Adam Klein

Guest Author

Adam Klein is Director of the Program on Technology, Security, and Global Affairs at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Adam also serves as Deputy Director of the Strauss Center and as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas School of Law.

Previously, he served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.

Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC.  There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law. Previously, Adam practiced law at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, LLP and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.

Adam is a former Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. He speaks German and French.