Michael A. Sheehan
Michael A. Sheehan has had a thirty year career of public service; much of it involved in counter terrorism, unconventional warfare, peacekeeping and other security challenges. He has served with distinction as a US Army Special Forces officer, a White House aide for two Administrations, as a senior diplomat at the State Department and the United Nations, and finally as the head of counter terrorism for NYPD. His forthcoming book reflects on much of his career in counter terrorism and is entitled Crush the Cell; How to Defeat Terrorism without Terrorizing Ourselves and will be published in May of 2008 by Random House.
Sheehan is a 1977 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served in a variety of Infantry and Special Forces assignments including as the Commander of a hostage rescue unit in Panama, as a counter insurgency advisor in El Salvador, and a Mechanized Company Commander on the Demilitarized Zone in Korea. He is qualified as an Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, Jungle Warfare and Colombian Special Forces (Lancero) soldier. Sheehan also served in the field on peacekeeping missions in Somalia (1993-4) and Haiti (1995) while on active duty; in both cases as Special Advisor to the head of the UN Mission. While on active duty in the Army, Sheehan served at the White House on the National Security Council staff for both President George H.W. Bush (1989-1992) and President William Jefferson Clinton (1995-1997) in the areas of counter narcotics, peacekeeping, and low intensity conflict. He was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge and numerous other decorations for his military service.
After retiring from the Army, Sheehan served at the State Department in the Bureau of International Organizations and worked on UN reform and peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia. After the bombings of our Embassies in East Africa, Sheehan was appointed as Ambassador-at-Large for Counter Terrorism (1998-2000) and was confirmed by the US Senate in 1999. At the State Department, he was responsible for coordinating the US government’s international counter terrorism policy and was a principal member of the National Security Council’s counter terrorism security group. From 2001 to 2003, Sheehan went back to peacekeeping duty as the Assistant Secretary General of Mission Support in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, where he responsible for supporting 16 missions around the world and over 40 thousand military and police peacekeepers. During this period, his focus was primarily on various African conflicts.
In his last assignment, Sheehan was the Deputy Commissioner for Counter Terrorism at NYPD; where he helped re-shape NYPD into what is widely regarded as one of the most effective counter terrorism organizations in the world (2003-2006). His office had over 120 detectives assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force where they partnered with the FBI in managing the counter terrorism investigations in the New York metropolitan area. In addition, he commanded the NYPD Counter Terrorism Division which had responsibility for infrastructure protection, training, deployment of counter terrorism patrol assets, private sector outreach and other functions.
Sheehan has master Degrees from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service (1986 to 1988) and the US Army Command and Staff College (1991). In both programs his dissertations concerned irregular warfare theory and practice. Sheehan continues to speak and lecture on counter terrorism and counter insurgency policy and is a distinguished fellow at the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point and the Center for Law and Security at NYU. In addition, he is a counter terrorism analyst for NBC News (in English and the Spanish language).
Currently, Sheehan is a partner in Torch Hill Equity partners, a private equity group that specializes in defense, intelligence and security sectors. He also maintains a select group of clients as a security consultant to the financial services industry and large infrastructure development projects in New York City and the Middle East.
He is married with two children and resides in New York City.
