Dan Plesch founded BASIC in 1987 and directed it from Washington DC until 2001, when he became the senior research fellow at RUSI in London. He had previously worked for NGOs focused on the abolition of nuclear weapons. He has been a consultant and advisor to the UK and US governments, the BBC, CNN, Sky News, Kroll Security International, Oxfam, the Foreign Policy Centre and Greenpeace. He was the independent advisor to the UK government’s Department of Constitutional Affairs on the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act.