Robert Terry Everett (February 15, 1937 – March 12, 2024) was an American politician and a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Alabama's 2nd congressional district.
[1] He was succeeded by Bobby Bright, the first Democrat to represent the district since William Louis Dickinson won it during the Barry Goldwater landslide in Alabama in 1964.
He established Everett Land Development and served as president and chairman of the board of the Alabama Press Association, chairman of the board for Dothan Federal Savings Bank, president of the Daleville Chamber of Commerce, and member of the Environment Protection Commission for the Southeastern Region of the United States.
However, Everett upset Dixon in the Republican primary, winning by 15 points largely by dominating the area of the district outside Montgomery.
During the 2002 Farm bill, Everett chaired the Specialty Crops and Foreign Agriculture Programs Subcommittee, which placed him in a strong position to advocate the interests of peanut farmers.
Everett also worked on military and veterans' issues (the 2nd District includes Fort Novosel and Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base).
The New York Times reported on December 17, 1997: "On that note, it looked as though the mini-scandal would end as an oratorical draw, or even a Republican setback.
The New York Times reported on December 12, 1997: "Mr. Lawrence probably would have stayed at Arlington forever if it were not for a group of Congressional Republicans led by Representative Terry Everett of Alabama, who last summer began investigating whether the Clinton White House had sold burial plots to generous campaign contributors."
In 1998, Congressman Everett received the "Excellence in Programmatic Oversight Award" from the House Republican Leadership for his Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee probe into improper burial waivers at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2005 Everett became the first chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which was created to place national strategic assets – nuclear weapons, intelligence, satellites and missile defense systems – under one authorizing Subcommittee with an annual budget of fifty billion dollars.
His tenure as chairman of this subcommittee mirrored his interests, focus, and method of operation, particularly as national security issues took prominence in the last four years of his terms.
Reflecting back to his service with the USAFSS Everett was particularly interested in maintaining the nation's superiority in high-altitude reconnaissance.
When the Air Force attempted to replace the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk in 2005, Everett inserted language in both the House Defense authorization bill and the House Select Intelligence Panel authorization bill which prohibited the Air Force from retiring the U-2 aircraft unless the Secretary of Defense certified there would be no loss of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.
Subsequently, Everett became the first active or retired member of Congress to participate in an Air Force space war game, and was appointed to the role of President of the United States (POTUS).
Over five hundred experts from the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia were involved in the different working cells, each of which used a "whole of government" approach to strategize about how to posture against possible attacks on America's space systems.
Kerry urged Everett to continue serving as a member of the Board working on "some of our most important diplomatic and international security challenges".
"The Supreme Court found more than 30 years ago that the Act's formula, which is based on the 1964, 1968 and 1972 presidential election voting data, was constitutional because it was temporary and narrowly tailored to address a specific problem.
[6] In an October 2006 New York Times Op-ed piece, Congressional Quarterly journalist Jeff Stein revealed that despite Everett's being vice-chairperson of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence, Everett did not know the ideological and religious differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims.