Bruce Riedel is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. A former CIA officer, Riedel was a senior adviser to four U.S. presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues. At the request of President Obama he chaired an interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for the White House, completed in March 2009. He is author of The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future, is a frequent media commentator on security and terrorism, and is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast.