White House ONDCP Director Dr. Rahul Gupta Welcomes New Deputy Director Adam Cohen
Washington, D.C. – Today, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Dr. Rahul Gupta is welcoming Adam W. Cohen to the role of Deputy Director. Cohen most recently served as the Director of the Executive Office of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces at the U.S. Department of Justice, the largest law enforcement task force in the nation with 560 federal prosecutors, 1,400 federal agents, 19 Strike Forces, and 4,000 state and local police officers from over 1,000 departments working on over 5,300 criminal investigations. Cohen has previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor at ONDCP.
“We are thrilled to welcome Adam back to ONDCP to serve as our new Deputy Director,” said Dr. Gupta. “Adam is a seasoned prosecutor with extensive experience coordinating national strategies to combat the opioid crisis, leading multi-national narcotics investigations, and overseeing the nation’s largest law enforcement task force at the Department of Justice. Adam’s decades of experience will be instrumental in our efforts to deliver on President Biden’s Unity Agenda efforts to beat the overdose epidemic and save lives.”
Adam W. Cohen, Deputy Director of ONDCP
Adam W. Cohen is a career prosecutor with more than three decades of experience. He began his career as an Assistant State Attorney in Miami, Florida and joined the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1998 as an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia where he was a senior OCDETF AUSA.
Cohen accepted an appointment to the Department’s Criminal Division, Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS) in 2003, where he led NDDS efforts at the multi-agency Special Operations Division serving as Deputy Chief for Special Operations and Intelligence and managing several sensitive programs.
In 2007, Cohen was selected to serve as Director of DOJ’s National Gang Targeting, Enforcement, and Coordination Center by the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division where he managed Departmental anti-gang efforts and served as Co-Chair of the Deputy Attorney General’s National Gang Intelligence and Coordination Governing Board.
From 2010 to 2018, Cohen was a manager in the Criminal Division’s Office of Enforcement Operations where he held several leadership positions, including as the Deputy Director of the Federal Witness Security Program, the Chief of Special Operations managing oversight of federal law enforcement use of sensitive investigative methods, and Special Counsel to the Director.
In 2016, Cohen was selected to serve at the White House as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he was the senior DOJ representative on a team charged with developing interagency national synchronization strategies to combat the synthetic opioid crisis.
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