Williams joined Braddock, Dunn, and McDonald in 1962 after earning an engineering degree from Auburn University and working in New Mexico. "I hated it," Williams recalls. "I hated the drafting, the endless calculations." So he asked if he could concentrate on management while the finn tackled the technical problems.

It was a shift engineered in high-tech heaven. Williams took BDM from a firm with three contracts and seventeen employees, operating out of a ramshackle building in El Paso, to a high-technology giant in Northern Virginia with thousands of employees and $424 million in sales. In the process, he redefined the phrase "federal contractor." BDM became one of the most successful companies whose product was brainpower. It didn't make anything; it tested the ideas other contractors came up with.

By 1970, Williams realized that BDM couldn't grow much more as long as it was located so far from the federal government, so he moved its headquarters to McLean. Working on such defense projects as the Stealth bomber, Star Wars, and an analysis of the strategic lessons of Vietnam, BDM grew an average of 30 percent a year over the next sixteen years.

Earle Williams retired from BDM in 1992. He still serves on the board of BDM, and he has a substantial investment in the company, both financial and personal. Yet he downplays his role in its success.

"We were in the right place at the right time," he says.