Bobby Ray Inman

Bobby Ray Inman (born April 4, 1931) is a retired United States Navy admiral who directed the NSA from 1977 to 1981 and served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1981 to 1982.¹²³ After retiring from the Navy he was chairman and chief executive of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in Austin, headed Westmark Systems and Tracor, sat on several corporate boards, and in 1993 was nominated Secretary of Defense by President Bill Clinton, withdrawing in January 1994.¹⁴

Naval intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency

Inman was born in Rhonesboro, Texas, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1950.² He joined the Naval Reserve in 1951 and was commissioned an ensign in 1952. He then spent nineteen years as an analyst for Naval Intelligence, serving on an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and a destroyer as well as in shore assignments.¹ He became Director of Naval Intelligence in 1974.¹

He was vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1976.¹ In January 1977 George Bush, then chairman of the National Foreign Intelligence Board, wrote to him as "Vice Admiral Bobby R. Inman, USN, Vice Director, Plans, Operations and Support, Defense Intelligence Agency," thanking him for a year of advice to the board.⁵

Director of the NSA, 1977 to 1981

Inman told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 1981 that he had served as director of the NSA "since 5 July 1977."³ He said that during his four years at the agency "this committee constantly pressed on the administration the question of the adequacy of the intelligence assets."³

The BBC's Tim Harford wrote in 2017 that the agency's head during the public-key cryptography dispute "was genuinely puzzled about the academics' motives," and that Inman "soon accepted that the professor had a point and no prosecutions followed."⁶

Inman testified that the NSA's signals intelligence collection in Southeast Asia was dismantled after the war and was not resumed until at least 1978.⁷

On March 5, 2003, Inman told David C. Walsh that he "flatly rejected" what Walsh calls the "Cristol/Israeli thesis" of the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. "It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the Liberty] was not correctly identified," Inman said, and he based the view on talks with NSA seniors who had direct knowledge at the time.⁸ Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations and production in 1967, said that intercepts of Israeli pilots' conversations made it "absolutely certain" that the pilots knew the ship was American.⁸

Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, 1981 to 1982

President Ronald Reagan nominated Inman in 1981.¹ The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held its hearing on February 3, 1981, with Barry Goldwater presiding. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. submitted written questions on a centralized data bank and on the Freedom of Information Act, and Inman's answers are printed with the record.³ He was easily confirmed, and his White House biography gives March 1982 as the date he resigned.¹

On December 4, 1981 Inman spoke at the White House briefing on the new executive order on intelligence activities. "It's my pleasure on behalf of the intelligence community to welcome the President's new executive order on United States intelligence activities," he said.⁹

In March 1982 Inman told a joint House subcommittee hearing on controls over unclassified scientific information that "It is time for the scientific community to accept that there is an outflow," and urged academic scientists to "set up their own mechanisms now" to limit it.¹⁰

Senior administration officials said on April 23, 1982 that an "intense debate" over reorganizing counterintelligence operations had led indirectly to his resignation.¹¹ The White House announced the resignation on Wednesday, April 21, 1982, and said he was leaving for private industry.¹² A Philadelphia Inquirer account said he had submitted it about a month earlier, during a "heated internal debate" over a secret counterintelligence study, and that the study's scope had since been narrowed. Its sources said two topics that Inman, Casey and FBI Director William Webster had feared might be included, the organization of U.S. counterintelligence agencies and deceptive Soviet missile telemetry, were not on the agenda approved by an interagency working group chaired by John Kohler of the intelligence community staff.¹³ A CBS radio commentary of April 22, 1982 described William J. Casey, the director, as "a professional politician" and noted that he had been Ronald Reagan's campaign manager.¹⁴

In October 1982 Inman told the Association of Former Intelligence Officers that "the education system failed to produce the people with the skills and the ability of linguists in area studies," and that the country needed a "surge to deal with a whole range of burgeoning problems in the outside world."¹⁵

CIA memoranda scheduled Inman and William Casey for breakfast with Secretary of State Alexander Haig on October 6, 1981, and again on January 26, 1982.¹⁶¹⁷

Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, 1983 to 1986

Inman became the first president and chief executive of MCC on January 21, 1983. The Austin research consortium was financed by fourteen American companies.² Michael Schrage wrote in a July 28, 1985 Washington Post profile that Inman "surprised and annoyed many of the members of his board" by rejecting many of the researchers the member companies offered. Inman told Schrage: "The management skills I've acquired through trial and painful error are serving me well here."¹⁸ He was chairman, president and chief executive of MCC from 1983 to 1986.¹⁹

