William J. Perry

William James Perry (born October 11, 1927) is an American mathematician, engineer, businessman, and civil servant who was the United States Secretary of Defense from February 3, 1994, to January 23, 1997, under President Bill Clinton. He also served as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1993–1994) and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (1977–1981).

Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University, with a joint appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Engineering. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is the co-founder of the Palo Alto Unitarian Church and serves as director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is an expert in U.S. foreign policy, national security and arms control. In 2013 he founded the William J. Perry Project, a non-profit effort to educate the public on the current dangers of nuclear weapons.

Perry also has extensive business experience and serves on the boards of several high-tech companies. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1970 for contributions to communications theory, radio propagation theory, and computer technology in the design of advanced systems. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among Perry's numerous awards are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1997) and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (2002), awarded by Japan.

Early life

Born in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, Perry attended, but did not graduate from Culver Military Academy. He graduated from Butler Senior High School in 1945 and served in the United States Army as an enlisted man from 1946 to 1947, including service in the Occupation of Japan. Perry later received a commission in the United States Army Reserve through ROTC, serving from 1950 to 1955.

Perry received his B.S. (1949) and M.A. (1950) degrees from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1957.

Early career

From 1954 to 1964 Perry was director of the Electronic Defense Laboratories of Sylvania/GTE in California, and from 1964 to 1977 president of Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory (ESL), Incorporated, an electronics firm that he founded. He was instrumental in demonstrating the technical feasibility of extracting Signals intelligence on the Soviet Union from the overall Rf background with the then proposed Rhyolite/Aquacade surveillance program. In 1967 he was hired as a technical consultant to the Department of Defense.

Undersecretary of Defense for R&E

From 1977 to 1981, during the Jimmy Carter administration, Perry served as Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, where he had responsibility for weapon systems procurement and research and development. Among other achievements, he had an influence on the development of the AirLand Battle doctrine, and was instrumental in the development of stealth aircraft technology, specifically the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.

Mid-career

On leaving the Pentagon in 1981, Perry became managing director until 1985 of Hambrecht & Quist, a San Francisco investment banking firm "specializing in high-tech and defense companies."

He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 to serve on the President's Commission on Strategic Forces. He was also a member of the Packard Commission.

Later in the 1980s he held positions as founder and chairman of Technology Strategies Alliances, professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, and served as a co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Perry returned to the Pentagon as Deputy Secretary of Defense after being nominated by Bill Clinton on February 3, 1993,

The "frenzy" of defense industry mergers that the US experienced after 1986 was encouraged when in autumn 1993, Perry and his boss Les Aspin invited two dozen industry executives to a dinner "in the secretary's dining room next to his office". The two Secretaries urged their guests to combine into a few, larger companies because Pentagon budget cuts would endanger at least half of the contractors represented there. The event would come to be known as the "Last Supper".

Secretary of Defense

Perry's boss as Deputy Secretary, Secretary Les Aspin, was not a good fit for the job and within a year tendered his resignation. Perry succeeded him after a two-month search.

He entered office with broad national security experience, both in industry and government and with an understanding of the challenges that he faced. A hands-on manager, he paid attention both to internal operations in the Pentagon and to international security issues. He worked closely with his deputy secretaries (John M. Deutch, 1994–95, and John P. White, 1995–97), and he met regularly with the service secretaries, keeping them informed and seeking their advice on issues. He described his style as "management by walking around."

Perry adopted "preventive defense" as his guide to national security policy in the post-Cold War world. During the Cold War the United States had relied on deterrence rather than prevention as the central principle of its security strategy. Perry outlined three basic tenets of a preventive strategy: keep threats from emerging; deter those that actually emerged; and if prevention and deterrence failed, defeat the threat with military force. In practical terms this strategy relied on threat reduction programs (reducing the nuclear complex of the former Soviet Union), counter-proliferation efforts, the NATO Partnership for Peace and expansion of the alliance, and the maintenance of military forces and weapon systems ready to fight if necessary. To carry out this strategy, Perry thought it necessary to maintain a modern, ready military force, capable of fighting two major regional wars at the same time.

Defense budget

thumb|right|Perry in Rwanda, 1994.

The formulation of the Defense budget and shepherding it through Congress was one of Perry's most important duties. The problem of how to deal with a large projected Defense budget shortfall from 1995 to 2000, an issue that weakened Perry's predecessor Les Aspin and contributed to his resignation, persisted when Perry took office. Immediately on presenting his 1995 budget request, which he termed "a post-Cold War budget," Perry stated that Defense required a few more years of downsizing and that its infrastructure needed streamlining as well. The proposal, he said, maintained a ready-to-fight force, redirected a modernization program (including a strong research and development program), initiated a program to do business differently (acquisition reform), and reinvested defense dollars in the economy. The budget projected a further cut of 85,500 in active duty military personnel, leaving a force of 1.52 million. Ultimately Congress provided $253.9 billion TOA, about $2 billion more than in FY 1994, but actually a 1.2% cut in inflation-adjusted growth. This proposal became entangled in the controversy during 1995 over the House Republicans' Contract with America, their efforts to spend more on defense than the administration wanted, and the continuing need for deficit reduction.

