It is Friday, October 29th, It is my great pleasure to be here with Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Admiral Inman, it's an honor to be with you today. Thank you so much. ZIERLER: What I'd like to do today is start with a question that really brings us together, and it's a question that has a history that goes back over 30 years.
What was your initial connection to Caltech? How did that come about? I had also done a number of not-for-profits. He also observed my constantly meddling in topics. He asked me one day in if I would consider being a trustee of Caltech. I said, "It's a great institution. I know from reputation.
But I'm not a scientist. It would be wonderful, if you're willing to do it, to help us find our way through the Washington maze. When I was the director at NSA, there were a number of things that TRW did, and usually did well, all still off in the classified side of the house. That's how I knew TRW and to know what a terrific organization it was. That was why Ruben Mettler came to my attention.
Was it ? I think I was already on before the annual meeting in the fall. I was immediately assigned to the trustee committee overseeing JPL.
Ed Stone was the director of JPL. He was famous as the project manager for the first intelligence-collecting satellite, of which much has now been written and published. It was a Rube Goldberg operation where this huge bus had six camera bays in it, and it would take photographs overwhelmingly just over the Soviet Union, and then kick out a bus, a parachute would open, and an airplane flying out of Alaska would hook the parachute, recover it, and bring it back to the house.
