Daniel Benjamin was sworn in as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State with the rank of Ambassador-at-Large on May 28, 2009. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Benjamin was Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution from December 2006 to May 2009. He spent six years as a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1994 to 1999, Mr. Benjamin served on the National Security Council staff. In 1998-1999, he was director for counterterrorism in the Office of Transnational Threats. In 1994-1997, he served as foreign policy speechwriter and special assistant to President Clinton. Before entering the government, Mr. Benjamin was a foreign correspondent for TIME Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

Daniel Benjamin has co-written two books. The Age of Sacred Terror was published by Random House in 2002 and documents the rise of religiously motivated terrorism and American efforts to combat it. The Age of Sacred Terror was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2002 and was given the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right, was published by Holt/Times Books in 2005 and named a Washington Post “Best Book” of 2005. He also edited America and the World in the Age of Terror: A New Landscape in International Relations (CSIS, 2005). He has published numerous articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate Magazine, TIME Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.