<span class="vcard">Carrie Cordero</span>

Carrie Cordero

Guest Author

Carrie Cordero (LinkedIn) is Robert M. Gates senior fellow and general counsel at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). In her research capacity, she leads the CNAS Securing U.S. Democracy Initiative, which focuses on homeland security, the intelligence community, surveillance, cybersecurity, and rule of law issues. She has testified before the United States Congress on homeland security, surveillance law, and foreign influence on democratic institutions. Her writing has appeared across national publications and platforms, including at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN.com, Politico, USA Today, Defense One, Lawfare, and Just Security, among others.

As general counsel, Cordero provides legal advice and counsel to the CNAS executive team and staff, including on matters of compliance, cybersecurity, privacy, contracts, grants, ethics, employment and all other aspects of managing an independent nonprofit organization conducting national security, foreign policy and defense policy research, and its associated fundraising activities. She also serves as secretary to the Board of Directors.

Outside CNAS, Cordero has been a CNN legal and national security analyst since 2017. She is also a member of the board of advisors of the Tech, Law & Security Program at American University’s Washington College of Law and the Advisory Committee of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. From March 2022–January 20, 2025, Cordero was a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Cordero spent the first part of her career in public service, including as counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security; senior associate general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and attorney advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice, during which time she handled critical counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations and appeared frequently before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. At the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, she worked extensively on developing policies, procedures, and processes relating to oversight, compliance, and protection of privacy and civil liberties in the context of government national security investigations and intelligence activities. She also served as a special assistant United States attorney. After leaving government service, Cordero was the director of national security studies at Georgetown Law, where she also served as adjunct professor of law from 2010 to 2020. She was also in private practice, handling matters related to surveillance, law enforcement response, security, and privacy.

Cordero earned her JD, cum laude, from Washington College of Law, American University, and her BA, magna cum laude, from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Articles by this author:

The Just Security Podcast
Asylum seekers wait for news outside El Chaparral port of entry on the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on March 19, 2020. It is raining and some carry umbrellas.
The US Department of Homeland Security building
Families sit and lie in overcrowded cells without privacy. Many individuals huddle in thin metallic emergency blankets as bedding. Barbed wire fencing serves as walls.
Honduran father Juan and his six-year-old son Anthony walk on their way to attend Sunday Mass on September 9, 2018 in Oakland, California. They fled their country and crossed the U.S. border at a lawful port of entry in Brownsville, Texas seeking asylum. They were soon separated and spent the next 85 days apart in detention. Juan was sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, while his son was sent to a detention shelter New York. Juan said it took six weeks from the time of separation until he was able to make a phone call to his son.
U.S. acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan listens to President Donald Trump during a bilateral meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Cabinet Room at the White House April 02, 2019 in Washington, DC.

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