Bobby Ray Inman

Bobby Ray Inman (born April 4, 1931) is a retired United States Navy admiral who held several influential positions in the United States Intelligence Community.

Inman was born and raised in the community of Rhonesboro, Upshur County, Texas, in the eastern portion of the state.

His father was the owner and operator of a gas station.

Inman attended and graduated from Mineola High School.

Inman graduated from Mineola High School in Mineola, Texas at the age of 15, in 1946.

He rode a bus from Mineola to Tyler Junior College, where he was a member of Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society.

He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in history at the age of 19.

According to Budiansky, after joining the Naval Reserve during the Korean War, Inman then "rocketed up through the ranks of naval intelligence".

Inman graduated from Texas with a bachelor's in history in 1950.

Inman has also served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dell Computer, SBC Corporation (now AT&T) and Massey Energy.

Admiral Inman “flatly rejected” Israel’s mistaken identity claim when it came to the 1967 USS Liberty incident.

He stated that “It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the USS Liberty] was not correctly identified.” Admiral Inman said his conclusions were based on his talks with senior NSA officials who had direct knowledge at the time.

Along with NSA Deputy Director for Operations Oliver Kirby, U.S. Air Force Major General John E. Morrison (Kirby’s successor), and Lieutenant General William E. Odom, he said he was unaware of any agency official at any time who dissented from the “deliberate” conclusion.

Inman served as Director of Naval Intelligence from September 1974 to July 1976, then moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency where he served as vice director until 1977.

He next became the director of the National Security Agency.

In 1976, Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie published their paper, New Directions in Cryptography, introducing a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, which went far toward solving one of the fundamental problems of cryptography, key distribution.

It has become known as Diffie–Hellman key exchange.

However, when Hellman and two of his graduate students attempted to present their work on this on October 10, 1977 at The International Symposium on Information Theory, the National Security Agency warned them that doing so would be legally equivalent to exporting nuclear weapons to a hostile foreign power.

Inman led the NSA at the time, and he feared that encryption – which had so far only been used for military purposes – would be used by hostile foreign powers, reducing the ability of the NSA to collect signals intelligence.

However, Hellman – who anticipated that the increasing use of electronic communications in private sector transactions would require encryption – proceeded to give the talk.

While this defied the NSA's threat of prosecution, Inman eventually realised Hellman's point and there was no prosecution.

Hellman and Inman even became friends.

Public key cryptography now forms an essential component of internet security.

Inman held this post until 1981.

His last major position was as the deputy director of Central Intelligence, a post he held from February 12, 1981 to June 10, 1982.

While simultaneously acting as the NSA director and the CIA deputy director in early 1981, he modernized the collection process by setting up a joint facility in College Park, Maryland.

According to Budiansky, Inman did so by "sending memos back and forth to himself approving his solutions."

Inman chaired a commission on improving security at U.S. foreign installations after the Marine barracks bombing and the April 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.

The commission's report has been influential in setting security design standards for U.S. Embassies.

After retirement from the Navy, he was chairman and chief executive officer of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas for four years and chairman, president and chief executive officer of Westmark Systems, Inc., a privately owned electronics industry holding company for three years.

Inman recalled in 1986 that he was 5' 4" tall and weighed 96 lb upon graduation, and he tutored athletes he admired during high school to keep from being bullied.

Admiral Inman also served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 through 1990.

Admiral Inman’s primary activity since 1990 has been investing in start-up technology companies, where he is a managing director of Limestone Ventures.

He is a member of the board of directors of several privately held companies.

He serves as a trustee of the American Assembly and the California Institute of Technology.

He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

President Clinton nominated him as Secretary of Defense, but he withdrew his nomination (see below).

Inman also was on the board of SAIC.

Since 2001, Inman has held the LBJ Centennial Chair in National Policy at The University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and in 2005 and again in 2009 was the school's interim dean.

In 2011, he became head of the board of directors of Xe Services, formerly Erik Prince's Blackwater and now known as Academi.