Gary Samore Joins Council as Director of Studies

August 15, 2006—Gary Samore, former National Security Council staffer during the Clinton administration and long-time State Department official, will become the Council’s new director of studies at the beginning of October. Samore is currently vice president for global security and sustainability at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he is responsible for the foundation’s international grantmaking. Previously, he was director of studies at London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).

“Gary brings to the job the perfect mixture of government service, academic stature, and management experience,” said Council President Richard N. Haass. “He inherits a strong Studies Program. I look forward to working with him to make it even stronger.”

Prior to joining the MacArthur Foundation in September 2005, Samore served as director of studies and senior fellow for nonproliferation at IISS. As director of studies, he was responsible for overall direction of the Institute’s research program, including fundraising for research projects, management of IISS research staff, and supervision of the IISS Adelphi Paper series. He also directed the IISS’s nonproliferation program, organizing numerous international conferences and workshops and producing a variety of IISS publications on proliferation issues. He is the editor of several IISS Strategic Dossiers on weapons programs in Iraq, North Korea, and Iran.

Samore has years of experience working on proliferation issues for the U.S. government. From 1996 to 2000, he served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for non-proliferation and export controls at the National Security Council. From 1987 to 1995, he held various positions at the Department of State. As deputy to Ambassador-at-Large for Korean Affairs Robert Gallucci, he was one of the U.S. negotiators of the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. He also served as director of the Office of Regional Nonproliferation Affairs in the Bureau of Political Military Affairs and as special assistant to the Ambassador-at-Large for Nonproliferation and Nuclear Energy Policy, Richard T. Kennedy.

Samore has held positions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the RAND Corporation, and Harvard University, where he received a PhD in government in 1984.

He succeeds James M. Lindsay, who after three years is leaving the Council to become the founding director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.

Contact: Lisa Shields, Vice President, Communications, 212-434-9888, [email protected]