SES Bob McBrien

Last Name: McBrien

First Name: John

Middle Name: Robert
Suffix:

Nickname: Bob

Medals and Honors:

• Meritorious Service Award (Treasury Secretary); Director’s Award for Exemplary Service (ONDCP); Director’s Award for Distinguished Service (ONDCP)

ACNSL Offices and Committees:

• Board of Directors
  Treasurer

Rank: Senior Executive Service

Service/Department: U.S. Dept of Treasury

Last or Significant Assignment: Associate Director for Global Targeting, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), U.S. Treasury Department

Areas of Experience:

• Associate Director for Global Targeting, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), U.S. Treasury Department

Articles, Books and Publications:

• Chapter 12, “Financial Tools & Sanctions,” in “IMPUNITY: Countering Illicit Power in War & Transition,” NDU Press

Bob McBrien became the Treasurer of the American College of National Security Leaders in September 2021.  A Career Senior Executive Service member, he retired in 2011 after 42 years of government service.  His remit included a wide range of programs, particularly interagency ones including economic sanctions, counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, Continuity of Government, other federal law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community. He was a leader and innovator in the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions organization, for nearly 25 years. He was OFAC’s first Associate Director for Global Targeting and is an authority in the employment of U.S. economic sanctions programs. 

His career began as a Special Attorney in the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. His move to the Treasury Department led to close work with the U.S. Secret Service, as well as Customs and ATF, and began his career-long involvement in the U.S. counterterrorism program and with the IC. Throughout his career he was called upon to handle a broad variety of special assignments at home and abroad including Treasury’s coordinator and counsel for the House and Senate reviews of the Intelligence Community in 1975 and security coordination oversight at the 1984 Olympics. He is also one of the authors of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act of 1999.

Following retirement, Bob served as a contractor to the Defense Department, advising on sanctions, illicit finance, and countering threat networks. He now consults, provides expert witness services, and serves on boards of advisers to a private sector company and to the Center on Economic and Financial Power of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.  He is a distinguished graduate of the National War College and was a visiting scholar on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.