 In December 2006, he was named U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Non-proliferation, being placed in charge of U.S. diplomacy related to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and heading the United States delegations to the 2007 and 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee meetings.In August 2008, Ford left the Executive Branch to become a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, DC think tank founded in 1961 by nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.In March 2013, Ford became Republican Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, and moved to become Senior Counsel for National Security Policy at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs after the Republicans won the Senate majority in the 2014 mid-term elections; he subsequently became that committee's Chief Investigative Counsel.