Obituaries

Milton CopulosFoundation President

Milton Copulos, 60, president of the National Defense Council Foundation and former director of energy studies for the conservative Heritage Foundation, died of septic shock March 11 at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He lived in Crofton.

Mr. Copulos had worked for the National Defense Council Foundation since 1988, often appearing at congressional briefings and speaking out on national security, drug interdiction and energy matters. For the past three years, he also was consultant to Dynamotive Energy Systems, a global energy technology company.

During 1998, he was senior investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, working on issues involving campaign contributions from China and Colombia. He then worked as an executive producer for a syndicated radio program, "Freedom Line With Mike Hambrick," for two years.

He was a consultant during the Reagan administration on resource security matters, helping to write a number of reports about critical materials, analysis and assessment of Soviet energy resources. In 1987, Mr. Copulos also worked as a consultant to CIA director Robert M. Gates.

He was born in Chicago and served two tours in the Army during the Vietnam War. Among his awards was a Bronze Star Medal. He moved to Washington in the early 1970s and graduated from American University. Mr. Copulos opposed designer Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial and successfully pushed for the addition of a representational statue and flag a short distance from the Wall.

"I think we had an honest disagreement about this," he told a New York Times reporter in 1982. "We felt there wasn't a positive statement about the veterans' service and now, I think, there is."

He worked for the Heritage Foundation in Washington from 1976 to 1987, writing position papers, opinion articles and studies about energy policy, some of which were published in The Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune, Soldier of Fortune and Insight magazine. He occasionally was an on-air analyst for Fox News and MSNBC.

He was a senior fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition.

Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Janet Copulos of Crofton; a son, James Copulos of Crofton; his father, Aristides Copulos of Boca Raton, Fla.; two brothers; and two sisters.

-- Patricia Sullivan