William Schneider, Jr.

William Schneider, Jr. is Chairman of the Defense Science Board and one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, Project for the New American Century PNAC letter sent to President William Jefferson Clinton.

In April 2004 he joined the lobbying and consulting company Jefferson Consulting Group as a "strategic advisor on issues related to national defense and homeland security, international affairs and the intelligence community". 

Schneider is also President of International Planning Services, Inc. (an international trade and finance advisory firm), an Adjunct Fellow of the Hudson Institute, and, during 2001, an occasional contributor to Tech Central Station.

Schneider served as Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology between 1982 and 1986 in the Reagan Administration. Prior to this he "joined the Administration as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget", his biographical note states. 

Between 1987 and 1993, Schneider served as Chairman of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament during the Presidency of George Bush Snr. He was a "member of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (operated under the auspices of USIA)". He also served as a member of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, otherwise known as the "Rumsfeld Commission" and on the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace industry.

Schneider, an economist, received received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1968. He was a staff member at the Hudson Institute between 1967 and 1971 where "he contributed to studies on strategic forces, Soviet affairs, theater nuclear force operations, and arms control." Between 1971 and 1976 he was a staff member of the U.S. Senate and between 1976 and 1981 the U.S. House of Representatives.

Schenider is the author of several works on defense and foreign policy, U.S. strategic forces, theater nuclear forces, and unconventional warfare including:
 * Why ABM? Policy Issues in the Missile Defense Controversy, Pergamon, 1969
 * Arms, Men, and Military Budgets, Transaction Press,
 * Food, Foreign Policy, and Raw Material Cartels,Crane, Russak, 1976


 * Director, 1worldspace
 * Advisory Board, IDDEX

Views on the Use of Tactical Nukes
According to Sy Hersh:


 * In January, 2001, as President Bush prepared to take office, Schneider served on an ad-hoc panel on nuclear forces sponsored by the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. The panel’s report recommended treating tactical nuclear weapons as an essential part of the U.S. arsenal and noted their suitability “for those occasions when the certain and prompt destruction of high priority targets is essential and beyond the promise of conventional weapons.” Several signers of the report are now prominent members of the Bush Administration...

Including, of course, William Schneider, Jr. who is now the chairman of the Defense Science Board. Incidentally, the boards supports the use of tactical nuclear weapons and Sy Hersh quotes one Pentagon official as saying that "They’re telling the Pentagon that we can build the B61 with more blast and less radiation".

Related Sourcewatch

 * neoconservative