Mark Stout was the Historian and Curator at the International Spy Museum from 2010-2013. He is a former intelligence analyst, having served for thirteen years with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also the founding President of the North American Society for Intelligence History. For eight years he directed a master’s degree program in global security studies for Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Stout is the author of World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence (University Press of Kansas, 2023). In addition, he is co-author or co-editor of several other books, including Spy Chiefs: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom (Georgetown University Press, 2017) and Covert Action: National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention (forthcoming from Georgetown University Press, 2025). Dr. Stout is a co-editor of the Georgetown’s Studies in Intelligence History book series. He has degrees from Stanford and Harvard and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Leeds.
Presentation Topics
American Spy Chiefs
In the public imagination, spy chiefs, the heads of American intelligence agencies, are often portrayed as immensely powerful individuals who are secretly lurking in the shadows to manipulate the world to be not as it seems. But has this been true in the United States? And what does it take to be an effective spy chief?
Intelligence and American Presidents
These days, the fraught relationship between the President and the US Intelligence Community is often in the news. But no American president since World War II has had stress-free dealings with intelligence. Learn about the love-hate relationships between some of our most important modern Presidents and their intelligence agencies.
American Intelligence during World War I: On the Home Front and on the Battlefield
In the United States, World War I is often a forgotten war but it was a tremendously important time in American intelligence. Important new technologies such as aerial reconnaissance and signals intelligence and an intense focus on domestic security and counterintelligence helped win the war and shape American intelligence to this very day.
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