Battelle Memorial Institute
Former Intelligence Counsel to Former Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott
E-mail: rmarksster@gmail.com
Phone: (703) 919-7419; (703) 677-7326
Areas of Interest
Intelligence
Islamist terrorism
Organized crime
Biography
Ronald “Ron” Marks served as Senior Director of Oracle’s National Security Group and an Executive Advisor for Zeta Associates, a northern Virginia signals software company with extensive business in the Intelligence Community. A former senior CIA official currently living outside Washington, D.C., Ron is native Oregonian, born in Portland, Oregon and raised in Gresham. He graduated from Gresham High School in 1974 and received his Bachelors in Business Administration and Economics from Lewis and Clark in 1978. Ron went on to the study at the Northwestern School of Law and took his Masters in Economics at the University of Oregon in 1982.
Since 1983, Marks has lived in Washington, D.C., where has been married to his wife, Suzanne, an attorney, for 20 years. Ron spent 16 years with the CIA. During that time, he occupied a number of increasingly senior positions including as Intelligence Counsel to former U.S. Senator Bob Dole. During his CIA career, Marks was also: Special Assistant to the ADCI for Military Support, U.S. State Department Program Director for Law Enforcement Issues in Russia and Eastern Europe and a senior budget director at the National Reconnaissance Office.
Since leaving government in 1999, Mr. Marks has been a senior defense contractor and a software executive who has testified before Congress and commented extensively on defense and intelligence issues on television and radio as a National Security Commentator on numerous television and radio news and talk shows. In addition, he has written editorials for the Washington Times on intelligence matters, and the Christian Science Monitor on homeland security issues.
Marks is also an Adjunct Professor at the National Defense University (NDU) where he teaches on Intelligence and National Security Matters. He is also a Senior Faculty member of the Intelligence and National Security Academy.
Ronald has also written for scholarly journals such as the Washington Quarterly and Cambridge University International Review. He has lectured on national security matters at Christ Church College, Oxford University; the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Institute, the National War College, Georgetown University, George Washington University, The Rand Corporation, as well as at several US national security agencies. Marks has testified before the Senate Government Affairs Committee on the oversight issues of U.S. Intelligence.
Mr. Marks is a 2010 Senior Fellow at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, an Associate Member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and is a Senior Steering Committee member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Transnational Threats Board. Ron served on the Lewis and Clark College Board of Alumni – 2005-07 – and is a member of the Cosmos Club.
