Richard Barrett was a fellow in New America's International Security program. He is senior director for Special Projects at the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies. He is also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University. He is on the boards of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague, and the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation in Washington, among other bodies.

From March 2004 to December 2012, Barrett was coordinator of the Al-Qaida and Taliban Monitoring Team at the United Nations in New York, appointed by the UN Secretary General. The team was established at the request of the Security Council to assist it in dealing with the threats to international peace and security posed by Al-Qaida, the Taliban and other associated groups and entities.

In 2005 Barrett helped establish a system-wide United Nations working group on terrorism which became the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force following the adoption of a Global Strategy to Counter Terrorism by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2006. Within the task force, he led on radicalization and deradicalization issues and on terrorist use of the Internet; he remains an adviser to its director.

Before joining the United Nations, Barrett worked for the British Government in the Security Service, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Secret Intelligence Service, where he was in charge of counterterrorism before and after the attacks in the United States in September 2001. He has served in Canada, Jordan, Turkey, and at the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations in New York.

Homeland Security & Terrorism, Political, Security & Defense, National Security,