John E. McLaughlin is Distinguished Practitioner in Residence in the Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University.

Mr. McLaughlin, a 1966 graduate of SAIS, served as Acting Director of Central Intelligence from July to September of 2004 and as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 2000 to 2004. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director for Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice Chairman for Estimates and Acting Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

He served as a US Army Officer in the 1960s, completing a tour in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. In the mid-1980s, Mr. McLaughlin served a rotational assignment in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Soviet Affairs. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he served as Director of the Office of European Analysis. He became Director of the CIA office – Slavic and Eurasian Analysis. While Deputy Director for Intelligence from 1997 to 2000, he created the Senior Analytic Service. From 2005 – 2008, he served as National Security Advisor to the Cable News Network (CNN).

Mr. McLaughlin is the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Community Service Award and the National Security Medal. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Board member of the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation, the Board of the OSS Society, the Board of Advisors at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, the Board of Directors of the Project on National Security Reform, and a Board of Trustees member at the Aerospace Corporation and the Noblis Corporation.