Martin Edwin “Mick” Andersen has worked as a foreign correspondent and historian in Latin America, as an investigative reporter focusing on U.S. homeland security, crime and corruption, as well as an educator and a good government activist.

From 1982-1987, Andersen was a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Washington Post based in Buenos Aires from 1982-1987 and was one of the first non-Peruvian reporters to cover that country’s Shining Path guerrillas from their stronghold in the Andes, in early 1982. He is also a former managing editor of Port Security News, the Washington correspondent for GSN: Government Security News, an investigative reporter for Insight on the News and Congressional Quarterly/Homeland Security (CQ/HLS), and has been a frequent contributor and guest columnist for the London Economist, the Washington Times, the Miami Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, and the Madison (WI) Capitol Times. 

More than a two dozen investigative articles Andersen published in Insight magazine on corruption and cronyism at the Inter-American Development Bank led to significant reforms at the IDB designed to improve transparency there.  A series of investigative articles for CQ/HLS resulted in a major Inspector General’s investigation at the Transportation Security Administration and an FBI probe of the nuclear weapons facility at Lawrence Livermore.

As a professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, working directly for Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston, Andersen was the staff author of various legislative initiatives signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, including bills that: required coverage of the rights of indigenous peoples in the annual State Department human rights report; gave the U.S. Department of Justice authority to conduct administration of justice programs in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and authorized the obtaining, through barter, of ex-Soviet Special Nuclear Materials (SNM).  He also accompanied Cranston to India and Pakistan in a show bi-partisan support for confidence building measures offered by Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gates in order to avert the possibility of a war between the de-facto nuclear powers.

Andersen was centrally involved in the Senate leader’s efforts to promote reform the International Military Education and Training program to include training of legislators and their staffs (“expanded IMET” concept), additional emphasis on humanitarian law, and was the staff author of the “War Crimes Prevention Act of 1991,” an attempt to focus attention on the need for greater training in humanitarian law by armed forces around the world. He worked closely with both the El Salvador military and leftist guerrillas on key civil-military and administration of justice issues, providing needed information and proposals to both sides that helped move the peace negotiations forward and paved the way for U.S. Department of Justice-led efforts to take a leading role in the construction of a new national civilian police force.

Andersen also served as a senior advisor for policy planning with the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department. In 2001, he won the U.S. Office of Special Counsel’s “Public Servant Award” for his extraordinary contributions in protecting national security information and combating administrative misconduct at Justice, the first ever federal employee in the national security category to receive such an honor. That same year, he was a specially-invited panelist for the “Transparency and Integrity in Government” workshop at Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity, sponsored by the Dutch government, in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Andersen, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, is a former director of Latin America and Caribbean programs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), headed by Vice President Walter F. Mondale, and the founder of its Civil-Military Project. For nearly a decade, 1997-2006, he was the senior Latin America analyst for Freedom House, the New York-based human rights group, and has also worked as an international consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). Andersen also served as the senior editor and legislative systems specialist for a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-sponsored project resulting in the creation of a 200-page “Transitional Election Planning Manual” for future use in an electoral opening in Cuba.

He is the author of two books on Argentine history— La Policia: Pasado, Presente y Propuestas para el Futuro (2000) and Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War” (1993)—the latter praised by The New York Times as “a tour de force,” as well as the editor of Hacia una Nueva Relación: El papel de las Fuerzas Armadas en un Gobierno Democrático (1990). Other of Andersen’s publications include: “Los Medios Frente a la Violencia: La Mejor Manera de Cubrirla,” in Jorge Sapoznikow, et al., Convivencia y seguridad: un reto a la governabilidad, (2000); “The Undone Reform: Civil-Military Relations and the Administration of Justice in Mexico,” in Riordan Roett (ed.), The Challenge of Institutional Reform in Mexico (1995); “Chiapas, Indigenous Rights and the Coming Fourth World Revolution,” The SAIS Review, (Summer-Fall 1994); “International Administration of Justice: The New American Security Frontier,” The SAIS Review, (Winter-Spring 1993); “The Military Obstacle to Latin Democracy,” Foreign Policy, (Winter 1988-1989); “Staying the Course in Chile,” The SAIS Review, (Winter-Spring 1987); and “Dateline Argentina: Hello Democracy,” Foreign Policy, (Summer 1984).

In April 2006, he was the co-author, together with Dr. James Jay Carafano, of the report, Trade Security at Sea: Setting National Priorities for Safeguarding America’s Economic Lifeline, published by The Heritage Foundation’s Maritime Security Working Group.  In August 2006, he published an essay, “Failing States, Ungoverned Spaces and the Indigenous Challenge in Latin America,” in the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies’ Security and Defense Studies Review. 

Andersen has also provided testimony before the U.S. Congress on indigenous rights; federal employee free speech rights, and international administration of justice, and has been a lecturer on topics—including counter-insurgency and how to cover war crimes trials—at civilian and military educational institutions such as Georgetown University, American University, the Marine Corps University, Addis Ababa University, the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, and the Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management (DISAM).

Publications:

“Failing States, Ungoverned Spaces and the Indigenous Challenge in Latin America,” Security and Defense Studies Review http://www.ndu.edu/chds/journal/PDF/2006/Andersen_essay-formatted.pdf

Trade Security at Sea: Setting National Priorities for Safeguarding America’s Economic Lifeline, The Heritage Foundation Maritime Security Working Group http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg1930.cfm