"Dirty Laundry"

Michael Riedel is an American journalist and broadcaster. He is the theater columnist for the New York Post, the host of "On the Town With Michael Riedel" on AM970 in New York City, and co-host (with Susan Haskins) of the weekly talk show Theater Talk on PBS. His best-selling book "Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway" won the 2015 Marfield Prize for arts writing and is widely considered to be the successor to "The Season," William Goldman's classic 1967 book about Broadway. Riedel's skewering of Broadway shows and personalities in his column have made him a controversial and often feared figure on the New York theater scene. He has been called "the enfant terrible of the New York press".

He played himself, ‘Brilliantly’, according to him, on the hugely popular NBC Series, ‘Smash’

Mike Baker

Mike Baker - During a career spanning over 15 years as a covert field operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Mike specialized in counterterrorism, counternarcotics and counterinsurgency operations. He engaged in, organized and supervised operations around the globe, working in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. He was recognized professionally for outstanding performance and for operational achievements in hostile environments.

After leaving government service, Mike co-founded Diligence LLC, a global intelligence, investigations, risk management and security firm that has grown over the past decade into one of the acknowledged industry leaders. As a principal partner he has led the company as it expanded around the world, opening offices in London, New York, Washington DC, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Brussels and Geneva. He also established the company’s security operations in Iraq, building a team of over 300 expat and local personnel involved in security and information collection.

The Diligence Advisory Board has included numerous senior leaders from the intelligence world, government and business. The non-executive Chairman is Judge William Webster, former Director of both the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Lord Charles Powell, former National Security Advisor to Margaret Thatcher, Mack McClarty, former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and several others have worked with Mike and the Diligence management team to create business opportunities and assist in the company’s growth strategy. Investors and partners have included Haley Barbour, the former Governor of Mississippi and Ed Mathias, senior partner of The Carlyle Group.

Mike is a regular contributor in the national and international media on intelligence, security, counterterrorist issues, geopolitical affairs and cybersecurity. He appears regularly on Fox News and CNN, as well as other major media outlets.

In addition, Mike is the co-host of America Declassified, a weekly series that premiered on the Travel Channel in November 2013.  He is also the co-host of World Access, a new weekly series premiering on Travel Channel in late 2015. Previously, Mike hosted the popular British reality television show “SPY”.

Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.

Taylor has coauthored three books that have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor published (through Encounter Books) The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor wrote Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson wrote Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.

Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, the perceived tensions between civil liberties and national security, torture, campaign finance, education, health care, impeachment, and a wide range of other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's leading legal journalists and has been known for breaking with both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.

Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court; he wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010; he has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has been published by The Atlantic, The New Republic, National Review, RealClearPolitics.com, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, and other magazines, plus op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.

Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1978-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.

Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988. He is 69.

Tara Maller

Dr. Tara Maller is a national security expert with extensive media and communications experience. She serves as Spokesperson and Senior Policy Advisor for the  Counter Extremism Project (CEP).  CEP is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideology. Led by a renowned group of former world leaders and former diplomats it will aim to combat extremism by pressuring financial support networks, countering the narrative of extremists and their online recruitment, and advocating for strong laws, policies and regulations.

Gordon Chang

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World, released by Random House in January 2006.  Showdown focuses on nuclear proliferation in general and the North Korean crisis in particular.  His first book is The Coming Collapse of China (Random House, August 2001). He is a contributor at Forbes.com and blogs at World Affairs Journal.

He lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as Partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie.

His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Barron's. 

He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other institutions.  He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon.  He has also spoken before industry and investor groups including Bloomberg, Sanford Bernstein, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia.  Chang has appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.  

He has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and Bloomberg Television. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and is a frequent co-host and guest on The John Batchelor Show. 

Outside the United States he has spoken in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, The Hague, London, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

He has served two terms as a trustee of Cornell University.