Best Known As: Political Figure

Gist:  Stansfield M. Turner (born December 1, 1923 in Highland Park, Illinois, USA) is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy.

Life Facts:  Upon leaving the agency, Turner became a lecturer, writer, and TV commentator, and served on the Board of Directors of several American corporations. Turner has written several books, including Secrecy and Democracy - The CIA in Transition in 1985, 'Terrorism and Democracy' in 1991, Caging the Nuclear Genie - An American Challenge for Global Security in 1997 (a revised edition of which was published in 1999), and 2005's Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, in which he advocates disbanding the CIA.

Turner has been sharply critical of the Bush administration handling of the Iraq invasion. In September 2003 he wrote that "most of the assumptions behind our invasion have been proven wrong: The intelligence did not support the imminence of a threat, the Iraqis have not broadly welcomed us as liberators, the idea that we could manage this action almost unilaterally is giving way to pleas for troops and money from other nations, the aversion to giving the UN a meaningful role is eroding daily, and the reluctance to get involved in nation building is being supplanted by just that." [

In November 2005, after Vice President Dick Cheney had lobbied against a provision to a defence Bill that Republican Senator John McCain had passed in the senate banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of all US detainees, Turner was quoted as saying "I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture. I think it is just reprehensible. He (Mr Cheney) advocates torture, what else is it? I just don't understand how a man in that position can take such a stance." Cheney countered the bill went well beyond banning torture and could be interpreted by courts to ban most forms of interrogation.

Turner has served on the Military Advisors Committee for the Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, whose mission is to reduce the amount of the discretionary budget going to the military by 15% and reallocate that money to education, healthcare, renewable energies, job training, and humanitarian aid programs.

Turner currently resides in Great Falls, Virginia.

Career Facts:  Following graduation from Highland Park High School, Turner attended Amherst College, entering it in 1941, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 1947 and attained a commission in the United States Navy in June, 1946 (during WWII classes were graduated in three years). He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford while serving in the navy, earning a Master's Degree in philosophy, politics, and economics in 1950. During his naval career he served as commanding officer of the Guided Missile Cruiser USS Horne (DLG-30) [ as well as commander in chief of NATOSouthern Flank, headquartered in Naples, Italy.

He served as President of the Naval War College from 1972 to 1974, where he successfully introduced a radical improvement of that College's curriculum, introducing educational approaches based on his experience as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. One of his principal innovations at the Naval War College was the introduction of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War as a major book of study, a reading that remains central to the Strategy and Policy curriculum today. After serving as Commander, United States Second Fleet, he commanded the Southern region of NATO and was subsequently Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1977 to 1981 in the administration of his Naval Academy classmate, President Jimmy Carter. He was a member of the Monsanto Company board of directors. He recently retired as senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park's School of Public Policy. In 2000, Turner was named the first Raymond H. Spruance Distinguished Fellow at the Naval War College.