BCSIA Director's Lunch
“Reflections on the Work of the Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence and Weapons of Mass Destruction”
with
Dr. Charles M. Vest
President Emeritus, M.I.T. and Member of the
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S.
The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is proud to host a Director's Lunch on “Reflections on the Work of the Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence and Weapons of Mass Destruction” with Dr. Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus, M.I.T., and member of the WMD Commission.
The WMD Commission, founded at the behest of President Bush, presented him the report on March 31, 2005. It concluded that the “Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction” and suggested 74 recommendations to correct intelligence community weaknesses, citing a lack of strong leadership and an over-reliance on assumptions, as well as failures of information collection, information sharing, analysis, and communication.
Charles M. Vest was president of MIT from 1990-2004. As president, he placed special emphasis on enhancing undergraduate education, exploring new organizational forms to meet emerging directions in research and education, building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, and enhancing racial and cultural diversity at MIT. He has also devoted considerable energy to bringing issues concerning education and research to broader public attention and to strengthening national policy on science, engineering, and education. Dr. Vest served on the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in both the Clinton and Bush administrations and chaired both the President’s Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and the U.S. Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of DOE Science Programs. He recently served on the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and on the National Academies-CSIS Roundtable on Scientific Communication and National Security. Dr. Vest has been a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Economic Growth and Technology and the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. He was Vice Chair of the Council on Competitiveness for a decade and has been Chair of the Association of American Universities (AAU). He is a director of IBM, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and the Kavli Foundation.
