Stephen Flynn

f you talk to Stephen Flynn, you'll probably get an earful. "I don't do sound bites," he admits. At age 43, Flynn is a fountain of knowledge, which he is now putting to use as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A border-security expert, he maintains that it's not really "borders" that need to be protected but international networks. "Canada is not trying to take the 49th Parallel from us," he says. "Mexico is not trying to take back the Southwest border. The problems don't land out of the sky, and end up at the border."

Flynn serves as an adviser to the congressional Port Security Caucus, and he visits major ports to offer advice to law enforcement officials. He helped devise Operation Safe Commerce, a public-private partnership in which a cargo container was tracked from Slovakia to New Hampshire, and contributed to the Hart-Rudman Commission report. He is valued because of his willingness to visit the front lines-walking the borders and traveling with container ships to track how items are shipped and to measure their vulnerability.

Flynn grew up in Newburyport, Mass., the birthplace of the Coast Guard. He received his bachelor's degree from the Coast Guard Academy, became a Coast Guard commander, and earned a Ph.D. at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Flynn became interested in border and port security issues while serving in the Coast Guard in 1986, when Navy officers told him he had to defend the USS Yorktown from a potential Libyan attack. "It was sort of this crazy experience of trying to explain to these guys that I really didn't practice warfare day in and day out, when it comes to people shooting at me." He remembers thinking, "You guys have to have a better plan than this."