News

ACCESSION 
NUMBER:351065

FILE ID:EUR420

DATE:06/30/94

TITLE:SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WILLIAM J. PERRY (06/30/94)

TEXT:*94063003.PFE

*EUR420   06/30/94

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE WILLIAM J. PERRY

(Biography) (690)

OCCUPATION: Public official, academic, businessman.

POSITIONS HELD: Secretary of Defense, 1994-Present.

Under Secretary of Defense, 1993-1994.

Co-director, Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford

University, 1989-1993.



Professor of Engineering, Stanford University, 1989-1993.

Chairman, Technology Strategies and Alliances, 1985-1993.

Managing Director, Hambrecht and Quist, 1981-1985.

Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, 1977-1981.

Technical Consultant, Department of Defense, 1967-1977.

President, ESL, Inc., 1964-1977.

Director, Electronic Defense Laboratories, GTE-Sylvania, 1954-1964.

Instructor of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University, 1951-1954.

MILITARY SERVICE: U.S. Army, 1946-1947.

EDUCATION: Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1957.

Master's Degree, Stanford University, 1950.

Bachelor's Degree, Stanford University, 1949.

PERSONAL: Born October 11, 1927.

Married, five children.

William J. Perry, a Pentagon veteran who has been a successful corporate

leader in the defense industry, a mathematician and a scholar, is the

nation's 19th secretary of defense.  Before taking that position, Perry was

one of President Bill Clinton's military technology advisers and also

deputy secretary of defense to former Defense Secretary Les Aspin.



Perry is noted within the military-industrial community as an innovative

thinker and an organizational genius, a man who has used his expertise in

academia, business and defense to further U.S. policy goals at home and

abroad.  During the Carter administration, Perry served as under secretary

of defense for research and engineering; he is credited during that tenure

with spearheading the drive for radar-evading "Stealth" technology, which

has a number of military applications, including the B-2 strategic bomber

1nd the F-117A fighter, credited with helping to win the Gulf War.



In a White House ceremony announcing the nomination, President Clinton said

that Perry has the right skills and management experience for the job of

secretary of defense.  "For years, and throughout his service this past

year, he has been at the cutting edge on defense issues," the president

said.  "In every aspect of his work, Bill Perry has earned high respect

from members of both parties in Congress, in the military among those who

study military strategy, and in the business community."



He "brings a highly evolved and unique blend of competencies" to the defense

arena, says Lockheed Corporation chairman Daniel S. Tellep.  "He knows

academia, venture capital, defense procurement, technology, military force

structure and the international scene."



Early in his career, Perry was the president of ESL, Inc., a company he

founded in 1964, which used the complex math of computers to interpret

electronic signals and thus break codes.  Prior to that, Perry was the

director of GTE-Sylvania Company's electronic defense laboratories in

California.



Perry was hired as a technical consultant at the Pentagon by the Department

of Defense in 1967.  He became the under secretary of defense for research

and engineering in 1977.  After leaving the Pentagon, Perry was managing

director of Hambrecht and Quist, an investment banking firm in San

Francisco, California.  He left in 1985 to form Technology Strategies and

Alliances, a management consulting firm which advises companies both in the

United States and abroad on high technology issues.



Perry is a recipient of the Army's Outstanding Service medal.  He has been

a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the

technology review panel of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence

and a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.



Perry has earned the Defense Department's Distinguished Public Service medal

twice -- in 1980 and 1981 -- the year in which the Federal Republic of

Germany also awarded him the Knight Commander's Cross.  In 1982, France

presented Perry with the Grand Officer de L'Ordre National du Merite.



At his confirmation hearing, Perry said that the secretary of defense must

be a key member on the U.S. national security team.  The president has

demonstrated the vision needed to achieve the best possible national

security, Perry continued, "but the waters are uncharted, and we owe the

president our best advice and counsel in planning strategy as we maneuver

through the shoals of the post-Cold War era."



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