Gordon Gray ( politician ) Gordon Gray ( May 30 , 1909 – November 26 , 1982 ) was an official in the government of the United States during the administrations of Harry Truman ( 1945 – 53 ) and Dwight Eisenhower ( 1953 – 61 ) associated with defense and national security . Biography . Family . Gordon Gray was born in Baltimore , Maryland , the son of Bowman Gray , Sr . and Nathalie Lyons Gray . He was married in 1938 to the former Jane Boyden Craige , and they had four sons : Gordon Gray , Jr . , Burton C . Gray , C . Boyden Gray and Bernard Gray . After Jane ' s death , Gray married the former Nancy Maguire Beebe . His father Bowman , his uncle James A . Gray , Jr . and later his brother , Bowman Gray , Jr . , were all heads of R . J . Reynolds Tobacco Company . His son , C . Boyden Gray , a graduate of Harvard and the University of North Carolina Law School , served as White House counsel for President George Herbert Walker Bush . His nephew , Lyons Gray , also a graduate of both North Carolina and Yale , is chief financial officer for the Environmental Protection Agency Education . Gordon Gray graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1930 , where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity ( Beta chapter ) & the secretive , Order of Gimghoul . He earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1933 and practiced law for two years in New York City before returning to Winston - Salem . UNC presented Gray with an honorary law degree in 1949 . He was the second president of the Consolidated University of North Carolina , succeeding Frank Porter Graham in 1950 . Public career . Gray began his public life as a lawyer and was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1939 , 1941 , and 1947 , representing Forsyth County . He entered the U . S . Army in 1942 as a private and rose to captain , serving in Europe with General Omar Bradley ' s forces . Gray ' s service to the federal government began with his appointment as President Harry S . Truman ' s assistant secretary of the army in 1947 ; two years later , he was appointed Secretary of the Army . He served in this post from 1949 until 1950 . The following year he became director of the newly formed Psychological Strategy Board which planned for and coordinated government psychological operations ; he remained in the post until May 1952 , all the while continuing to lead the University of North Carolina . In 1954 Gray chaired a committee appointed by AEC chairman Lewis Strauss which recommended revoking Robert Oppenheimer ' s security clearance . The Gray Board , as it was known , issued its split decision on May 27 , 1954 , with Gray and Thomas A . Morgan recommending the revocation , despite their finding that Oppenheimer was a " loyal citizen . " Dr . Ward V . Evans , a conservative Republican and the third member of the board , dissented , saying that most of the allegations against Oppenheimer had been heard before , in 1947 , when he had originally received his clearance . Gray shocked proponents of public education in North Carolina when he said , in a November 1954 Founder ' s Day speech at Guilford College , that " if I had to make a choice between a complete system of publicly supported higher education or a complete system of private higher education , I would choose the latter as a greater safeguard of the things for which we live . " Less than a year later , Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson named Gray assistant secretary for international security affairs and Gray ' s brief career in academia was ended . President Dwight D . Eisenhower appointed him to head the Office of Defense Mobilization in 1957 , where he served until the office ' s consolidation in 1958 . Eisenhower then appointed Gray his National Security Advisor from 1958 until 1961 . On January 18 , 1961 , President Eisenhower awarded Gray the Presidential Medal of Freedom . He served on the President ' s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Presidents John F . Kennedy , Lyndon B . Johnson , Richard M . Nixon and Gerald R . Ford . In 1976 , he was awarded the United States Military Academy ' s Sylvanus Thayer Award . In controversial leaked documents , Gray is alleged to have been part of the secret Majestic 12 organization . Gray was also publisher of the Winston - Salem Journal , chairman of the board of Piedmont Publishing Company and chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation .