Spencer Phipps Boyer

National Intelligence Officer for Europe
National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Spencer P. Boyer is the National Intelligence Officer for Europe in the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the center for long-range strategic thinking within the U.S. Intelligence Community. In this capacity, he serves as the senior European affairs analyst and principal subject matter expert on Europe for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as a primary bridge between the intelligence and policy communities on European affairs. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  

Before joining the NIC in March 2014, Mr. Boyer was a Visiting Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. During the first term of the Obama administration, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, where his areas of responsibility included Western Europe, public diplomacy, and public affairs.

Mr. Boyer began his professional career as an Associate with the international law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. Subsequently, he worked in The Hague as a Law Clerk to the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in Zurich as a Staff Attorney at the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland, and in Paris as Counsel at the International Court of Arbitration. He has also served as Executive Director and War Powers Initiative Director at the Constitution Project, based at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute, and as a Security and Peace Initiative Fellow and Director of International Law and Diplomacy at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, his policy analysis focused on transatlantic relations, European affairs, and multilateral affairs.

Mr. Boyer has been a guest analyst with numerous international, national, and local news outlets, including CNN, BBC, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, and Voice of America, and is widely published on foreign affairs matters. He is co-editor of Power and Superpower: Global Leadership and Exceptionalism in the 21st Century (The Century Foundation Press, 2007). Among other professional distinctions, Mr. Boyer was a Public Policy Scholar in the Global Europe Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and served on the Independent Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He has also been a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School. He is admitted to the Bars of the District of Columbia, New York, and New Jersey, and is a member of CFR.

Mr. Boyer is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he specialized in public international law and the work of international organizations. While at NYU, he also obtained a master’s degree in French Studies, with a concentration in French politics, history, and economy. In addition, Mr. Boyer has done intensive language studies at Middlebury College and studied in Cameroon with the School for International Training. He is a native of Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School.