Biography

Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President at the RAND Corporation, is the author of Will Terrorists Go Nuclear (2008, Prometheus Books) and of several RAND monographs, including Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves (2006) and two 2002 reports on al Qaeda. He formerly served as chair of the Political Science Department at RAND.

Commissioned in the infantry, Jenkins became a paratrooper and a captain in the Green Berets. He is a decorated combat veteran, having served in the Seventh Special Forces Group in the Dominican Republic and with the Fifth Special Forces Group in Vietnam. He returned to Vietnam as a member of the Long Range Planning Task Group and received the Department of the Army's highest award for his service.

In 1996, President Clinton appointed Jenkins to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. From 1999 to 2000, he served as advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism and in 2000 was appointed to the U.S. Comptroller General's Advisory Board. He is a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute, where he directs the continuing research on protecting surface transportation against terrorist attacks.

Jenkins has a B.A. in fine arts and an M.A. in history, both from the University of California, Los Angeles. He studied at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and in the Department of Humanities at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, where he was a Fulbright Fellow and recipient of a second fellowship from the Organization of American States.