Security in a Changing World : Case Studies in U. S. National Security Management 9780313010750, 9780275972790

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Security in a Changing World

Security in a Changing World Case Studies in U.S. National Security Management Edited by Volker C. Franke

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Security in a changing world : case studies in U.S. national security management / edited by Volker C. Franke. p. cm ISBN 0–275–97279–8 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0–275–97280–1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. National security—United States. 2. United States—Military policy. 3. United States—Foreign relations—1945–1989. 4. United States—Foreign relations—1989– I. Franke, Volker, 1963– UA23.S396 2002 327.73—dc21 2001133082 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2002 by Volker C. Franke All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001133082 ISBN:0–275–97279–8 0 –275–97280–1 (pbk.) First published in 2002 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

vii

Abbreviations

ix

1.

Introduction Volker C. Franke

Part I. 2.

3. 4.

Leadership and Accountability

From Turbulence to Tragedy: The Crash of Ron Brown’s Flight in Croatia Patricia W. Ingraham and Barbara S. Romzek

11

The Battle to Destroy Chemical Weapons W. Henry Lambright

27

Changing Course: Admiral James Watkins and the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex W. Henry Lambright

55

Part II. 5.

1

Civil-Military and Military-Media Relations

Generals versus the President: Eisenhower and the Army, 1953–1955 Andrew J. Bacevich

83

vi

6.

7.

Contents

“Rotation from Hell”: The 48th Infantry Brigade, Georgia Army National Guard in Desert Shield/Desert Storm Eliot A. Cohen

101

Burned by the Press: One Commander’s Experience Richard J. Newman

115

Part III. 8.

9.

Breaking the Market or Preventing Market Breakdown: The Technology Reinvestment Project Sean O’Keefe and Volker C. Franke

133

Searching for a Safer Technology: Army-Community Conflict in Chemical Weapons Destruction W. Henry Lambright

149

Part IV. 10. 11.

Technology and Industrial Policy

Resource Management (Exercises)

Four Days in December L. Paul Dube

171

Nationland James S. Blandin and Sean O’Keefe

185

Index

191

About the Editor and Contributors

201

Preface and Acknowledgments

The end of the Cold War has brought about significant changes in the political, economic, social, and cultural structure of the international system. Policy-makers find themselves increasingly in the middle of decision-making processes that require them to devise strategies and policies for meeting shifting security needs, widening political demands, and accelerating social and technological changes that characterize an ever more complex global security environment. The idea behind this book was to place readers interested in issues of national security policy and management in situations that simulate the decision environment as it presents itself to the individuals making decisions with considerable implications for maintaining and enhancing American national security. The case studies and exercises included in this volume were initially developed for National Security Studies, a partnership between Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Funded through a Department of Defense contract, National Security Studies provides executive education course offerings in national security management, leadership, and decision-making to help prepare defense executives and senior military officers for the challenges of a changing global security context. All cases compiled in this volume have been used successfully in a number of National Security Studies courses and in a variety of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, national se-

viii

Preface and Acknowledgments

curity policy, journalism, public policy and administration, leadership, and management. In addition to traditional academic audiences, this book should also be of great interest to national security practitioners and to students in executive education or midcareer programs in public administration, leadership, and management. All case studies have been classroom tested—typically in a graduate seminar and in at least one of the National Security Studies executive education courses. Classroom testing ensures that cases achieve their pedagogical goals and learning objectives. Class participants provided extensive evaluations on the quality of each case and its effectiveness in outlining and discussing particular policy dilemmas. In addition to classroom tests, all case manuscripts were reviewed by specialists from academia and practitioners with considerable expertise in the area of national security. Case development, testing and review and, ultimately, the realization of this book would not have been possible without the enthusiasm, commitment, and dedication of the many individuals who contributed their time, resources, and efforts to this endeavor. Apart from the case authors, I am most grateful to Sean O’Keefe who, as the Director of National Security Studies for five years, not only provided leadership and vision to the program from its inception but also conceptualized and gave shape to the case studies component of the National Security Studies program. Both the National Security Studies program and the case development component benefited invaluably from the services of Kathi Millson, the program’s senior administrator, without whose energy and devotion, professional dedication, organizational skills, and great sense of humor the program and this volume would be lacking in many ways. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Andrew J. Bacevich, William C. Banks, Eliot A. Cohen, Steven David, L. Paul Dube, Mary Schumacher, Sally Selden, and Jeffrey Straussman for their dedicated efforts in supplying countless reviews of case manuscripts.

Abbreviations

ACWA

Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment

AFIs

Air Force Instructions

ARPA

Advanced Research Projects Agency

ASARC

Army Systems Acquisition Review Council

BART

Bay Area Rapid Transit

CACs

Citizen Advisory Commissions

CAMDS

Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System

C4 I

Command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence

CoSAD

Coalition for Safe Disposal of Chemical Weapons

CSEPP

Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program

CWC

Chemical Weapons Convention

CWWG

Chemical Weapons Working Group

DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DOD

Department of Defense

DTCC

Defense Technology Conversion Council

DV

Distinguished Visitor

EPA

Environment Protection Agency

EPLRS

Enhanced Position Location Reporting System

ERWM

Environmental Restoration and Waste Management

x

Abbreviations

FCIF

Flight Control Information File

FEMA

Federal Emergency Management Agency

FORSCOM

(U.S. Army) Forces Command

FRG

Federal Republic of Germany

GAO

General Accounting Office

GDP

Gross domestic product

GPS

Global Positioning System

IL&E

Installations, Logistics, and Environment

JACADS

Johnson Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System

JCS

Joint Chiefs of Staff

KEF

Kentucky Environmental Foundation

MREs

Meals Ready to Eat

NAS

National Academy of Sciences

NCOs

Noncommissioned officers

NDB

Nondirectional beacon

NGAUS

National Guard Association of the United States

NIMBY

Not in my backyard

NOPE

Not on planet Earth

NOTAMS

Notices to Airmen

NPR

New Production Reactor

NRC

National Research Council

NRC

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NRDC

Natural Resources Defense Council

NSC

National Security Council

NTC

National Training Center

OGC

Operations Group Commander

OSD

Office of the Secretary of Defense

OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

OVT

Operational Verification Test

PAO

Public affairs officer

PEIS

Programmatic environmental impact statement

R&D

Research and development

RD&A

Research, Development, and Acquisitions

RFP

Request for proposal

SAC

Strategic Air Command

SAIC

Science Applications International Corporation

Abbreviations SDI

Strategic Defense Initiative

SES

Senior Executive Service

SORTS

Status of Resources and Training System

START

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

TDY

Temporary duty

TERPS

Terminal Instruments Procedures Review

TRP

Technology Reinvestment Project

UCMJ

Uniform Code of Military Justice

USAFE

U.S. Air Force Europe

WIPP

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

xi

1 Introduction Volker C. Franke

The world watched in disbelief as, in November 1989, thousands of East Germans, armed with hammers, chisels, picks, and shovels, began to tear down the Berlin Wall, the most infamous symbol of the Cold War that had separated not only a city but the world for nearly half a century. The events of that year and their aftermath brought about not only the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany but also fundamentally changed many of the operational assumptions that had characterized U.S. national security since World War II. Throughout the Cold War U.S. national security policy had been shaped by fears of communism and Soviet nuclear prowess and the determination to control both. The result were strategies promoting deterrence, containment, military strength, and interventionism. Ironically, America’s “victory” in the Cold War removed many of the cornerstones that had imposed structure to its foreign and national security policy and created a sense of order in world politics. Some observers immediately argued that we would soon miss the Cold War and its ordering structure, which had provided somewhat calculable levels of certainty and predictability.1 Absent a distinct enemy and the threat of global thermonuclear war, U.S. national security today faces a host of new challenges that require policy-makers to make difficult decisions with significant domestic and international implications. Incidents of national and international terrorism, conflict, and aggression have escalated since the end of the Cold War, with di-

2

Security in a Changing World

sastrous human impact. Worldwide commitments have increased by 300 percent since the end of the Cold War, yet America’s standing armed forces have steadily declined in size, strength, and modernization. Since 1989, active and reserve forces have been cut by some 40 percent and overall defense expenditures have decreased by an equally significant margin. Nevertheless, senior military leaders continue to affirm that U.S. forces could, if necessary, still fight and win two major regional wars nearly simultaneously, as they were designed to do. But after years of asserting they were holding the line on the military’s ability to respond to international crises and defend against attack, it is becoming increasingly difficult for U.S. forces to continue their present course of “doing more with less.” Critics point to growing difficulties in recruitment and retention, as many highly skilled professionals opt for more predictable and lucrative careers in a booming private sector economy.2 Repeated deployments in peace operations place an increased burden on the families of active duty personnel and, as some observers have charged, may undercut necessary combat skills.3 In addition, rapid technological advances have sparked a “revolution in military affairs,” which will undoubtedly lead to changes in the way wars will be fought in the future.4 All of these developments profoundly impact the strategies and policies that will shape U.S. national security for some time to come. Despite these trends, public support for the military’s national security capability and professionalism remains high. Indeed, the American public respects the armed forces more than any other institution or profession. Moreover, although military deployment to nonconventional missions has been a point of contention among policy-makers, recent studies show that the American public overall supports U.S. military engagement in these types of operations.5 But the public’s respect has not translated to greater dedication of resources to maintain professional and operational capability or new mission support—in fact, relative public silence on the issue may imply tacit support for declining military resources. The range of conflicting goals, expectations, and capabilities demands that national security leaders identify new solutions to international conflicts and civil unrest and prepare America’s forces for completing operational assignments under increasingly uncertain conditions and with changing alliances that may include military units from other countries, international organizations, and governmental as well as nongovernmental actors. Meanwhile, there is renewed pressure to use existing resource levels more efficiently and effectively to satisfy future operational requirements. In this context, one is likely to ask what is the future of U.S. national security? What strategies and policies will determine how resources are allocated and where and when force is used and troops are deployed? How do emerging

Introduction

3

security demands—from peacekeeping to waging limited war—shape national security decisions? How best to manage an increasingly diverse, highly skilled, and more and more specialized force to take on ever more complex challenges? It is these questions that are at the heart of this book. Although this volume is not intended to provide conclusive answers to these types of questions, it seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate of and spark discussion on a variety of contentious policy issues the answers to which will have a significant impact on the future of U.S. national security management and leadership. THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK The aim of this book is to aid the preparation of national security and foreign policy decision-makers and to improve the understanding of readers interested in national security–related policy issues. Each case examines pertinent management, leadership, and accountability issues related to U.S. national security and places readers at the center of difficult decisions. Although the cases collected in this volume revolve around national security–related policy questions, they also illustrate more general policy dilemmas and are designed to stimulate discussion of those issues inside and beyond the classroom. Cases highlight dilemmas at two levels: pertaining specifically to the case and pertaining to its larger policy implications. Cases do not provide specific policy recommendations or definite answers for how to resolve these dilemmas. Quite the contrary, they present evidence in support of both (or more) sides of a policy argument and will often leave readers with some discomfort in terms of how dilemmas should be resolved. The absence of a one-sided argument, specific policy recommendations, or “logical” conclusions sets these case studies apart from typical academic publications. The purpose of the cases is for readers to recognize the importance of the issues at hand and their greater policy implications and to discern lessons that might apply more generally to public policy, administration, and management. In addition to traditional case studies, this volume also includes two resource management exercises requiring active student participation in resolving policy dilemma(s). In simulating a policy decision or crisis management context, participants survey the interagency process, obtain a realistic feel for the interpersonal and group dynamics that characterize policy decision-making, and explore how they might improve their own personal effectiveness in such a process. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK The book is divided into four separate parts, reflecting some of the most pertinent policy issues national security managers are facing in the aftermath of

4

Security in a Changing World

the Cold War. Case studies presented in Part I address issues of leadership and accountability within the national security public management context. In chapter 2 Patricia W. Ingraham and Barbara S. Romzek discuss the tragic events surrounding the 1996 plane crash killing Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and thirty-three others. In retrospect, some of the reasons for the accident are clear. In part, the plane crashed as a result of individual errors. But, institutional conditions also played a role, including political and military circumstances surrounding the secretary’s mission. “From Turbulence to Tragedy: The Crash of Ron Brown’s Flight in Croatia” highlights the challenge military officers face as they seek to demonstrate initiative and leadership in a time of mission shift, high tempo operations, heightened political scrutiny, and declining resources. Questions raised by the case include whether and to what extent institutional systems of decision-making, reporting, and staff development contribute to mistakes and mishaps, and what adjustments are needed to reduce the probability of future tragedies. W. Henry Lambright adds two distinct case studies on organizational leadership in times of dramatic change. “The Battle to Destroy Chemical Weapons” (chapter 3) focuses on the administrative leadership of the four assistant secretaries with primary responsibilities for the Chemical Demilitarization Program between 1985 and 1997. In September 1985, Congress approved funds for a new program in chemical weapons development and production, at the same time mandating that the existing stockpile of aging and, in some cases, obsolete weapons be destroyed by 1994. As of today, the initial deadline of 1994 has slipped several times. Leadership issues raised in this case include the level of organization appropriate to be in charge of this program, relations with other agencies and Congress, strategies of implementation, the impact of presidential policy on administrative efficiency, and the role of the Army in dealing with highly politicized issues involving local citizens. In addition, the case tackles questions of technological and environmental risk and of relations within the Department of Defense among generalist political appointees, military professionals, and technical experts. In “Changing Course: Admiral James Watkins and the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex” (chapter 4), Lambright illuminates the possibilities of leadership based on strong personality and its limits in the American system of government. The case tells the story of how former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Watkins, President Bush’s appointee as secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), sought to make his agency more sensitive to its safety and environmental responsibilities. The case examines how Watkins coped with downsizing DOE’s defense mission as the Cold War ended while enlarging its environmental mission. When he came into office in 1989, the nation’s capacity to build nuclear weapons had been shut down due to safety and envi-

Introduction

5

ronmental problems. He had to take an organization that had always put production first, and make safety and environment co-equal values. This entailed cultural change of the sprawling nuclear weapons complex. Then, the Cold War ended and Watkins had to downsize the defense mission of DOE even as he attempted to maintain that capacity. At the same time, he had to build a new environmental clean-up mission virtually from scratch. Part II of this volume tackles issues of civil-military and military-media relations. In The Soldier and the State, Samuel P. Huntington asked: “What does the military officer do when he is ordered by a statesman to take a measure which is militarily absurd when judged by professional standards and which is strictly within the military realm without political implications?” In Huntington’s view, the answer is clear: given such a “clear invasion of the professional realm by extraneous considerations . . . the existence of professional standards justifies military disobedience.”6 Between the fall of 1953 and the summer of 1955, the leaders of the U.S. Army struggled against a national security policy they thought flawed, dangerous, and even immoral. In opposing the strategy of massive retaliation, senior Army leaders placed themselves at cross purposes with President Eisenhower. Andrew J. Bacevich’s case, “Generals versus the President: Eisenhower and the Army, 1953–1955” (chapter 5), is the story of that conflict. It describes the basis of the Army’s opposition to Eisenhower’s policies and the means by which Army leaders chose to advance their position. It also describes the response by civilian leaders determined to prevail in a controversy that touches on core issues of civilian control: What are the proper limits of dissension by military professionals? How should they express dissent? What, if any, alternatives do senior officers have if their views on policy issues of fundamental importance are disregarded? Civil-military tensions persist in the post–Cold War era, pertaining not only to issues of civilian control but also to active-reserve relations in the All-Volunteer Forces. As the United States began mobilizing its forces for deployment to the Persian Gulf in the fall of 1990, one critical question was what would happen with the reserves. It was understood that reservists would be needed in many capacities. The 48th Georgia Army National Guard brigade was an obvious candidate for a prominent role in the battle. It was a roundout brigade of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, a full third of that unit’s maneuver force. Eventually, the 48th was mobilized, but it never got to the Gulf, much less to the battle area. The senior leadership of the U.S. Army judged that it was simply not ready. How had this happened? “ ‘Rotation from Hell’: The 48th Infantry Brigade, Georgia Army National Guard in Desert Shield/Desert Storm” (chapter 6) examines the decision to mobilize the 48th, and then to keep it stateside, as well as the furor that then ensued. Eliot A. Cohen explores the management of active-reserve relations,

6

Security in a Changing World

and in particular the gap between declaratory policy and real belief. Readers get a sense of how active-reserve relations can go awry and what can and should be done to manage, correct, or rescue them. In addition, this case presents an opportunity to reflect on the role of the citizen soldier in a new era of war. U.S. national security issues generally and civil-military relations more specifically are oftentimes filtered through media reporting. Richard J. Newman, “Burned by the Press: One Commander’s Experience” (chapter 7), takes the case of one commander and illustrates some of the central dilemmas officers face when deciding whether, and how, to deal with the press. When U.S. Army troops deployed to Bosnia in late 1995, as many as three dozen reporters were among them. Such “embedding” arrangements—in which journalists live and travel with the troops for a period of time—are becoming the favored means of covering deployments for the press and the military services alike. But early in the Bosnia deployment, the Army experienced the risks associated with embedded media, as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal quoted the commander of the lead brigade making a number of highly controversial statements. Newman examines this incident in detail, documenting how a commander’s seemingly innocent remarks became the subject of a career-threatening investigation. It also explores how senior officials in the theater of operations, at command headquarters in Germany, and in Washington, affected the outcome. The case analyzes one of the central dilemmas officers face when deciding whether, and how, to deal with the press: any benefit (positive publicity) tends to accrue to the military as an institution, while the risk (negative publicity) is borne largely by the individual officer. Part III presents issues and dilemmas of technology and industrial policy. Sean O’Keefe and Volker C. Franke’s case, “Breaking the Market or Preventing Market Breakdown: The Technology Reinvestment Project” (chapter 8), illustrates the controversy over the Clinton administration’s signature technology project intended to integrate commercial and defense research and development efforts into a single industrial base to promote economic growth, smooth the transition for the post–Cold War defense industry, and develop dual-use defense technology through collaborative efforts between industry, government, and academia. This case, more generally, raises questions about the viability of governmental market intervention: How can the United States stay militarily superior and economically competitive in the face of uncertain threats, growing fiscal constraints, and revolutionary changes in technology? Should government become involved in the market for the sake of strengthening national security? If so, to what extent and where? Who decides which projects are in the interest of national security?

