Don't Call Him Bobby Ray: Portrait of an Operator

(2 of 2)

Beginning as a shipboard cryptographer, Inman rose quickly. He became director of Naval Intelligence in 1974 and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1976. In 1977 Jimmy Carter named him as head of the National Security Agency, the supersecret electronic eavesdropping and code- breaking service at Fort Meade, Maryland. He liked that so much it took a direct order from Ronald Reagan to move him to the deputy directorship of the CIA, where his probity was needed to balance the unpredictable chief spook, William Casey. In the process, Inman became the first naval intelligence specialist to reach four-star rank.

It turned out Casey was beyond balancing, and Inman resigned. He said later he understood how Robert Gates could have been kept in the dark about Irangate, because Casey had done the same thing to him on several plots. In any case, Inman said, "I am not a very good No. 2, so my year at the Defense Intelligence Agency and my 18 months at the CIA were not the happier times of my career." In the 1980s he headed a computer-technology venture and a defense-contractor company in Austin, Texas. Neither was a great success, but no one blamed him. Now he wants to bring the "best business practices" to the Pentagon.

When Inman left the CIA, he vowed never to accept another government post. "The frustration," he said, "was in watching the decision makers and thinking they were making a botch of it." Last week he said he didn't want the Defense job either, but he took it for "duty and country." His reputation for straight talk is so solid that no one questioned the statement.