Career
Canavan presently sits on the board of defense contractor USfalcon. Canavan was the seventh commander of the United States military"s Joint Special Operations Command and retired after serving as the chief of staff for the United States European Command. In the wake of the September 11 attacks Canavan resigned his position as Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security at the Federal Aviation Administration amid controversy over Air Marshal assignments to Bush Administration Cabinet members and confidence in his leadership.
As a major general he led the team in Croatia which recovered and identified the bodies from the 1996 crash of an Air Force Connecticut-43 which killed the Commerce Secretary, Ronald H. Brown.