Introduction

7

W. Henr y Lambright’s case, “Searching for a Safer Technology: Army–Community Conflict in Chemical Weapons Destruction” (chapter 9), builds on the case presented in chapter 2, but tackles a different set of issues. In what was seen as a major foreign policy victory for the Clinton administration, Congress in 1997 ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The subsequent problem was to implement this treaty. Lambright examines the challenges of compliance with the 1997 CWC. He explores issues relating to safety of alternative technology programs, public trust in government, Army public relations and strategies to handle opposition, and the role of science and citizen concerns in formulating policy objectives, assessing risks, and accommodating vastly different interests. Part IV contains two exercises in national security resource management. The first, L. Paul Dube’s “Four Days in December” (chapter 10), places exercise participants in a presidential transition team and requires them to decide on policy priorities and resource allocations. The exercise begins about three weeks after a presidential election. Exercise participants are assigned to the president-elect’s transition staff and tasked to advise the president-elect whether and how her predecessor’s Defense program should be revised. The exercise is designed to allow and force participants to deliberate the fundamental strategy, policy, and resource underpinnings of the Defense program. Participants, divided into teams, are tasked to establish and articulate the strategy and policy premises of the Defense program that they would recommend to a new president, along with the force levels, programs, and resources required to carry it out. Participants must organize themselves, develop a process, assign responsibilities, and make judgments about time allocation and sequence of events required. James S. Blandin and Sean O’Keefe’s “Nationland” exercise (chapter 11) situates participants in the senior national security working group of a fictitious state that faces a number of difficult budget and defense policy choices. In an environment characterized by rapid economic growth, coupled with growing unemployment in some sectors of society, the leaders of Nationland must establish firm priorities between defense and non-defense spending and decide which programs deserve the most resources. Exercise participants, assigned to presidential senior national security working groups, will review the national security function of the government, establish a national security policy, and determine the proper roles, missions, and functions of the armed forces. Next, the groups will determine how important defense spending is compared to other national needs. Finally, the groups will decide how to structure Nationland’s defense budget and how to allocate funds consistent with its policy and strategy objectives.

8

Security in a Changing World

NOTES 1. See John J. Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,” Atlantic 266 (August 1990): 35–50. 2. See for instance Sheila Nataraj Kirby and Scott Naftel, “The Impact of Deployment on the Retention of Military Reservists,” Armed Forces & Society 26(2) (winter 2000): 259–284; David R. Segal, Jerald G. Bachman, Peter Freedman-Doan, and Patrick O’Malley, “Propensity to Serve in the U.S. Military: Temporal Trends and Subgroup Differences,” Armed Forces & Society 25(3) (spring 1999): 407–427; Bradley Graham and Eric Planin, “Military Readiness, Morale Show Strain,” Washington Post, 13 August 1998, p. A-1; and Charles Moskos, “From Institution to Occupation: Trends in Military Organization,” Armed Forces & Society 4(1) (November 1977): 41–50. 3. See for instance Eliot Cohen, “Defending America in the Twenty-first Century,” Foreign Affairs 79(6) (November/December 2000): 40–56; James Burk, ed., The Military in New Times: Adapting Armed Forces to a Turbulent World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); David R. Segal and Mady W. Segal, Peacekeepers and Their Wives: American Participation in the Multinational Force and Observers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993). 4. See for instance Eliot Cohen, “A Revolution in Warfare,” Foreign Affairs 75(1) (January/February 1996): 37–54. For general information on the military’s defense planning see the Annual Reports of the Secretary of Defense to the President and the Congress at http://www.dtic.mil/execsec/adr2001/index.html, last visited 28 March 2001. 5. See for instance the following pamphlets: Steven Kull and I. M. Destler, Misreading the American Public on International Engagement (Washington, DC: Program on International Policy Attitudes, October 1996); Steven Kull, Americans on Bosnia: A Study of U.S. Public Attitudes and Americans on the NATO Operation in Bosnia (both Washington, DC: Program on International Policy Attitudes, May 1995); Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay, U.S. Public Attitudes on U.S. Involvement in Haiti (Washington, DC: Program on International Policy Attitudes, August 1994); and Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay, U.S. Public Attitudes on Involvement in Somalia (Washington, DC: Program on International Policy Attitudes, October 1993). For updated information on American public opinion toward the military, specific missions, or U.S. foreign and national security policies see http://www.pipa.org. 6. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 77.

I Leadership and Accountability

2 From Turbulence to Tragedy: The Crash of Ron Brown’s Flight in Croatia Patricia W. Ingraham and Barbara S. Romzek

On April 3, 1996, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and thirty-three others were killed when their plane, a U.S. Air Force CT-43 A, descended off course toward the Dubrovnik airport and crashed into a mountainside. Approaching Dubrovnik, the pilots had brought the plane in too high, too fast, and without properly configuring it for the landing. The crew had failed to identify the missed approach point and the aircraft was heading nine degrees off course. Any one of these errors might not have resulted in the fatal mishap if adjustments had been made in time. In fact, earlier on the same day, the pilots had made some of the same mistakes in their approach to Tuzla, but had landed successfully. Tragic events such as the mishap at Dubrovnik afford an opportunity to examine the dynamics of individual and institutional responsibility. People make mistakes and mishaps occur even in circumstances where effective and detailed plans are in place. In retrospect, some of the reasons for the tragic accident are clear. In part, the plane crashed as a result of individuals’ errors. One of the investigating officers noted that “some really good people just knew they had done wrong . . . they said ‘I did it wrong.’ But others would not accept responsibility.” But, institutional conditions also played a role, including political and military circumstances surrounding the mission. Inevitably, questions remain: What accounted for the combination of errors at Dubrovnik and who is to blame for an accident that should have been avoided?

12

Leadership and Accountability

The issue of accountability revolves around identifying who in the chain of command had the responsibility and the knowledge to understand the risks involved in the mission. The Air Force concluded in an investigative report that the accident was caused by “a failure of command, aircrew error, and an improperly designed instrument approach procedure.”1 One of the investigating officers remarked, “Reviewing these facts was a painful experience . . . how they all came together is one of those things you wish you had the answer to, but we’ll never find out.” Questions raised by the accident include whether and to what extent institutional systems of decision-making, reporting, and staff development contribute to mistakes and mishaps, and what adjustments are needed to reduce the probability of future tragedies. As one investigating officer put it: “How much critical learning and command experience is enough? How is learning from mistakes built in? These were not bad people; they were just trying to do the right thing in a tough environment.”

THE LEADERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY CONTEXT In very general terms, accountability is a management and leadership concept that emphasizes that individuals are answerable for performance. To fully understand accountability one must address several related questions. Accountability to whom? For what kind(s) of behavior? With what consequences for success and/or failure? While these short questions appear straightforward, in public management arenas the answers are typically complex due to the wide variety of influences, organizations, and policies. An understanding of that complexity is essential for individuals who seek to determine the manner and extent to which specific individuals or organizational units are responsible for their actions and outcomes. Leaders operate within organizational environments that offer opportunities and constraints. Leaders demonstrate initiative and manage diverse expectations while motivating and directing subordinates to accomplish organizational tasks. Thus, leaders must be sensitive to institutional opportunities and constraints, and must recognize that they will be held accountable for their performance. Effective leaders must anticipate and interpret performance expectations and accommodate conflicting performance standards in shifting circumstances. A key task leaders face is deciding which accountability standard should be accorded highest priority. And they must help subordinates develop sound judgment regarding how to demonstrate initiative within the context of organizational directives.

From Turbulence to Tragedy

13

Accountability: To Whom? Accountability in the military appears to be straightforward. The armed forces feature a strong hierarchical structure with a clear chain of command that extends from the president to the entry ranks of the armed forces. Ideally, each individual in the chain is responsible for providing subordinates with the leadership, guidance, and resources necessary to accomplish the mission. Each individual is also responsible for imparting to superiors the information required to assess and resolve potential risks of failure. This case touches on numerous individuals in a complicated chain of accountability that roughly mirrors the military chain of command. The CT-43A was assigned to the 76th Air Squadron at Ramstein Airbase, Germany. The 76th reported to U.S. Air Force Europe (USAFE), the top Air Force command in Europe, through the 86th Airlift Wing and the 17th Air Force (see appendix III). Other key agencies in the accountability loop for Air Force personnel include the Air Force Flight Standards Agency, an independent agency serving the Department of Defense (DOD) with responsibility for flight safety. Accountability: For What? At any one time managers and leaders are expected to meet some or all of several fundamental performance expectations. Both civilian and military managers face basic expectations at various times: follow orders, submit to external oversight and monitoring, demonstrate sound professional judgment and initiative, and anticipate the concerns and interests of key institutional stakeholders, such as elected officials or other military units. Occasionally there will be conflict among these expectations. Leadership skills, experience, and managerial wisdom help individuals prioritize among the multiple expectations they face and the possible accountability relationships in any given situation. Clearly, military operations are generated by procedure. At minimum, pilots are accountable for safe and effective operation of aircraft in compliance with the various Air Force and Department of Defense regulations. Pilots fly under numerous rules and regulations and are trained to fly into all airports under visual or instrument conditions. Air Force regulations, such as those included in The Dash 1 Flight Manual, clearly delineate the conditions for safe visual approaches. By contrast, instrument approaches and landings may be based on different procedures and/or directives. The following are of particular interest to this case: 1. DOD Approved Approaches—Certified Air Force approach based on previous flight experience to a particular airport. In the European Theater, approaches published by the Royal Air Force and the German Air Force are also approved.

14

Leadership and Accountability

2. Jeppesen Procedures—Instrument approach procedures based on commercial standards utilized by air traffic controllers in the host nation. These approaches are reformatted, translated, and published by Jeppesen, Sanderson, Inc., and include terrain data as necessary, but “do not review or approve adequacy, reliability, accu2 racy, or safety of the procedures.” 3 Air Force Instructions (AFIs)—Highest level provisions regarding minimum conditions for instrument landings and other safety procedures. 4. Flight Control Information File—Electronic information providing the most current flight data and procedures.

Within the Air Force and USAFE, Jeppesen procedures are the most controversial, since they reflect local airport practices which may not be consistent with DOD standards. At the time of the accident, it was also not clear whether Jeppesen approaches required prior review. Earlier directives authorized use of Jeppesen approaches without review,3 but later Air Force instructions indicated that Jeppesen approaches needed to be reviewed.

SPECIAL AIRLIFT MISSIONS: THE CONDITIONS IN EUROPE USAFE, Ramstein Air Base, and the 86th Wing had been downsized drastically and reorganized in the years preceding the April flight. By early 1996, USAFE and the entire European Theater were struggling with fewer resources. Like in many defense organizations at the time, it was widely perceived throughout the command that reductions in personnel and dollars had not been accompanied with reductions in the number and intensity of mission taskings. At the time of the April flight, Ramstein and other European bases were heavily involved in support activities for missions to Bosnia and Saudi Arabia. Staff was absent due to frequent temporary duty (TDY) commitments.4 HQ USAFE, like other bases in Europe, felt a pervasive sense of intense tasking tempo. One former Operations Group Commander, described the mood as “doing too many things with too few people.” Lt. Colonel Norbert Madsen of the Air Force Flight Standards Agency, characterized the operations tempo as so intense that sometimes “it outweighs rational thought.”5 The 86th Wing had been transformed from a fighter to an air transport unit. Consistent with the mission change, the wing Commander Brigadier General William E. Stevens sought to change the wing’s philosophy and particularly emphasize on-time take-offs.6 Along with its transition to air transport the wing was also adjusting to new senior leadership, like the Operations Group Commander (OGC), Colonel John E. Mazurowski.

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Mazurowski had come to the post in April 1995 as part of a fast-tracked promotion process. Mazurowski had been judged by Air Force leaders to be among the best and brightest and had moved through a series of jobs very quickly. He had consistently been promoted early—about two years ahead of schedule—and was a clear example of the general pattern in which exceptional people are pushed through assignments to keep on track for promotion. Assignment to the 86th Wing was a significant posting to qualify for future promotion slots. At the hearings following the Dubrovnik crash, Colonel Mazurowski reflected on his assignment to the wing: “I did not have an airlift background in the C-130. And I knew there was an awful lot of high ops tempo in the airlift arena, in this wing . . . there was a legitimate concern about credibility in coming into the wing and not having flown any of the aircraft that were in the wing itself.”7 Accompanying the intense tempo in USAFE came an increased reliance on electronic communications. In many organizations today, communication through the organizational hierarchy occurs increasingly by electronic mail, rather than through fully staffed out reports. The loss of face-to-face communication can lead to situations where individuals might easily overlook or ignore the central point of a message. And the ease of copying (and forwarding) messages to superior officers can lead others in the communications network to infer authorization where none has been granted. While speeding the flow of communications, this increasingly pervasive mode of communication often bypasses coordination.

THE MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE: REQUESTING THE WAIVER Airlift operations are performed to move personnel and cargo to specific sites around the world. Distinguished Visitor (DV) missions are routine tasks for Airlift Wings. However, many of these missions include flights to nonroutine locations. In the case of Bosnia, for example, airlifters were frequently tasked to fly into airports previously inaccessible to the American military. These flights required consideration of restricted air corridors in Eastern Europe, landing at airports without DOD tested approach procedures. This situation presents problems for pilots, especially when inclement weather patterns mandate instrument approaches. Air Force Instruction (AFI) 11–206, issued in 1994, required major commands to review non-DOD approaches prior to employment during a flight. Airlift pilots complained that the nature of many missions forced them into unknown airports on a frequent basis and that flying only into DOD approved sites would severely constrain their ability to accomplish mission objectives.

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But the AFI directive clearly stipulated that, unless an approach is published by the DOD or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it requires an additional review—the Terminal Instruments Procedures Review (also known as TERPS)—before it can be flown by an Air Force crew. An exception is allowed if visual flight rules are possible. A safety supplement to this AFI directive was issued by USAFE in late 1995 that specified that non-DOD approaches could be flown without additional review, if conditions exceeded a 1,500 feet ceiling and 5,000 meters visibility. Since the supplement conflicted with the standards set in the AFI, using it required a special waiver. Colonel Mazurowski, the Operations Group Commander, believed that both the waiver process and the required review process would severely limit the ability of the wing to carry out its mission. On November 30, via e-mail to the USAFE Director of Operations, Mazurowski requested USAFE ask the Flight Standards Agency for a blanket waiver from AFI 11–206 to allow the 86th to fly approaches based on minimum Jeppesen procedures rather than the standards specified in the AFI supplement. An information copy of the e-mail was sent to Major General Charles Heflebower, the Commander of the 17th Air Force, who responded—also via e-mail—“I have not approved. Do not go to USAFE for a flying waiver on anything until I have approved.”8 A series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and decisions to ignore directives followed. (The log of the e-mails that chronicle them is included as appendix I.) The result of this confusion was that for about three weeks members of the 86th Wing believed that they had verbal permission to waive AFI 11–206 and fly unchecked Jeppesen approaches. Pilots were notified in the Flight Control Information File (FCIF) that unchecked Jeppesen approaches were authorized. When advised that the Air Force Flight Standards Agency denied the waiver, Colonel Mazurowski and his staff chose not to rescind the FCIF, but to continue “ops normal” (i.e., pilots continued to fly approaches down to Jeppesen published minimums). The rationale was that any restriction on flying Jeppesen approaches would have severely constrained its ability to accomplish the mission. Since previous approaches had been flown successfully, safety did not appear to be compromised by its continuation.9 Furthermore, since superior officers had been copied in the e-mail communications, Colonel Mazurowski noted later, “I expected somebody to come back and tell me if that was the wrong approach.”10 THE MISSION AND THE CREW On March 27, 1996, the 86th Air Wing was tasked with a routine DV mission to transpor t Secretar y Brown and his group throughout

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Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia on a three-day trip. The initial itinerary included Zagreb, Tuzla, Sarajevo, and Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik was later deleted and then added back into the itinerary at the request of the Commerce Department on April 1. Both pilots on the CT-43A were experienced and fully qualified for flying special airlift operations and DV missions.11 Captain Ashley Davis, the pilot in command, had flown the CT-43A from Ramstein since 1994. Davis was upgraded to aircraft commander in December 1995. Based on a waiver request by Colonel Mazurowski, Captain Davis was designated an evaluator pilot at the end of February 1996, although he had less than the required 100 hours as aircraft commander at the time. Captain Thomas Shafer, the co-pilot, had five years of experience in other aircraft and had completed a local first pilot requalification in December 1995. He was initially scheduled for a checkride during the Brown airlift mission to complete his upgrade to aircraft commander. However, since the necessary paperwork had not been completed, the certification procedure was eliminated from the trip. Notwithstanding, Captain Shafer’s upgrade to aircraft commander status looked to be well on track. Instructing and evaluating CT-43A pilots proved difficult, since only two CT-43As existed and a limited number of pilots were assigned to fly them. Consequently, the 86th frequently used its own CT-43A pilots as peer evaluators. This was not a routine practice, however. No “black hat”—external and unscheduled—checkrides had been scheduled for the CT-43A since 1994. In December 1995 the Air Mobility Command, which sets general policy for airlift assets, recommended that the squadron request qualified external evaluators from the 17th Air Force or other major commands.12 Given its specialized nature, the 86th also operated a bit differently than other air wings. Considered a routine commercial standard, the 86th Air Wing did not have any theater specific formal training for Jeppesen approaches. Although Jeppesen procedures were “briefly covered” by the squadron and were also included in annual refresher courses, the Wing did not require its pilots to complete special training before flying a Jeppesen approach.

