She worked at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1961 to 1971, drawing attention to excessive military budgets by compiling data on international defense spending.
Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense, derided the reports as "misleading" and the agency was ordered by the Nixon administration to cease publishing the analyses in 1970.
[1][2] The government published its own annual report, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, which did not make the comparison to social spending.
[3] This set of work continued to focus on the steady increase in defense spending in spite of other, more serious problems also needing attention, such as worldwide poverty, famine, illiteracy, and unemployment.
[2] She was married to high school classmate Robert Sivard (1914–1990),[4] the former art director of the United States Information Agency, with whom she had two children.