First Amendment Symposium
Speaker Biographies
Mike German
Policy Counsel for National Security, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
Moderator, The Role of Whistleblowers to Facilitate Government Accountability
Michael German served as a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1988 to 2004. He has taught counterterrorism at the FBI National Academy and worked as an undercover agent against white supremacist groups in Los Angeles, California, and militia groups in Seattle, Washington. He resigned from the FBI in June after protesting the handling of a terrorism case.
Mr. German is the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent (Potomac Books 2007), which provides unique insights into why terrorism is such a persistent and difficult problem and why the U.S. approach to counterterrorism is not working.
His articles on terrorism have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the National Law Journal. For his work combating white supremacist groups, he was awarded the Los Angeles Federal Bar Association Medal of Valor and the First African Methodist Episcopal Church FAME Award.
Mr. German received his B.A. in philosophy from Wake Forest University in 1985 and his J.D. from Northwestern University in 1988.
