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Ken at Borders Books in Albany, NY
Photo courtesy of Times Union/Steve Jacobs
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Ken Ackerman, a writer and attorney in Washington, D.C., is a 25-year veteran of senior positions in Congress, the executive branch, and financial regulation.
Ken has authored four published books: The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday 1869 (1988), which recounts the famous gold market corner; Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James a. Garfield (2003), his critically acclaimed biography, Boss Tweed: the Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (March 2005), and his most recent, Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties. Click here for a full publication list.
Ken with Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman watching President Clinton. |
When he's not writing, Ken practices law in Washington at Olsson, Frank and Weeda, P.C. Along the way, he has served as legal counsel to two committees of the United States Senate: Governmental Affairs (1975-1981) under then-Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois, and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry (1988-1993) under its then-Chairmen Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, he headed the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency
and Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (1993-2001). Earlier, he held various legal positions at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Ken testifying before Congress. |
During this varied career, Ken has testified before dozens of Congressional hearings, investigated issues ranging from the 1979-80 silver corner to the 1987 stock crash, and developed legislation on topics from budget reconciliation to farm policy to electronic eavesdropping to civil service reform to financial market oversight. He has appeared often before Congress, the media, and public groups, including farmer town meetings in over 20 States and government officials in London, Warsaw, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and Ramallah, PNA.
Ken was profiled in Government Executive magazine in 1997 and included by National Journal that year in its “Washington 100” list of top Federal decision-makers. He teaches seminars for TheCapitol.Net and serves on the board of Washington Independent Writers (WIW) and WIW's Freedom to Write Fund. He enjoys scuba diving and is a PADI certified divermaster. Click here to read his article from American Heritage on deep sea diving in the 1880's.
A native of Albany, New York, and a graduate of Brown University (1973) and the Georgetown University Law Center (1976), Ken lives with his wife Karen in Falls Church, Virginia.
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