Robb, Charles Spittal (1939-…), a Democrat from Virginia, was a member of the United States Senate from 1989 to 2001. In the Senate, Robb, a former U.S. Marine, took an interest in military issues and favored increases in defense spending.
Robb was born in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 26, 1939. His family later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. He attended Cornell University in 1957 and 1958 and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1961. From 1961 to 1970, Robb served in the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam. He remained in the Marine Corps Reserves from 1970 to 1991, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1967, Robb married Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a wedding at the White House. The couple had three daughters.
In 1973, Robb received a law degree from the University of Virginia. He was a lawyer in private practice from 1974 to 1977. In 1978, Robb was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia, a position he held until 1982, when he was elected governor. He served as governor until 1986 and then returned to his law practice. Robb was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988. He took office in 1989. He was reelected in 1994. In 2000, however, he lost to his Republican opponent in a bid for reelection.
In 2004, President George W. Bush named Robb to a special commission to investigate U.S. intelligence failures on Iraqi _weapons of mass destruction—_that is, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Iraq’s possession of such weapons had been a chief reason Bush gave for starting the Iraq War (2003-2011). However, search teams in Iraq failed to find any such weapons. The commission issued its report in early 2005. The report was severely critical of U.S. intelligence agencies and blamed faulty intelligence-gathering for the misleading information supplied to the president.
