Kevin M. Woods is a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses and since 2003 has been the task leader of the Iraqi Perspectives Project. Prior to joining IDA, Kevin served as an officer in the United States Army in numerous worldwide operational assignments before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2004. He has a Masters Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Military History at the University of Leeds.

Kevin is the lead author of several studies on Operation Iraqi Freedom and the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein including: The Iraqi Perspectives Report: Saddam's Senior Leadership on Operation Iraqi Freedom (Naval Institute Press, 2006); Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents (IDA Study, March 2008); and the recently released The Mother of all Battles: Saddam Hussein≠s Strategic Plan for the Persian Gulf War (Naval Institute Press, Aug 2008).

Kevin's new task, which is related to the purpose of the Minerva Initiatives Conference, is to transition the research pioneered through the Iraqi Perspectives Project into the Conflict Records Research Center. The Center's purpose is to make available for scholarly study a large portion of the documents and media files captured during recent combat operations. In addition to records of the former Ba'ath regime in Iraq, the collection will include primary source materials from terrorist organizations.