THE FLIGHT The short flight from Zagreb to Tuzla was uneventful, but on approach the crew was notified by the tower that they were flying “well left” of the approach. After correcting, the crew landed successfully at Tuzla. After the Brown party had left the plane, the crew flew to Split, refueled and returned to Tuzla three hours later. The Split-Tuzla leg took longer than anticipated, because an error in the crew’s flight plan took them into

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Bosnia-Herzegovina through a closed corridor (a corridor in which flight was prohibited, typically for security reasons) requiring them to reroute. At Tuzla, Secretary Brown and his group reboarded and the aircraft departed for Dubrovnik ahead of schedule. But again the crew routed into a closed corridor despite the fact that the exact closing times had been available through a series of special classified instructions. The routing was corrected, adding approximately fifteen minutes to the flight time. Approaching the Bosnia-Herzegovina/Croatia border, Zagreb Air Traffic control transferred the CT-43A to the Dubrovnik Approach Tower. Dubrovnik is a nonradar approach facility. Air traffic control services are based on vertical, lateral and longitudinal separation rather than radar monitoring. Weather conditions in Dubrovnik clearly mandated an instrument approach: rain with broken clouds at 400 feet, overcast at 2,000 feet, and 8,000 meters visibility. The CT-43A had one Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) to receive signals from the nondirectional missed approach point beacon. The Dubrovnik approach, however, required two ADFs: one to identify the missed approach point and another for final approach guidance. The crew had overlooked this point during mission planning. The plane descended from 10,000 feet at a speed higher than recommended for the approach. Approximately five minutes later, the plane was sixteen miles from the airport and received permission from Dubrovnik tower to descend to 4,000 feet. Continuing its descent, the plane was still flying too fast to fully configure the aircraft landing flaps before the final approach.13 Apparently uncertain of their position and in deteriorating weather, the crew flew past the final approach fix and began the final approach without clearance from Dubrovnik tower. The tower subsequently cleared the flight for landing, while it was already on approach. The crew’s performance at this stage violated several fundamental Dash 1 Manual flight procedures: failure to configure the aircraft for landing, excessive speed (80 knots above final approach speed), and failure to hold at the fix point—that is, their failure to recognize the need to hold. Most important, they did not comply with the requirement to execute a missed approach. If pilots cannot see the runway when they reach a designated missed approach point, they are directed to pull out of descent, climb, and come around for another approach. Approaching Dubrovnik, the crew was in contact not only with the tower, but also with a pilot on the ground, who had landed an hour earlier in Dubrovnik with the American and Croatian ambassadors on board. This pilot advised the CT-43A crew to fly to Split in case of a missed approach, rather than trying again to land at Dubrovnik. The record is not clear, but the pilot on the ground may also have described his own earlier approach. Although not part of the Jeppesen procedures, the crew was advised to use an approach fre-

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quently used by Croatian pilots to fly final approach from the sea, rather than through the mountains. While receiving this advice, the crew was still configuring the plane for landing. Approximately two minutes later, the pilots overflew the missed approach point, but continued their descent. After another forty seconds, and with apparent difficulty using visual identification due to broken clouds, the CT-43A was well left of the correct course. The plane crashed into a mountain about one nautical mile past the missed approach point.

THE INVESTIGATION Immediately following the tragedy, General Michael Ryan, commander of USAFE, convened a special Accident Investigation Board to examine the cause of and circumstances surrounding the crash. Chaired by Major General Charles H. Coolidge and assisted by civilian and military technical experts, the Board conducted 150 interviews, obtained 3,200 pages of testimony and produced a final report over 7,000 pages long. The investigation revealed that:

1. Officers from the Air Force Flight Standards Agency denied that a verbal waiver to AFI 11–206 had ever been suggested or given. 2. Officers in both USAFE and the Air Force Flight Standards Agency were aware that the 86th Wing had been flying unreviewed Jeppesen approaches and was not in compliance with AFI 11–206 prior to the April 3 crash. 3. Both tasking tempo and the informality of the e-mail process created significant communication problems and lack of oversight of key administrative functions. In addition, several decisive e-mail messages contained incomplete information. One of the investigators concluded, “disregarding an e-mail was easier than disregarding a fully staffed up report or analysis.” Colonel Mazurowski, the 86th OGC was fully aware that he was disobeying a directive from higher up. 4. The pilots made “several errors in judgment and a series of mistakes” throughout the day of the crash. On both the Tuzla and the Dubrovnik legs of the flight, the crew planned routes through closed corridors and had to be corrected. Both final approaches also required correction. 5. Given the lack of familiarity with the Dubrovnik airport and its approach and given their failure to fully configure the plane for landing at the point of the holding fix, the pilots should not have attempted to land at Dubrovnik.

In its final report, the Investigative Board concluded that the 86th Wing had failed for a variety of reasons:

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1. Command had failed to comply with governing directives from higher headquarters. 2. The aircrew had made errors while planning and executing the flight, which, in combination, caused the mishap. 3. The nondirectional beacon (NDB) approach for Dubrovnik had not been properly designed and violated international criteria for sufficient obstacle clearance. As a result, the CT-43A came in too low for the surrounding terrain. 4. The airlift crew had been inadequately trained for theater-specific instrument approach procedures.

ACHIEVING ACCOUNTABILITY: AIR FORCE ACTIONS TO IMPLEMENT INVESTIGATION FINDINGS In response to the findings of its extensive investigation, the Air Force initiated training and retraining on instrument procedures, adopted new equipment and procedural standards, and upgraded equipment aboard passenger aircraft. Accountability to Sources External to the Air Force The accident investigation, conducted by independent investigators, initially took the form of a safety investigation, which meant that its findings were not completely subject to public disclosure. However, in direct response to requests from key external stakeholders (e.g., the president, Congress, family members of the crash victims, and the general public) the investigation was quickly changed to an accident investigation, providing the greater public disclosure. The Air Force was convinced that these efforts would increase public confidence in its willingness to investigate its own officers. To show further responsiveness to external stakeholders and “the substantial public interest,” the Air Force publicly announced the names of some of the officers held accountable for the mishap. While privacy is the norm in disciplinary matters, the Air Force released the names of those receiving the most significant sanctions, demonstrating its “commitment to ensure accountability for, and to learn from, the tragic events of April 3.” Finally, DOD and FAA published standards—Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS)—to which pilots were expected to adhere. For example, one such set of standards alerted to instrument approach design errors for Dubrovnik. Accountability to Sources Internal to the Air Force The Air Force responded to the crash by clarifying standing orders and issuing new ones where needed. In doing so, it reinforced the existing command

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system of accountability with its emphasis on obedience to directives. Specific command and rule-based actions included: 1. On April 4, 1996, the day after the crash, the 86th Air Wing rescinded the FCIF directing crew to continue flying unreviewed Jeppesen approaches. 2. The Air Force prohibited all non-DOD instrument approaches in the USAFE theater of operations. Additional personnel and resources were made available to accelerate the approach review process. 3. USAFE commands were directed to ensure strict compliance with Air Force flight directives and to provide theater-specific training with an emphasis on non-DOD approaches.

In addition, disciplinary actions were taken against the officers who were held accountable for the various factors that contributed to the accident. General Ryan, commander of the USAFE and convening authority of the investigation, directed actions against sixteen Air Force officers, ranging from punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to counseling. Two officers received reprimands under Article 15 of the UCMJ. Brigadier General William E. Stevens, the commander of the 86th Airlift Wing at the time of the crash, was punished for dereliction of duty for negligently failing to ensure that non-DOD published instrument approaches were not used unless USAFE had reviewed and approved them. Colonel John E. Mazurowski, 86th OGC, was punished for dereliction of duty for willfully failing to ensure that USAFE regulations regarding aircrew use of DOD published instrument approaches were used. He subsequently retired at the rank of major. Besides Stevens and Mazurowski, letters of reprimand were presented to two other officers for failure of command accountability. Major General Jeffrey G. Cliver, the Director of Operations, HQ USAFE, was reprimanded for failure to delineate responsibilities within his organization, failure to exercise effective oversight of AF flight directives, and failure to inquire into the 86th Wing’s noncompliance with AF directives. Colonel Roger W. Hansen, who served as vice commander of the 86th Airlift Wing, was reprimanded for failure to ensure that the wing complied with the requirement to have non-DOD published instrument approaches reviewed for safety before they were flown. Twelve other officers faced disciplinary actions. Four colonels and two lieutenant colonels received administrative letters of admonishment. Two lieutenant colonels and two majors received administrative letters of counseling and two lieutenant colonels received verbal counseling.

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Tragically, the pilots faced the ultimate accountability for their actions—the loss of their lives. A pilot’s decision to fly in a manner inconsistent with established practice and flight safety rules represents a failure in individual professional judgment. However, there is an element of the aviator culture that emphasizes the “can do” mindset, occasionally shrugging off safety risks as part of the job. Airlift pilots, one investigator noted, “showed no fear” in the face of the unfamiliar; their attitude was “if you can read an approach, you can fly it.” Investigators of the crash conjectured that the plane’s improper landing configuration was due to the pilots trying to do too many tasks simultaneously as they approached Dubrovnik. Prudence would have required them to execute a missed approach, get their bearings, and take time to properly configure the plane. As one investigator noted, “I’d just like to know what [the pilots] were thinking and talking about before the crash. How could professional pilots fly like amateurs all day long?” The wing’s reliance on peer evaluations of pilot skill suggests a “make do” attitude, when external “black hat” checkrides would have been preferable. “In-group” checkrides are more susceptible to informal pressures and slippage in safety standards. Since the mishap, the Air Force has reinforced the professional credentials and expertise of aircrews and mandated refresher training on instrument procedures and flight evaluations for operational support aircrews. In addition, General Ryan, the commander of USAFE, changed institutional arrangements that may have contributed to events, including tasking and command and control of airlift activities throughout the command. His objective was to improve standardization and evaluation procedures in the command and to clarify responsibility and accountability. The U.S. Air Force also established minimum equipment standards for all operational support aircraft and reviewed pipeline training of aircrews on instrument approach procedures. Finally, it reprogrammed $264 million in U.S. Air Force funds to upgrade/accelerate passenger aircraft safety equipment installation to include flight data and cockpit voice recorders and global positioning systems.

APPENDIX I: THE E-MAIL TRAIL November 30, 1995—Brig. Gen. Stevens, Commander of 86th Airlift Wing, at the initiative of Colonel John E. Mazurowski, requests the waiver from AFI 11–206. November 30, 1995—Brigadier General Charles Heflebower, Commander of 17th Air Force, responds that he has not approved request for waiver. December 4, 1995—Major Andrew W. Heydeck, the USAFE Action Officer—apparently at the direction of Major General Jeffrey G. Cliver, Director of Operations—proceeds to request the waiver from the Air Force Flight Standards Agency

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(AFFSA) at Andrews Air Base, Maryland. It is not clear whether AFFSA was aware of 14 17th Air Force Commander Heflebower’s position. The waiver was requested verbally, in a telephone conversation and also by e-mail. In later testimony before the Investigative Board, Major Heydeck said “the opinion . . . over the phone was that our waiver request would be approved because of the fact that Jeppesens are authorized in the other multi-command guidance and are used on a daily basis with air15 craft in the U.S. and USAFE . . . I passed that on to the 86th Wing.” December 4, 1995—Opinion that verbal waiver had been obtained transmitted by e-mail to Major Heydeck’s supervisor at USAFE (Lt. Colonel Grady), to the 86th Air Wing commander (Brigadier General William E. Stevens) and to the 17th Air Force Commander (Major General Heflebower). December 11, 1995—Colonel Mazurowski, 86th Operations Group Commander, approves a notice to the Flight Crew Information File, applicable to all 86th flight crews, stating that a verbal waiver had been obtained and Jeppesen procedures to the published minimums were authorized. January 2, 1996—Headquarters USAFE Director of Operations, Major General Cliver, receives an e-mail from Headquarters Air Force Operations staff (Captain Michael Wolter) denying the waiver, reasserting the need for review prior to flying Jeppesen approaches to published minimums, and emphasizing that the requirements of 11–206 remained in place. Message emphasized uniform safety standards, but also noted that the major commanders were in the best position to determine “the extent and depth” of the necessary reviews. No specific tasking system was created at HQ USAFE to ensure compliance with 11–206 in light of the waiver’s denial. January 23, 1996—Denial communicated via e-mail to Colonel Mazurowski, 86th Ops Group Commander. E-mail also contains notification that the December 11 FCIF should be rescinded. E-mail bypassed formal chain of command; neither Brigadier General Stevens, 86th Air Wing Commander, nor Major General Heflebower, the 17th Air Force Commander were directly notified. January 23, 1996—Colonel Mazurowski, 86th Operations Group Commander, e-mails squadron commanders in his group: “My view on this: Safety is not compromised if we continue flying ops normal until approaches are reviewed—then we rescind the FCIF” (Report, p. 61). February 6, 1996—E-mail from USAFE notified action officers in related commands of denial of waiver, but did not note that the denial had come from Headquarters Air Force, not from AFFSA, or that the same directive had been sent to other major commands.

APPENDIX II: GLOSSARY Air Force Flight Standards Agency (AFFSA). Headquarters is at Andrews Air Force Base, MD. The agency establishes and publishes regulations affecting instrument

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Leadership and Accountability flying for the Air Force including General Flight Rules and Terminal Instrument Procedures (TERPS). They also publish Notices to Airman (NOTAMs) for DOD.

Air Force Instructions (AFIs). Published instructions to all AF personnel. These stipulate the highest level provisions regarding minimum conditions for instrument landings and other safety procedures. Compliance with AFIs is mandatory. Final approach fix. This is the point at which pilots receive permission from the control tower to begin their final approach for landing. The fix is designated by a nondirectional beacon. Dubrovnik airport uses a Kolocep (KLP) as its nondirectional beacon. Flight Control Information File (FCIF). Electronically provides the most current data and procedure information available to flight crews. Jeppesen Approach Procedures. Flight approach procedures published by an Englewood, CO, firm, Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc. The firm translates and publishes the airport approach procedures used by host nations. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy nor the safety of their published approaches. Air Force planes fly with a full set of Jeppesens on board when they go somewhere. In the airlift world, pilots have the whole book with them rather than just individual plates (Report, p. 1902). Missed approach point. A nondirectional beacon identifies a fixed point that is listed in the airport approach requirement that designates the mileage mark at which the pilot must make a decision to proceed with the landing or pull out, circle around, and try the landing again. If the aircraft has reached the missed approach point but the pilot is unable to see the runway and descend safely for landing, the pilot is required to pull out of the descent, turn around and try to approach the runway again for landing. Non-DOD Approaches. Approaches not approved by the Department of Defense, such as host government procedures or Jeppesen published procedures that reflect local practices and have not been reviewed by USAFE TERPS Office. TERPS. Terminal Instruments Procedures. Procedures approved by Air Force Flight Standards Agency (AFFSA), headquartered at Andrews Air Force Base, MD. The USAFE TERPS office, which was staffed with three or four people at the time of the mishap, conducted reviews of Jeppesen procedures to ascertain whether they were consistent with DOD standards and to suggest changes to Jeppesen procedures that would bring them into compliance with DOD standards.

APPENDIX III: REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS

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NOTES 1. News Release, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Washington, DC 20301, August 6, 1996 “CT-43 Accident Update,” p. 2. 2. Accident Investigation Board Report: United States Air Force CT-43A, April 1996, Dubrovnik, Croatia, p. 49. 3. Ibid., p. 1885. 4. Ibid., p. 54. 5. Ibid., p. 3333. 6. Ibid., pp. 4390–4393. 7. Ibid., Tab V, p. 4388. 8. Ibid., Tab CC-1.9/5. 9. Ibid., pp. 4443–4445. 10. Ibid., p. 4442. 11. Ibid., p. 36. 12. Ibid., p. 55. 13. Ibid., p. 21. 14. Ibid., p. 52. 15. Ibid., p. 1878.

3 The Battle to Destroy Chemical Weapons W. Henry Lambright

In the late summer of 1994, Gilbert Decker, recently appointed assistant secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisitions (RD&A), was summoned to a meeting with Undersecretary of Defense John Deutch. Berating the Army for its lack of attention to management, he cited the Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program as his immediate cause for alarm. The cost growth was getting out of hand, he declared, looking at Decker. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” Decker responded. He pointed out that “Chem Demil,” as the program was known, was under the jurisdiction of another assistant secretary. “I know,” barked Deutch, “I want to transfer this program to you.” The undersecretary was known in Washington as a man who seldom had doubts about his decisions, even if others did. “I don’t know anything about chemical weapons,” complained Decker. “You have to go through the chain of command, talk to the Secretary of the Army, and the Assistant Secretary for Installations, Logistics, and Environment, Michael Walker, who had the program,” he advised. Deutch was undeterred by the protestations. The meeting was over. It was left to Decker to work with others above and adjacent to himself in the Army hierarchy to iron out details of the transfer. For his part, Walker was by all accounts relieved to have Chem Demil moved. As Decker soon discovered, the program had more than cost-control problems. It was politically controversial and seen as a tar baby by virtually all who had been involved with it. The shift in organizational location had happened before. In 1985 the undersecretary of the Army, James Ambrose, made the opposite move when

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he shifted the program from an earlier assistant secretary for RD&A to the assistant secretary for Installations, Logistics, and Environment (IL & E).1 Decker soon learned what those who went before him found, namely, the destruction of chemical weapons in the United States was not a simple management matter. Indeed, it was a political struggle, a battle, with many fronts in Washington, the states, and the world. Deutch placed Chem Demil under Decker in part because he saw the program as akin to acquiring other expensive high technology, as a tank or missile. As such, it needed high-level technical management associated with the Research, Development, and Acquisition office of the Army. Ambrose, however, had moved the program to Installations, Logistics, and Environment because he saw the environmental aspects leaping to the fore, and the program needing more political than technical or military acumen. The political problems were not solved by 1994. As Decker discovered, they were worse than ever in some ways. Somehow, the technical and political had to be managed at once, since issues in one exacerbated those in the other. The Chem Demil program illuminates events, decisions, and personalities that impact on a large-scale, multibillion dollar technological program in the Army. The program is unique because it is not aimed at producing new weapons. Rather, it aims at destroying old weapons. It is technological and environmental—a high-tech, lethal-waste clean-up program, in an Army context. It involves the Army with the public in ways that are virtually unique. As such, there is a mismatch between traditional organization and program management models. It nevertheless constitutes a type of post–Cold War problem that will be increasingly significant for the Defense Department. Cleaning up after the Cold War poses new technical and risk questions at the frontier of knowledge. It has dimensions that extend from local politics to presidential-level foreign policy. The chemical demilitarization program proved a test in leadership for the four individuals who have had the primary authority for the program during the period covered by this case, 1985–1997. The leadership challenge provides the prime focus for the events that follow.

