Jon B. Alterman is director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Middle East Program. Prior to joining CSIS, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Before entering government, he was a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace and at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. From 1993 to 1997, Alterman was an award-winning teacher at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in history. He also worked as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.), responsible for foreign policy and defense.

Alterman has lectured in more than 20 countries on subjects related to the Middle East and U.S. policy toward the region. He is the author of Egypt and American Foreign Assistance, 1952-1956: Hopes Dashed (Palgrave, 2002), New Media, New Politics? From Satellite Television to the Internet in the Arab World (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998), and the editor of Sadat and His Legacy: Egypt and the World, 1977-1997 ( Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998). In addition to his academic work, he is a frequent commentator in print, on radio, and on television. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Asharq al-Awsat, and other major publications. Alterman is on the Board of Advisory Editors of the Middle East Journal, is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Transnational Broadcasting Studies, and is a former international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Eleana Gordon oversees democracy programs and communications at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, promoting pro-democracy activists from the Islamic world. These projects include the Women for Free Iraq, a 2003 campaign by Iraqi women to advocate for democracy in Iraq; and the Iraq Democracy Information Center, which publishes writings on democracy. She organized two major conferences on democracy for Iraqi women activists, in Hilla in October 2003 and in Amman in April 2004, and continues to work closely with Iraqi women's groups to strengthen the protection of individual rights in the new Constitution.

Morton H. Halperin is the Director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Society Institute. Halperin oversees all policy advocacy on U.S. and international issues, including promotion of human rights and support for open societies abroad.

Halperin has a distinguished career in federal government, having served in the Clinton, Nixon, and Johnson administrations. In the Clinton administration, Halperin was Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998–2001), Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy at the National Security Council (1994–1996), and consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (1993). He was nominated by the President for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Democracy and Peacekeeping. During the first nine months of the Nixon administration, Halperin was a Senior Staff member of the National Security Council staff with responsibility for National Security Planning (1969). In the Johnson Administration, Halperin worked in the Department of Defense where he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (international Security Affairs), responsible for political-military planning and arms control (1966–1969).

Halperin also has a long record as a Washington advocate on national and international issues. He spent many years at the American Civil Liberties Union, serving as the Director of the Washington Office from 1984 to 1992, where he was responsible for the national legislative program as well as the activities of the ACLU Foundation based in the Washington Office. Halperin also served as the Director of the Center for National Security Studies from 1975 to 1992, where he focused on issues affecting both civil liberties and national security.

Halperin has been associated with a number of think tanks and universities, including Harvard, where he taught for six years (1960–66), and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been widely published in newspapers and magazines across the world, and has authored, coauthored, and edited more than a dozen books.

Yahia Said is Director of Iraq Revenue Watch and a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Global Governance.

The son of an Iraqi journalist and leading Iraqi feminist who was tortured and imprisoned by Hussein, Said left Iraq in 1979 as a teenager when Hussein began cracking down on opposition parties. While in exile Said has specialized on issues of post-totalitarian and post-conflict transition with a focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

After the fall of the Hussein regime, he started a research project at the London School of Economics analyzing the post-Saddam transition in Iraq. He also designed projects aimed at enhancing political participation and building networks involving Iraqi academics, journalists, activists, and policymakers with counterparts in the West and other transition countries.

Since 2003 he has traveled to Iraq regularly to meet with dozens of activists, intellectuals, political and spiritual leaders, and ordinary citizens. He has devoted special attention to identifying and meeting with civil society leaders, people who enjoy moral authority due to their expertise, spiritual status, or personal integrity. He regularly briefs officials in the “Green Zone” concerning his discussions with those in the “Red Zone.”