Edmund McWilliams (born February 18, 1947)[1] is an American diplomat and previous United States Ambassador to Tajikistan.
Ed McWilliams entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1975 and served in Vientiane, Bangkok, Thailand, Moscow, Russia, Kabul, Afghanistan, Islamabad, Managua, Nicaragua.
McWilliams was dispatched to Islamabad in 1988 as a semi-independent analyst of U.S. policy regarding the Afghan jihad in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal.
His blistering criticism of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and their patronage of radical Islamists led to an ultimately-baseless internal investigation regarding his integrity, spearheaded by Ambassador Robert Oakley and CIA Chief of Station Milt Bearden.
In 1998, McWilliams received the American Foreign Service Association's Christian Herter Award for creative dissent by a senior FSO.