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Roberta Mary Morgan, better known by her married name of Roberta Wohlstetter, was one of America's most important historians of military intelligence. Her most influential work is Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. The former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is said to have required that his aides read it. Indeed, it was brought up during discussions of intelligence failures leading to the successful al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
She was the daughter of Edmund M. Morgan, Jr., a noted Harvard law professor who helped to simplify the federal rules of civil procedure and to modernize the U.S. code of military justice. Her husband was the late nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter.
She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan jointly with her husband in 1985. Reagan said:
Roberta Wohlstetter, a generation ahead of her time, asserted her influence in areas dominated by and, in some cases, reserved for men. She rose above all obstacles and has had a profound influence. Her inquiries went to the heart of the system of our society, focusing on essential questions. Her analysis of the problems of terrorism, intelligence, and warning and, with Albert [Wohlstetter], the problem of nuclear deterrence broke new ground and opened new alternatives for policymakers. I daresay that she has blankly enjoyed posing the same penetrating questions to her husband that she has to the intellectual and political leaders of the country. And that is certainly one explanation for the clarity and persuasiveness of his own voluminous words on strategy, politics, and world affairs.
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