US Presidential Cabinet Secretary. He served as the US Attorney General during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1965 to 1966). A member of both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's inner-circles, he was a close adviser on a wide range of issues which defined the 1960s, among them the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and civil rights. Born in Philadelphia, his father was a corporate attorney, his mother served as a member and president of the New Jersey state board of education. While attending Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he excelled as an athlete (playing hockey). After the United States' entry into World War II, he enlisted with the US Army Air Corps and for a period of time, he was a prisoner of war after he was shot down during a mission over the Mediterranean. He earned an Air Medal and three clusters. Upon returning home, he attained his BA from Princeton University and received his law degree from Yale two years later. In addition, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study abroad at Balliol College (Oxford). He took a position at his family's law firm and served as an adviser to the general counsel of the Secretary of the Air Force, while becoming a professor at Yale Law School and the University of Chicago. Like many young Democrats, he became a member of the Kennedy administration and gradually was elevated to the president's deputy. He was an adviser during the Bay of Pigs (1961) and Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and as deputy attorney general, he confronted a defiant Governor George Wallace who was forbidding desegregation at the University of Alabama. After President Kennedy's assassination, he stepped in to serve as acting attorney general when Robert Kennedy took a leave of absence to cope with his brother's death. He succeeded Kennedy as attorney general in 1965 and during his tenure under President Lyndon Johnson, he played a vital role in drafting the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Following his time in government, he returned to practicing law in New Jersey.