United States Senator for Alaska from 1968 to 2009 and long-serving chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its defence subcommittee, and one of the three senators who funded AAWSAP.
The appropriation
Imminent names Stevens with Senator Harry Reid and Senator Daniel Inouye as the three who moved the $22 million into the DIA in 2008 without a public line item. That structure is the whole reason the programme could exist and the whole reason its critics call it unaccountable, and both readings are correct: an appropriation arranged between three senior appropriators is legal, ordinary in defence budgeting, and invisible.
Stevens also had a personal interest in the subject: he described being pursued by an unidentified object while flying in Alaska during his service as a transport pilot in the Second World War, an account he gave more than once and never expanded on.
Connections
AAWSAP · Senator Harry Reid · Senator Daniel Inouye · DIA · Imminent · Black Budget · Robert Bigelow