Eric J. Boswell

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Eric J. Boswell is an American diplomat who served twice as the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security. His first term was from 1996 to 1998, and his second term ran from 2008 to 2012.

Boswell was born on May 31, 1945, in Naples, Italy. He served in the U.S. Army (1968–1969) and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 1970. He joined the Foreign Service in 1972 and worked in Dakar, Senegal (1973–74) and Quebec City (1977–80). He spent time in Washington, D.C., on Near Eastern assignments (1980–83), then led the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs as Deputy Executive Director (1983–85). He also served in Amman (1985–87) and Ottawa (1987–90). From 1990 to 1992, he was the executive director of the Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs, and he was Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Management (1992–93).

In 1993, President George H. W. Bush nominated Boswell as Director of the Office of Foreign Missions, a position he held with the rank of Ambassador. President Bill Clinton later appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, a role he began in 1996. He left this post in 1998 and became Director of Administration for the Pan American Health Organization (a U.N. specialized agency), a position he held until 2005. He then worked as a senior adviser at U.N. offices in New York (2004) and as Assistant Deputy Director for Security in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (2005–2008), helping to develop security policies for the U.S. intelligence community.

In 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Boswell to a second term as Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security and Director of the Office of Foreign Missions, and he served from July 7, 2008, to December 19, 2012. After the Benghazi attack in September 2012, Boswell resigned amid management concerns highlighted by the Accountability Review Board. The board found systemic leadership and management failures in two bureaus, and Hillary Clinton accepted its recommendations to strengthen security at high-threat posts.