Re: Bobby Inman

Inman's first job after retiring from his spook's life in the Navy was
to start MCC in Austin, TX. I saw him speak in 1984 at Bell Labs
Murray Hill shortly after the AT&T divestiture, before Bellcore got
its own facilities.  He was there to sign up Bellcore for MCC
membership, although we didn't know it yet.

He gave an almost content-free talk about "regaining America's
technological leadership" or something like that. When he finished, I
got up and asked him how he could reconcile his stated need to lead
the world in high technology with a DoD-dominated export control
system specifically geared to keeping us from selling those very
technologies in which we lead the world.  He waffled like a classic
politician. I was still trying to decipher his answer long after he
finished.

After MCC, I think he went to Westmark, a defense contractor. He also
showed up on at least one Baby Bell board of directors (SW Bell?). As
a shareholder, I made it a point to specifically withhold my vote for
him when the proxies got mailed out.  (To be sure, big corporation
proxies are about as meaningful as ballots in a Communist election,
but what the hell -- unlike the Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes,
at least they pay postage.  Eventually I started voting against ALL of
the directors on all of the Bell proxies, just for the hell of it.)

After what Inman tried to do to civilian crypto in the late 1970s, the
word "slime" keeps coming to mind. But then again, there are plenty of
Inmans in the military-industrial complex.

Phil

Phil Karn sez:
> After what Inman tried to do to civilian crypto in the late 1970s, the
> word "slime" keeps coming to mind.

I think this is mistaken, in the sense that we think of lawyers, car
salesmen, RBOC directors, etc. as slime.  What Inman did was wrong from our
point of view, but I think he was acting forthrightly and honestly and in
concert with what he believes.

Inman is a very jingoistic patriot.  America First is not just a slogan for
him, but a way of life.  MCC's and Westmark's purposes in the universe were
largely based on promoting American ideas and technology in competition with
the Japanese.

Example: during an election year, he invited US Representative Jake Pickle
to come to MCC and speak and press the flesh.  Now, Inman is a blue-blood
Republican, and Jake is a *very* liberal Democrat.  But Inman had become
convinced that Pickle's progressive stand on corporate policy (reward
corporations for keeping jobs and technology in the US) was better for
America than his opponent's (who favored Reaganesque laissez faire let-the-
corporations-do-anything).  Therefore, Inman supported Pickle and put MCC's
considerable muscle behind Pickle.

This, and similar incidents, lead me to believe that if we could get Inman
to understand that cryptographic secrecy and export controls are in fact bad
for America he would oppose them.  At the NSA he (no doubt) had people
telling him that classification was necessary for American security (what a
surprise).

> But then again, there are plenty of Inmans in the military-industrial
> complex.

Unfortunately that's not the case.  I think if we had more men and women of
principle in the M-I complex we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

My favorite Inman story: how he got to be Admiral.  He was into spook stuff
in the early 70s, particularly intelligence analyses.  He is reputed to have
predicted the Arab attack on Israel that began the Yom Kippur war in '72.
According to the story, he filed reports saying the attack would happen a
couple weeks before the event.  His superiors disagreed and (in true NASA
Challenger management fashion) demanded he change his reports, which were
being passed up to the JCS and the President.  Apparently he refused, and
they essentially forced him out of the military.  While his commission was
in the process of expiring the attack happened and they made him an Admiral.
Apparently this was not enough to mollify him and he quit anyway.

Of course, this stuff is all hush-hush, but the timing is about right for
this story to be true and people who know Inman say he won't deny it.

In any event, the point of these stories is to illustrate my contention that
Inman is a man of principle who is willing to risk his career for what he
sincerely believes is right.  I would not call him a slime and I would not
make the mistake of underestimating him.

--Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard
Media Lab - Advanced Human Interface Group	wex@media.mit.edu
Voice: 617-258-9168 Page: 617-945-1842		an53607@anon.penet.fi
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to
action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.

>> After what Inman tried to do to civilian crypto in the late 1970s, the
>> word "slime" keeps coming to mind.

>I think this is mistaken, in the sense that we think of lawyers, car
>salesmen, RBOC directors, etc. as slime.  What Inman did was wrong from our
>point of view, but I think he was acting forthrightly and honestly and in
>concert with what he believes.

Okay, I admit that "slime" may be a bit too strong. And according to
the "Puzzle Palace", Inman was surprisingly enlightened (at least for
a senior military officer in the late 1970s) when it came to one
privacy-related topic, that of allowing civilian gays to serve openly
in the NSA. As I recall, he agreed that a gay out of the closet was
much less likely to be blackmailed than one that was still in the
closet, rejecting the argument that an openly gay NSA employee
represented an unacceptable security risk.

But I *still* can't forgive him for how he tried to kill civilian
cryptography as NSA director, especially since his more recent
comments to John Perry Barlow tend to indicate that he hasn't changed
his views much, if at all.  This is a guy that will have to be watched
*very* carefully, especially since everybody in Washington seems to be
falling all over themselves to praise him.

Phil

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> Inman is a very jingoistic patriot....

> I think if we had more men and women of principle in the
> [military-industrial] complex we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

> ...

> In any event, the point of these stories is to illustrate my contention that
> Inman is a man of principle who is willing to risk his career for what he
> sincerely believes is right.

So, are you saying that you would rather have your privacy invaded on
jingoistic principle than casually?  Threatened by some wicked, depraved
``principle'', individual liberty is even harder to defend.  This is
what makes Inman so dangerous.

	John E. Kreznar		| Relations among people to be by
	jkreznar@ininx.com	| mutual consent, or not at all.

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