Perry cautioned Congress in September of the possibility that President Clinton would veto the FY 1996 Defense budget bill because Congress had added $7 billion in overall spending, mainly for weapon systems that the Defense Department did not want, and because of restrictions on contingency operations Congress had put in the bill. Three months later he recommended that the president veto the bill. When Congress and the administration finally settled on a budget compromise midway through FY 1996, DoD received $254.4 billion TOA, slightly more than in FY 1995, but in terms of real growth a 2% cut. rather than from defense contractors, signaling a major departure from the traditional "milspec" over 30,000 military specifications and standards that actually inflated the cost of military items.

In a further effort to save money Perry resorted to base closures and realignments. In May 1994 he and General John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that Defense would go forward, as required by law, with a 1995 round of base closings. In doing so Defense would consider the economic impact on the affected communities and the capacity to manage the reuse of closed facilities,

On October 21, 1994, the United States and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework after lengthy negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, assisted again by former President Carter. The United States, Japan, South Korea, and other regional allies promised to provide North Korea with two light water nuclear reactors, at an eventual cost of $4 billion, to replace existing or partially constructed facilities that could produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. North Korea then agreed to open its nuclear facilities to international inspection, and the United States pledged to lift trade restrictions and provide heavy fuel oil for electric power generation. Perry considered this agreement better than risking a war in Korea and a continuation of North Korea's nuclear program. He promised that he would ask Congress for money to build up U.S. forces in South Korea if the agreement broke down. Again a critical situation had moderated, but implementing the agreement proved difficult. By the end of Perry's term, some issues remained outstanding, and tension between the two Koreas flared up from time to time.

The Middle East

In the Persian Gulf area, Ba'athist Iraq continued to have conflict, with periodic provocative moves by Saddam Hussein triggering U.S. military action. After the 1991 Gulf War, acting in accord with United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, the United States organized a coalition to enforce no-fly zones in Iraq, north of 36° and south of 32°. In a tragic accident in April 1994 two U.S. Air Force F-15 aircraft, operating in the no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq, shot down two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters after misidentifying them as Iraqi. This incident, with its high death toll, highlighted dramatically the complexities in dealing with Iraq in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Further, in October 1994, when several elite Iraqi Armed Forces divisions began to move toward the Iraq–Kuwait border, the United States mobilized ground, air, and naval forces in the area to counter the threat. Perry warned Iraq that the U.S. forces would take action if it did not move its Republican Guard units north of the 32nd parallel. Subsequently, the UN Security Council passed a resolution requiring Iraq to pull its troops back at least 150 miles from Kuwait's border. and was due to fear of repeating the Battle of Mogadishu.

Accomplishments and resignation

In January 1996, Perry talked about experiences over the past year in which he never thought a Secretary of Defense would be involved. At the top of the list was witnessing participation of a Russian Ground Forces brigade in a U.S. Army division in the Bosnian peacekeeping operation. The others—Dayton, Ohio, becoming synonymous with peace in the Balkans; helping the Russian defense minister blow up a Minuteman missile silo in Missouri; watching United States and Russian troops training together in Kansas; welcoming former Warsaw Pact troops in Louisiana; operating a school at Garmisch, Germany, to teach former Soviet and East European military officers about democracy, budgeting, and testifying to a parliament; dismantling the military specifications system for acquisition; cutting the ear off a pig in Kazakhstan, and eating rendered Manchurian toad fat in China. These things, Perry said, demonstrate "just how much the world has changed, just how much our security has changed, just how much the Department of Defense has changed, and just how much my job has changed."

As he left the Pentagon, Perry listed what he thought were his most important accomplishments: establishing effective working relationships with U.S. military leaders; improving the lot of the military, especially enlisted men and women; managing the military drawdown; instituting important acquisition reforms; developing close relationships with many foreign defense ministers; effectively employing military strength and resources in Bosnia, Haiti, Korea, and the Persian Gulf area; dramatically reducing the nuclear legacy of the Cold War; and promoting the Partnership for Peace within NATO. His disappointments included failure to obtain Russian ratification of the START II treaty; slowness in securing increases in the budget for weapon systems modernization; and the faulty perceptions of the Gulf War illness syndrome held by some of the media and much of the public. At a ceremony for Perry in January 1997 General Shalikashvili noted the departing secretary's relationship with the troops. "Surely," Shalikashvili said, "Bill Perry has been the GI's secretary of defense. When asked his greatest accomplishment as secretary, Bill Perry didn't name an operation or a weapons system. He said that his greatest accomplishment was his very strong bond with our men and women in uniform."

thumb|right|Perry at the National Defense University graduation on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2008.

Perry rejoined the faculty at Stanford University, becoming a professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford's School of Engineering.

In 1999, Perry was awarded the James A. Van Fleet Award by The Korea Society.

