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Institutional
Affiliations
American
Defense Preparedness Association: Member (3)
American
Security Council (ASC): Member of the National Advisory
Board (3)
National
Security Industrial Association (NSIA): Member (3), (4)
American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics: Member (3), (4)
California
Council on Science and Technology: Member of the Board of
Directors and Fellow (11)
Committee
on the Present Danger: Member (15)
Government
Posts/Panels/Commissions
Panel
to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security of the U.S.
Nuclear Stockpile (“Foster Panel”): Chair since
1999
Defense
Science Board: Member and Chairman from January 1990 to
June 1993 (10)
President’s
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: Member, 1973-1990 (3)
Department
of Defense: Director of Defense Research and Engineering,
1965-1973 (1), (3), (4), (10)
Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA): Member of the Ballistic
Missile Defense Advisory Committee, 1965 (3)
President’s
Science Advisory Committee: Panel Consultant until 1965
Army
Scientific Advisory Panel: Member until 1958 (3)
Air
Force Scientific Advisory Board: Member until 1956 (3)
Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory: Director, 1961-1965 (4)
California's
Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER): Chair of
the Review Panel, 1998-2001 (11)
Panel
to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security of the U.S.
Nuclear Stockpile (“Foster Panel”): Chair
Team
B: Participated in the establishment, in the mid-1970s,
of this controversial exercise aimed at reinterpreting intelligence
on Soviet capabilities and intentions
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Nine
Sigma: Member of Strategic Advisory Board (3), (11)
Northrop
Grumman Space Technology (formerly TRW, Inc.): Consultant
(3)
Sikorsky
Aircraft Corp.: Consultant (3)
Defense
Group Inc.: Consultant (3), (4)
JAYCOR:
Member of the Board (3), (4)
Areté
Associates: Member of the Board (3), (6)
United
Technologies Corp. (UTC): (4)
Wackenhut
Services, Inc: Consultant (11)
TRW,
Inc.: Former Member of the Board of Directors,1988 to 1994;
and Vice President, Science & Technology until 1988 (3),
(4)
Technology
Strategy and Alliances: Partner, Chairman of the Board (17)
Education
McGill
University, Montreal: B.Sc. with honors, 1948 (3), (4)
University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D. in Physics,1952
(3)
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Highlights
& Quotes
Foster, a distinguished
scientist whose career working in the U.S. weapons complex dates
back to the early years of the bomb, has been involved in many key
hardline policy initiatives. He was a member of the rabidly anti-communist
Committee on the Present Danger in the 1970s; he helped establish
the Team B exercise in the mid-1970s, which put the country on a
path to a confrontational relationship with the Soviet Union and
helped lay the groundwork for the Reagan administration’s
reinvigorated Cold War policies; and he chairs the so-called “Foster
Panel” (The Panel to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security
of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile”), which has played a key role
in pushing for new nuclear weapons production.
In her book
Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA, author
Anne Kahn writes that while Foster was a member of the Ford administration’s
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), he
was “chief instigator of the PFIAB-mandated competitive threat
assessment [Team B],” which was charged with reinterpreting
intelligence gathered by the CIA on Soviet strategic capabilities
and intentions. He recommended the anti-Soviet hardliner Richard
Pipes to chair Team B’s Strategic Objectives Panel, the most
well-known and controversial team. As alternatives, he suggested
William Van Cleave or Albert Wohlstetter, both anti-communist and
pro-nuclear demagogues.
Foster has
been instrumental in pushing for new nuclear weapons research as
head of the congressionally mandated Panel to Assess the Reliability,
Safety, and Security of the United States Nuclear Stockpile (or
“Foster Panel”). As Stephen Schwartz wrote in the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists (“The New-Nuke Chorus Tunes Up,”
July-August 2001): “Congressional advocates of nuclear testing
and new weapons production have not been particularly subtle. Consider
the ‘Panel to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security
of the United States Nuclear Stockpile,’ created in 1998 by
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a longtime foe of the comprehensive
test ban. Known as the ‘Foster Panel’ after chairman
John Foster, a former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
the group was established to ‘assess whether [the Energy Department’s
stockpile stewardship program] would prove adequate should the suspension
of testing be extended indefinitely under the proposed Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty. ... In its second and most recent report, released
in February, the panel recommends, among other things, spending
$4 billion to $6 billion over the next decade to ‘restore
needed production capabilities ... to meet both current and future
workloads’; to construct a small-scale plutonium pit production
facility at Los Alamos; to continue design work on new warheads;
and to shorten the time needed to prepare for tests at the Nevada
Test Site from 24 to 36 months to just three to four months. The
Energy Department is reported to be working now on increased preparedness
for testing.” (16)
Foster also
serves on the board of the American Security Council (ASC), which
claims that its “work has been a principal factor in returning
America to the days when she was militarily strong and morally principled.”
