Harvey John “Jack” McGeorge II (September 29, 1949 – August 18, 2009) was a Marine, Secret Service specialist, and munitions analyst for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)—and a frequently recognized regional leader in BDSM advocacy and education. In 2000, on the strength of published work and demonstrated expertise, he defended his knowledge of biological and chemical weaponization before a panel of the Academic Council of the State Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology in Moscow and received an honorary doctorate. He helped found Black Rose, served as an officer of the Leather Leadership Conference, directed with the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, and chaired the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities. He died in August 2009 from complications of open-heart surgery.
The 2002 Washington Post Controversy
Over Thanksgiving weekend 2002, the Washington Post publicly highlighted McGeorge’s leadership in the Washington, D.C. BDSM and leather community as UN weapons inspections in Iraq drew intense scrutiny. He had not hidden his involvement: his full name appeared on websites, and he said as much to the Post and other media. He nonetheless offered his resignation to Hans Blix, hoping to protect UNMOVIC’s credibility. Blix refused to accept it. Hua Jiang, spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, later said that being into BDSM was no more likely to be a cross-cultural problem in the Middle East than many other personal issues. Essays and films that followed—“A taste of the whip for Saddam,” “No Apologies: The Story Of Jack McGeorge,” “Pleasure, Pain, and Saddam Hussein,” “Weathering the Storm of Public Controversy”—kept the episode in leather memory as both media storm and quiet institutional win.
Education and National Service Roles
McGeorge’s community work emphasized teaching. Black Rose became a major D.C.-area educational organization for classes and discussion. Through the Leather Leadership Conference he helped train organizers; through NCSF he sat near public-policy defense of sexual freedom; through the research consortium he bridged dungeon knowledge and academic study. Archived conference presentations show him treating protocol, risk, and institutional politics as serious adult subjects.
Awards and Memorials
- Pantheon of Leather Mid-Atlantic Regional Award — 1998 and 2000 (tied with Jonathan Krall in 2000)
- Pantheon of Leather Man of the Year — 2004
- First Master Jack McGeorge Excellence in Education Award, Master/slave Conference — 2009 (posthumous)
- Leather Hall of Fame — 2021
- Centurion Award, Leather Archives and Museum
Black Rose established the Jack McGeorge Excellence in Education Award for multi-year exemplary educational service to the club and the wider national community. The Leather Leadership Conference founded a Jack McGeorge Scholarship. Those honors convert a headline outing into ongoing investment in teachers—the part of his story that outlasts whip jokes about Saddam.
For BDSM readers, McGeorge models dual public roles without apology: high-stakes security credentials on one side, open leather education on the other, and a resignation offer refused by a boss who declined to treat consensual SM as disqualifying. Competence was not erased by a dungeon résumé.
