Lake, (William) Anthony (Kirsopp) (1939–1996)

US government official, national security adviser 1993–96. He helped to shape President Bill Clinton's foreign policy of support for the new market-based democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Having joined the foreign service, Lake was sent to South Vietnam in 1963. As special assistant to Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser, 1969–70, Lake tried to persuade Kissinger to urge Nixon to withdraw US troops from Southeast Asia. He resigned in 1970 after the US invasion of Cambodia. Under President Carter he was director of policy planning for Secretary of State Cyrus Vance 1976–80. In 1997 he was initially nominated to become the CIA's new director, but withdrew after facing difficult Senate confirmation hearings.

Lake became a professor of international relations at Mount Holyoke College in 1981 after Carter's defeat in the presidential election. Lake's books include Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (1984) and Somoza Falling (1989).