James E. Winder

Mr. James E. Winder was born on June 16, 1953, in Athens, Tennessee, and graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University in 1975 with a B.A. in philosophy and literature. He earned an M.A. in philosophy from Purdue University in 1980.

James Winder spent the lion’s share of his career as a mid-level manager and intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), where he retired in 2013 after 30 years of service. At NSA, Mr. Winder’s most noteworthy assignment was in 1991-1992, when he served as Assistant Director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). During that time, he co-authored a report for President George H.W. Bush on intelligence lessons learned during the first Gulf War and provided extensive research and documentation on a wide range of other matters of great interest to the PFIAB board members. In a special commendation, then Acting PFIAB Chairman, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, cited Mr. Winder for his “expert advice to the President of the United States” and for his “extremely incisive and timely contributions on some very complex issues.”

During three decades at NSA, Mr. Winder produced three classified, book-length studies, most notably including a comprehensive report on an important topic, which won NSA’s annual Cryptologic Literature Award. In addition, he wrote a wide variety of other in-depth reports on Soviet intelligence, terrorism, and technical threats to U.S. telecommunications.

Mr. Winder is also the author of The History of Eternity, a series of philosophic meditations in poetic form, which is, according to Mr. Winder, the cryptic story of his life and the lives of many others. There is – in the history of philosophy and literature – no other work that is akin to it in nature and scope.