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John Claggett Danforth (born September 5, 1936), also referred to as Jack Danforth, is a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former United States Senator from Missouri.
An heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, Danforth was born in 1936 in Saint Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Princeton University in 1958 and then received graduate degrees from Yale University in both Divinity and Law. He served as Missouri's Attorney General from 1969 to December, 1976, when he succeeded retiring Senator Stuart Symington in the U.S. Senate after his Democratic opponent, Congressman Jerry Litton, died in an airplane crash the night he won the Democratic primary. Danforth retired from the Senate in 1995.
During the Clarence Thomas hearings of 1991, Danforth used his considerable clout to aid the confirmation of Thomas, a former Danforth aide and protegé.
In 1999, Democratic U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Danforth to lead the investigation into the FBI's role in the Waco, Texas/Branch Davidian disaster of 1993. In September 2001, Republican President George W. Bush appointed Danforth a special envoy to Sudan.
A political moderate who is respected by members of both parties, Danforth was once quoted as saying he joined the Republican Party for "the same reason you sometimes choose which movie to see — [it's] the one with the shortest line".
As an ordained Episcopal priest, Danforth officiated the funeral services of former President Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004 at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.. He also did the same for Washington Post executive Katharine Graham in 2001.
On July 1, 2004, Danforth was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, succeeding John Negroponte, who had left his post after becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq on June 23, 2004. Danforth submitted his resignation on November 22, 2004, effective January 20, 2005.
Danforth is married with five adult children.
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