BACKGROUND AND SETTING The development and use of chemical weapons during World War I provided a dramatic glimpse of the power of science and technology to produce weapons of mass and somewhat indiscriminate killing. These weapons were effective both in a military and psychological sense. While the United States refrained from subsequent use of chemical weapons in World War II and later wars, it did produce and stockpile them. Chemical weapons became one aspect

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of the Cold War, as both the United States and the Soviet Union developed ever more deadly agents and encased them in rockets and other munitions.2 As these weapons aged, they became dangerous, capable of exploding or leaking. Many were declared obsolete and many of them were routinely burned in open pits or sunk in the oceans. In 1969, as a new environmental consciousness rose on the nation’s agenda, the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (NRC) recommended that ocean dumping be avoided and that public health and environmental protection be emphasized. It suggested two technical alternatives: chemical neutralization and incineration.3 In line with the NRC recommendations, the Army from 1971–1976 conducted research and development on these two technologies in the course of destroying chemical weapons at its Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. Assessments of this work, known as Project Eagle, indicated incineration was a technology far readier for effective deployment than neutralization. The Army decided to emphasize incineration, building a relatively small pilot–scale plant at its base in Tooele, Utah, the principal repository of chemical weapons in the United States. In 1979, the Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System (CAMDS), as it was called, was put to work on an experimental basis, and technology developed further.4 At the same time, reports that the USSR and other nations were creating chemical weapons helped stimulate the Army to seek a decision to develop new chemical weapons called binary (for two-stage) weapons to replace the existing stockpile of unitary (one-stage) weapons. The Army’s campaign did not go far with the Carter administration. The Reagan administration had a different view. President Reagan wanted to modernize the military across the board, chemical weapons included. Developing new weapons, destroying old ones: these policies went hand-in-hand, one giving impetus to the other. The Army decided to scale up the Tooele technology effort to a full-scale facility demonstrating an operational capacity. It chose the Johnston Atoll, 750 miles southwest of Hawaii, isolated and uninhabited, as the site for this first-of-its-kind plant. There were chemical weapons already there from World War II. As the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) was designed, the Reagan administration and Congress fought over the initiation of the binary weapons program. In 1982, 1983, and 1984 Congress divided on the modernization program, with the Senate voting for and the House against.5 In 1984, the NRC, with which the Army had an ongoing scientific advisory relationship, endorsed the Army’s destruction plans. These entailed an exceedingly elaborate, complex, and technically sophisticated design in which weapons—many of which were in rocket form—would pass through a multi-

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stage disposal process. Along the way, they would be robotically disassembled, emptied, and then incinerated. Disassembly was critical because otherwise they might explode, rupturing the facility and venting poison gas into the air. Four separate furnaces were involved. The technique was called the “reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration process.” Because the oldest weapons were rotting and beginning to expend their lethal fumes, the NRC argued that these weapons had to be destroyed “as soon as possible.” Approximately 30,000 tons of old weapons were stored in facilities around the United States and in Europe, primarily Germany.6

THE DECISION TO DESTROY In September 1985, after four years of conflict with Congress, the Army and the Reagan administration gained the victory they had sought. Congress approved funds for a new program in binary chemical weapons development and production. At the same time, Congress mandated that the existing stockpile of unitary weapons be destroyed and set a deadline of 1994 for this to be accomplished. The Army estimated the cost at $1.7 billion.7 It began construction of the Johnston Atoll facility. The Chemical Demilitarization (Chem Demil) Program was under the Army Materiel Command, the line unit of the service responsible for providing equipment to the Army (including new equipment requiring research) commanded by a four-star general. The assistant secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisitions was the designated civilian authority. The program drew for technical guidance and expertise on the Army’s Aberdeen, Maryland laboratory, and particularly Charles Baronian, the top chemical weapons scientist-manager at Aberdeen. Baronian was generally regarded as the key man behind technical development in chemical weapons destruction. The decision to destroy old chemical weapons meant that the Army had to plan more broadly for how this task was to be done. The schedule and cost, which derived from various estimates, bore little relation to real-world reality as planners in another part of the Army soon discovered. The fact that the program was now intended to go into large-scale operations meant that a host of extremely troubling decisions had to be made relating to environmental impacts. Congress, in passing the legislation authorizing the destruction program, made it clear that environmental health and safety should be the most important value in implementing the program. The office that handled environmental compliance was that of the assistant secretary for Installations, Logistics, and Environment. It fell to IL&E to write the environmental impact statement (EIS) that went along with the actual construction of a facility—or facilities—for chemical

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weapons destruction. This meant that IL&E had to work with RD&A and Army Materiel Command in overall planning for the destruction process. The “how” question had not only technological, but also geographical aspects. The technological seemed the least problematic at this time. The R&D work to date argued in favor of reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration. The JACADS facility was expected to prove and demonstrate this approach, once and for all. The geographical aspect of “how” also entailed “where?”—and at this stage in the program, these were the dominant issues of the day. There were a number of options. One was to dispose of the weapons at one national site (perhaps JACADS). Another was to use two regional sites, one on either side of the Mississippi River. The third option was to dispose of the weapons at the sites they were stored—namely, eight locations within the continental United States. These sites were: Tooele, Utah; Anniston, Alabama; Pueblo, Colorado; Newport, Indiana; Lexington–Bluegrass, Kentucky; Aberdeen, Maryland; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and Umatilla, Oregon. The Army, led by Mike Owen, IL&E deputy assistant secretary, studied the possibility of transporting the chemical weapons across state lines to get to one national site or two regional sites. Owen’s team found that many railroad tracks that would be used were in ill-repair, thereby raising the risk of accident. This was 1985, just one year after the Bhopal chemical disaster in India. Transporting these lethal (and possibly leaking) weapons added to the hazard. Moving them also meant creating an emergency response system that moved with the weapons. It meant investment in repair of the worst tracks. It meant avoiding cities and major population centers at all cost. Given existing rail (and other) transportation patterns, there was no way to avoid all major cities. Baltimore, near Aberdeen, would be directly threatened by one route. Another route that seemed plausible on one set of criteria was thrown out when it was realized it went within 50 yards of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The situation at Tooele, near Salt Lake City, was so bad that entirely new railroad lines had to be contemplated. Then, there were the states in-between the existing sites. It did not take much reconnaissance to tell the Army planners that the more states affected, the greater the political resistance. The IL&E staff concluded that there was no politically acceptable alternative except to build eight separate incinerators at the eight different sites in the United States. The Army leadership went along with this view, especially after informally discussing the options with Congress. One congressman voiced a common view that if the Army tried to bring chemical weapons into his state: “I’ll meet you at the border!” Part of preparing a programmatic EIS was conducting public hearings at all the sites. In many situations, there was considerable citizen apprehension.

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Owen did not believe the Army, much less DOD, understood the problems ahead. The undersecretary of the Army, Ambrose, was an engineer. His view, and that of many RD&A technical and military professionals, was “just get on with the job.” Accustomed to a highly classified and hierarchical world, they assumed that once JACADS was successful, it could be rapidly emulated across the country. We had a “slam dunk” attitude toward the program, one chemical military officer stated. A particular trip to Kentucky “sensitized” Ambrose to reality. Of all the sites, the Lexington–Bluegrass community signaled the greatest resistance. Owen recalls a trip a number of Army officials, including Ambrose, took to Kentucky. Before going down, the Army was called by Larry Hopkins, the congressman who represented the district in which the Lexington–Bluegrass Army Depot was located. The legislator warned the Army: “You are going into a hornet’s nest. They will eat you alive.” The meeting was as bad as promised. The people were irate, and also worried. Children were there wearing gas masks. Perhaps three to four hundred locals came and most were strongly opposed to building a weapons-incineration plant in their backyard. The Army and DOD representatives defended the technology as putting safety first. But the opposition was not about to be assuaged. On the military flight back to Washington, Ambrose remarked: “We must turn to Shannon. This is not a research program. This is a political program.”8

ENTER JOHN SHANNON Back in Washington, Ambrose talked with John Shannon. Calling Chem Demil “a can of worms,” he asked: “Will you take it?” Shannon, who knew very little about the program, but who had himself attended the Kentucky meeting, agreed. Assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Logistics, and Environment, Shannon was a man who had served in the Army, then spent several years as a DOD liaison to Congress prior to the presidential appointment as assistant secretary. He had a reputation for excellent skills in dealing both with the bureaucracy and Congress. In the course of his initial briefing on the program, Shannon asked one of the technical people about the risks of delay. How long before the leaks get serious? he asked. “You’ve got 12 years” was the answer.9 Alarmed, Shannon looked at the organization to accomplish the program. With Army Materiel Command out of the loop as part of the move to IL &E, there was not much there. He soon found himself spending a good 75 percent of his own time on the program, with his deputy, Owen, devoting 100 percent of his time to getting the program underway. To the extent there was any man-

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agement infrastructure at all, it was at Aberdeen. Brigadier General David Nydam was the program manager and his subordinate, Charles Baronian, the dominant technical manager. In his younger years, Baronian had sought to make chemical weapons more lethal. Now, toward the end of his career, he labored with equal zeal to destroy them. Along with his expertise, Baronian had a forceful personality and Nydam was perceived as generally deferring to Baronian. The same could be said for Shannon and Owen, at least on technical matters. They did not tinker with Aberdeen. Instead, they made modest organizational adjustments in Washington and with the contractor level of management. Shannon established a small staff and liaison office of five military and civilian personnel who smoothed communications between Washington (Shannon/Owen) and the field (i.e., Aberdeen and Johnston Atoll). This office also helped in the myriad of new tasks (budget, legislative, community contacts) that Shannon and Owen had to build up. In addition, Shannon began contracting with industry for construction and other work associated with the program. Owen, meanwhile, continued the planning begun earlier, completing the environmental impact statement for a national program that would go to EPA for approval. Hearings at the sites also continued, as did effort by Shannon to win local and congressional support. Kentucky proved a thorn, exacerbated by Hopkins, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. His attitude toward the weapons was “get them out of Kentucky.” But the Kentucky attorney general told the Army he’d sue if it tried to move them. When the Army said it would burn them on site in accord with its plan, he declared: “I’ll sue you!” So they would have to just sit there. The attorney general said he’d sue the Army if they did that. “What were we to do?” recalled Owen. “Put them on the moon?” There was no placating Kentucky and most of the other states. Utah, in the Army’s view, was more reasonable. It became clear to Shannon that support from the states would not come free. If the Army was going to burn chemical weapons, it would have to have plans for an emergency response in case something went wrong. Emergency response systems, including new communications and computer equipment and upgraded hospitals, cost money. The money, argued state representatives, should be part of the federal Chem Demil Program. In 1986, the Army published a draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS), as required by law, for the entire chemical weapons disposal program. The following year, Congress directed the Army to prepare a final PEIS containing a thorough evaluation of alternative disposal technologies. In February 1988, the final PEIS was completed, along with the formal announcement explaining how the decision to destroy obsolete weapons would

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be carried out. Onsite disposal at the storage locations was selected and incineration was officially adopted as the technology for destruction.10 Critics in Congress, reflecting local concerns, questioned whether the Army had conducted the thorough evaluation of alternative technologies for which they had asked. The Army’s view was that it had. In March, the Army published its plan and schedule for construction and operation of the eight continental disposal facilities. The schedule was staggered, with construction beginning with one plant in 1989 (Tooele), on three additional plants in 1991, and on the final four plants in 1992. The plan assumed that the reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration process would be demonstrated successfully in JACADS, and the proven technology transferred quickly to the other sites. The plan further assumed that Congress was serious about a deadline, and that the state environmental requirements process would be straightforward.11 In the same year, the Army initiated its Chemical Emergency Preparedness Program for communities near the chemical stockpiles. Shannon decided the Army would enter into agreement with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to implement this part of the overall Chem Demil Program.12 It was difficult enough in a culture geared to production of weapons, to launch a destruction effort. To also manage a community emergency preparedness program seemed too much. Shannon agreed that the Army would provide the money and FEMA would distribute it to state and local governments on the Army’s behalf. The Emergency Preparedness Program added to the total costs of Chem Demil. However, far more expensive were the technical facilities. They were now being viewed as more costly then originally contemplated. In 1988 the estimates for the total Chem Demil Program rose from $1.7 billion to over $3.4 billion.13 The money was placed as a direct appropriation to the Department of Defense. The Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) then passed the money along with the responsibility to the Army as “executive agent.” This meant that the secretary of the Army did not have to trade-off Chem Demil for tanks or a set of helicopters. DOD budget staff complained that this procedure made the Army less cost-conscious about Chem Demil.14 Whatever the case, Congress agreed with the Army that the original schedule had not been realistic. In 1988, it extended the deadline for completing the program to 1997. EPA meanwhile concurred with the Army’s environmental impact analysis and plans, but set an extremely high safety standard which evolved as the ability to measure emissions improved. It eventually settled as the “6–9s” rule. That is, the Army had to guarantee that its technical process would be 99.9999 percent certain no dangerous emissions would be released.15

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CRYOFRACTURE The 1988 decision to go with reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration technology made official what was unofficially already set firmly by previous Army decisions. If there was a technical debate within the Army on the “how” question, it was muted. When dissent on technological choice arose, it came from outside the Department of Defense. A large San Diego–based company, General Atomics, proposed an alternate approach to reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration. It was called cryofracture. Finding the Army unimpressed, the company took its case to Congress and located a champion in John Murtha, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee responsible for DOD’s budget. Cryofracture involved freezing and then smashing the brittle weapons at the front-end of the destruction process. The bits and pieces were then incinerated. To a nontechnical listener, cryofracture, with three basic stages, seemed simpler than a process that entailed four separate furnaces and required complicated robotics in disassembling volatile weapons. The important difference, however, was mainly at the front-end. Ultimately, cryofracture still resulted in incineration, and thus smoke coming out of a plant that would alarm people downwind. But in 1988, when the reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration decision was announced, there were no operating plants spewing fumes. JACADS was still being built. Decision-making about technology was, therefore, lodged in Washington. General Atomics, with the help of key staff of the House Appropriations Committee, and particularly Congressman Murtha, tried to reopen the decision process. Congress provided “guidance” to the Army in appropriations documents that cryofracture be seriously considered. Consideration meant further R&D and, by implication, a slowing-down of the pace of deployment of the reverse assembly process. Legislators who knew little about the cryofracture process but who opposed building plants in their districts could go along with the concept of “more study.” Cryofracture’s allies thus consisted of political officials who sincerely wanted the Army to take a look at what might be a better technology, and others who simply wanted to delay decision-making. Owen recalls his initial reaction to cryofracture was positive, and Shannon recollects a willingness to consider it. It looked “more efficient than the Rube Goldberg contraption that had been designed,” said Owen. Baronian, however, made a strong case to the Army civilian leadership that cryofracture was a bad idea. The Army had looked at it earlier and found it wanting. No matter! Congress pressed the Army to launch an additional R&D program on cryofracture as a back-up for reverse assembly. Army resistance was countered

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by more congressional pressure, and willingness to appropriate additional funds for cryofracture. Shannon relented and supported added funds for cryofracture research. The defense comptroller’s office had a different perspective. Here was a new start that might build up in expense in ensuing years. Moreover, OSD budget examiners believed cryofracture could seriously delay the reverse assembly technique by competing with it. A recent NRC study has found cryofracture was many years behind reverse assembly in readiness for deployment. Budget examiners in OSD saw the alternative as unnecessary and expensive. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Taft subsequently dropped the program from the budget sent to Congress. 16 Congress took umbrage and a major contest over control of the Chem Demil program between Congress and the DOD hierarchy ensued with the Army in the middle. Shannon told Taft that it would be best to keep cryofracture, given congressional sentiment. He felt the decision appeared to place money-saving ahead of safety and political considerations.17

SUSAN LIVINGSTONE TAKES OVER Shortly after George Bush became president in 1989, Shannon was promoted to undersecretary of the Army. Briefly, Owen served as acting assistant secretary for Installations, Logistics, and Environment until Susan Livingstone was confirmed. Livingstone came to the Army from the Veteran’s Administration where she had presided over large construction projects. Her education at Tufts had been in the social sciences and she had held a sequence of increasingly responsible administrative positions. She had also spent time in a staff role on the Hill. She regarded herself as a professional manager and that is how she was perceived by others. As Shannon was seen as a generalist whose prime skill was dealing with Congress, Livingstone was a nontechnical woman whose forte lay with the details of management. Having the politically oriented Owen stay with her helped give the Army a strong team to deal with the Chem Demil Program. Both politically and managerially, Chem Demil was growing even more complex. Like Shannon, Livingstone would find herself devoting a significant percentage of her customary fifteen–hour days to this one program.18 Livingstone inherited the management structure Shannon had created and a number of the same individuals. General Nydam had completed his tour and was replaced by another able officer, General Walter Busbee. The career service technical manager, Charles Baronian, remained and pushed as hard as ever along the technological trajectory he had significantly influenced.

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JACADS was almost ready to begin testing its capacity to process weapons, and, in October 1989, before JACADS was tested, the decision was made to start construction of the Chem Demil facility at Tooele. This was the first facility to be built in the continental United States. The argument was made that Tooele had over 40 percent of the chemical weapons in the U.S. arsenal and many there were old and in danger of leaking. Letting weapons continue to sit was considered high risk—higher risk than working out the development kinks of incineration. Some eyebrows in Congress were raised by the decision—which came well before JACADS was operational. The decision seemed to preempt cryofracture, at least at Tooele. In 1988, Congress had required the Army to complete “operational verification testing” at Johnston Atoll prior to full-scale operations there or at any of the proposed disposal facilities in the continental United States. The Army promised it would adhere to the law. When Livingstone came aboard, JACADS was, as she put it, “going hot,” and the decision to build Tooele had been made. She received a series of briefings, one of which was from Shannon. He told her this was a “complex program.” He explained that it involved all kinds of technical, managerial, and political aspects. “It’s an oddity,” Shannon told her. “It has unique problems.” What she remembered about the program was the sense of its uniqueness, the sense “we were blazing new trails. . . . There was no history for this sort of thing in the Army.” One aspect of the uniqueness lay with the management. Not only was it “off-line,” in the sense that the Army acted as executive agent for a DOD program, but it was off-line in terms of usual military hierarchy. The principal military officer in the program, the Brigadier General at Aberdeen, reported directly to her rather than to someone higher in the military chain of command. In other programs, she noted, the military had operational control and civilians in the Pentagon had policy oversight. Chem Demil was different. The civilians had operational control, and that was in large part because of the political dimensions. Civilians—meaning Livingstone, as Shannon before her—had to go out to the communities and defend the program. This was not the norm in military “operations.” Moreover, the military, she found, did not have a sense of ownership. Chem Demil was a destruction program, not a military campaign or new weapon system. “Where was the glory?” she asked. “It was like the Superfund. . . . The only glory in this program would lie when the stockpile was gone.” While she was acutely conscious of the politics, and did her share, she let Owen deal with many of the congressional interfaces and community contacts. Her skills were managerial and there was a sense that there had been no tight management up to this time. She looked at the costs and realized they were much higher than anyone had realized or been willing to say. There were tech-

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nical glitches, one after the other, at JACADS, slowing that down. Utah, meanwhile, was using its state powers to require additional reviews for safety and environmental impact before granting permits for the Tooele project. All the other states were erecting barriers of one kind or another. While she put the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) into action, her organization found dealing with FEMA not always efficient or pleasant. She worked to get a more realistic cost estimate for the program, while also seeking to get the Army and DOD to take greater ownership. She found Busbee a willing partner in strengthening controls. She put pressure on Busbee and Busbee in turn put pressure on the largely civilian technical management staff. Baronian was unaccustomed to having the military program manager assert authority over him, and the two men found themselves often in disagreement. Livingstone wanted to run a tight ship, and that proclivity often translated into paperwork. Baronian wanted to get on with the job, and found the additional paperwork bureaucratic and frustrating. Livingstone understood his discomfort, and appreciated his value to the program. She was not trying to diminish his sense of ownership. Rather, she was trying to incorporate what was something of an ugly duckling into the Pentagon family. Chem Demil had to be considered important to the military and to her superiors in DOD. She decided she had to take a program that was “an oddity,” as Shannon had put it, and “institutionalize” it, give it more formal structure, make it more a part of the routines of DOD, both civilian and military. Moreover, she had to do this in spite of centrifugal forces, such as the cryofracture issue, which continued to pull the program throughout her regime (1989–1992). She recalled the lack of program “stability” compounded by political interests. All the while, she worried, aware that chemical weapons sitting at the various sites constituted a potential time-bomb, ticking away. By the end of 1989, she informed Congress it was “improbable” that the Army would meet the 1997 deadline for completing destruction of the weapons.

