David Aaron

Ambassador David Aaron is a Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation coordinating counter-terrorism and homeland security research.  He has served in both the government and the private sector.  A graduate of Occidental College and Princeton University, he then entered the Foreign Service, where he held a variety of posts, which included the U.S. Delegation to NATO and to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union.  In the latter capacity he was a principal negotiator of the U.S. – Soviet Nuclear Accidents Agreement. After leaving the Foreign Service, he continued in government in several positions, including the National Security Council where he was the principal drafter of what became known as the “Schlessinger Doctrine”.  Subsequently, he became a Task Force Director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then Deputy National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.  In the latter capacity, he chaired sub-Cabinet committees dealing with Arms Control and with Intelligence.  He also served as a confidential presidential emissary to Europe, where he negotiated the deployment of Medium Range missiles, to the Middle East where he helped prepare for the Camp David negotiations, as well as to Africa, Latin America, and China.