Korean Air Lines Flight 007, 1983

In an interview published in the Washington Post on September 4, 1983, Inman offered a theory of the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. He proposed that "the program put into the computer for driving the navigation system is in substantial error," so that the aircraft drifted off course while its crew believed it was on track. Asked how the error was made, he answered "Totally by the Koreans." He said that to the pilot "it appears that he is on his normal track," and that the Soviets "at that point had to be discussing how to get it to land."²⁰

Inman Report on overseas security, 1985

Inman chaired the Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, which the Secretary of State convened, and whose report is generally called the Inman Report after him. The panel's members were Warren B. Rudman, Daniel A. Mica, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Anne L. Armstrong, D'Wayne Gray and Robert J. McGuire, with Victor H. Dikeos as executive secretary.²¹ The report addresses "questions of organization within the Department, professionalism of those executing security responsibilities, international diplomacy to thwart terrorism," and the standards and building program required for overseas posts.²¹ The report calls for relocating a large number of American diplomatic facilities abroad to more secure locations and for retrofitting others against attack.²² It reviews the attacks on the United States Embassy in Beirut.²¹

Westmark Systems and Tracor, 1986 to 1989

As of September 1986 Inman planned to step down as chief executive of MCC in January 1987 and become chairman and chief executive of a new holding company, Westmark Systems, that would acquire companies in the high-technology defense business. The company was to be majority owned by Mason Best Co., a Texas merchant banking concern. Its planned board included Donald Rumsfeld, Drew Lewis, Robert S. Strauss, David T. Kearns of Xerox Corp. and Clifford J. Grum of Temple-Inland.²³ By October 1987 he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Westmark Systems of Austin, Texas.²⁴ The Temple-Inland proxy statement of 1995 gives his Westmark chairmanship as beginning in September 1986 and his chief executive role as running from December 31, 1986 until December 31, 1989.²⁵ The SBC proxy statement of 1995 gives "from January 1987 through December 1989" for his chairman and chief executive roles at Westmark.²⁶

Inman was chairman and chief executive of Tracor, a Fortune 500 military contractor, from 1988 through December 1989, and the company filed for Chapter 11 protection about nine months after he left.²⁷ A 1993 New York Times account described a leveraged buyout during his tenure that "eventually landed" the company in bankruptcy court.²⁷ The newspaper described Tracor as "a casualty not only of Wall Street's excesses of the 1980s but of mismanagement, cost overruns and shrinking Pentagon spending." Inman told the Times that the company's problems had been caused by Wall Street bankers and lawyers whose excessive fees added costs to the purchase price and produced the debt, and he acknowledged that cost overruns and performance problems reduced its cash flow.²⁷ The 1984 Texas State biography had already listed Tracor among the companies whose boards he sat on.² At his news conference of January 1994 he cited a New York Times story critical of his operation of Tracor.²⁸

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the LBJ School

Inman was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1987, and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 through 1990.²⁹ The Temple-Inland proxy statement of 1995 gives the chairmanship as January 1987 to December 1990.²⁵ He was appointed to the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in August 2001, and was interim dean of the school in 2005 and from January 2009 to March 2010.²⁹

Corporate boards

From March 1985 Inman was a director of Southwestern Bell Corporation (renamed SBC Communications), and he was first elected a director of Temple-Inland in 1987; the SBC proxy of 1995 lists him as a director of Fluor, Science Applications International Corporation, Temple-Inland and Xerox.²⁶²⁵ He chaired the Nominating Committee of the Fluor board and sat on its Organization and Compensation Committee, according to the Fluor proxy statement of February 1994.³⁰ In 1984 Inman sat on the boards of Dravo Corp., Science Applications Inc., Texas Eastern Co., Tracor Inc. and Western Union Corp.²

Inman was a director of the company now named Massey Energy from 1985.³¹ The company was the former Fluor Corporation. A reverse spin-off completed November 30, 2000 separated the new Fluor Corporation, and the old company was renamed Massey Energy Company and kept its coal-related businesses.³¹ In 2002 Inman was also a director of the new Fluor Corporation, Science Applications International Corporation, SBC Communications and Temple-Inland.³¹

Inman was a director of Science Applications International Corporation from 1982. He joined the company in April 1990 as a part-time employee and advises it on strategic planning.¹⁹ In the 1994 proxy statement he is listed as chairman of the executive committee, whose other members were J. R. Beyster, E. A. Frieman, L. A. Kull, M. R. Laird, J. W. McRary and B. J. Shillito.³² A CIA reading-room memorandum on parapsychology research at the company names Inman and Melvin Laird among its board members.³³

