Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

BOLAND, EDWARD P. (1911–2001).Democratic congressional rep-

resentative from Massachusetts, Congressman Boland was instru-

mental in the enactment of various prohibitions against giving assis-

tance to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the early 1980s.

Representative Boland, elected to the House of Representatives in

1952, was also the first chairman of the House Permanent Select

Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) from 1977 until 1985. See also

BOLAND AMENDMENTS.

BOREN, DAVID L. (1941– ). David L. Boren was U.S. senator from

Oklahoma between 1980 and 1994. Prior to his election to the Senate,

Boren, a Yale graduate and a Rhodes Scholar, served as governor of

Oklahoma from 1975 until 1979. In the Senate, Boren served on the

Senate Finance and Agriculture Committees as well as chairman of

the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the principal

committee in the Senate overseeing the activities of U.S. intelligence.

Prior to leaving Congress, Boren authored the National Security Edu-

cation Act of 1992, which established the National Security Educa-

tion Program (NSEP), a grants and scholarship program to promote

the study of foreign languages, area studies, and national security is-

sues. He is currently the president of the University of Oklahoma.

BOYD, BELLE (1843–1900).AConfederate spy during the American

Civil War, Belle Boyd is credited with supplying General Stonewall

Jackson with intelligence on the strength and disposition of Union

forces around Front Royal, Virginia, in 1862. Although imprisoned

and released several times, Belle Boyd undertook many risky assign-

ments, one of which was to act as a Confederate courier to England

in 1864. The war ended before she could return, and so she stayed in

England to establish a stage career. Boyd eventually came back to the

United States to pursue her career in the theater.

BRILLIANT PEBBLES.Brilliant Pebbles was successor to the Strate-

gic Defense Initiative (SDI), first proposed by President Ronald Rea-

gan, in 1984. Brilliant Pebbles, originally conceived in a series of 1986

war games by Edward Teller, the father of the American hydrogen

bomb, was designed to thwart a Sovietnuclear strike by intercepting the

missiles before they reached American soil. The initial plan called for

space- and ground-based interceptors and sensors as well as a battle

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