David T. Johnson

David T. Johnson is a senior adviser with the CSIS Americas Program. Ambassador Johnson comes to CSIS with a distinguished, 33-year career in government, most recently serving as assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs (2007–2010). Earlier, he was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London and served as the Afghanistan coordinator for the U.S. Department of State. During the 1990s, he was White House deputy press secretary for foreign affairs and spokesman for the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He also served as deputy spokesman at the State Department and director of its Press Office; as U.S. consul general in Vancouver; and as deputy director of the State Department’s Operations Center. Ambassador Johnson entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1977.

Ambassador Johnson worked in State Department on European security issues and as desk officer for Berlin, Austria, and Switzerland. He was an economic officer at the U.S. embassy in Berlin and a vice consul at the U.S. consulate general in Ciudad Juarez. Before joining the Foreign Service, he was an assistant national trust examiner with the Treasury Department’s Comptroller of the Currency, where he specialized in reviewing banks’ trust, municipal finance, and portfolio investment activities. He earned a B.A. in economics from Emory University in 1976 and completed the course of study at Canada’s National Defense College in 1989–1990. He is a member of the International Narcotics Control Board, the monitoring body for the UN international drug control conventions.