J.F.O. “Jef” McAllister

American journalist, author and lawyer
March 10, 2006 - 4:00pm

About J.F.O. “Jef” McAllister

Dr. J.F.O. “Jef” McAllister became Chief of TIME Magazine’s London Bureau in September 1999. He is responsible for covering the U.K. and Ireland for Time and Time International.

He previously served as Deputy Bureau Chief in TIME’s Washington Bureau, where he was responsible for managing the work of 15 correspondents who cover the U.S. capital.

Between 1995 and 1997 he was TIME’s White House Correspondent, covering foreign and domestic policies and the internal politics of the Clinton Administration. He reported extensively on the re-election campaign and traveled regularly with the President.

In his previous assignment as Diplomatic Correspondent, which began in 1994, McAllister accompanied Secretaries of State James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger and Warren Christopher on their foreign travels, and contributed to or wrote more than 40 cover stories on diplomacy.

While a student, McAllister worked as a stringer in TIME’s Washington, London and Boston bureaus. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a concentration in American diplomatic history, afterwards working in Manila as a Luce Scholar for an Asian news service. As a Marshall Scholar he earned a D.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford, writing a thesis about postwar British policy to promote technical innovation and industrial competitiveness. While there he also wrote the memoirs of U. Alexis Johnson, an Ambassador to Japan and Under Secretary of State. From Oxford, McAllister went to law school at Yale, clerked for a federal judge and worked as a corporate lawyer in New York.

After returning to Washington D.C. in 1989 to cover the State Department for TIME, McAllister wrote about Gulf War diplomacy, Middle East peace talks, tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program, U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and Russia and the U.S. deployments to Somalia and Haiti. In Washington he wrote profiles of President Clinton’s principal foreign policy advisors, about the inside diplomacy of the Clinton-Jiang Zemin summits, the pros and cons of trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein and Clinton’s many legal and political difficulties arising out of the Monica Lewinsky matter.

In London he has written about the Northern Ireland peace process, Britain and the euro, changing attitudes towards drugs in Europe, the Iraq war, and cover stories on Tony Blair, the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth’s 50 years on the throne, the 2001 and 2005 British general elections, EU expansion, European anti-Americanism, immigration and the BBC. He travels regularly with Tony Blair and has written frequently about the Bush-Blair relationship. He has extensive TV and radio experience, including BBC 24, BBC World, Hardtalk, ITN, Breakfast with Frost, Newsnight, GMTV, McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, CNN, World at One, Women’s Hour, Radio 5 Live and the World Service.

In 2002 he was a finalist for “Writer of the Year” chosen by the U.K. Periodical Press Association, and in 2003 and 2005 was the runner-up for the Foreign Press Association’s award for “Best Story by a Foreign Correspondent.”

McAllister is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and past president of the Association of American Correspondents in London. He is married with three children, and lives in London.