Career
He 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. Inman held this post until 1981. His last major position was as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a post he held from February 12, 1981 to June 10, 1982.
Inman has been influential in various advisory roles. Notably, he 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. 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 Gefinor Ventures and Limestone Ventures. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Massey Energy Company and 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. 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.
In 2011 he became head of the board of directors of Xe Services, formerly Erik Prince's Blackwater.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Ray Inman
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)