Inman chaired the Audit Committee of Dell Computer Corporation during its fiscal year 1994 (ended January 30, 1994) and resigned as a director on December 16, 1993, the date of his nomination as Secretary of Defense. The proxy statement filed May 24, 1994 does not state the year he joined the board.³⁴

The Council on Foreign Relations listed Inman among its directors, with a term expiring in 1988, in its 1984-1985 annual report, and he was one of eight candidates on its nominating slate for eight vacancies that year.³⁵

In 2011 Inman was an independent director of Xe Services, the former Blackwater Worldwide, alongside John Ashcroft.³⁶

International Signal and Control and James Guerin

The company's founder was James Guerin. A special proxy board of International Signal and Control, made up of Inman, retired Army general John Guthrie and former assistant secretary of the Navy Barry Shillito, was set up so that the London-listed company could handle classified American defense work.³⁷ Glenn Frankel wrote in 1989 that Inman and Alexander Haig "lent their names to Guerin's business activities over the years."³⁷

In an April 27, 1992 letter to Louis Bechtle, chief judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Inman called James Guerin a patriot.³⁸ Inman has acknowledged having worked secretly with defense contractor James Guerin.³⁸ He sought sentencing leniency for Guerin in 1992.³⁸ Guerin was serving fifteen years for smuggling weapons to South Africa.³⁸

Nomination for Secretary of Defense, 1993 to 1994

Clinton named Inman on December 16, 1993 to succeed Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense. The White House described him as having "a bipartisan reputation as one of the nation's finest intelligence officers."¹ Inman said at the time that he neither sought nor wanted the job, but accepted it out of "duty and country."⁴

The Clinton Library finding aid for his board file states that President George H. W. Bush named Inman to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in July 1991, that he served about thirty months, and that his term "was not renewed" after Clinton selected him for Defense.³⁹ Timothy Good's 1991 book, published before that date, states that "In July 1990 he was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board."⁴⁰

On January 18, 1994 Inman asked Clinton to withdraw the nomination and held a news conference in Austin.²⁸ He described a "modern McCarthyism" practiced by newspaper columnists and Republican opponents, and said that William Safire of The New York Times had recruited Senator Bob Dole to launch a "partisan effort" against him.²⁸ Inman said Safire's vendetta began when, in 1981, he took actions that limited Israel's access to certain U.S. intelligence data, and cited a Safire column that called him a media manipulator, a tax "cheat," a "flop" as a businessman and anti-Israel. He listed as further grievances the Tracor story and a White House leak of his failure to pay Social Security taxes on a household worker.²⁸ Dole denied planning a partisan attack ("I have no idea what's gotten into Bobby Inman"), and two administration sources told the Washington Post that the FBI background check had provided nothing that would disqualify him.²⁸ In a letter to Clinton he wrote: "I sense elements in the media and the political leadership of the country who would rather disparage or destroy reputations than work to effectively govern the country."²⁸ The White House announced the withdrawal the same day.⁴

Warrantless surveillance, 2006

At a New York Public Library panel on eavesdropping in May 2006, Inman said of the warrantless NSA program: "This activity is not authorized." Asked whether the president had the legal authority to order the wiretaps, he replied that "someone else would have to give you the good answer." He also called for the CIA to be "broken up in two."⁴¹

Contacts with UFO researchers, 1988 to 1991

Timothy Good's 1991 book Alien Liaison describes Bob Oechsler, a former NASA mission specialist in Good's words, approaching Inman on May 13, 1988, outside the speakers' tent at the University of Maryland Science and Technology Center after Inman gave the keynote address at the groundbreaking for the NSA's supercomputer facility for the Institute for Defense Analyses. In Good's account Oechsler handed Inman a card listing robotics and security-surveillance expertise, and Inman put it in his breast pocket and said "OK."⁴⁰ Good wrote that at his suggestion Oechsler telephoned Inman in July 1989, reminded him of the meeting, and asked for guidance toward access to a craft for technical research, and also on behalf of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton, the former Chief of the Defence Staff.⁴⁰ Good's acknowledgements thank "Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, for making the acquisition of some of that information possible."⁴⁰

