Brigadier General (Ret.) John Adams

Brigadier General John Adams, U.S. Army (Retired), is the President of Guardian Six Consulting LLC. He retired from the US Army in September 2007. His final military assignment was as Deputy United States Military Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, the highest military authority of NATO, where he worked with military representatives of NATO and Partnership for Peace member nations to develop defense and military policy recommendations for the political authorities of the Alliance.

​On September 11, 2001, he was stationed at the Pentagon as Deputy Director for European Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and participated in immediate disaster recovery operations at the crash site as well as coordinated international support for the U.S. diplomatic and military response. While in OSD, he worked with Central and Eastern European NATO aspirants on their programs to successfully join NATO. He is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm (1991), Operation Guardian Assistance in Rwanda (1996), and served extensively on official business throughout the Balkans from 1998-2003. He traveled on temporary duty to both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004. As a military attaché in Belgium, Rwanda, Croatia, and South Korea, he provided political-military advice to U.S. Ambassadors, U.S. Government authorities in Washington, visiting US Government delegations, and represented the United States with foreign government officials regarding national and regional issues.

​Born and raised in the Washington, DC, area, General Adams was a Distinguished Military Graduate and received a Regular Army commission from North Carolina State University Army ROTC in 1976. As a Foreign Area Officer, Military Intelligence Officer, and Army Aviator, his more than thirty years of service in command and staff assignments included nearly eighteen years in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including assignments with U.S. Embassies in Belgium (1994-1997), Rwanda (1996), Croatia (1998-2001), and South Korea (2002-2003). As an Army Aviator, he has more than 700 hours as pilot-in-command in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft including the UH-1D, OV/RV-1D Mohawk, and RU-21 Guardrail Special Electronic Mission Aircraft.

​He has served as an Adjunct Instructor in Political Science at the University of Arizona South, teaching a course in National Security Policy. He holds Masters in International Relations (Boston University), English (University of Massachusetts), and Strategic Studies (U.S. Army War College). In 2004, he completed the U.S.-Russia Flag Officers' Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught English at West Point from 1988-90, and is proficient in French, Dutch, German, and Croatian.

​General Adams' military awards and decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal (with Oak Leaf Cluster), the Bronze Star Medal, the Army Aviator Badge, Parachute Badge, and Ranger Tab. He was also the Distinguished Graduate of the Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course at Fort Huachuca in May 1977, and the Distinguished Graduate of the Officer Rotary Wing Aviator Course at the Army Aviation Center in January 1979. He is a recipient of the Military Intelligence Corps' Knowlton Award and the Director of Central Intelligence's Exceptional Human Intelligence Collector Award (as a member of the Great Lakes Crisis Team).