A PRESIDENTIAL PERTURBATION Shannon had been greatly occupied with the congressional political problems afflicting Chem Demil. Livingstone had those on her desk, but in addition, new challenges with a presidential and foreign political dimension interrupted the steady course of action she was trying to establish for destroying the U.S. stockpile. In 1986, President Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had agreed to remove all U.S. chemical munitions from West Germany by 1992.19 Shortly after his inauguration, President Bush had been asked by Kohl to speed the removal of chemical weapons from Germany. The chancellor was worried

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that the presence of these weapons could become a political issue in the German election in late 1990. In March 1989, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker announced that the United States would explore ways to expedite the removal of the weapons by the end of 1990.20 Livingstone was faced with an unexpected presidential deadline pertaining to an international commitment. Congress initially held the accelerated removal date hostage to the cryofracture decision and the new deputy secretary, Donald Atwood, relented. Cryofracture went back into the Chem Demil Program as an R&D effort.21 In agreeing to the movement of weapons to Johnston Atoll, however, Congress set conditions that affected Livingstone. The most important and most direct was that no more than $10 million could be spent until the secretary of Defense certified that JACADS was capable of storing additional weapons and destroying chemical agents. The key question Livingstone had to determine was the technical readiness of Johnston Atoll to deal with the German munitions. With the president anxious to speed the removal and Congress putting conditions on the receipt of weapons, Livingstone felt cross-pressured. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, did not want these weapons coming out of Germany and temporarily stored in Hawaii until Johnston Atoll became operational.22 To have secretary of Defense certification, Johnston Atoll would have to be brought up to a certain standard. It had to be demonstrated that JACADS could destroy the weapons as promised. The formal testing phase, called Operational Verification Test (OVT), was expected to last sixteen months to remove technical problems and show reliability. The National Research Council had been brought in to provide an independent assessment of OVT. Full OVT could not be completed if the president’s schedule was to be met. What would be an acceptable “partial” OVT that would show JACADS “ready enough” to receive chemical weapons was not obvious. In 1989 and much of 1990, there was no guarantee JACADS could achieve an acceptable OVT in time. The equipment at Johnston Atoll was breaking down, suffering one glitch after another, even venting traces of poison gas. Military and contractor personnel began working two shifts on the atoll. Under the remote and extreme conditions, it was difficult for contractors to get the skilled manpower required for the tasks. JACADS was the first system of its kind—a fully enclosed apparatus that disassembled munitions and then burned components in four separate furnaces—each with its own pollution abatement system. While technology had been tested before on a small scale, never before had it been pushed to operational scale. Accelerating the pace to OVT carried risks. In addition to the technical issues, and close congressional oversight, there was a mass of environmental paperwork that had to be moved through more

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quickly than had been expected. Weapons transfer within Germany required German environmental regulations to be satisfied through bilateral planning for the removal operation. For the transoceanic routes, the Army had to develop an environmental review covering transportation alternatives, transportation route, shipboard monitoring, and security and safety procedures. A supplemental Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System EIS had to be developed by the Army to assess the effect of storing and destroying the German stocks. Citizens of Hawaii and Micronesia had been assured in the original JACADS EIS that Johnston Atoll would not become a “national dumping ground” for chemical munitions other than those stored on the island. More public hearings would now be required as part of the supplemental EIS, and the public again had to be reassured that the Army meant what it said the first time—although it now looked like Johnston Atoll was being made into an “international dumping ground.” All these requirements were understood prior to the Bush-Kohl agreement and planning had been getting a modicum of attention. However, with what amounted to a sudden presidential deadline, all planning moved toward action with immediate priority. Livingstone assumed much of the load within DOD in monitoring events and coordinating with counterparts responsible for different components of the overall transfer. In Germany, a bilateral committee was established and U.S.–German military officers worked closely on all aspects internal to Germany. The Navy was involved for the ship transport. Classification restrictions were eased so that the media and public could be informed of what was to transpire. The German government worked hard to coordinate with its subnational governments along the proposed highway and railroad transportation route, and closely monitored dissident elements who might attempt terrorist acts.23 A serious problem occurred when production of specially-made containers to carry the weapons had to be halted in April 1990. This was prompted due to the congressional ceiling on DOD expenditures pending Johnston Atoll certification. Germany stepped into the breach, agreeing to fund the costs of making the remaining containers.24 But that was but the first of a number of financial issues to arise and there were limits to what the Germans could do. The program of removal, termed officially a “retrograde” action, needed more money and Congress would not let more money be spent until certification was reached. Certification was the part of the overall transfer program for which Livingstone was directly responsible. It was the chief barrier to attaining the accelerated schedule. Sixteen months of OVT was a standard obviously too long for the German retrograde effort. Hence, the issue was an OVT that would satisfy congressio-

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nal language requiring the secretary of Defense to certify “to the Congress that the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System has destroyed live agent chemical munitions.” General Walter Busbee, program manager for Chemical Demilitarization, wrote Livingstone on April 17, 1990, that there were three options available. One would be to certify as soon as the first weapon was destroyed. Another would be to certify after three days of successful operation. A third would be what he called “the whole system approach where in an approximate time frame of 8–14 days 600–800 rockets are destroyed employing all elements of the system over ‘several shifts’ of the operation.” The third option was what had been envisioned in a written OVT plan that had been provided, he said.25 On April 26, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney wrote the various congressional committees of jurisdiction requesting removal of the $10 million cap to finance certain immediate needs, including modifications of the two ships that would carry the weapons to Johnston Island. However, he promised, “we will move no munitions from the current storage site in the FRG until the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System has destroyed agents and the appropriate verification has been made to Congress.”26

THE DEADLINE CRUNCH In late April, Livingstone began to prepare and circulate to principal decision makers in DOD a weekly “status report” on JACADS. She was confronted with conflicting technical estimates as to how soon OVT could start—Busbee asserted late May, while Baronian’s judgment was July.27 On May 16, in her third report, she said “the earliest OVT could start would be June 5.28 The various environmental impact statements and other legal hurdles were being surmounted. JACADS certification had to be completed and sent to the Congress by 30 July in order to meet the schedule for munitions movement from the current German storage site.29 On May 23, Livingstone, in her fourth status report, said that Cheney had, on May 17, accepted the German offer to produce the remaining secondary steel containers required for the retrograde program. Congress appeared willing to raise the cap to provide enough additional money in a supplemental appropriations bill to pay for ship modification by June 1. The environmental impact statement had to be finished by June and JACADS would start OVT “so that certification can be done prior to the 30 July 1990 date to start the convoys out from the storage site.” On June 4, Livingstone decided to go with the “whole system” approach to OVT—the longest of the three options Busbee had listed in April, one involving as many as 14 days of testing. On June 13, Owen, writing for Livingstone,

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said that the earliest start date for OVT was now June 21. There had been problems, but no “show-stoppers.” The Army would devise several “short-term fixes” for the present, and in the ensuing months “a permanent fix.” In addition to keeping DOD policy makers alert to JACADS events, Livingstone and Owen also made sure key members of Congress were aware of the sequence of decisions.30 The June 21 date for OVT slipped to June 28, removing “virtually all of the remaining flexibility in the retrograde schedule,” as one of the participants in the process observed.31 Individuals at the different stages of the transfer were getting increasingly alarmed with the delays. Some generals in charge of the European side of the operation worried that if the schedule of JACADS slipped further all schedules would be thrown out of sequence. In a message sent to the commander of U.S. European Command General John Galvin and other high-ranking officers, U.S. Army, Europe Commander, General “Butch” Saint wrote: “There will be alarm and protest at all levels of German government. The rail movement will also be delayed causing additional FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) consternation and requiring recoordination of thousands of security and disaster response forces. Additionally, the Port Contract will be affected. Further delays in JACADS may even impact the sea leg of the retrograde. Apparently, our German friends are concerned enough that staff inquiries from FRG Ministry of Defense were made as to when it would be appropriate for Chancellor Kohl to contact President Bush. We need to start exploring either a later ship departure date or decoupling JACADS from the retrograde. We are going to begin discussions with Honorable Susan Livingstone to determine the best course of action.”32 Livingstone “really sweated” at this time, recalled Owen. “She was heavily involved. She was monitoring it hour by hour.” He said people were working 24 hours a day and “we weren’t sure” we could make it. On June 30 at JACADS OVT began. Then a fire broke out, and everything had to be stopped. “We had to fix it and start up the machinery again,” said Owen. “We were having telephone calls back and forth at 3 and 4 A.M. in the morning. The secretary of Defense got involved. It was a presidential decision. We can’t go back and say to the chancellor of Germany that we’re sorry. We can’t do it.” Livingstone, in her tenth status report, dated July 5, said that operations had to be halted “in keeping with the requirement of safety first in this program.” The program manager (Busbee) made the right decision, she said, and experts from Aberdeen and Tooele had been dispatched to Johnston Atoll. If all went well, she said, operations would be resumed “this week.”33 “We did do it by the skin of our teeth,” recalled Owen. On July 22, Livingstone wrote a memo that went up through the chain of command to the secre-

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tary of Defense. “I hereby certify that JACADS has destroyed live agent chemical munitions.” She said she used the “whole system approach” and specified what that meant in terms of days and amount of weapons destroyed. “The certification criteria were met on 21 July 1990 and the time-frame it took to destroy the above was a total of nine operating days, 30 June 1990 and 14–21 July 1990.” The Busbee criteria had said eight to fourteen days and 600 to 800 rockets destroyed. The number of days (nine) and rocket number (605) pushed the edge of those criteria—but they fit. Livingstone, moreover, indicated that JACADS had destroyed additional chemical weapon agents in its liquid incinerator. Finally, OVT would run the full 16 months, and Congress would be informed of the results.34 On July 23, Deputy Secretary Donald Atwood signed the necessary certification letters attesting to adequate storage space and successful destruction of live weapons at Johnston Atoll.35 On July 25 Livingstone wrote her “final” status report (number 13) summing up what had transpired in recent days, and noting also that on July 20 the administrative court in Cologne, Germany had rejected a legal suit by a German environmental group to stop the movement within Germany.36 On July 26, the munitions left their storage depots in Germany and were transported under extremely heavy guard, day and night, by rail. They were placed in two ships, also under heavy guard, which commenced a long journey that took them around South America via the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn. The waves were high and the ocean turbulent. But it was considered too risky to go through the Panama Canal. Eventually, on November 6, the weapons arrived at JACADS. The entire operation was judged both in Germany and the United States a total success. But only those involved, especially those associated with Livingstone and JACADS, knew how difficult and anxiety-filled the process had been.

CONTAINING COSTS Once the transfer of weapons from Germany to Johnston Atoll was behind her, Livingstone was in a position to give increased attention to gaining control over cost and schedule of the U.S. stockpile program. When she took over for Shannon, the projected cost of the stockpile elimination was $3.1 billion, with 1997 the year of completion. She quickly discerned 1997 was not possible, but was shocked by how uncertain was the deadline and how fast the costs were rising. In April 1991 she advised Congress the costs were going to soar to $6.1 billion and completion would not take place before 1999. JACADS ran into seri-

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ous technical problems, and had to be shut down for six months, causing more delays and added costs. As a result of JACADS and other difficulties, the General Accounting Office (GAO), which was investigating Chem Demil at the behest of Congress, called the Army projections “optimistic.” It noted that the Army was assuming that JACADS (and equipment based on the JACADS model) could destroy twenty-four rockets an hour. The rate that GAO found was thirteen an hour. It suggested that the Army take alternative technologies more seriously, including cryofracture.37 Livingstone was aware the Army had already looked at alternative technologies, including cryofracture. But cryofracture was not doing very well, suffering a variety of problems. Moreover, switching from reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration would not save money, but would cost more money. Something had to be done to get better control of the costs and schedule. Livingstone became increasingly concerned with Tooele. The costs there also kept going up. Not long after a rise of $49 million over the original estimate, she was informed of an additional increase of nearly $14.7 million. Then, Livingstone was told of further increases of $120 million.38 Exasperated, she demanded that General Busbee, the program manager at Aberdeen, find out what was going on. At the same time, in October 1991, she asked the auditor general of the Army to conduct an inquiry into the Tooele situation. Not surprisingly, officials in the DOD Comptroller’s Office were also growing more concerned.39 In 1991 Livingstone awarded a Program and Integration Support contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to provide management and technical integration services for a number of activities related to the operation of the chemical disposal facilities. She needed more management help. Also, as far as she was concerned, the program had been run as a “mom and pop” operation, and had never had a true, systemic life-cycle cost estimate. When she ran what she considered a deeper and more realistic appraisal in 1992, she found that life-cycle costs would be $1.4 billion over what she had been told in 1991. Moreover, the program completion date now looked like 2000. Her numbers showed a cost of $7.9 billion. She had her estimates reviewed by the Army Audit Agency and validated by the U.S. Army Cost and Economic Facility. 40 Finally, at her urging, the Chem Demil program was subjected to a further review by the Army Systems Acquisition Review Council (ASARC). This was a high-level Army body that scrutinized management of large-scale weapons systems. More and more, in 1991 and 1992, Livingstone adopted manage-

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ment techniques used for other large-scale technology programs to help run Chem Demil. Unfortunately, she later wrote, congressional and OSD budget decisions resulted in yet more program delays, and delays meant increasing program costs. It was not long after she had gone through all the work of reaching a “credible” and “firm” life-cycle cost that she found the program expenses going up to $8.6 billion and completion stretching to 2003.41

OWEN TAKES HIS TURN In the fall of 1992, Livingstone left the public service and again Owen served as acting assistant secretary. He characterized himself more in the model of Shannon than Livingstone. He had been a Republican political operative, and had worked on the Hill. His style of management was to focus on “the big picture.” He had been involved with Chem Demil since 1985 and undoubtedly felt prepared to run the show after serving second to Shannon and Livingstone. When the Clinton administration arrived in January 1993, Owen stayed in place. In time, he decided to focus on an aspect of the program he believed especially troublesome: cryofracture. The R&D effort to bring cryofracture to a point where it could be a viable alternative to reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration was not bearing fruit. The tests were showing serious problems with the technology. The theory behind cryofracture was that the machinery would fracture the frozen weapons into particles so small that if explosions ensued in the oven into which they passed, the explosions would constitute no problem. However, Owen found that once in a while a large piece survived the fracturing process. In the oven, that piece caused explosions that could damage the integrity of the incinerator. If the containment vessel broke, poison gas would seep into the air. Given the sheer amount of weapons to be processed, an accident sooner or later was inevitable, in his view. The continual political pressure to spend money on cryofracture was one of the drivers in raising costs of the overall program. Finally, cryofracture still ended in incineration and incineration was increasingly proving a huge public relations headache. If there was going to be an alternative technology, he felt, it should not entail incineration. Would Congress go along? JACADS, whatever its stops and starts, was working again, destroying weapons. It seemed to make sense to bite the bullet and try to persuade political proponents that all the years and hundreds of millions poured into cryofracture had been enough to show it was not a viable substitute.

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In August 1993, the secretary of Defense, following Owen’s own determination, certified to Congress that the Army had successfully completed full OVT at Johnston Atoll. The sixteen–month OVT had taken thirty-one months, but it was over. Full-scale operations could now begin there and in other plants to be built. That fall he discussed his desire to terminate cryofracture R&D with Baronian, Busbee, and others in the Army. Then he worked his way up the chain of command, ultimately getting a “go for it” from the secretary of Defense. Informing the White House, he touched base with the Senate, and then gathered his courage for a meeting with Congressman Murtha, cryofracture’s long-time champion in the House. “I went down there sweating bullets,” Owen recalled. He said to himself: “This is it. I’m going to get it.” To his amazement, Murtha did not challenge him. After listening to Owen’s litany of arguments, Murtha responded: “O.K., we believe you.” “The decision went down like smooth whiskey,” said Owen. He regarded termination of cryofracture his major contribution to the Chem Demil program.42 He was much less successful on another issue. This was the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP). The Army had established CSEPP in 1988 to improve emergency response in communities near the eight sites in the continental U.S. where chemical weapons were stored. Shannon had entered into an agreement with FEMA, and Livingstone had established CSEPP formally in legislation. Owen had to preside over growing dissatisfaction with CSEPP’s implementation. The Army-FEMA relationship had soured. There was finger-pointing on both sides. The state and local emergency officials in turn blamed both federal agencies. Costs were going way above original estimates and the Army believed FEMA was turning CSEPP into a pork barrel for its state and local constituents. At one CSEPP planning meeting, a senior state official came up to him and said: “Mike, I don’t care what you do as long as I get my Crown Vic!” What was he talking about? Owen wondered. Then he spoke to another individual at the meeting who informed him: “Oh, he just wants a new [Crown Victoria] Ford Sedan that he can toot around in, in his county.” The problem of CSEPP became more visible in July 1993 when the GAO testified before Congress on the program. David Warren, associate director for Defense Management and NASA Issues, declared that the program had spent close to $187 million so far and achieved little. He attributed the problems to fragmentation in management. It was not clear who was in charge and where the funds were going. The communities at risk were only modestly better off in 1993 then they were in 1988. They were certainly not prepared for a chemical emergency. Meanwhile, he noted, the costs of CSEPP were up. He quoted an Army estimate of $696 million through 2003, the date the Army was now pro-

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jecting for completion of the overall Chem Demil effort. That, the GAO official pointed out, was an increase of $582 million over the Army’s original estimate of $114 million.43 Owen, like others in the Army, felt they were getting the heat for problems out of their control. When Owen left office in April 1994, he could see progress on the technological front—the improvements at JACADS, the termination of cryofracture. But CSEPP was in need of overhaul.

