U.S. Army COL Seamas Whitesel is an Instructor at the National War College, in the Department of Strategy and Policy. He graduated from Heidelberg American High School in Germany, and received a bachelor’s in International Relations and English from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He commissioned into the Aviation branch and completed UH-60 Blackhawk training and the Aviation Officer Basic Course at Fort Rucker. As an Aviation Officer, he served at company, battalion, and brigade levels, including command of the flight company at the Joint Readiness Training Center. He also deployed in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
COL Whitesel then joined the Foreign Area Officer (FAO) branch as a South Asia specialist. He studied Hindi and Urdu at the Defense Language Institute in California, then attended the Bangladesh Defence Services Command and Staff College. He additionally completed a Master of International Policy and Practice at George Washington University focused on South Asian foreign politics.
As a newly-trained FAO, COL Whitesel was assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served as a South Asia Analyst and as Chief of the South Asia Political and Military Analysis Branch. He also served as the Executive Officer and Military Assistant to DIA’s Deputy Director of Commonwealth Integration. Following that appointment, COL Whitesel deployed in support of U.S. Special Operations Command on a counter-VEO mission. He was then assigned as the Senior Defense Official and Defense Attaché to the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
Following his return from Nepal, COL Whitesel served as the National Security Council Director for South Asia Regional Affairs, focused on the smaller South Asian States and cross-cutting South Asia regional issues. After his tour at the White House, and immediately prior to teaching at NWC he returned to the Army Staff to serve in the United States Military Observers Group as the Director for Support Operations.
Seamas and his wife Lindsay are the proud parents of five children. COL Whitesel is an avid reader and enjoys spending his free time at his family farm in Pennsylvania, where he tries valiantly but unsuccessfully to keep livestock and manage his unruly garden with Lindsay.