Still, the Air Force wanted to keep him and said they would send him to college. He chose the University of Kansas, where he majored in Latin American studies. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1975 and his master’s degree in 1976. He then rose to his ranks in the Air Force, served with the Pentagon and in increasingly senior positions around the world. In 1992, he was named a four-star general.
After retiring from the Air Force, he was invited by Newt Gingrich, who had just completed the Republican takeover of the United States House of Representatives in 40 years and became a speaker, to help him implement his strategic vision.
In 1998, Mr. Gingrich and President Bill Clinton established the Hart-Rudman Commission to examine the country’s security apparatus in a comprehensive manner for the first time since 1947. General Boyd, the commission’s executive director, said in Oral History whose report was taken seriously earlier in 2001, “We would at least have had an equal opportunity to prevent the disaster that befell us on 9/11.”
He later became president and chief executive of Business Executives for National Security, a nonprofit organization through which top executives, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, FedEx’s Fred Smith, and AIG’s Hank Greenberg, offered their expertise to improve the efficiency of the Pentagon and in the domestic environment. safety.
In 2002, as President George W. Bush prepared to invade Iraq, General Boyd and Jessica Matthews, then president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foreign policy research group in Washington, came up with an alternative to war. They proposed what they called forced inspections, where United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq would be assisted by a US-led multinational inspection executive force. These inspectors would demand compliance by Iraq “or else”, which could mean a policy of regime change. The United States eventually invaded Iraq, but their proposal was discussed at the highest level in Washington.
Over the years, General Boyd tended to stay out of electoral politics and quietly support Republicans. But in 2020, he signed a letter, along with nearly 500 other military and civilian leaders, saying he supported Joe Biden as president over President Donald J. Trump.
“Donald Trump’s attack on the rule of law that enables democracy has been so blatant that I have decided to speak out,” he said in a video posted on Twitter.
General Boyd and Mrs. Matthews were married in 2005. She survives him. In addition to his son, General Boyd, who lived on a farm outside Marshall, Virginia, also leaves behind a daughter, Jessica Van Tillborg; four granddaughters; and his sister, Shirlee Bouch.
