Suzanne Spaulding

he intelligence committees depend on a strong staff for much of their information, and Suzanne Spaulding fills that role nicely for the Democrats on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. As minority staff director, she manages seven people who monitor the budgets and activities of the intelligence community around the world.

When she signed on to the House Intelligence Committee in September, Spaulding was considered valuable because of her extensive experience in the field. She most recently worked as a homeland-security consultant for RAND, where she started shortly after the September 11 attacks. Spaulding served as executive director of the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by former CIA Director John Deutch, and chaired the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security. She also served as assistant general counsel at the CIA, and worked as general counsel on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Notably, Spaulding was executive director of the L. Paul Bremer-chaired National Commission on Terrorism, where she worked with her current boss, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. She began studying terrorism while working for Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in the mid-1980s.

Spaulding, 47, was born at Camp Lejeune, the Marine base in Jacksonville, N.C., grew up in Hawaii and Northern Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia. Looking ahead, she says the intelligence community's ability to prevent another 9/11 will be increased if "the talent and expertise resident throughout the community can be harnessed in a fully collaborative way, rather than stovepiped or bound by jurisdictional barriers." And she adds that the oversight committee also has lessons to learn: "Staff and members are now more consistent and rigorous in questioning the basis for analytic judgments and the reliability of sources."