Executive Secretaries
NOTE TO READERS
Updates to the Principal Officers and Chiefs of Mission database are currently suspended. For information about the Department’s current and recent leadership, we recommend visiting the Department of State homepage’s Biographies of Senior Officials and List of U.S. Ambassadors.
Notice posted on January 12, 2024.
Last
updated March 14, 2024.
In 1961, the Department of State conferred on the Director of the Executive Secretariat the title of Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and Executive Secretary, along with rank equivalent to an Assistant Secretary of State. Since then, the Secretary of State has designated all incumbents. The Department established the Executive Secretariat in Mar 1947 to regulate the flow of information within the highest levels of the Department. Its functions have included such various assignments as Protocol (prior to 1955), management of the Department’s Operation Center (since 1962) and preparation of briefing papers about the Department during the transitions between Presidential administrations.
- Lucius Durham Battle (1961–1962)
- William H. Brubeck (1962–1963)
- Benjamin Huger Read (1963–1969)
- Theodore Lyman Eliot Jr. (1969–1973)
- Thomas Reeve Pickering (1973–1974)
- George Stoney Springsteen Jr. (1974–1976)
- C. Arthur Borg (1976–1977)
- Peter Tarnoff (1977–1981)
- L. Paul Bremer III (1981–1983)
- M. Charles Hill (1983–1985)
- Nicholas Platt (1985–1987)
- Melvyn Levitsky (1987–1989)
- J. Stapleton Roy (1989–1991)
- W. Robert Pearson (1991–1993)
- Marc Isaiah Grossman (1993–1994)
- Kenneth C. Brill (1994–1995)
- William Joseph Burns (1996–1998)
- Kristie Ann Kenney (1998–2001)
- Maura Ann Harty (2001–2002)
- Karl William Hofmann (2002–2005)
- Harry Keels Thomas Jr. (2005–2007)
- Daniel Bennett Smith (2007–2009)
- Stephen D. Mull (2009–2012)
- John R. Bass (2012–2014)
- Joseph E. Macmanus (2014–2017)
- Lisa D. Kenna (2017)