Phillip E. Carter is Senior Fellow, Counsel and Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.  His research focuses on issues facing veterans and military personnel, force structure and readiness issues, and civil-military relations.

Mr. Carter began his career as an Army officer, serving for several years in the active and reserve components as a military police and civil affairs officer.  He deployed to Iraq in 2005-06, where he served as an embedded adviser with the Iraqi police in the Diyala province, and worked closely with the State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team.  After coming home, Mr. Carter became increasingly involved in veterans and national security policy issues.   In 2007, Mr. Carter helped stand up the Obama campaign’s veterans policy committee; in 2008, he joined the campaign as its national veterans director, responsible for policy and political engagement with the veterans and military community. In 2009, Mr. Carter served as a political appointee in the Obama administration, responsible for detainee policy issues.

In addition to his military and government experience, Mr. Carter has worked in the private sector as an attorney and business leader.  He previously practiced law with a major international law firm, where his work focused on government contracts, export controls, and national security law.  Mr. Carter authored briefs in the landmark national security cases Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (relating to military commissions at Guantanamo Bay), FAIR vs. Rumsfeld (relating to military recruiting on university campuses) and Al-Aulaqi v. Obama (a challenge to U.S. targeting of al Qaeda personnel in Yemen).  Following his law practice, from 2011 to 2013, Mr. Carter served as chief operating officer for Caerus Associates, a private-sector strategy and design firm.

Mr. Carter currently teaches as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University.  He serves on the editorial board of the Journal for National Security Law & Policy, and the veterans advisory council for the Jericho Project, a non-profit organization in New York devoted to ending homelessness through innovative supportive housing programs.  He continues to write extensively on legal and national security issues, with recent work appearing in the Washington Post, Slate, and Foreign Policy, and other publications, also comments on national security issues as @Carter_PE on Twitter.

A native of Southern California, Mr. Carter attended college and law school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 

(As of Oct 2015)