The National Security Roundtable

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
During the 1990's, Kent Clizbe was a C.I.A case officer and member of the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations. He left the C.I.A. in 1998 but returned in 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, to serve as a counter-terrorism contract ops officer in multiple counter-terrorism deployments.

In a career that spanned the globe, in multiple roles and multiple operations, Clizbe worked in various intelligence positions in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe. Although his specialty is counter-terrorism and Islamic extremism, Clizbe has worked counter-intelligence, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, and other targets as well.

In 2005, Clizbe was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors, for his counter-terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in the article "Jihadists in Paradise" by Mark Bowden (noted author of Black Hawk Down and Guests of the Ayatollah) in the Atlantic Monthly (March 2007).

Prior to joining the C.I.A, Clizbe served in the U.S. Air Force as a Vietnamese linguist and was stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. He has linguistic expertise in Vietnamese, Italian, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, and Arabic.