Colonel Leighton is a former member of the Joint Staff, Pentagon under Admiral Mullen and General Pace with areas of expertise in intelligence, acquisition, air combat, and foreign relations, with specialty in the Middle East and Asia. Colonel Leighton is the recipient of the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star for his work in Operation Iraqi Freedom and was awarded the Joint Qualified Officer designation. Currently, Cedric Leighton is the Founder and President of Cedric Leighton Associates, a DC area-based strategic risk and management consultancy. He has 26 years experience as an Intelligence Officer in the United States Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 2010.

His military assignments include:


 
* Assigned to the United States Special Operations Command, he managed sensitive intelligence missions in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. He worked closely with the units involved in the US - Colombian hunt for the notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s.


 
* Led a National-Tactical Integration Team and was deployed to Saudi Arabia in support of the "shock and awe" phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The team he led was credited with enabling the destruction of 95 percent of Saddam Hussein's air defense system, facilitating US and allied air supremacy over Iraqi airspace. He was also assigned to the United States Special Operations Command where he managed sensitive intelligence missions in the Middle East.



* Deputy Training Director for the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland. Serving on General Keith Alexander's staff, Colonel Leighton directed the efforts of the Cryptologic Training System. He also advised General (now retired) Michael Hayden when he was Director of NSA and Cedric was Director of Operations for the 70th Intelligence Wing.


 
* Deputy Director for Warfighter Support and Integration in the Intelligence Directorate of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. In this role he was responsible for planning and managing strategic intelligence, policy, Command and Control system interoperability and intelligence-related programmatic assessments for the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC).



* Deputy Secretary of Defense's Deputy Advisory Working Group (DAWG) He informed deliberations on numerous occasions. Both the JROC (Jay-Rock) and the DAWG
oversee the Defense Department's multi-billion dollar acquisition process.

In the course of his military career, Colonel Leighton was deployed five times to the Middle East, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and led 13th Air Force’s Intelligence Cooperative Engagement program with the Royal Thai, Indian, Indonesian, and Malaysian Air Forces. 
 After tours as an instructor and Flight Commander at the Air Force’s intelligence training center and a stint in the Pacific Theater, Colonel Leighton served on the Air Staff as Functional Manager for Signals Intelligence, Executive Officer to the Director, and Congressional Liaison.

Following his Air Staff tour, Colonel Leighton became the Director of Operations for the 70th Intelligence Wing at Fort Meade, Maryland. In this capacity he was instrumental in developing the Air Force’s National-Tactical Integration initiative, which made possible the first-ever seamless integration of Signals Intelligence-derived data into the Air Component Commander’s targeting process. This initiative became operational on the night of September 11, 2001.

Upon his return from the Middle East, Colonel Leighton assumed command of the 316th Training Squadron, the Department of Defense’s largest multi-service intelligence training unit. In this capacity he drove the modernization of cryptologic training and incorporated the lessons of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom into the curriculum.

Colonel Leighton has extensive media experience and has appeared on Fox Business News, CNN, MSNBC, Maryland Public Television and is a regular cyber and foreign policy news analyst for Capital Insider in Washington DC., and has contributed to AOL Defense, Huffington Post, CNBC. com, and TheStreet. com.



Cedric Leighton received his Bachelor of Arts Degree, magna cum laude in History and German Area Studies, (with distinction in all subjects) from Cornell University in 1984. While at Cornell, he was a radio news anchor and reporter for WVBR-FM. He earned his Master of Arts in International Studies from Angelo State University in 1995.



His military education includes Squadron Officer School (1988), Air Command and Staff College (1998), Air War College (2002), and the National Defense University’s Joint and Combined Warfighting School (2009).

Security & Defense, Software, Information Technology,