President Biden appointed Pitt Cyber Founding Director David Hickton to the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) for a three-year term through January 10, 2027.
Hickton joins the nine-person board to provide advice and recommendations to the President and other executive branch officials on the “systematic, coordinated, and comprehensive identification, collection, review for declassification, and release of declassified records and materials of historic value.”
Five of the nine members are appointed by the President, and one each by the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House, and the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate.
All appointees are required by the PIDB’s founding statute to be “preeminent in the fields of history, national security, foreign policy, intelligence policy, social science, law or archives.”
This marks Hickton’s third presidential appointment by three different presidents. Former President Bill Clinton appointed Hickton to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts in 1998, and former President Barack Obama appointed Hickton as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania in 2010.
“It is an honor to be selected for this important position and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve,” Hickton said of his appointment.