Protecting the United States from radical Islamic groups like al-Qaida is something a lot of people in Washington talk about but very few actually do. One of those who made a profound difference in the fight against terrorist groups was Michael A. Sheehan, who died this past summer at the age of 63.

The depth and breadth of his many roles and responsibilities must be some kind of record in the annals of national security. As a younger officer, he served as a Special Forces operator in the jungles of El Salvador, as well as a company commander near the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea. In Washington, he served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.


For many, that would have been enough. But in 1993, Lt. Col. Michael Sheehan became an adviser on peacekeeping to Madeleine Albright, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. That was where my 25-year friendship with Mike began. As a novice in the executive branch (after four years on the professional staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had joined Albright as a senior adviser and spokesman), I soaked up the lessons Mike shared with me about how personalities and bureaucratic imperatives so often stood in the way of smart policy. Those of us who knew him and loved him can still hear him rail against the pitfalls of foreign policymaking, and against those who let their egos stand in the way of making America safer.

In 1995, Clinton and Albright asked Mike and me, along with Richard “Dick” Clarke (already a legend among national security insiders), to develop a plan to oust Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali from his post as secretary-general of the United Nations and replace him with someone more attuned to American national security interests and less toxic on Capitol Hill. This was no ordinary assignment, as the United States had never taken such an action in the history of the U.N. But by 1995, it was evident not only that Boutros-Ghali was an obstacle to Congress paying its roughly $1 billion in arrears owed to the world body, but also that the Egyptian diplomat had demonstrated in Somalia and Bosnia that he was willing to thwart U.S. objectives and undermine U.S. and international security.

With Mike and Dick managing the fallout in Washington, Ambassador Albright succeeded in this unusual diplomatic endeavor. Having worked in New York at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. on peacekeeping, Mike had explained to the president and others in Washington how Boutros-Ghali had used his power behind the scenes to encourage the failed raid against Somali military leader Mohamed Farah Aideed. It required a painful veto in the U.N. Security Council, but the new secretary general, Kofi Annan, whom Mike knew well from U.N. peacekeeping, was America’s preferred candidate all along. Soon thereafter, Congress approved legislation to repay U.S. debts to the U.N.

It was only natural that when Albright became secretary of State, she gave Mike a big promotion to become U.S. ambassador at large for counterterrorism. It was there that he identified Osama bin Laden and his newly formed al-Qaida organization as a primary threat to America and its people, and it was there, working again with Dick Clarke, that Mike tried to warn his superiors about the dangers of terrorism. Mike understood how crucial it was for the U.S. military to see terrorism as a military and civilian threat, which led him to his famous question directed at military officers in 2000, “What’s it going to take to get them to hit al-Qaida?” he asked. “Does al-Qaida have to attack the Pentagon?” Tragically, his warning went unheeded until that terrible morning on September 11, 2001, when everyone suddenly knew what Mike and Dick had known all along.

Later, Mike was asked by Ray Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner, to set up its first counterterrorism force, which many still consider the finest in the world. Mike’s last government job, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, no doubt involved many more still-classified operations to defeat America’s enemies and protect its people.


But it wasn’t just his four decades of protecting us from our enemies that made Mike so special. Whether as a soldier, deputy commissioner of police, an NSC staffer, a senior U.N. official, U.S. ambassador at large, a senior Pentagon official overseeing top secret military operations, an NBC News terrorism analyst or, lastly, a scholar at West Point, he also did his best to protect us from ourselves. For as a worldwide authority on al-Qaida and terrorist groups, he spent as much of his time debunking exaggerated threats as he did urging steps to protect us from real dangers.

America lost one of its finest this year. And those of us who knew him lost someone special, a truth-teller who operated without partisanship but with a sense of humor. His no-nonsense patriotism was and is a model for us all.