3d75f2f5   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, alt.paranet.abduct   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy   
   From: garymatalucci@gmail.com   
      
   The Buying and Selling of the Pentagon (Part I)   
      
   For the last seven weeks, we have been running Solutions columns on   
   how to fix the Pentagon. With the DoD budget ballooning again and   
   again over the past 40 years and the news yesterday that we have   
   already spent $600 million in the first week in defending Libya from   
   the air, there appears to finally be some movement to look into what   
   is wrong with our defense spending. We have fired 191 cruise missiles   
   at a cost of $288 million alone ($1.5 million per missile) - just one   
   illustration on how we have spent too much for our weapons, and the   
   Pentagon has admitted that it is unauditable and cannot successfully   
   track most of its procurement money.   
      
   There was story yesterday by Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Government   
   that, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO): About   
   one in three major US Defense Department weapons programs since 1997   
   have had cost overruns of as much as 50 percent over their original   
   projections ...   
      
   The overruns, found in 47 of 134 programs included in a study by the   
   US Government Accountability Office, were enough to trigger a law that   
   requires congressional notifications and potential termination. Only a   
   single program has been terminated during that review process - the   
   Bell Helicopter Textron $6.78 billion Army Armed Reconnaissance   
   Helicopter, the GAO said.   
      
   What the GAO is not saying is that these are the overruns that the   
   government knows about because there are many contractor and DoD   
   program manager accounting tricks that hide overruns, including   
   putting the extra expense in other programs that are not so closely   
   monitored. Defense contractors and their buddies in the Pentagon are   
   as good at hiding or deflecting overruns and manufacturing problems as   
   General Electric is at dodging taxes.   
      
   I could go on for many more paragraphs about the problem and cite   
   years and years of reports of fraudulent, wasteful and ineffective   
   contracting, but most informed readers (especially Truthout readers)   
   have heard of these horror stories for decades.   
      
   So, I wanted to concentrate and pull back the layers of problems and   
   try to get down to basic incentives that would allow this to go on for   
   generations of military and DoD civilian personnel. Each round of   
   exposés triggered legislative reforms that were just reforms on paper,   
   which were ignored by the bureaucracy, or real reforms that were   
   deformed by a bureaucracy skilled in loopholes and slow rolls with few   
   in the Congress or various administrations unwilling to commit to true   
   oversight.   
      
   I don't believe that the US can make real changes to DoD procurement   
   until we change the financial incentives of the individuals who work   
   in this corrupt system. All other reforms can be deformed, and anyone   
   who does not go along with this system, i.e. the Boy Scout types, are   
   pushed out and most often have their careers destroyed if they don't   
   go along with it. In this column, I will define the problem with the   
   incentives for the people who work in this DoD/contractor system, and   
   in next week's column, I will suggest tough solutions to change the   
   very base of incentives for DoD personnel and the defense contractors.   
   For those who are interested in digging deeper on how this system got   
   its start since World War II, I would suggest reading journalist   
   Andrew Cockburn's excellent essay in the "Pentagon Labyrinth" called   
   "Follow the Money."   
      
   Since I started working on reforming the Pentagon in 1979, I have   
   found one of the most corrupting problems has been the revolving door,   
   the insidious practice where DoD and Congressional personnel go to   
   work for defense contractors or start work at defense contractors and   
   move in and out of the government positions using their influence and   
   inside knowledge to maximize the profits of the defense industry.   
      
   There have been many attempts to curb this process such as making DoD   
   officials register where they working after leaving the DoD and   
   putting in one- or two-year cooling off periods where they cannot   
   attempt to influence the government in programs that they worked in,   
   but most of these reforms have been ignored or deformed. When Congress   
   passed a law requiring that DoD keep a list of who went through the   
   revolving door, the DoD decided that the list was not to be made   
   public.   
      
   There have been decades of reports by the GAO on the problems of the   
   revolving door, hearings by Congress and reports in the media with   
   very little effect. As I wrote about in a Solutions column a few weeks   
   ago, the revolving door with our officer corps is the worst because   
   when senior officers retire with their military pensions and sell   
   their souls to a defense contractor for money, it is devastating to   
   the morale of the junior officer corps. The younger officers who don't   
   believe in this corrupting practice get out of the service, and those   
   who stay have to accept the undue influence of former officers to the   
   detriment of national defense.   
      
   Thomas Amlie, while working within the Air Force, wrote the best   
   explanation I have seen on the corrupting pressures with our officers,   
   in a 1983 memorandum to his superiors. Dr. Amlie was the inventor of   
   the Sparrow missile and had been the director of Naval Weapons   
   Laboratory at China Lake. I included part of his memorandum in my 1985   
   book, "The Pentagon Underground":   
      
   The major problem with having a military officer in charge of   
   procurement is his vulnerability. It turns out that not everyone can   
   make general or admiral and our "up or out" policy forces people to   
   retire. The average age of an officer at retirement is 43 years.   
   Counting allowances, a colonel has more take home pay than a US   
   Senator. At the age of 43, he probably has kids in or ready for   
   college and a big mortgage and can't afford a large cut in his income.   
   Besides, he is at the peak of his intellectual powers, is emotionally   
   involved and doesn't want to quit.   
      
   We throw him out anyway, no matter how good a job he is doing. Many of   
   these officers, particularly the good ones who have spent most of   
   their careers flying aircraft, operating ships or leading troops, do   
   not have the skills which are readily marketable in the civilian   
   sector. This nice man then comes around and offers him a job at   
   50k-75K [1983 dollars] per year. If he stands up and makes a fuss   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)