Perry sits on the advisory board of the Commonwealth Club of California. Perry currently sits on the board of directors for Xyleco. Perry joined the financial board of the Thailand-based manufacturing company, Fabrinet in 2008. He was a board member of Theranos, a Silicon Valley biotech company which defrauded more than $700 million from its investors before it collapsed.

On June 17, 2006, Perry gave the featured commencement speech to engineering and science graduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

William Perry appeared as an important and influential person in the development of Silicon Valley, in the PBS documentary, Silicon Valley: 100 Year Renaissance (1998).

On October 16, 2008, Perry was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy.

Work to eliminate nuclear weapons

Perry is a founding board member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to reduce the threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. He currently has an emeritus status on the board. Perry is an advisory board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. Perry is currently chair of the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and frequently speaks at Bulletin events. He is a Member of the Supervisory Council of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe. Perry is also a member of the board of directors of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, DC–based think tank that specializes in U.S. national security issues. Perry is also on the advisory board of the Truman National Security Project, a progressive leadership institute that trains the next generation of foreign policy and national security leaders.

In March 2006, he was appointed to the Iraq Study Group, a group formed to give advice on the U.S. government's Iraq policy.

thumb|right|200px|Perry at a conference in [[Stockholm in 2014]]

In 2007, Secretary Perry joined three other eminent statesmen, former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn in calling for the United States to take the lead in reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons. Their op-ed, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons", published in the Wall Street Journal, reverberated throughout the world, and is one of the key factors that has convinced political leaders and experts internationally that the conditions are in place to achieve that goal. The four men published four subsequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, including one on March 5, 2013: "Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Risks: The Pace of Non-Proliferation Work Today Doesn't Match the Urgency of the Threat". They subsequently created the Nuclear Security Project to galvanize global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for their vision and the steps to achieve them. The Nuclear Threat Initiative serves as coordinator of the NSP, in conjunction with Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 2010, the four produced the documentary Nuclear Tipping Point. The film is introduced by General Colin Powell, narrated by Michael Douglas and includes interviews with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2011, Perry joined a team of former government officials from various countries, formed under the auspices of the Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki to prepare a plan for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This project is titled Hiroshima for Global Peace.

In 2013, Perry founded the William J. Perry Project to seek to promote greater public awareness about nuclear weapons and engage more people in acting to mitigate the growing threat they pose to humanity. The Project is a nonprofit venture supported with funds raised from private individuals and is sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He warned that: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”

On September 30, 2016, the New York Times published a Perry opinion editorial advocating, " ... the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force ... ". Perry believes that ICBM's are turning more into liabilities than assets. Perry says it would save "considerable cost" and would prevent accidental nuclear war. With regards to an accidental nuclear war, Perry has experienced a false alarm for an incoming missile which later turned out to be a computer error. Perry's experience was 40 years ago but our technology is still not perfect with the recent false alarm in 2018 Hawaii false missile alert. Perry says the major problem with ICBM's are the "non-recall" ability which if these missiles are sent and it turns out to be a false alarm then there's no turning back.

Perry is cited by the website of Los Angeles Congressman Ted Lieu for supporting legislation proposed by Lieu and U.S. Senator Ed Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts, that would limit President Donald Trump and future presidents' authority to launch a nuclear first strike against another country by requiring them to first get approval from Congress. The following quotation is attributed to Perry in Congressman Lieu's website: "During my period as Secretary of Defense, I never confronted a situation, or could even imagine a situation, in which I would recommend that the President make a first strike with nuclear weapons—understanding that such an action, whatever the provocation, would likely bring about the end of civilization. I believe that the legislation proposed by Congressman Lieu and Senator Markey recognizes that terrible reality. Certainly, a decision that momentous for all of civilization should have the kind of checks and balances on Executive powers called for by our Constitution."

Perry was profiled in the Radiolab episode Nukes in 2017. He argued for the need for checks and balances for a nuclear strike by the U.S.

Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS)

On April 2, 2013, the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS) was officially renamed the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (The Perry Center) in recognition of its founder, the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense, Dr. William J. Perry. This change honored his role in establishing the center, which originated from the first Defense Ministerial of the Americas in 1995, when Perry promoted regional defense cooperation and the training of civilians in security matters.

Books

With Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund, Perry wrote the book The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. This book concludes with a ten-point plan for nuclear weapons safety:

End presidential sole nuclear authority.
Prohibit launch on warning.
Prohibit first use.
Retire all ICBMs and scale back the nuclear rebuild.
Save New START and go farther.
Limit strategic missile defenses.
Don't wait for treaties.
Engage diplomatically with North Korea and Iran.
Bring the bomb into the new mass movement.
Elect a committed president.

Other political activities

Perry, along with all other living former secretaries of defense, ten in total, published a Washington Post op-ed piece in January 2021 telling President Donald Trump not to involve the military in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.

Honors

: Presidential Medal of Freedom, with Distinction, 1997.
: Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, 1996 Postanowienie Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 13 grudnia 1996 r. o nadaniu orderu..
: Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir 1998.
: Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1998.

References

Sources

External links

Official site, William J Perry Project
Lessons in Leadership , podcast of William Perry speaking at Stanford University