Robert Ashley, Jr., former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a two-time Wash100 Award recipient, has been named an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Ashley retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of lieutenant general in November 2020 after more than 36 years in active duty, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit said Monday.
Prior to assuming his role as the 21st director of DIA in 2017, Ashley served as deputy chief of staff, G-2, at the Army where he acted as a senior adviser for security, intelligence and counterintelligence to the Army secretary and chief of staff.
He also held director roles at the Army Joint Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command in addition to serving in overseas deployments such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
Robert Gates, a senior fellow at CNAS, said Ashley's experience “will be of immense benefit” for the group's defense and intelligence research.
Aside from Ashley, CNAS also appointed Michael Kofman, senior research scientist at the Russia Studies Program within the Center for Naval Analyses, as adjunct senior fellow for the organization’s Transatlantic Security Program.
Kofman holds fellowships at the National Defense University and the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the CNAS' Transatlantic Security Program, said Kofman brings decades of experience in Russian studies to support CNAS efforts to assess potential threats to the U.S. and its transatlantic allies.