2,425 articles
John André
John André (1750-1780), British adjutant general and spymaster under Sir Henry Clinton, negotiated Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point; captured near Tarrytown with Arnold's papers, he was hanged as a spy at Tappan on 2 October 1780.
John Anthony Walker
John Anthony Walker Jr. (1937–2014), U.S. Navy chief warrant officer, spied for the KGB from 1967 to 1985, leading a family spy ring (Whitworth, Arthur, Michael Walker) that sold naval cryptographic secrets.
John Balcerzak
John Balcerzak is a former Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police officer fired in 1991 for returning a drugged 14-year-old boy to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and reinstated in 1994.
John Basilone
John Basilone (1916–1945), "Manila John," was a USMC gunnery sergeant, Medal of Honor winner at Guadalcanal's Henderson Field and posthumous Navy Cross recipient at Iwo Jima, the only enlisted Marine of WWII with both decorations.
John Beieler
John Beieler is an American computational political scientist who works on automated political event data and was named the intelligence community's first Chief AI Officer in 2024.
John Borlase Warren
Sir John Borlase Warren, 1st Baronet (1753–1822), was a British admiral, politician, and diplomat who defeated a French expedition to Ireland in 1798 and commanded North American stations in the War of 1812.
John Boyd (military strategist)
John Boyd (1927–1997), US Air Force colonel and Korean War F-86 pilot, developed energy-maneuverability theory that shaped the F-15 and F-16 and the OODA decision loop that influenced US Army and Marine Corps maneuver warfare doctrine.
John Brennan (CIA officer)
John Owen Brennan (born 1955), American retired intelligence officer; CIA Director 2013-2017 under Obama, earlier TTIC and NCTC head and White House counterterrorism adviser; later investigated over the 2016 Russia assessment.
John Burgoyne
John Burgoyne, nicknamed "Gentleman Johnny," was a British general, politician, and playwright whose 1777 surrender at Saratoga helped bring France into the American Revolutionary War.
John C. Egan
John Clarence "Bucky" Egan (1915–1961), USAAF/USAF colonel, service number O-399510, commanded the 418th Bomb Squadron, 100th Bomb Group; Munster raid POW; Korea B-26 commander; died on active duty.
John C. Frémont
John C. Frémont (1813–1890), "The Pathfinder," American explorer, Topographical Engineer, first Republican presidential nominee (1856), Union major general whose 1861 Missouri emancipation proclamation Lincoln revoked, and Arizona Territory governor.
John C. Pemberton
John Clifford Pemberton (1814–1881), Philadelphia-born West Pointer and Confederate lieutenant general, commanded the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana and surrendered Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863.
John C. Raaen Jr.
John C. Raaen Jr., born John Carpenter Raaen Jr., is a retired Army major general who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and commanded US Army Armament Command.
John Cairncross
John Cairncross (1913-1995), British civil servant and Soviet agent code-named Liszt, the Cambridge ring's 'fifth man', named in 1990; penetrated the Treasury, Hankey's office, Bletchley Park Hut 3, and MI6.
John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun
John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun (1705–1782), Scottish soldier and peer; raised Highlanders in the 1745 rising and was British commander-in-chief in North America 1756–1757, recalled after the failed Louisbourg expedition.
John Chandos
Sir John Chandos was an English knight, one of the most celebrated commanders of the Hundred Years War, serving the Black Prince from 1339 until his death in 1370.
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), English general and Captain-General of allied forces in the War of the Spanish Succession; victor of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenaarde, and Malplaquet; ancestor of the Spencer-Churchill dukes.
John Cruickshank
John Alexander Cruickshank (1920-2025), Scottish RAFVR Catalina pilot and banker, last surviving Second World War Victoria Cross recipient, awarded the VC for sinking a U-boat on 17 July 1944 despite 72 wounds.
John E. Douglas
John E. Douglas, retired FBI special agent and profiling program manager, co-founded criminal profiling with Robert Ressler through serial-killer interviews; author of Mindhunter and BTK book, inspiration for Silence of the Lambs and Netflix's Mindhunter.
John E. McLaughlin
John E. McLaughlin, American career CIA analyst and intelligence officer, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence 2000–2004 and Acting Director July–September 2004; founded the Sherman Kent School, later Johns Hopkins SAIS professor.
John Eisenhower
John S. D. Eisenhower (1922-2013), son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a U.S. Army officer, Ambassador to Belgium 1969-1971, and military historian, author of The Bitter Woods and ten books.
John F. Campbell (general)
John F. Campbell, also known as John Francis Campbell, is a retired United States Army four-star general who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2014 to 2016.
John F. Kelly
John F. Kelly (born 1950, Boston) is a retired four-star Marine general, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security from January 2017 and Trump White House chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, later a prominent critic calling Trump a fascist.
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (Jackie Fisher, 1841-1920), British admiral of the fleet and First Sea Lord 1904-1910 and 1914-1915, reformer behind HMS Dreadnought, fleet redistribution, and Selborne officer-training scheme.
John French, 1st Earl of Ypres
John French, 1st Earl of Ypres (John Denton Pinkstone French, 1852–1925), British field marshal who commanded the British Expeditionary Force 1914–15, resigned after Loos, and served as last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1918–21, surviving an IRA ambush.
John Frost (British Army officer)
Major-General John Dutton Frost (1912-1993), British airborne officer of the Cameronians and Parachute Regiment, led the Bruneval Raid and 2nd Parachute Battalion at Arnhem; the Arnhem bridge was renamed John Frost Bridge.
John Garang
John Garang de Mabior was a Sudanese politician who founded the SPLM/A and led the rebel movement in a 22-year war from 1983 to 2005 before becoming First Vice President of Sudan.
John Hawkins (naval commander)
Sir John Hawkins (1532–1595), Elizabethan naval commander and merchant, was England's first slave trader, leading three 1560s slaving voyages backed by Elizabeth I, then reformed the Royal Navy as treasurer and fought the 1588 Armada.
John Henry Patterson (author)
John Henry Patterson (1867–1947), Anglo-Irish soldier, hunter, author, and Zionist, wrote The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907) about the lions he killed in 1898, and commanded the Zion Mule Corps and Jewish Legion.
John Hunt, Baron Hunt
John Hunt, Baron Hunt (Henry Cecil John Hunt, 1910–1998), British Army officer and mountaineer who led the 1953 British Everest expedition; first DofE Award director; life peer 1966.