Senior Fellow, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

The Johns Hopkins University

 

A 1966 graduate of SAIS, McLaughlin most recently served as acting director of central intelligence from July to September 2004 and as the deputy director of central intelligence since October 2000. At the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), he was the deputy director for intelligence, and vice chairman for estimates and acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council.  Earlier in his career with the CIA, which spanned three decades, McLaughlin focused on European, Russian, and Eurasian Issues in the Directorate of Intelligence.  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he served as director of the Office of European Analysis during the period marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While deputy director for intelligence from 1997 to 2000, he created the Senior Analytic Service, a CIA career track that enables analysts to rise to very senior rank without branching out into management. He also founded the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, an institution dedicated to teaching the history, mission, and essential skills of the analytic profession to new CIA employees.