Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — After flying Naval reconnaissance missions during the Cold War, working for the U.S. State Department at the United Nations and the CIA, and serving as a Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary in the first years of President Bush's administration, Peter Brookes has a wealth of foreign policy experience.

He's bringing that experience to Steamboat Springs on Monday for a talk entitled "America's Foreign Policy Challenges." The talk begins at 7:30 a.m. at the Steamboat Yacht Club on Yampa Avenue.

The event is part of the Steamboat Speaker Series hosted by the Leadership Program of the Rockies, a conservative, Denver-based public policy institute. Jennifer Schubert-Akin, former chairwoman of the Routt County Republican Central Committee and a 2006 graduate of the leadership program, is organizing the speaker series.

Brookes is senior fellow for National Security Affairs with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C. He is a weekly columnist for the New York Post and a regular contributor to Armed Forces Journal. Brookes also is the author of "A Devil's Triangle: Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Rogue States," first published in 2005.

He has been published in numerous newspapers and appeared on many news-oriented TV programs.

Brookes, a decorated military veteran and retired Navy commander, has served with the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Naval Intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff while working as an intelligence analyst, Russian-language interpreter, defense attache and associate professor at the Joint Military Intelligence College.

In January, the Steamboat Speaker Series hosted Stephen Moore, an editorial board member and senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, for a talk titled "Keys to Prosperity."