GIL DECKER GETS THE CALL When Owen turned the program over to the new assistant secretary of the Army for IL&E, Mike Walker, he warned him to “give it time or it will come up and bite you.” Whatever time Walker gave the program, it was not enough for John Deutch, undersecretary of Defense. When he saw what was happening with the costs and schedules of Chem Demil, he was appalled and intervened sharply. It was the late summer of 1994, Gil Decker, assistant secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisitions was called to Deutch’s office, where the undersecretary complained about the Army’s ineptness in acquisition management, particularly with the Chem Demil program. Decker defended himself as having nothing to do with chemical weapons, but it did him no good. Deutch was handing him Chem Demil and expecting him to deal with its problems. Decker couldn’t change Deutch’s mind. Meetings ensued and Walker did not evidence any reluctance to see Chem Demil go somewhere else. Decker was briefed on the program and, like others before him, was astounded by its sheer scale. His was an office set up to manage the big R&D and procurement programs of the Army—billion-dollar major weapons systems. Livingstone had become aware that Chem Demil was more like a weapons acquisitions program than a typical “installation” that her division customarily managed. That is why, without moving the program to RD&A, she used some of that office’s techniques, specifically the ASARC mechanism. But the size and technical complexity of Chem Demil argued for a complete shift to a division accustomed to dealing with big technology. That apparently was Deutch’s reasoning, coupled with concern that IL&E just wasn’t getting the job done. Decker was a successful engineer and high-tech businessman from California. He had worked with Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, when the latter was in business. Later, he headed a unit of TRW, the giant aerospace firm. His life had been spent in technical management and he enjoyed running large-scale programs. His job as assistant secretary for RD&A was one with which he was at ease. Unlike Livingstone, he had a technically-skilled staff and administrative

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routines that suited what Chem Demil had become, at least technically. In DOD terms, it was designated an “acquisitions category 1-D program,” which elevated its financial and management review to the highest level. The program was now projected to spend $8.6 billion through 2004, the new deadline Congress had recently set. That budget figure represented a 406 percent increase over the original estimate and Decker discovered there was no guarantee the numbers would not go up again. In addition, the stockpile program had recently been expanded to add disposal of non-stockpile chemical weapons waste, material often buried in the ground. Moreover, with the end of the Cold War, the United States was being asked to provide substantial technical assistance to the Russians in destroying their stockpile. Such assistance took time and money, and involved numerous foreign policy-related activities for the Army. Finally, the United States had in 1993 signed a UN-sponsored resolution to destroy chemical weapons (the Chemical Weapons Convention), which would prove to be another driver behind the Chem Demil program. Chem Demil, in other words, had risen in national and international importance, become more elaborate, and potentially much more expensive—and Deutch was agitated. Like the others who had led Chem Demil prior to Decker, he found it soon became the single most time-consuming job he had as an Army assistant secretary. Decker started talking with senior civilian and military officers to determine whether the program should be managed differently. Busbee was completing his tour and Baronian had recently retired. Deutch was pushing. Change was in the air. There were three options that came out of his conversations in late 1994, early 1995. One was the existing model, which had a brigadier general as program manager, reporting to him. A second was to place Chem Demil under a two or three-star general running other major systems at Aberdeen. The third was to keep the existing model, but elevate the status of the program by putting a two-star general as head. Decker decided the third option was the one that made most sense and he recruited General Robert Orton, one of the Army’s top chemical corps officers, for the post.44 Decker told Orton he would delegate much of the day-to-day management to him. “I will not second-guess you. If you have problems, bring them to me.” They would constitute a team and move the program into the mainstream of Army concerns. Decker felt that his own responsibility had to go to the political aspects, particularly the states. The program had evolved to the point where state permits to build were the next steps. So far, the only continental site where that was a reality was Tooele. Opposition to incineration was everywhere, even Tooele. In 1994, the NRC had advised the Army, once again, that storage risks outweighed inciner-

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ation risks and there were no alternatives to incineration mature enough to merit meaningful comparison.45 The problem was that the communities did not want incineration. Hence, with the Congress insisting it do so, the Army was conducting R&D on nonincinerating alternatives. Decker in 1995 directed the Army to ask industry for new ideas about technology, just in case there was something the Army had missed in its own labs. The NRC then could look at all the ideas available and see if any alternative (nonincineration) options made sense.

THE STATE AND LOCAL FRONT While the technical review was under way, Decker began touring the various sites and getting familiar with the local dynamics. What he found was that each situation was different. Tooele had the most weapons and was the furthest along in decision-making. Construction of the facility had been completed and tests of equipment were underway. Decker found Utah’s state environmental department quite sophisticated. Political people there were also generally supportive, if wary. In general, he felt Utah would put the Army through hoops, but it was more afraid of keeping the weapons than incinerating them. At the other extreme, he found, was Kentucky. The state whose negative reaction had caused Ambrose to give the program to Shannon, was still the hotbed of opposition. It was the base for the primary interest group opposition, the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG). This group was well organized and highly effective. It had won the allegiance of key political people in the state, and that translated into actions to stifle the Army. Like his predecessors, Decker was energized by worry about an accident at one of the sites. Decker decided the Army had not done an effective job in taking its case to the state and local level. It had not built a good relationship with the communities that were its neighbors. Unless the Army acted to speed the state and local decision process, costs would continue to rise and little would be accomplished. By July 1995, a total of $2 billion had been spent on chemical weapons disposal, but only two percent of the stockpile had been destroyed, mainly those munitions at JACADS. The Army had had something of a “bunker mentality” and needed to take its case more proactively to the people. Decker worked to loosen some of the restrictions the Army was under from classification. In 1996, the Army, for the first time, declassified and made public specifics about the size and location of its chemical warfare stockpiles. Of course, people at the sites knew there were chemical weapons there. Now they knew what type and how many. Declassification made it much easier for the

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Army to talk about the stockpiles and try to win the confidence of the stockpiles’ neighbors. Working closely with General Orton and others, Decker had the public outreach side of the program enhanced greatly. At every site, an outreach center was established to provide information. Decker himself talked to elected leaders in the affected states as well as to administrators and environmentalists. CSEPP continued to be a problem. Nevertheless, in June 1996, Utah’s emergency officials stated they were prepared to deal with a chemical accident. This preparedness may have been connected with the Army’s agreement to pay Tooele County $13 million over a period of seven years for the added costs due to the weapons destruction activity.46 In August, the Chemical Weapons Working Group, the Sierra Club, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation brought suit against the Army to prevent operations at Tooele. The plaintiffs cited problems at Johnston Atoll, environmental and health risks, and the availability of alternatives. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled in favor of the Army and refused to grant the injunction. A week later, the opponents asked that the Utah Board of Solid and Hazardous Waste prevent operations. The request was denied. At that point, the Army started the disposal process at Tooele. Three days later, operations were halted after a trace amount of agent was detected in a sealed vestibule attached to the air filtration system. No agent was released to the environment and no one was harmed. After a week of investigation, operations resumed. In November, the former plant manager at Tooele claimed that the facility had significant health and safety risks due to plant defects and unqualified managers. In December, the Army’s top safety expert, along with a Utah inspection team, completed an investigation of Tooele and found the plant was “safe to operate.”47 Tooele was the first success for Decker. In February 1997, the Umatilla facility in Oregon came next. Following extensive discussions, including meetings between Decker and the Umatilla Indian Tribe, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission gave approval for the Army to build an incinerator at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, requiring the installation of a carbon filtration system for an extra layer of protection. Decker reached a separate understanding with the Umatilla Indians, marking what the tribe said was the first occasion in modern times when the Army and Indians had reached amicable agreement. As with Utah, Oregon (and the Indians) expected the Army to help with resources for emergency preparedness.48 Meanwhile, Kentucky and Colorado, two states opposed to incineration, took their case to Congress. The FY 1997 DOD Appropriations Act, passed in 1996, provided $40 million to conduct a pilot program to identify and dem-

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onstrate two or more alternatives to the incineration process. The act also prohibited DOD from obligating any funds for constructing disposal facilities at the Bluegrass, Kentucky, and Pueblo, Colorado, sites until 180 days after the secretary reported the alternatives. The NRC, in response to the Army’s request to evaluate alternative technologies suggested by its labs and industry, advised the Army that a neutralization process was an alternative technology that might work in destroying bulk chemicals—that is, agents only, not the metal casings. Neutralization had been studied many years earlier, but advances had taken place. Neutralization involved mixing chemical agents with other substances to form less toxic compounds. An advantage is that because no appreciable gases are released, there is no need for a complex pollution abatement system. A disadvantage is that neutralization also has a byproduct residue that would be hazardous for release to the environment.49 There were two bulk-only stockpile locations: Newport, Indiana, and Aberdeen, Maryland. In February, following this recommendation, the Army announced it would build neutralization plants at both the Maryland and Indiana locations. The opponents of incineration in the two states were elated.50 The Army, however, took pains to stress that neutralization was not fully ready, and hence success could not be guaranteed. In effect, because of the pressure from Congress and resistance at Maryland and Indiana, the Army was making a decision it did not regard as technically optimal for an alternative technology program. The CWWG and other opponents said that if alternative technology worked for those two sites, it could be made to work for all. The Army disagreed and said that the “perceived risk” of incineration was going to mean a great deal more money would be spent and it would take much longer to destroy weapons. Even if neutralization worked at the bulk sites, it would not destroy weapons at the other sites, which included rockets and other hardware devices. Hurting the Army’s argument were the Russians, who said they wanted to use neutralization techniques to destroy their chemical weapons. Decker returned to private life in California in summer 1997. He would transfer to a successor a program that had seen progress in the use of reverse assembly, high-temperature incineration during his regime. As JACADS routinely destroyed weapons, Utah operations got underway, and Oregon gave permits to begin construction. Alabama made a positive decision on incineration, and Arkansas was expected to follow suit. Decker had also presided over accommodations to political demands and what he regarded as unjustified community fears about risk. Some in the Army thought he had demonstrated political realism, others that he had surrendered to the opposition. Fortunately, there had been no major accident at any stockpile during his watch.

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There has been forward motion toward the ultimate aim of weapons termination. The four leaders discussed in the case have contributed to this process. However, despite their efforts, the initial estimate of $1.7 billion stood at $12.4 billion in 1997. The original deadline of 1994 had been extended to 2004, and is expected to slip further. The termination objective, nevertheless, remains on target and received significant new impetus in 1997 when the U.S. Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.51 The United States thus became party to an international agreement to end chemical weapons once and for all, throughout the world.

NOTES 1. Interview with Mike Owen, May 7, 1997; Charles Baronian, June 1, 1997; and David Wilson, July 10, 1997. 2. Chemical weapons exert their destructive impact by directly affecting human physiology (e.g., by burning, attacking the respiratory system, producing unconsciousness, hallucinations, and death). They can be released in the form of gases, liquids, vapor, or solid aerosols. The military value lies less in their lethality than in their ability to disrupt an opponent’s combat operations. The Aspen Strategy Group and the European Strategy Group, Chemical Weapons and Western Security Policy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987). For a history of chemical weapons see V. Adams, Chemical Warfare, Chemical Disarmament (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990). 3. National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council (NRC), “Disposal Hazards of Certain Chemical Warfare Agents and Munitions” (Washington, DC: NRC, 1969). 4. Interview with Charles Baronian, June 14, 1997. 5. New York Times, June 16, July 14, September 15, September 16, November 9, and November 18, 1983; May 18, 1984. 6. “Praise for the Army’s Chemical Weapons Disposal Plans,” Chemical Week, November 28, 1984; R. S. Smith, “NRC Urges Destruction of Chemical Weapons,” Science 226, December 7, 1984. 7. Facts on File, 1985 - 407G2, 439C1, 524E1, 842D2, 936F2. 8. Interview with Mike Owen, May 7, 1997. 9. Interview with John Shannon, February 27, 1997. 10. Stephen Dycus, National Defense and the Environment (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1996): 66–67. 11. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Weapons: Obstacles to the Army’s Plan To Destroy Obsolete US Stockpile” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1990): 10. Program Manager for Chem Demil, Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program, Implementation Plan, March 15, 1988, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 12. Interview with Mike Owen, May 7, 1997.

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13. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Weapons: Obstacles.” 14. Interview with Ron Garant, Charles Horner, and Ken Schreier, January 9, 1996. 15. Interview with General Walt Busbee, July 10, 1997. 16. Program Budget Decision, W. H. Taft, October 29, 1988, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 17. Memo, John Shannon to Undersecretary of Defense (Acquisitions), October 17, 1988. DOD Files, Washington, DC. 18. Interview with Susan Livingstone, May 17, 1997. 19. Dycus, National Defense and the Environment, p. 28. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Warfare: DOD’s Successful Effort To Remove US Chemical Weapons From Germany” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1991): 10. 20. General Accounting Office, “DOD’s Successful Effort To Remove Chemical Weapons From Germany,” p. 1. 21. “Chem Demil Program, “ SFIL-CD, June 30, 1989, DOD Files, Washington, DC; Don Atwood, Letter to Senator John Warner, July 25, 1989, DOD Files, Washington, DC; Memo For Record, Chem Retrograde Meeting with Representative Murtha, no date (Probably July 27, 1989), DOD Files, Washington, DC; Memo For Record, FRG Retrograde Meeting, August 8, 1989, DOD Files; Horner, Memo for Mr. O’Keefe, October 17, 1989, Washington, DC; Tony Capaccio, “Murtha Warns Atwood on Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Plant,” Defense Week, October 20, 1989, p. 1; Robert B. Barker, Letter to Representative Jamie Whitten, December 15, 1989, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 22. Letter from Senator Daniel K. Inouye to William H. Taft, March 7, 1989, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 23. Interview with Colonel Ed Fisher, March 10, 1997. 24. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Warfare,” p. 11. 25. Walter Busbee, Memo for Susan Livingstone, Assistant Secretary Army (Installations, Logistics, and Environment), April 26, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 26. Richard Cheney, Letter to Senator Daniel K. Inouye, April 26, 1990, DOD Files., Washington, DC. 27. Interview with Charles Baronian, June 14, 1997. 28. Susan Livingstone, JACADS/Retrograde Status Report #3, May 16, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 29. Susan Livingstone, JACADS/Retrograde Status Report #4, May 23, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 30. Michael Owen, JACADS/Retrograde Status Report #7, June 13, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 31. Memo, Nolan Adams, for Colonel Bushong et al., June 27, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 32. Memo, from CINCUSAREUR Heidelberg to UNCINCEUR Vaihingen, 0101050Z July 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC.

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33. Susan Livingstone, JACADS/Retrograde Status Report #10, July 5, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 34. Memo, Susan Livingstone, for Secretary of the Army, July 22, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 35. Donald Atwood, Letter to Hon. Thomas Foley, Hon. Dan Quayle, July 23, 1990, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 36. A suit filed by Greenpeace on the U.S. side was also dismissed by a federal court. Dycus, National Defense and the Environment, p. 28. 37. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Weapons: Stockpile Destruction Cost Growth And Schedule Slippages Are Likely To Continue” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1991): 3–5. 38. Susan Livingstone, Memorandum for the Auditor General, October 10, 1991, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 39. Susan Livingstone, Memo for Auditor General, October 11, 1991, DOD Files, Washington, DC. 40. Susan Livingstone, “Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program, Significant Accomplishments: 1989–1992.” Information provided to the author. 41. Interview with Susan Livingstone, May 18, 1997. Susan Livingstone, Memo to Secretary of Army: “Significant Accomplishments: 1989–92,” “Enclosures.” Material provided to the author. 42. Interview with Mike Owen, May 7, 1997. 43. David R. Warren, Statement, “Chemical Weapons Storage: Communities Are Not Prepared To Respond To Emergencies” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1993): 2–3. 44. Interviews with Gil Decker, February 13, 1997, and February 27, 1997. 45. Cited in General Accounting Office, “Chemical Weapons Destruction: Advantages and Disadvantages of Alternatives to Incineration” (Washington, DC: GAO, 1994): 1, 2. 46. “Chemical Weapons Incinerator in Utah Clears Major Hurdle,” Greenwire, June 25, 1996. 47. “Chemical Weapons: Tooele Incinerator Safe—Army Expert,” Greenwire, December 12, 1996. 48. “Chemical Weapons: Despite Opposition, Oregon Incineration,” Greenwire, February 11, 1997. Interviews with Decker, February 13, 1997, and February 27, 1997. 49. General Accounting Office, “Chemical Weapons Destruction,” p. 22. 50. New York Times, February 7, 1997. 51. Interview with Colonel Ed Fisher, June 25, 1997.

4 Changing Course: Admiral James Watkins and the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex W. Henry Lambright

In May 1989, Admiral James Watkins, recently appointed as Secretary of Energy, was shocked to learn that the FBI and EPA planned a surprise raid on Rocky Flats, a Department of Energy (DOE) facility near Denver, Colorado, responsible for plutonium triggers in nuclear weapons. The FBI and EPA believed Rocky Flats had violated environmental laws in its disposal of dangerous nuclear materials. Watkins feared that if the FBI and EPA tried to force their way into the heavily secured facility, they would provoke a confrontation with the DOE guards and contractor who might mistake them as terrorists. Watkins arranged, at the appointed time, for his deputy to fly out to Rocky Flats and personally escort the FBI and EPA agents into the facility.1 The Rocky Flats raid was but the most dramatic of a number of events concerning conditions at DOE weapons facilities. Watkins found himself in charge of a nuclear time-bomb in which a disaster, real or perceived, could take place at any moment. THE PRESIDENT CALLS Watkins’ challenge as DOE leader began in January 1989, when he received a call from the new president, George Bush who asked, “Jim, can you clean up this mess?” The admiral replied that he did not know if that would be possible. The president asked him to try. The admiral had spent a military career responding to the commander in chief and he felt personally close to Bush. He

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could not refuse the president and said he would do his best to bring order to what was the chaos at DOE.2 A month later, he was at DOE, preparing for confirmation hearings and getting to know some of the officials with whom he would be working. Word came about a serious spill of contaminated water at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina—via the media.3 Surprised that his staff knew little about the incident, Watkins viewed this event as early evidence of a suspect reporting system at DOE from field to headquarters. DOE, he surmised, was going to be a challenging assignment.

