Anthony Lake was a national security advisor under President William J. Clinton who formulated the administration’s policy toward the Bosnian Conflict. Lake was born in New York City and graduated from Harvard University in 1961. He went to work for the State Department in 1962. In 1969, Lake was appointed as a special assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. He earned a doctorate from Princeton University in 1974. From 1977 to 1981, Lake was the director of policy planning in the State Department. After the election of Ronald W. Reagan, Lake became a professor at Amherst College and later at Mount Holyoke.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Lake was a foreign policy advisor to Clinton. He was then appointed national security advisor to Clinton in 1993. Lake had a close relationship with Clinton and withstood criticism over the administration’s management of the Somalia intervention and the U.S. policy during the Haiti intervention. He was instrumental in the formation of the 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea, in which the United States agreed to provide food and energy aid to Pyongyang in exchange for the regime’s continuing participation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the suspension of the country’s atomic weapons program (the agreement was scrapped in 2002 following revelations that North Korea had secretly continued its pursuit of nuclear weapons).

Lake developed the multilateral approach to Bosnia that resulted in the 1995 Dayton Accords and the subsequent deployment of a peace enforcement mission led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1996, Clinton nominated Lake to replace outgoing Central Intelligence Agency director John M. Deutch. However, Lake withdrew his appointment due to opposition by Republicans in the Senate. He then left government service in 1997 and accepted a teaching position at Georgetown University.