James Daniel Howard (born August 24, 1943) was Special Assistant to President of the United States Ronald Reagan from July 1986 to February 1988, United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from February 1988 to May 1989 and Under Secretary of the Navy from 1989 to 1993. Early life and education Howard was born August 24, 1943, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After high school, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, serving in Japan from 1961 to 1965. Upon leaving the Marines, he enrolled at the University of Chattanooga, receiving a B.A. in 1969. After college, Howard moved to Denver to work as a field representative for the American Red Cross. He later returned to school, enrolling at the University of Tennessee and receiving an M.A. in 1972. He then moved to Washington, D.C. to become a Foreign Service Officer trainee. Career Foreign Service Officer, 1974–1987 Howard's first posting as a member of the United States Foreign Service was in Japan, where he was a language trainee in Yokohama 1974–1975, and then served as director of the American Center in Sapporo from 1975 to 1977. From 1977 to 1980, he was the press attaché of the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo. In 1981–82, he was a cultural affairs officer of the American embassy in Warsaw. During that period martial law was declared in Poland. Howard was detained by the Communist government authorities three times and was ultimately declared persona non grata and expelled in May, 1982. He then went to Cyprus where he was a public affairs officer at the American embassy in Nicosia. He was involved in the evacuation of Americans from nearby Beirut in the wake of the 1983 embassy bombing, the bombing of the embassy annex, and of the bombing of the Marine Barracks. His last two weeks in Cyprus were spent attempting to resolve the TWA Flight 847 hijacking. Howard returned to the United States in 1985 to serve as a public affairs adviser to the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the United States Department of State. He received the State Department's Superior Honor Award for his work on the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in 1986. In 1986, President of the United States Ronald Reagan named Howard a Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the White House where he worked