THE DOE WEAPONS COMPLEX For decades dating back to the Manhattan Project, DOE and its predecessor agencies had worked to produce thousands of nuclear weapons. Although refashioned as the Department of Energy by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the reality was that the dominant element of DOE remained the nuclear weapons complex, which consisted of nuclear weapons production and research facilities. The production side consisted of seventeen plants and installations of various sizes scattered across twelve states, employing 100,000 government and industry personnel. Weapons research labs included Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Collectively, they were in the business of developing and manufacturing a vast array of nuclear materials and devices for weapons production. For most of its history, the weapons complex was shrouded in secrecy and virtually autonomous. The safety and environmental rules affecting other agencies seldom penetrated the weapons complex. DOE was a civilian agency, but most of its work was for the Department of Defense. Annually, the secretaries of Energy and Defense, in association with a few others concerned with national security, determined nuclear weapons needs and supply as expressed by the National Nuclear Stockpile Memorandum. This was regarded as among the most important policy documents affecting atomic weapons, as it concerned the reliability and credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.4 Pressed heavily by the arms build-up during the Cold War, the DOE weapons complex showed its age in the 1980s. With facilities dating in some cases back to the 1940s, equipment was severely taxed. All the plants had deteriorated steadily over the years, and in 1988 many were shut down as safety issues came to public attention. Stimulating much of the public concern was the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and subsequent investigations of civilian and military reactors in the United States. Independent experts began to signal greater concerns.5

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A steady stream of congressional hearings on the weapons complex in 1988 led to further media inquiries. Articles appeared almost daily in the major newspapers. Between October 1, 1988, and January 8, 1989, the New York Times carried 108 stories on the DOE weapons complex, thirty-seven of them on the front-page. The weekly news magazines joined the chorus—a characteristic title: “They Lied to Us: Unsafe, Aging US Weapons Plants are Stirring Fear and Disillusion.”6 The problem was not just the safety and environmental situation. Certain facilities responsible for materials essential to nuclear weapons had been shut down for repair.7 Most significantly, the Savannah River facility, consisting of three reactors, was the only plant in the country responsible for tritium, a gas with a relatively short-lived effectiveness for weapons production.8 The Reagan administration, as administrations before, had spent large sums modernizing missiles for the nuclear triad—air-, sea- and land-based systems. All that armamentarium had an Achilles’ heel—the DOE nuclear complex. When Bush was inaugurated, relations were thawing with the Soviet Union, but the Cold War and bureaucratic and industrial momentum were still evident. Conservatives in Congress, military officers, and Defense Department strategists were exceedingly worried about the halt in nuclear weapons production. Environmentalists were increasingly concerned about the ecological impacts of nuclear weapons waste. Something had to be done. Bush determined that his first priority for DOE was to appoint someone truly competent to repair and reform the weapons complex—an able manager, someone familiar with nuclear technology, a person in whom he had confidence.

ADMIRAL JAMES WATKINS The man Bush chose, Admiral James Watkins, fit the job description. Born in 1927 in California, Watkins graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1949. In 1951, he graduated from the Naval Submarine School. Seven years later, in 1958, he received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. An alumnus of the Nuclear Reactor Engineering Course at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he served for three years as assistant to Admiral Hyman Rickover, “father of the nuclear Navy,” in the early 1960s. After his work with Rickover, Watkins advanced steadily in the Navy, becoming chief of Naval Personnel, commander of the Sixth Fleet, vice chief of Naval Operations, and commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. President Reagan selected Watkins as chief of Naval Operations in 1982. In this foremost military role in the Navy, he influenced the decisions to modernize the Navy and was a moving force behind Reagan’s decision to launch the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983.9

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Retiring from the Navy in 1986, Watkins was appointed by President Reagan in 1987 as chairman of the Presidential Commission on AIDS. His performance in managing a commission composed of bitterly divided factions, and producing a hard-hitting report to the president in 1988, brought him considerable media and public visibility. He was hailed as a conflict manager, open-minded and compassionate—attributes rarely ascribed to Rickover acolytes.10 Whatever else he was, Watkins was an avowed disciple of Admiral Rickover. His time as Rickover’s assistant had profoundly and permanently influenced him. He spoke of having learned “Rickover management” under the admiral. Rickover management, for Watkins, meant attention to all the details in applying a dangerous but highly valuable technology. It was a style of management that led to “safety first” as the top priority. It was a hierarchical, command-and-control style of management that left little doubt about who was in charge. As exercised by Rickover in a DOD setting, the style was effective. When Rickover died in 1986, Watkins, as chief of Naval Operations, gave the eulogy, pointing out that more than 150 U.S. naval combatant ships were nuclear-powered and had “achieved an amazing safety record of more than 3,000 ship-years of accident-free operations.” Schooled in the Rickover philosophy, Watkins had an intense faith in the atom and its promise. He truly believed it could be managed. He reasoned that if he could bring Rickover management to DOE, he might save not only DOE, but nuclear technology, which was near abandoned at commercial utilities as too perilous for use.

CONFIRMATION At his confirmation hearing in February 1989, Watkins said he would be active in all aspects of DOE operations, and that he would shape a new comprehensive energy policy, but his top priority would be to straighten out the weapons program. He intended to clean up the contaminated weapons complex and put defense operations “back on track.” He blamed poor management, out-of-date technology, and a “deeply-embedded 35–year culture” at DOE. That culture “has evolved from such heavy emphasis on achieving defense production goals, made within an atmosphere of collegial secrecy, that problems relating to safety, health and the environment have not only been backlogged to intolerable levels, but, in effect, hidden from public view until recently. So we are now paying the price for the long-term cultural misdirection.” The Senate voted 99–0 to confirm Watkins on March 1. On March 9, amidst ruffles and flourishes from the U.S. Marine Band, President Bush ad-

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ministered the oath of office before DOE employees at the headquarters cafeteria. Bush gave Watkins a glowing introduction, and stressed that the Reagan idea of terminating DOE was over. The department would continue. Under Watkins, he expected it would also get better.11

ASSEMBLING A TEAM Watkins immediately brought his executive director, Polly Gault, and other AIDS commission staff to DOE. Gault had worked on Capitol Hill, was known as a tough administrator capable of pushing people hard to get missions accomplished, and factored as a key person throughout Watkins’ tenure at DOE.12 Watkins had selected Henson Moore to be his deputy, a presidential appointment, but had to work hard to get him. Moore had been a senior member of Congress from Louisiana. Recently retired to private law practice, he had been considered for secretary, but did not have the nuclear experience Bush felt was required. But he did know the oil and gas industry, a critical dimension of DOE’s work about which Watkins knew little. Moore had wanted the top position, and did not want to be number two, especially to a military man he did not know.13 But after four hours of discussion with Watkins, Moore agreed to take the deputy job. Initially strangers, they formed a close working partnership and eventually became friends. Watkins regarded him as his alter ego, a man whose expertise in oil and gas and contacts with Congress served him well.14 Third in command was Undersecretary of Energy John Tuck. A lawyer with a naval background, Tuck had been on the Reagan White House staff and previously with the Senate Republican leadership staff. While Watkins welcomed Tuck, he regarded him as a political appointee of limited technical knowledge. Tuck, for his part, thought Watkins somewhat naïve on the political front. While an important man at DOE, owing to his political contacts in the White House and on the Hill, one who for a time ran the all-important defense programs of DOE, Tuck was never personally close to Watkins.15 If there was an inner circle of power at DOE, it consisted of Watkins, Moore and Gault. Close to that circle was Leo Duffy, a top-notch nuclear engineer, greatly respected by Watkins, who had worked as a contractor in Rickover-managed projects. Watkins brought Duffy aboard officially as special assistant for coordination of DOE Defense Waste Management. Duffy would be Watkins’ principal associate for nuclear waste cleanup, a greatly expanded mission under Watkins. Also close to Watkins was Steve Blush, a nuclear specialist recruited from the staff of the National Academy of Sciences. Blush served virtually from the beginning on a consultant basis, eventually coming

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aboard officially to head a new safety office that reported directly to Watkins.16 In addition, Watkins had a number of individuals outside DOE whom he consulted, the most important of whom was Bill Wegner, a long-time aide to Admiral Rickover. Now retired, Wegner was a close friend and intimate advisor to Watkins on many issues.17 There were others who were important to the management changes Watkins wished to install at DOE, who came on and off the stage of Watkins’ decision-making. However, the initial Watkins management team for the weapons complex was this relatively small group of professionals, who generally shared a common framework of thinking. From an organizational perspective, DOE consisted of “the Watkins people” and everybody else.

INITIAL ACTIONS In March, during his first appearance on Capitol Hill after being sworn in, Watkins asked the Senate Budget Committee for patience while he and his associates “get our arms around” the problems of hazardous waste, safety lapses and aging equipment. But the Budget Committee chairman, Jim Sasser (D., Tennessee) warned Watkins that Congress was impatient. He told Watkins to have a cleanup plan formulated within a year or face “serious consideration” by Congress of stripping DOE of the job altogether. Watkins responded that he recognized DOE had a “very bad track record” and promised to rebuild trust. “The credibility will come back . . . if I can have a little time to build a system.” Outside the committee room, he told reporters that any attempt to strip DOE of the cleanup role would be a “tragic mistake.” He also didn’t need any additional oversight. “I don’t need anybody to tell me how to suck eggs. I know how to suck eggs and I want to get on with it.”18 Watkins’ immediate problem was Savannah River and other facilities critical to defense, which were either shut down, or in jeopardy of being shut down, for safety reasons. Unwilling to take what he was told by DOE careerists as accurate, he had charged Duffy, Blush, and a few others with nuclear expertise to scout the DOE system to assess the situation beginning with Savannah River.19 He also asked Duffy to come up with a plan by July on what to do about the nuclear waste problem. Watkins wanted to get an overview of the problems and remedies, and establish priorities. However, he had come aboard a moving train, and found some options were already being quickly foreclosed.20 For example, the secretary could not wait until the Duffy plan was ready for Hanford. Hanford, perhaps the most highly contaminated site in the entire weapons complex, sprawled over hundreds of acres in eastern Washington State. It had been the subject of considerable negotiation prior to Watkins’ arrival at DOE. A three-party agreement had been finalized February 27 among

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DOE’s Hanford Operations Office, EPA, and Washington State. The three-party agreement had been pushed by EPA and Washington State to get DOE moving on clean-up at Hanford. The agreement allowed Hanford to continue operations and not become the focus of a lawsuit by EPA. But the problem for Watkins was the three-party agreement required DOE to expend upwards of $50 billion over a thirty-year period. Watkins wanted to know where the money was coming from. Moreover, he wanted to approach DOE clean-up strategically, and not have priorities established by special interests and individual field offices. This agreement was symptomatic in his view of the absence of topside control at DOE. The department was pulled apart by centrifugal forces. In this case, a DOE unit, the Hanford Operations Office, was one of the centrifugal forces.21 The Hanford arrangement really bothered Watkins, but he discovered he had little choice at this late date but to go along. On March 17, however, he made it known that henceforth, he would be personally involved in negotiating any agreements “which would have the effect of committing the department’s resources beyond funds that are currently available.”22 Watkins was learning that DOE behaved as though headquarters was unimportant, ignored until the last minute, merely a rubber stamp on decisions made below. He also found that he couldn’t necessarily trust the information or some of the officials in the field. Duffy, Blush, and his other “scouts” told him Savannah River could not be brought back on line in 1989, as Watkins had been led to believe by DOE careerists.23 Watkins promised Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney that he would get the troubled reactor complex restarted early enough in 1990 “to maintain a viable weapons stockpile.” However, he would not restart Savannah River until he had established a culture where “safety [was] the co-equal of production,” he said. To help bring this culture about, he ordered the agreement with the principal contractor at Savannah River, Westinghouse, to be altered so that the award fee was dependent on how well the contractor followed safety policies. As far as Watkins was concerned, Savannah River was “another Three Mile Island waiting to happen.”24 One of Watkins’ early undertakings was to study the organization of DOE. He found the lack of accountability unbelievable. “Every time [I] asked who was responsible for something,” he recalled, “each person pointed to the one at his left.”25 In theory, program directors in Washington had responsibility for particular facilities and laboratories in the field. The reality was different. For example, responsibility for Savannah River ran directly to Watkins himself. How could a department secretary manage specific facilities? This was a recipe for no accountability, for it took the program directors out of the chain of command and left facilities essentially autonomous. To the extent there was a major headquarters office that concerned itself with the field, it was a budget and

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personnel function that largely served rather than supervised the field centers.26 Moreover, many of the laboratories and field operations nurtured local constituencies and built alliances with key members of Congress. They gave headquarters little deference.27 In May, Watkins announced a major reorganization involving Savannah River. He ordered Savannah River to report to the assistant secretary for Defense Programs. In his view, Defense Programs had been responsible for environmental and safety issues at Savannah River, but had not exercised that authority, delegating to (and often ignoring) the department’s Office of Environment, Safety and Health. Watkins explained that his rationale was accountability to provide line management and oversight. This was Rickover management, in his view. Watkins wanted Defense Programs to be fully responsible for all activities under its mission. This system of management, he declared, had proven its worth in the Navy for over 35 years and in the commercial nuclear reactor industry since Three Mile Island. “This system,” said Watkins, “is based on the principle that unless accountability and responsibility for safe operations of reactor plants are firmly embedded in the line, no amount of oversight can assure management or the public that we are serious about safety ‘round the clock.’”28 While this management change made sense to Watkins, it caused alarm in the environmental community. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and some lawmakers in Congress questioned whether Watkins was inadvertently weakening the main environmental voice at DOE, the Office of Environment, Safety and Health. To Watkins, he felt he was actually strengthening environment and safety by bringing it into the line function.29 He started with Savannah River, his immediate priority, and planned to extend his management approach throughout the complex. Watkins’ intent was to move swiftly, but incrementally, in learning, refining, and improving the organization through cultural change. Events forced him to conclude he had to shift to a crisis mode of decision, however.

THE ROCKY FLATS RAID In May, Polly Gault got a call from Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. He asked her to come over to the Justice Department where he informed her that for a year the Justice Department and EPA had been gathering evidence on “environmental crimes” committed at DOE’s Rocky Flats facility, 18 miles from Denver, Colorado. This was the facility that made plutonium pits, or triggers for nuclear weapons. Justice had evidence of improper and illegal burning of plutonium and other deadly wastes. The FBI and EPA planned a surprise raid at Rocky Flats to gather evidence before it might be destroyed. Everything

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was held confidentially, but Thornburgh felt that Admiral Watkins needed to know and cooperate.30 Shocked, Gault went back to DOE and informed Watkins. A meeting soon followed at the Justice Department. Thornburgh presided. Also present were representatives from the FBI and EPA, including Administrator William Reilly. The DOE contingent included Watkins, Moore, Gault, Duffy, and Blush.31 The DOE representatives were sworn to secrecy as Thornburgh recounted the allegations which were based on reports from whistleblowers, as well as aerial infrared surveillance. Thornburgh laid out the plan for armed FBI and EPA investigators to raid Rocky Flats. Watkins and his DOE associates pointed out that Rocky Flats was a nuclear weapons facility and, as such, was heavily guarded. If the EPA and FBI tried to force their way in, they could inadvertently prompt a gun battle. As Moore recalled, “Thornburgh’s face turned white at that point.” In lieu of an unannounced raid, Watkins proposed that Moore be sent to Rocky Flats to relieve the DOE manager at Rocky Flats and escort the FBI and EPA into the facility. Thornburgh and Reilly quickly agreed to this revised strategy.32 Moore planned and coordinated the action for June 6. Watkins instructed him to take control of the situation there, make sure it did not get out of hand, and avoid a life-threatening confrontation. In advance of the action, Moore informed Colorado Governor Roy Romer who pledged cooperation. There was an ominous feeling in the air at DOE among those aware of the impending move. Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs Troy Wade, feared just before the raid got underway, “Something is going to happen at Rocky Flats.”33 But there were no untoward incidents. The DOE and Rockwell International contractor officials were totally dumbfounded as Moore escorted a group of 70 EPA, FBI and DOE officials into the facility. Moore took control of Rocky Flats and stayed there three weeks—Watkins’ direct representative at Rocky Flats. He kept in daily contact with Watkins, who made decisions requiring his authority and kept Congress and the White House advised on developments. The media attention was intense. The number of outside inspectors swelled after the initial entry. Twenty-five additional DOE experts joined the initial team of investigators. The team determined that carelessness and lax procedures led to violations of environmental laws. Whether there was gross criminal malfeasance was something they were unable to prove in the short term—and, as it turned out, were never able to prove conclusively.34 But Moore was upset by the attitude of denial at the facility. Speaking to an assemblage of managers and workers at Rocky Flats, Moore harped on the need for stronger adherence to environmental and safety procedures. A senior DOE manager in the audience challenged him, “You

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don’t know what you’re talking about. Stay in Washington. Let us do our job.” Moore countered, “Either get with the program or get out!”35 As far as Watkins was concerned, he could not do his job unless his people did their job differently. The basic values and interests—the “culture”—of a whole generation of DOE civil servants and contractors had to be reformed. The Rocky Flats incident pointed to the imperative that Watkins work out a new relationship with the state of Colorado, EPA, and other agencies. As a start, Watkins and Governor Romer reached an “agreement-in-principle” that Moore announced at a press conference in Colorado on June 15. Under the agreement, DOE would spend $1.8 million per year on environmental monitoring and undertake a study of health effects of plant operations on area residents. This agreement provided for independent validation of data, cleanup schedules, and funds for state oversight. Moore’s statement stressed environmental safety was the top priority at DOE, ahead of production. EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) were promptly granted access to restricted areas of the facility. DOE had previously refused even the slightest concession to environmental protection and inspection, in Watkins’ view. “We straight-armed EPA every time,” Watkins said. From now on, DOE was going to cooperate with the regulatory agencies.36 Such moves to open up a previously insulated facility greatly alarmed some individuals in DOE and DOD who thought Watkins was going too far in appeasing the environmentalists. Moreover, the heat from industry became intense. In Washington, Watkins found himself pressed by Rockwell and its friends in Congress to back off his assault. Rockwell wanted protection from EPA and OSHA rather than an expedited investigation. Unless the government backed off, Rockwell threatened to cease Rocky Flats operations. Such a move could cause disruption in a facility deemed vital to national defense. Rockwell stepped up the campaign and pressured John Sununu, White House chief of staff. The company had friends in high places in Washington, including the Pentagon. The pressure on Watkins was strong and extended to Thornburgh and EPA Administrator Reilly. To Watkins, Rockwell’s demands were “ridiculous,” and he was going to “go by the book.” If Rockwell wanted to leave the program, it could do so and he would find another contractor. Thornburgh and Reilly were relieved at Watkins’ resolve. As Polly Gault recalls, Thornburgh declared, “I’m glad you’re Secretary of Energy.”37 Eventually, Rockwell did leave and another contractor came aboard. The events at Rocky Flats and repeated signs of an ineptness, arrogance, and resistance at DOE outraged Watkins. He resolved to speed up and force the process of administrative change.38 One very late evening in June, assisted only by Gault and his secretary, he drafted a new policy for DOE.

