Les Aspin

Les Aspin (born July 21, 1938, Milwaukee, Wisconsin—died May 21, 1995, Washington, D.C.) was an American public official who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 to 1993. He served as secretary of defense under U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in 1993–94.

Aspin graduated from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in history, Oxford University in England in 1962 with a master’s degree in economics, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966 with a Ph.D. in economics. He then spent the next two years in the United States Army, in which he served as a systems analyst, stationed at the Pentagon.

As an opponent of the Vietnam War, Aspin, a Democrat, won election in 1970 to the U.S. House of Representatives representing southeastern Wisconsin. After earning a position on the Armed Services Committee, he made a name for himself by issuing frequent bulletins about financial mismanagement in the Pentagon. As chairman of the committee, from 1985 to 1992, Aspin supported U.S. funding for the contra rebels attempting to overthrow the Marxist government in Nicaragua during the administration of U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan and for the Persian Gulf War under Pres. George H.W. Bush.

In 1993 Aspin was named defense secretary in Clinton’s administration. In that capacity, he gained a reputation for indecisiveness. While attempting to implement Clinton’s campaign promise to allow LGBTQ+ service members to serve openly in the military, Aspin developed the unsatisfactory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell compromise. He broadened the combat role of women and was widely praised for his initiative to restructure the U.S. military in a post-Cold War climate, but he failed to fortify U.S. troops in Somalia just weeks before 18 U.S. soldiers died there in a raid, an inaction that led to his resignation under pressure in 1994 after only 11 months in office.

After his resignation, Aspin was chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (under Clinton; renamed the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in 2008), a committee established to scrutinize U.S. intelligence agencies. He struggled with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy for several years and died in May 1995 after suffering a stroke.