Brian G. Shellum

Brian Shellum is currently a senior intelligence analyst with the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization with the U.S. Department of Defense. He worked as a historian at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the 12 years from 1994 to 2006. Prior to that he served in the U.S. Army as an armor officer and West European foreign area specialist before retiring in 1994. His military career highlights include various troop assignments with tank units, a tour as an army attaché in Bonn, Germany, Gulf War I service on the staff of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, and work as a senior intelligence analyst at DIA. He lived and studied for eleven years in Germany, and speaks fluent German. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, holds an MS degree from Campbell University, and studied at the University in Bonn.

Brian Shellum’s publications at the Defense Intelligence Agency include Defense Intelligence Support in the Gulf War: A Chronology (1997), At the Creation, 1961-1965: Origination Documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency (2002), and a number of classifed studies and histories. He published a book on Charles Young, the third Black graduate of West Point, titled Black Cadet in a White Bastion: Charles Young at West Point, in February 2006. His second book on Young, Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young, was released by the University of Nebraska Press in January 2010.

When he is not reading and writing, Brian Shellum enjoys fly-fishing, skiing, woodcarving, and listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio to remind him of his Minnesota roots. He is married and has two adult children.