William Perry

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Perry returned to the Pentagon as Deputy Secretary of Defense after being nominated by Bill Clinton on February 3, 1993,

The "frenzy" of defense industry mergers that the US experienced after 1986 was encouraged when in autumn 1993, Perry and his boss Les Aspin invited two dozen industry executives to a dinner "in the secretary's dining room next to his office". The two Secretaries urged their guests to combine into a few, larger companies because Pentagon budget cuts would endanger at least half of the contractors represented there. The event would come to be known as the "Last Supper".

Later career

Academia and corporate boards

After he left the Pentagon, Perry returned to San Francisco to join the board of Hambrecht and Quist as a senior adviser.

Perry rejoined the faculty at Stanford University, becoming a professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford's School of Engineering.

In 1999, Perry was awarded the James A. Van Fleet Award by The Korea Society.

Perry sits on the advisory board of the Commonwealth Club of California. Perry currently sits on the board of directors for Xyleco. Perry joined the financial board of the Thailand-based manufacturing company, Fabrinet in 2008. He was a board member of Theranos, a Silicon Valley biotech company which defrauded more than $700 million from its investors before it collapsed.

On June 17, 2006, Perry gave the featured commencement speech to engineering and science graduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

William Perry appeared as an important and influential person in the development of Silicon Valley, in the PBS documentary, Silicon Valley: 100 Year Renaissance (1998).

On October 16, 2008, Perry was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy.

Work to eliminate nuclear weapons

Perry is a founding board member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to reduce the threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. He currently has an emeritus status on the board. Perry is an advisory board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. Perry is currently chair of the Board of Sponsors for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and frequently speaks at Bulletin events. He is a Member of the Supervisory Council of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe. Perry is also a member of the board of directors of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, DC–based think tank that specializes in U.S. national security issues. Perry is also on the advisory board of the Truman National Security Project, a progressive leadership institute that trains the next generation of foreign policy and national security leaders.

In March 2006, he was appointed to the Iraq Study Group, a group formed to give advice on the U.S. government's Iraq policy.

In 2007, Secretary Perry joined three other eminent statesmen, former Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn in calling for the United States to take the lead in reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons. Their op-ed, "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons", published in the Wall Street Journal, reverberated throughout the world, and is one of the key factors that has convinced political leaders and experts internationally that the conditions are in place to achieve that goal. The four men published four subsequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, including one on March 5, 2013: "Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Risks: The Pace of Non-Proliferation Work Today Doesn't Match the Urgency of the Threat". They subsequently created the Nuclear Security Project to galvanize global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for their vision and the steps to achieve them. The Nuclear Threat Initiative serves as coordinator of the NSP, in conjunction with Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 2010, the four produced the documentary Nuclear Tipping Point. The film is introduced by General Colin Powell, narrated by Michael Douglas and includes interviews with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2011, Perry joined a team of former government officials from various countries, formed under the auspices of the Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki to prepare a plan for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This project is titled Hiroshima for Global Peace.

In 2013, Perry founded the William J. Perry Project to seek to promote greater public awareness about nuclear weapons and engage more people in acting to mitigate the growing threat they pose to humanity. The Project is a nonprofit venture supported with funds raised from private individuals and is sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

In 2015, Perry published a memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, (Stanford Univ. Press), with a foreword by George P. Shultz. The memoir describes coming of age at the dawn of the nuclear age, and his later roles in managing the nuclear threat. He warned that: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”

On September 30, 2016, the New York Times published a Perry opinion editorial advocating, "... the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force... ". Perry believes that ICBM's are turning more into liabilities than assets. Perry says it would save "considerable cost" and would prevent accidental nuclear war. With regards to an accidental nuclear war, Perry has experienced a false alarm for an incoming missile which later turned out to be a computer error. Perry's experience was 40 years ago but our technology is still not perfect with the recent false alarm in 2018 Hawaii false missile alert. Perry says the major problem with ICBM's are the "non-recall" ability which if these missiles are sent and it turns out to be a false alarm then there's no turning back.

Perry is cited by the website of Los Angeles Congressman Ted Lieu for supporting legislation proposed by Lieu and U.S. Senator Ed Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts, that would limit President Donald Trump and future presidents' authority to launch a nuclear first strike against another country by requiring them to first get approval from Congress. The following quotation is attributed to Perry in Congressman Lieu's website: "During my period as Secretary of Defense, I never confronted a situation, or could even imagine a situation, in which I would recommend that the President make a first strike with nuclear weapons—understanding that such an action, whatever the provocation, would likely bring about the end of civilization. I believe that the legislation proposed by Congressman Lieu and Senator Markey recognizes that terrible reality. Certainly, a decision that momentous for all of civilization should have the kind of checks and balances on Executive powers called for by our Constitution."

Perry was profiled in the Radiolab episode Nukes in 2017. He argued for the need for checks and balances for a nuclear strike by the U.S.

Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS)

On April 2, 2013, the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (CHDS) was officially renamed the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies (The Perry Center) in recognition of its founder, the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense, Dr. William J. Perry. This change honored his role in establishing the center, which originated from the first Defense Ministerial of the Americas in 1995, when Perry promoted regional defense cooperation and the training of civilians in security matters.

Books

With Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund, Perry wrote the book The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. This book concludes with a ten-point plan for nuclear weapons safety:

End presidential sole nuclear authority.

Prohibit launch on warning.

Prohibit first use.

Retire all ICBMs and scale back the nuclear rebuild.

Save New START and go farther.

Limit strategic missile defenses.

Don't wait for treaties.

Engage diplomatically with North Korea and Iran.

Bring the bomb into the new mass movement.

Elect a committed president.