Matthew G. Olsen

Matthew G. Olsen

Matthew Glen Olsen (born February 21, 1962) is an American prosecutor and the current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

Born in Fargo, North Dakota, Olsen is the graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School. Olsen began his career as a law clerk for District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, before entering private practice and working as a trial attorney for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 1992. He moved to the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia where he was a federal prosecutor and served as the first director of the Office's National Security Division from 2004 to 2005. In 2006 Olsen was appointed by President George W. Bush to be the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's National Security Division, where he served until 2009, when he became the acting director of the Division. In 2009, he was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to become the Head of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, a commission set up to oversee the legal justifications of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Olsen later briefly served as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as the General Counsel of the National Security Agency.

On July 1, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Olsen to become the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and was confirmed by the Senate on August 16, 2011.