Thomas C. Reed

Former Secretary of the Air Force

Wednesday, February 3, 2016  |  12:15pm  |  Texas Governors' Room, Union Building

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Thomas C. Reed is a former Secretary of the Air Force, having served in that capacity during the Ford and Carter administrations. In the 1970s Reed was the youngest-ever Director of the once-covert National Reconnaissance Office, responsible for all U.S. satellite intelligence systems, both photographic and electronic, during the Cold War. During the 1980s, Reed served as Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Policy. His technical background includes nuclear weapon design and low-temperature physics.

In 1973 Reed was recruited to manage certain intelligence projects at the Pentagon in connection with the Yom Kippur War then raging in the Middle East. A decade of involvement in national security matters followed. 

During the 1990s Reed spent time in Ukraine, assisting with the return of abandoned Soviet nuclear weapons to Russian control. With the coming of the millennium, he turned his attention to writing, to documenting the history of the Cold War and its principal players.

His first book, “At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War” with an introduction by former President George H.W. Bush was published by Ballantine Books in 2004. It delves into the lives of those who fought and ended the Cold War without a nuclear shot being fired.

His second work, “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation” was co-authored by Danny Stillman, a former chief of technical intelligence at Los Alamos. It was published by Zenith Press in 2009, with a favorable review by William J. Broad, science editor of the New York Times, prior to publication.