John A. McCary is a tactical and language consultant to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency where he advises program managers on the development of machine translation technologies.  He holds a master's degree in International Security from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  His master's thesis, The Anbar Awakening: An Alliance of Incentives, was published in the January 2009 edition of The Washington Quarterly.  McCary speaks fluent Arabic and French, and was formerly an active duty human intelligence collector in the United States Army from 2000-2005, including a combat tour outside Fallujah from 2003-2004.

Since leaving active duty in 2005, McCary's writings about his wartime experiences have been widely published. One of his wartime letters, entitled "To the Fallen," was published in the anthology "Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of US Troops and Their Families" (2006). His letter and personal testimony are also featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience" (2007).

McCary currently lives in Washington, DC where he continues to write and contribute regularly to various news programs including NPR, ABC and NBC News and other media outlets.