Lee Carpenter

Above all, Lee Carpenter has been one of America’s most important back-room Defense workers. Politically “centrist” and working as a civilian, his assessments came to be respected and relied upon by top US military leaders and arms control negotiators all the way up to Amb. Max Kampelman, whom he was invited to serve in the final years of his career as a weapon system and force structure analyst. After serving in the US Marine Corps and working as a General Electric technician for the US Navy,  Carpenter developed a four-decades-long career with the Bell Telephone Companies, IBM, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the U.S. Department of State, dedicated to enhancing the strategic defense posture of the United States. His 1980 Soviet threat analysis guided and facilitated the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Forces Renewal Program. His work with the Administration during 1980–1983 and testimony to the 97th and 98th Congress ensured agreements to produce 100 B-1 bombers, to base 100 MX ICBMs in the Minuteman ICBM silos, to develop and produce the Trident D-5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile, and to develop a small land-mobile ICBM. Carpenter also spent four years working in Geneva, Switzerland, as a Senior Advisor to the US–Soviet Nuclear and Space Talks. During this period he also prepared analyses of Soviet initiatives and anticipated the systemic failure of the Soviet Union.