John Arthur "Jack" Shaw (July 1, 1939 – April 5, 2020) was an American former civil servant who held positions under several presidents: Senior Staff under Richard Nixon, White House liaison under Gerald Ford, and in the State Department under Ronald Reagan.
[3] Shaw was accused of improper advocacy for private contracts, which led to his dismissal,[4] but a subsequent FBI investigation resulted in no charges against him.
Shaw was born into a prominent Philadelphia political family, and was raised in the suburbs by an aunt and uncle due to the early death of his parents.
Additionally, a Silver Goblet bearing his name is given out each year to a male rower who epitomizes his will to keep fighting in the face of adversity.
From 1978 to 1980, Shaw returned to the private sector as a Vice President of Booz Allen & Hamilton International, overseeing the development, organization and management of two new industrial cities, Jubail and Yanbu, in Saudi Arabia.
From 1989 to 1991 he served as Associate Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the Department of Commerce, and oversaw a major effort to reform the Bureau of Export Administration.
On September 13, 1991, he was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement, replacing Quincy Mellon Crosby.
[12] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appointed Shaw in October 2001 to head the new Office of International Technology Security.
[4] As head of the Office of International Technology Security, Shaw tracked Saddam Hussein's weapons programs before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he has said that Russia helped move them to Syria.
[19] Shaw urged U.S. officials to hire a company called Nana Pacific, owned by Alaskan natives and therefore eligible for no-bid contracts.
[19] As for the communications systems, neither Nana Pacific nor its proposed subcontractor (Guardian Net whose board included a friend of Shaw's named Don DeMarino) nor a related consortium called Liberty Mobile (which included DeMarino and the telecom company Qualcomm), were given that contract, about which Shaw took three notable actions.
[27] Since 2007, he has also been an advisory board member at NeXplore Corporation, a software company that develops Internet properties and applications primarily in the United States.