(8)
At the same
time that Foster has been busy pushing for stepped up weapons production
and hawkish military policies, he has been doubling as a consultant
or board member for numerous defense companies and associations,
including:
- The Defense
Group: “Defense Group Inc. (DGI) is a high technology services
and hardware company providing research, development, analysis
(RD&A), integration, management, and marketing support to
a variety of federal, state, and local governments, as well as,
commercial clients. While our core business continues to be focused
on first responders and homeland defense, we are rapidly taking
a position of leadership in mission-specific software tool development
and the unique hardware-software integration challenges associated
with them. Also, since its inception, DGI has and continues to
be called upon by the Departments of Defense, Energy and Justice
for our subject-matter-expertise in nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction. DGI has provided its products and
services to the FBI, Pentagon, Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
and National Guard as well as corporations such as MCI Worldcom
and Bristol Myers Squib.” (7)
- Jaycor:
“Jaycor focused on activities supporting the defense of
the country against strategic nuclear attack. At the end of the
Cold War in 1990, the company began to diversify, and at the same
time implemented a strategy of building shareholder value by commercializing
dual-use technologies originally developed under government funding.
... In January of 2002 Jaycor entered into a merger agreement
with Titan Corporation, a public company (TTN-NYSE) headquartered
in San Diego. The merger was consummated on March 21, 2002, and
effective that date Jaycor became a wholly owned subsidiary of
Titan Corporation. The corporate cultures of Titan and Jaycor
are very similar, with both entities focused on growing the core
defense business, while at the same time commercializing selected
defense technologies.” (14)
- Areté
Associates: “Areté Associates is an advanced science
and engineering company contributing to national security and
competitiveness. The unique aspects of Areté Associates
are its quality and innovative solutions to the most challenging
technical problems faced by our defense and intelligence organizations.
“ (6)
- United Technologies
Corporation: “Our businesses are all world leaders, producing
innovative technology products in aerospace, military and civil
aviation, elevator design, climate control and helicopter design.”
(10)
- The National
Security Industrial Association (NSIA): “The association’s
membership base consists of over 1,100 corporate members and more
than 27,000 individuals from the entire spectrum of the defense
and national industrial bases, from government and from foreign
nations with whom the United States, through DoD [Department of
Defense], has a Memorandum of Understanding. Included in the Association's
membership are organizations who sell goods and services to the
various Departments of the Executive Branch of government. Also
included are organizations who advise and assist these companies
or who desire to develop a relationship with them through the
networking opportunities inherent in association membership. Our
mission is to provide a legal and ethical forum for the interchange
of ideas between the government and industry to resolve industrial
problems of joint concern. Our primary areas of interest are the
business and technical aspects of the government-industry relationship,
encompassing government policies and practices in the entire acquisition
process, including research and development, procurement, logistics
support, and many technical areas.” (9)
Foster is the
recipient of numerous awards. In 1960 he received the Ernest Orlando
Lawrence award “for unique contributions, demanding unusual
imagination and technical skill, to the development of atomic weapons.”
(2) He has also received the Department of Defense Eugene Fubini
Award, the Founders Award from the National Academy of Engineering,
the 1992 Enrico Fermi Award, the Defense Department’s Distinguished
Public Service Medals, the James Forrestal Memorial Award, the H.H.
Arnold Trophy, the Crowell Medal (1972), the WEMA Award (1973),
and the Knight Commander’s Cross (Badge and Star) of the Order
of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1974). Foster is also
a commander in the Legion of Honor, Republic of France. (3), (4)
He is coauthor
most recently of “The Evolving Battlefield” (Physics
Today, December 2000), in which he argues: “National defense
with maximum precision and minimum unintended damage should be an
attractive challenge for scientists seeking to improve the human
condition.” (5)
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