Steven Kleinman is the Director for Strategic Research for The Soufan Group. He is a career intelligence officer with more than 28 years of operational and leadership experience in assignments worldwide and has served as a Senior Intelligence Officer at the Joint and Combatant Command levels. He is a recognized subject matter expert in human intelligence operations, strategic level analysis, and special operations.

Mr. Kleinman is a highly decorated veteran of three major military campaigns ― Operations Just Cause, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom ― during which he served as an interrogator, the chief of a joint and combined interrogation team, and as a Senior Advisor on interrogation operations to a special operations task force. He has been recognized as one of the most prolific interrogators during the first Gulf War.

Mr. Kleinman served as the Director of the Air Force Combat Interrogation Course and as an Advisor to the National Defense Intelligence College's program on human intelligence and counterintelligence studies. As a Senior Advisor to the first contemporary study on interrogation sponsored by the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Science Board, Mr. Kleinman has been a major force in rethinking the American approach to strategic interrogation. He continues to serve as a senior consultant on interrogation-related studies being conducted at leading universities and research centers across America. He has testified on intelligence, interrogation, and detainee policy before the Senate and House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.

Mr. Kleinman is a well-known speaker on national security and intelligence-related topics and has presented before a broad array of audiences, including: the International Terrorism and Intelligence Conference in London, Stanford University, the American Psychological Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Army Intelligence Training Center and School, Georgetown University School of Law, the Graduate School of Psychology at the University of Nevada in Reno, Nevada and the Home Team Academy of Singapore.

His articles and research papers have been published in the Harvard University Press, Willan Publishing (UK), the New York City Law Review, the Defense Intelligence Journal, the American Intelligence Journal, the Journal of Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, and the National Defense Intelligence College Press. He was a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence published in 2004. He has also been cited in numerous publications, to include Newsweek, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, Der Stern, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.

Mr. Kleinman is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where he earned a bachelor of arts in psychology; the National University, with a master of science in forensic sciences; and the National Defense Intelligence College, with a master of science in strategic intelligence. His professional military education includes Air War College, Air Command & Staff College, and the Naval War College's Strategy and Policy program.