Fred Iklé  Fred Charles Iklé (August 21, 1924 – November 10, 2011) was a Swiss-American sociologist and defense expert. Iklé's expertise was in defense and foreign policy, nuclear strategy, and the role of technology in the emerging international order. After a career in academia (including a professorship at MIT) he was appointed director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1973–1977, before becoming Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (1981 to 1988). He was later a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Department of Defense's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Director of the National Endowment for Democracy. Iklé is credited with a key role in increasing U.S. aid to anti-Soviet rebels in the Soviet–Afghan War. He successfully proposed and promoted the idea of supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, overcoming CIA opposition. Iklé was born Fritz Karl Iklé in Samedan, Switzerland in 1924, and up in St. Gallen. He anglicized his name after moving to the United States in 1946. He earned a degree at the University of Zurich with a master's and doctorate from the University of Chicago (1948 and 1950), both in sociology. His doctorate involved research in Dresden and Nagasaki and led to a book, "The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction," (1958). From 1964 to 1967 Iklé was a professor in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also at the Rand Corporation and at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. At Harvard, he met Henry Kissinger, and in 1973 Kissinger (then Richard Nixon's national security advisor) recruited Iklé to government service. From 1973 to 1977 Iklé served as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. After the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Iklé was appointed Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, serving from 1981 to 1988. As an under secretary of defense, Iklé led the effort to lobby for National Security Decision Directive 166 ("Expanded US Aid to Afghan Guerrillas"), signed by Reagan in March 1985. When he visited Pakistan in April 1985, Iklé found that the CIA was still pursuing the war in a halfhearted manner. "We began to understand that what to us was a very big deal back in Washington, from the point of view of the president, is a second order priority handled by one GS [civil service officer]," according to Michael Pillsbury, Iklé's deputy.