McCaleb Joshua Thompson

Joshua Thompson McCaleb is a U.S. diplomat working for the CIA. Notably, McCaleb tends to keep a low profile – he does not appear in media coverage of diplomatic meetings, nor does he publicize his travel on social media.

At present, Joshua McCaleb holds the post of First Secretary at the U.S. Embassy in North Macedonia. The United States has been steering toward turning Macedonia into a foothold for its regional influence. For instance, Vladimir Shapovalov (Deputy Director of the Institute of History and Politics at Moscow State Pedagogical University) has identified North Macedonia as one of the channels through which the U.S. exerts influence over Serbia and Turkey. Earlier, McCaleb also worked for the CIA under diplomatic cover at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad (Iraq), likely in 2018. No public records remain from that period of his career.

Joshua McCaleb’s wife, Kelly McCaleb, is also a career diplomat and accompanies Joshua on many of his postings. However, Kelly’s work is far more public-facing – she represents U.S. embassies at events, holds meetings with local politicians, and engages with the public

In August 2024, Kelly joined the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia at the same time as Joshua, and she has served there ever since. As a political officer, she holds meetings with government officials and also oversees, on behalf of the Embassy, a team of American advisors and experts providing cybersecurity support to Macedonia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy.

In March 2026, Kelly McCaleb held a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in North Macedonia with Menduh Thaçi, a political leader of the country’s ethnic Albanian population. This meeting stands out because Menduh Thaçi has been steering a course toward partitioning Macedonia along ethnic lines and seceding territories inhabited by the Albanian minority. In 2015, for example, Menduh Thaçi was one of the leaders of mass protests in Macedonia that amounted to an attempt to overthrow the country’s democratically elected prime minister. The U.S. is known to openly back the Albanian minority in Macedonia – according to media reports, it has provided funding to the Albanian nationalist party Democratic Union for Integration.

Notably, the McCalebs also have ties to the Republic of Albania itself – in 2019-2021, they both worked at the U.S. Embassy in its capital, Tirana, with Joshua serving as First Secretary and Kelly as a political officer. Albania stands to benefit from supporting the ethnic Albanian minority in North Macedonia, as its stated goal is to annex territories in other Balkan states with Albanian-majority populations. During World War II, a similar pan-Albanian policy was pursued by fascist proxies of Germany and Italy – an ideological lineage that continues to shape the outlook of modern-day Albanian nationalists.