Thomas C. Reed

Former Secretary of the Air Force

Thomas C. Reed is a former Secretary of the Air Force, having served in that capacity during the Ford and Carter administrations. In the mid-seventies, Reed was the youngest-ever director of the once-covert National Reconnaissance Office, responsible for all US satellite intelligence systems, both photographic and electronic, during the Cold War. During the eighties, Reed served as Special Assistant to President Reagan for National Security Policy. His technical background includes nuclear weapon design and low-temperature physics.<br /> <br /> Reed graduated from Cornell University with a degree in engineering and an ROTC commission into the US Air Force. He began his professional career at the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division in Los Angeles during the 1950s, the years of Sputnik and the "missile gap." <br /> After earning a graduate degree from the University of Southern California, Reed moved to Lawrence Livermore, where he designed two thermonuclear devices fired over the Pacific in 1962. On leaving Livermore, Reed started and ran a successful high-tech company making superconductors, but he also developed an interest in politics. <br /> In 1973, Reed was recruited to manage certain intelligence projects at the Pentagon in connection with the Yom Kippur War then raging in the Mideast. A decade of involvement in national security matters followed. Reed left Washington in 1983 to return to business pursuits, but throughout the years of Soviet collapse, Reed continued to advise the Joint Strategic Planning Staff on policy and intelligence matters.<br /> <br /> During the nineties, 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, documenting the history of the Cold War and its principal players. <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> In his third book, Reed turned to history-based fiction with The Tehran Triangle, written with Sandy Baker and published by Black Garnet Press in 2012. James Schlesinger, former chairman of the AEC, director of central intelligence, secretary of defense and then secretary of energy, wrote that, "The Tehran Triangle is a harrowing tale about Iran's quest for the bomb. The story feels real; it could have been written by an intelligence insider and a nuclear weapons expert. And it was."<br /> Reed was born in New York City. He now lives in Healdsburg, California, with his wife Kay.