Hon. Sen. Slade Gorton

Board of Directors, Discovery Institute

Slade Gorton is of counsel to Preston Gates & Ellis LLP. He recently served as a Commissioner on the National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States from 2002-2004. Before his appointment to the 9-11 Commission, Slade spent 18 years representing Washington State in the United States Senate. Gorton's years in the Senate saw him appointed to powerful committee posts including Appropriations, Budget, Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Energy and Natural Resources. Slade served as the Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee (1995-2001), the Commerce Subcommittees on Consumer Affairs (1995-99), and Aviation (1999-2000). He was a member of the Republican leadership as counsel to the Majority Leader (1996-2000).

Slade began his political career in 1958 as a Washington state representative; he went on to serve as State House Majority Leader. In 1968 Slade was elected Attorney General of Washington state where he argued 14 cases before the Supreme Court. In June 1980, Slade received the Wyman Award as "Outstanding Attorney General in the United States."

Slade also served on the President's consumer Advisory Council (1975-77) and on the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission from 1969-1981. He was Chairman of the Washington State Law & Justice Commission (1969-76), served as an instructor in Constitutional law to public administration graduate students at the University of Puget Sound (1977), and has served on the Board of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center since 1987. He is also a member of the board of directors at Discovery Institute.

Education & Credentials

B.A., magna cum laude, Dartmouth College, 1950
Phi Beta Kappa
LL.B., Columbia University, 1953

Archives

Ten Years After 9/11, Americans are Safer but There is More to Do

WITH its vivid introduction, “Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States,” the “9/11 Commission Report” became an instant best-seller and a National Book Award finalist. Unchallenged in its objective history of the circumstances and failures leading up to the horrors of 9/11, except by inevitable conspiracy theorists, it set forth a wide-ranging series of recommendations that resulted in more positive changes in our national-security establishment than those from any other such commission in history. And so where do we stand now, 10 years later? Inside the United States, at great cost in both dollars and personal disruption, we are clearly safer. In fact, in the past decade there has been only one fatal terrorist

“Future Of Transportation, Funding & Climate Change”

This is the TVW video of the Sept. 5 panel discussion at Cascadia Center’s Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation conference titled, “Future Of Transportation, Funding and Climate Change.” Joining moderator Slade Gorton of the National Transportation Policy Project are Paul Brubaker of USDOT’s Research & Innovative Technology Administration, David Kaplan of V2Green, WSDOT Sec. Paula Hammond, Bill Rogers of Idaho National Laboratory, and Neil Schuster of the American Assn. of Motor Vehicles Administrators. The panel discussion is preceded by a presentation from Admiral Dennis Blair of Securing America’s Future Energy.To view, click on the link above or the screen embed below. For air times of Sept. 5 Beyond Oil segments (for September, 2008) go to

Between Presidents, a Dangerous Gap

Now that we have presumptive presidential nominees from the two major political parties, we need to turn our attention to the transition that will take place six months from now. One of the observations of the 9/11 commission was that the deeply flawed presidential transition of 2000 and 2001 created a dangerous period of vulnerability. As always, the crowd coming in was dismissive of the concerns of the crowd going out. There was a mismatch between the concerns of the Clinton national security team and those of the incoming Bush team. While there were briefings between the election and the swearing-in, there was no trust – and thus no effective dialogue – between the members of the two administrations. In addition, President Bush took too long to set priorities and

Who’s In Charge? Coordinating Puget Sound Transportation

WHO’S in charge? That’s the question citizens ask most often in focus groups and front-porch panels on transportation. Two bills in Olympia right now address just that question. Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen and House Transportation Chairman Ed Murray have both proposed bills that would establish study commissions to bring specific proposals back to the 2007 Legislature to consolidate Puget Sound’s transportation governance. The importance of a strong regional force in transportation was emphasized by the December 2000 report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation. That report recommended that the Legislature “provide regions with the ability to plan, select, fund and implement … projects identified to meet the