Samuel M. Witten has served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration since July 2007.  He served as Acting Assistant Secretary of State from December 2007 through July 2009 during a lengthy gap in presidential appointees. 

 

Witten earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in 1979 and a JD degree from the Columbia University School of Law in 1983. Following law school, he served as a law clerk for a US federal trial judge (1983-1984), as a staff attorney at the State Department (1984-1989), in private practice at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers (1989-1992) and in the international affairs section of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division (1992-1993).

 

From 1993-1994, he headed the federal government’s Heathrow Arbitration Team and helped settle a longstanding aviation dispute with the United Kingdom. Witten then served as the legal counsel for the State Department’s Counterterrorism Coordinator (1994-96) and as the Assistant Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence (1996-2001). As assistant legal adviser, he supervised the extradition of fugitives to and from the United States and the negotiation of US treaties on international law enforcement cooperation.

 

From 2001 until 2007, Witten served as State Department Deputy Legal Adviser and supervised the department’s legal work in areas including human rights and refugees, law enforcement matters and international economic issues. In 2005-06, Witten also served as director of the State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues.