Inman recalled in 1986 that he was 5' 4" tall and weighed 96 pounds (44 kg) upon graduation, and he tutored athletes he admired during high school to keep from being bullied.

[2] He rode a bus from Mineola to Tyler Junior College, where he was a member of Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society.

He stated that “It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [the USS Liberty] was not correctly identified.”[4] He said his conclusions were based on his talks with senior NSA officials who had direct knowledge at the time.

However, when Hellman and two of his graduate students attempted to present their work on this on October 10, 1977 at The International Symposium on Information Theory, the National Security Agency warned them that doing so would be legally equivalent to exporting nuclear weapons to a hostile foreign power.

However, Hellman – who anticipated that the increasing use of electronic communications in private sector transactions would require encryption – proceeded to give the talk.

Inman has also served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dell Computer, SBC Corporation (now AT&T)[10] and Massey Energy.

[12] Inman was announced as President Bill Clinton's choice to succeed Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense on December 16, 1993, initially receiving broad bipartisan support.

Lott appeared even more surprised, saying that "I am floored by [Inman's] bizarre press conference", while an unnamed White House aide added: "Most of us were glued to the tube, our mouths open in shock.

"[15] In 1994, after Bobby Ray Inman asked to be withdrawn from consideration as Defense Secretary, his critics speculated that the decision was motivated by a desire to conceal his links to International Signal and Control (ISC).

[16] Originally called ESI (Electronic Systems International), the company manufactured sub-assemblies for the AGM-45 Shrike and RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles in 1974, and just after the Vietnam War which was part of a standard arms contract for the US defense administration (DCAS).

ISC was involved in two major indiscretions, for which CEO James Guerin received a 15-year prison sentence: From 1984 to 1988, ISC sent South Africa more than $30 million in military-related equipment, including telemetry tracking antennae to collect data from missiles in flight, gyroscopes for guidance systems, and photo-imaging film readers, all of which would form the "backbone" of a medium-range missile system.

[19] Another link to Iraq was the supply of the specifications for the Mk 20 Rockeye II cluster bomb through Chilean defense company Cardoen Industries, which was able to build an almost identical weapon that was subsequently used against coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War of January–February 1991.