Joseph J. Kruzel Jr.

Joseph J. Kruzel Jr. (1945–1995)

"Kruzel, a native of Goldsboro, N.C., graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1967. He had a doctorate from Harvard. He taught at Harvard, Duke and Ohio State and was a frequent contributor to defense journals. He served as an intelligence officer in the Vietnam War. During the Jimmy Carter Administration, he was a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. Kruzel and his wife, Gail, had two children."

At a Presidential Citizens Medal presentation, President Bill Clinton said, "Joe Kruzel was also a man with an apparently endless sense of humor. Over a three-decade career of service to our Nation, he retained also his idealism about our goals, while leavening it with a healthy dose of realism about the foibles of any large bureaucratic effort. One of his colleagues remarked that while others were focused on day-to-day events, Joe's eyes were always on the horizon. He saw that an undivided democratic Europe was within reach, and he led the Pentagon's efforts in reaching out to the East to make that dream a reality. All of us, including myself and Bill Perry, valued his sage and firm advice. He did not mince words, and we all listened."

In 1985 Charles F. Hermann, director of the Mershon Center, encouraged Kruzel to begin publishing American Defense Annual.

Works 1990-91: American Defense Annual @ Internet Archive