NightWatch
For the Night of 18 August 2019
Dear NightWatch Reader,
I would like to offer my condolences to the NightWatch community. Mr. John McCreary, NightWatch's author, passed away last week.
I have included Mr. McCreary's biography below. More than two lifetimes of accomplishments for most of us.
Thank you for your loyal readership,
Mike Wattley
IT Director
Fulco Inc.
John F. McCreary
NightWatch, LLC
John McCreary is the Owner and chief editor of NightWatch, LLC. Mr. McCreary has over 50 years of experience as a professional analyst and is a distinguished and decorated 40-year veteran of defense and air force intelligence. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed threat newsletter NightWatch.
Prior to forming NightWatch, LLC, he served for nine years as the Chief Analysis Officer of Kforce Government Solutions (KGS.) Prior to that he was the Highly Qualified Expert (HQE) for analysis transformation with the United States Air Force where he taught and mentored the analysts of the Air Force Intelligence Analysis Agency, wrote and taught the first course in advanced intelligence analysis for the Air Force and installed an end-to-end, systematic analysis evaluation and feedback program for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.
Mr. McCreary joined the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1968 as an intelligence research specialist, specializing in Chinese language and studies. Between 1980 and 1992 he was the senior analyst and Director, National Warning Staff, Office of the Director of Central Intelligence. In 1992 he served as the lead attorney-investigator for the Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA affairs.
From 1993 until his retirement from DIA in 2006, he was the senior analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence, J2, Joint Staff in the Pentagon. He was promoted to senior rank in the first class of Defense Intelligence Senior Level Experts in DIA. At the time of his departure from DIA in 2006, he was the senior ranking Defense Intelligence Senior Level Expert in the agency and in the Joint Staff in the Pentagon.
He has received dozens of commendations, citations, medals and awards from the Intelligence Community, the CIA and the DIA. In 2004 he received a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service; the only DIA analyst to have received this award.
Mr. McCreary is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Illinois, class of 1968, and a graduate of Georgetown Law Center. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi and the Virginia State Bar.
He has been the principal author of
NightWatch since its inception in 1993, first as a highly classified daily threat summary for senior executives in the Department of Defense. In retirement after 2006, at the request of flag rank officers in the Defense Department, he converted
NightWatch to an exclusively open source threat document, which it remains through this date.
In addition to
NightWatch
, his other publications include, The Latest Intelligence Crisis, with US Circuit Court Judge Richard A. Posner, in
Intelligence and National Security, Volume 23, Issue 3, 2008
; Intelligence as Evidence, J2 monograph,1996;
Analysis of Political Instability, J2 monograph, 1995;
Warning Cycles, Studies in Intelligence, 1983.
End of Night
Watch
for 18 August.