The call was tape-recorded by Oechsler. In the transcript as reproduced in Loose Threads (2022), which dates the call to 1989, Inman says: "All of those are areas in which I am vastly out of date. When I made the decision to retire seven years ago, I made a conscious decision to sever ongoing ties with the U.S. Intelligence Community."⁴² He directs Oechsler to Everett Hineman, the CIA deputy director for science and technology, and to retired rear admiral Sumner Shapiro, "a former director of Naval Intelligence" who "has been a Vice President of BDM." Oechsler then asks: "Do you anticipate that any of the recovered vehicles would ever become available for technological research? Outside of the military circles." Inman answers: "Again, I honestly don't know. Ten years ago the answer would have been no. Whether as time has evolved they are beginning to become more open on it there's a possibility. Again, Mr. Hineman probably would be the best person to put that kind of question to."⁴² Earlier in the call Oechsler asks whether Inman understands "that there is a cultural dialogue going on" between "the parties that presumably are behind the technology in the crafts," and Inman replies "I honestly don't know. Have no exposure at all."⁴² The exchange appears on page 191 of the London edition of Alien Liaison.⁴³

Oechsler told Good that Shapiro "seemed to have knowledge that the United States was in possession of extraterrestrial space vehicles" and gave "every indication of having studied one at close quarters," after two meetings in 1989 and on June 21, 1990, the second of which ended abruptly with Shapiro suspecting false pretenses.⁴⁴ Oechsler also described an August 10, 1989 meeting with Hineman, who telephoned on September 1, 1989 to say "I come to different conclusions than you do."⁴⁴ Good wrote in Alien Contact that Oechsler invited Inman to give the keynote address at the Ozark UFO Conference in April 1990, and that Inman declined and "made it clear (via his executive assistant, Tom King) that any public discussion of the information which Bob had acquired from the former intelligence community directors would be in 'violation of national secrecy laws.'"⁴⁵ Oechsler wrote in Alien Update that after validating his meeting with Hineman, Ronald Pandolfi asked Inman whether he had talked to Oechsler about UFOs, and that Inman "did not deny that such a conversation took place, but was unwilling to discuss any details."⁴⁵

The authors of Loose Threads state that notes from the inaugural "ATP TEN" meeting at BDM in 1985 name Inman in connection with a "major engineering project," and report that John B. Alexander, asked about the note by a researcher, gave a brief reply rejecting the idea of Inman as an official topic of conversation.⁴⁵ They also state that Inman directed the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office as a second post while Director of Naval Intelligence.⁴⁶ Steven Greer said in a 2016 lecture that Barry Goldwater telephoned Inman at Greer's request and told him afterward that Inman "tore me apart"; Grant Cameron said he found a Goldwater file letter confirming that Goldwater telephoned Inman, and that Goldwater's daughter said she had never seen him so rattled.⁴⁶

Inman's written statements deny each element. On December 18, 1989 he wrote to Good, who had written to him on November 17 and December 7, 1989: "Unfortunately I do not know of any information which could be of assistance to you for your UFO report."⁴³ On July 26, 1991 he wrote to Armen Victorian, who had sent him the pages of Alien Liaison on which he was quoted: "I believe all these allegations to be false. Concerning your comments on a group of scientists called MJ12, I have no such awareness and do not believe such a group exists. In summary, the book is filled with fabrication and distortions."⁴³ On August 5, 1991, answering Victorian's request for an "ultimate clarification," he wrote that he had "no specific recollection of the receipt of a calling card from Mr Oeschler" before the call, that he "did not understand until well into his dialogue that his research was about Unidentified Flying Objects," that "Throughout 22 years of service in the intelligence community, I never encountered any credible evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial or interplanetary entities," and that Shapiro had told him Oechsler "totally misrepresented both the nature and content of their conversation."⁴³ Loose Threads quotes a published review as reporting that when asked whether the "recovered vehicles" quote was essentially correct, Inman answered "What kind of vehicles is he talking about?" and "The conversation I recall . . . the reference was to underwater vehicles."⁴⁶

Shapiro told Victorian on August 3, 1991: "He met me on one occasion and I realised that he was a fraud," and that he had never met Oechsler in a restaurant as Good's page 195 describes.⁴³ Victorian, writing in Lobster in 1992, reported that he had received a complete copy of the recording from Oechsler and that it contained "not a single specific reference to the subject of UFOs," and that John Dingley, whom Oechsler named as another listener, confirmed on July 14, 1991 that he had heard the tape and that it had no reference to UFOs.⁴³ Loose Threads describes Victorian as "a skeptical inquirer using a pseudonym."⁴⁶