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POWERING REFORM On June 27, with the Rocky Flats investigation still underway, and the media spotlight directly on him, Watkins announced a series of moves “to strengthen environment, safety and health activities at DOE’s production, research and test facilities.” Declaring he was “not proud nor pleased” with what he had seen during his first months in office, Watkins charged “the chickens have finally come home to roost and years of inattention to changing standards and demands regarding the environment, safety and health are vividly exposed to public examination.” He strongly disagreed with the “operating philosophy and culture of DOE” which acted as if production, safety, and environmental protection were incompatible objectives. He made it absolutely clear he intended to change course at DOE. In what became known as his “Ten-Point Plan,” Watkins announced that contractor fees would be changed so that “not less than 51 percent” would be “based on compliance with environmental, safety and health requirements.” At Rocky Flats, the figure had been closer to 20 percent. Under the new plan, if a contractor failed to give adequate attention to these values, the entire award fee would be lost. Moreover, DOE would adhere to current and established additional compliance agreements, and would make health data available to the public. The plan also called for speed up of DOE facilities cleanup through additional expenditures. The Bush administration’s planned spending for cleanup was increased immediately from $2.1 billion to $2.4 billion, with spending rising to $4.1 billion by fiscal year 1994. To lower the chances of another “Rocky Flats,” Watkins said he would put into place a new top management team committed to safety over production and send “tiger teams” to inspect each of the major DOE facilities. These tiger teams would be similar to DOE’s twenty-five-person team sent to Rocky Flats immediately after the raid. The job of the tiger teams was to uncover safety and environmental shortcomings before they had damaging effects. He ordered the facilities to engage in “self-assessments” before the tiger teams arrived.39 The Ten-Point Plan demanded an accelerated cultural revolution in DOE. Would the admiral be able to carry it off? Environmental interest groups were skeptical. His internal critics at DOE also wondered how serious he was, and whether he would be gone before change could be accomplished. His detractors knew that he and Sununu—men with large egos and strong personalities—had differences over many DOE issues. They hoped those differences would speed his departure. On July 7, two weeks after the plan was unveiled, Watkins sent the first tiger team to the West Valley Demonstration Project, a facility near Buffalo. Ten days later, he dispatched the second to Fernald, a facility near Cincinnati,

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whose problems had been highlighted in national media. And many more inspections followed—over the remainder of his term, tiger teams traveled to all the major DOE nuclear facilities. Along the way, serious problems were detected and actions to deal with them implemented.40 The DOE officials and contractors hated the tiger teams. Just preparing for a visit took time and energy and filled field office leaders with anxiety. Managerial reputations and careers were threatened. No DOE secretary before had ever tried to “run” the agency, and this was a threat to the traditional freedom of field organizations. Behind his back, laboratories and facilities griped about “the admiral.” Who did he think he was? Watkins spoke highly of DOE people, as individuals, but he continued to be harsh on DOE as an organization. But he achieved his purpose: the tiger teams got the attention of DOE careerists and contractors. Management began to make changes prior to the arrival of tiger teams, and when infractions were found, more changes afterward. This was reform forced from the top, grudgingly accepted in the organization. In essence, DOE’s weapons-related missions were revised to: (1) the defense production mission, (2) the research mission—both of which went back to the agency’s origin, and now (3) the environmental cleanup mission. This third mission, while having precedent, was new in terms of scale, organizational clout, and public visibility. Also, while maintaining the existing environmental and health staff agency, Watkins added a new staff unit, the Office of Nuclear Safety, which reported directly to him. Its focus was nuclear safety and its director, Steve Blush, was forceful, blunt, and the unofficial “chief tiger.” With Blush leading the way, regular meetings now took place where problems were brought to the table for preventive action that previously had been buried well below the level of the secretary. In August, Watkins unveiled the $19.5 billion five-year strategy for nuclear clean-up. The long-term plan would take perhaps thirty-five years to complete. In October, a new Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ERWM) was established, led by Leo Duffy. The new office pulled together the previously fragmented clean-up offices into a strong headquarters program with a leader personally close to the secretary.41 Watkins also began replacing individuals in key leadership positions throughout the agency, along with contractors. One of the principals he pushed aside was the influential acting head of Defense Programs, Troy Wade, who personified for Watkins the entrenched DOE bureaucracy. Wade had friends in DOD, Congress, and throughout DOE. When Watkins forced him and certain others in field operations offices either to retire early or transfer to other jobs in or out of DOE, he sent a powerful message throughout the department and its constituency.42 In some instances, where he did not replace

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leaders, he placed people he trusted within the department to provide an independent source of information. He brooked no overt resistance. To those critics who carped from the sidelines, he declared, “If I can’t do it [achieve change], I don’t know who else can.”43 Through budgetary and personnel actions, Watkins severely shook up DOE. While many in the agency disliked him and his methods, others respected his efforts as long overdue. Knowing he had detractors, he asked Congress, governors, and environmentalists to give him support to institute the new policies.

CONFRONTING BARRIERS In his Ten-Point Plan, Watkins strongly emphasized that he needed new leadership at DOE to help him change the department. Duffy was the right man, in his view, for heading the massive cleanup job, and he was able to get him in place. Blush was right for enforcing higher safety standards. The other key person he desperately wanted was Victor Stello, to lead Defense Programs, and he specifically mentioned Stello in the Ten-Point Plan. Stello was a Rickover-trained nuclear engineer who had served as executive director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). His technical and managerial skills were not questioned. His toughness was well known and regarded as essential for Defense Programs and its recalcitrant field officials and contractors. But, a number of environmental groups opposed Stello for having been too “cozy” with industry when he was at NRC. There were other critics, including a number in Congress, who also thought he was too close to White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, who was increasingly unpopular with leading Democrats in Congress. Watkins wanted Stello on the merits. He was Watkins’ man, not Sununu’s man, said the admiral. But the impression spread that Stello was being pressed on Watkins by the Republican White House because of Stello’s ideologically conservative views. The environmentalists and Democrat leadership in the Senate strongly opposed Stello for reasons extraneous to the technical-managerial ability Watkins saw in the man.44 Watkins grew exasperated at this political turn of events. Along with other key staff, Stello represented a vital appointment. In October, John Tuck, the undersecretary, was named acting assistant secretary for Defense Programs. Stello was assigned as Tuck’s deputy. Recognizing the maneuver, five senators asked the president to withdraw the Stello nomination. Watkins continued to press. Directing the nuclear weapons complex was “the toughest task I have in the department,” Watkins said, and he needed Stello. Senator Tim Wirth (D., Colorado) warned Watkins not to waste his political capital on Stello,45 but he would not give up. The battle went well into 1990 before Watkins finally, reluctantly, surrendered when it was painfully ob-

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vious the votes were not there. But, Watkins prevailed on Stello to remain as deputy since Senate confirmation was not necessary. While both men were embarrassed by the failed nomination, Stello was still part of the team, and he remained in his deputy post throughout the Watkins regime.

SHIFTING PRIORITIES The Stello dispute notwithstanding, Watkins forged ahead in late 1989 and 1990 with his reforms. He did so as the international environment changed rapidly—the Berlin Wall came down, the United States and USSR engaged in arms control discussions. On the domestic front, the budget deficit continued to grow and discretionary spending continued to shrink. Watkins knew the weapons complex had to change with the times. A modernization plan for the weapons complex had been previously developed in the Reagan administration. The plan called for furnishing Savannah River with a New Production Reactor (NPR), and also building a new tritium facility in Idaho, employing a different technology, as backup to Savannah’s NPR. Watkins, seeking an independent view, turned to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for advice. At first, Frank Press, president of NAS, refused, complaining the department had ignored the academy’s advice for years.46 Watkins asked Press to keep an open mind. DOE was changing. Press relented. Subsequently, the academy advised that the New Production Reactor in Idaho would yield more capacity than needed.47 Armed in January 1990 with the academy recommendation, Watkins cancelled plans for the Idaho facility. Concurrently, he closed down a facility at Hanford designed for fast-breeder reactors.48 The review he conducted also led Watkins to conclude that new facilities in Rocky Flats were required. He had barely heard of Rocky Flats prior to becoming secretary of Energy. “Now, I’ve lived with it since then, day and night,” he declared in March. “It’s critical to national security [and] if we keep [it] closed, that amounts to unilateral disarmament.” Watkins argued with Congress to fund plutonium pits. These would allow him to deliver warheads for Trident II missiles for strategic submarines.49 While Congress was questioning the need to appropriate money for nuclear preparedness, it was directing more funds for clean-up. Duffy exclaimed in April that “we’ve reached a point where we’re ahead of our headlights.” In June, referring to clean-up, he declared, “The infrastructure does not exist. There is no place to store and dispose of the waste, there is no contractor with the capability and DOE does not have the in-house expertise. . . . It’s going to be an interesting next few years.”50

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Watkins determined that certain defense facilities could be transferred to Duffy’s jurisdiction if no longer producing weapons but requiring clean-up. The most important was Hanford, transferred in July, and subject to the three-party agreement Watkins had reluctantly approved. He traveled to Hanford to proclaim that DOE would showcase modern clean-up techniques at this site. Indeed, he declared that Hanford would be DOE’s “flagship” for environmental restoration and waste management.51 No one would lose his or her job. Clean-up was a gigantic task and would take many years. The employees and townspeople near the site were disappointed, however. They had felt important to national security. They had taken pride in their mission. One of the town’s high school teams even featured a mushroom cloud on its uniform.52 Going from bomb making to clean-up was perceived as a large step down. In July, Watkins unveiled a revised modernization plan for the complex. It featured a radical consolidation by 2015,53 to concentrate U.S. nuclear weapons capability, now spread around the country, in a few places. Watkins felt there had to be a new production reactor built, probably in Savannah. Tritium remained the weakest point of the U.S. arsenal, given its decay rate and the dreadful condition of reactors in Savannah. The plan also called for Rocky Flats getting a new plutonium facility. Modernization included a storage facility for nuclear weapons waste.

PRESSURES FROM DOD Having failed with Stello, Watkins at last completed his top management team with a man who could serve as assistant secretary for Defense Programs and help reform the production side of DOE. This was Richard Claytor, who fit the Watkins mold: Naval Academy graduate, nuclear-trained under Rickover, thorough, and competent. When Claytor asked Watkins what his first priority as assistant secretary should be, the admiral replied, “Savannah River.”54 One of the reasons Savannah River was top priority was that it was at the core of a dispute between Watkins and DOD. There were many facets to this interdepartmental contest, but Savannah River usually was involved in one way or another. The friction began at a cabinet session in late 1989 when Watkins convinced President Bush to reallocate $600 million from the defense budget to DOE to restart Savannah River.55 It was not so much the money, as the manner in which Watkins used a cabinet meeting to get the president’s decision. Cheney felt he had been blindsided.56

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At a level below, there was a dispute between Watkins and Cheney’s special assistant for Atomic Energy, Bob Barker.57 DOD was the customer for nuclear materials, and Barker saw no product coming out of DOE. Barker vociferously complained that Watkins was bending too far in the direction of safety and environment and jeopardizing national security. The meetings between Watkins and Barker were increasingly rancorous. Finally, at one particular meeting, Barker went one step too far for Watkins. He argued that Savannah River should be restarted even if it were not completely safe—after all—how safe was safe enough? As far as Watkins was concerned, this was the last straw. Watkins demanded and got a meeting at the White House. He told Cheney and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, “You have to get rid of this [man]. I want him off my back. This guy is saying that I should get a presidential determination of sovereign immunity from these various safety and environmental factors and start it anyway.” Watkins made it very clear that he thought that Savannah River was unsafe, and that was that. Cheney and Scowcroft listened as Watkins fumed. He must have been persuasive. The pressure eased, but concerns remained.58

THE NEW PRODUCTION REACTOR DOD officials were not alone in their worries about Savannah River. Several members of Congress pressed Watkins to replace the old Savannah River facility with a New Production Reactor. Watkins had established an organization to develop NPR, headed by Dominic Monetta. This was a major program—potentially $6 billion to develop and deploy NPR. As the NPR program evolved, Watkins was acutely conscious of the continuing decline of the Soviet threat. In July 1991, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed. START called for reduction of the respective arsenals of the United States and USSR by 30 percent. Bush promised to reduce stockpiles to 6,000 “accountable” warheads.59 For Watkins, that still meant DOE was in the nuclear weapons business. The days of all-out, full-speed-ahead production were gone, but he had a responsibility to maintain the 70 percent of the stockpile left. There were enough old weapons that could be scavenged to make plutonium pits—but Rocky Flats or a substitute would have to get started eventually. The immediate problem remained tritium. There had not been any tritium produced at Savannah River, the one site for manufacture, since 1988. START took some pressure off the demand for tritium, but a great deal of the demand remained.

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Meanwhile, global atmospherics weren’t particularly settled. In September, a coup was attempted in the Soviet Union, and Mikhail Gorbachev “detained” by Soviet dissidents. The coup failed, and Gorbachev retained power—at least for a while. Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s political rival, however, was making his move. The uncertainties involving the USSR were enormous. A strong contingent argued that now was not the time to unilaterally disarm. But in this uncertainty, the White House directed Watkins to take another look at plans to build the New Production Reactor at Savannah River. Was it really needed? NPR had been taken as a given, by virtually everyone, once Savannah River had shut down in 1988. The issue Watkins had earlier confronted was “how many” NPRs were essential, and he had killed the back-up proposed in Idaho. Work was well underway in designing an NPR for Savannah River. There was tremendous momentum behind NPR. The pressures for NPR came from within DOE, DOD, Congress, and industry. There were two competing design approaches, advanced by different contractors. The leading approach was that of General Atomics, based in California. Since NPR was expected to go to South Carolina, that state, like California, saw significant gains from NPR. Senator Strom Thurmond (R., South Carolina) was the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and regarded NPR as critical for the nation and his state. NPR was a huge construction project and many jobs were at stake. The Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Sam Nunn (D., Georgia), highly respected in military affairs, and a close friend of Watkins, believed the nation needed NPR, and it was better to spend money on NPR than repairing the old Savannah River facility. Prompted by the White House, Watkins did take another look at NPR, and what he saw bothered him. General Atomics was using an approach he regarded as problematic. Particularly serious in his view was the stream of hazardous waste generated. Since he was even less disposed to the design of the company competing with General Atomics, he wondered if a more advanced technology might not be better—assuming he had the time and money to develop one. Key senators, meanwhile, pushed actively for General Atomics’ NPR approach. They proposed legislation that emerged from the authorization conference to prevent Watkins from spending more than 25 percent of his weapons complex budget on repairing old facilities (i.e., Savannah). He knew this proposed legislation was designed to pressure him to build NPR. Watkins was enraged at what he regarded as political interference in a technical decision that was his prerogative. At the beginning of November, he announced his decision to postpone for two years a final choice on NPR. Issues of technology and location were put on hold. There would be further research and development and testing of alternate technologies. Referring to the legis-

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lation that would bind his hands, he fired off a letter to Nunn, upbraiding him for lack of consultation, in which he declared, “I do not understand how language like this, which was in neither the Senate or House bills, can be considered in such a cavalier manner at this time.” He made clear by his action that he was in charge of DOE, not the senators (or lobbyists from General Atomics). His immediate priority, he declared, was restarting Savannah River.60 Senator Nunn was equally furious. The dispute was ventilated in the media. He told Tuck, the DOE undersecretary, who was trying to smooth matters between Congress and DOE, “You tell Watkins that we have telephones in this town, and they work both ways!”61 Whatever Tuck told Watkins did not go over very well. This was a matter of principle for Watkins. It was not an issue for political compromise. You were either for Watkins or against him when it came to NPR. Tuck and NPR Program Director Monetta disagreed with Watkins and were soon out of DOE.62 In December, Watkins turned to Will Happer, his science advisor, head of DOE’s basic research enterprise. Would he examine the possibility of using a linear accelerator to produce tritium? If there was a better, more innovative, less waste producing way to have NPR than the General Atomics and other techniques being developed, he wanted to know about it.63

SAVANNAH RIVER TROUBLES Watkins’ decision to postpone building NPR while undertaking a two-year review of alternatives created even more pressure on the Energy Secretary to get the existing Savannah River facility restarted. Watkins had, in the view of some of his closest associates and friends, created a potential tritium gap not only for DOE, but for the nation. But he believed he had the time to come up with a better solution than the expensive and flawed General Atomics NPR, provided Savannah River came on line. He focused on one particular reactor at the beleaguered three-reactor Savannah River site, called the K reactor. Watkins devoted much personal attention to Savannah River requirements for new equipment and the retraining of personnel in improved safety procedures. Indeed, his intense and detailed level of scrutiny astounded even DOE associates who thought they knew him well.64 It was an emulation of “Rickover management,” embodied in Watkins. In late December 1991, Savannah River was finally ready to start. Just prior to that long-awaited event, an accident occurred. Approximately 150 gallons of tritium-contaminated water leaked from a heat exchanger used to cool the reactor. It got into the Savannah River and forced local businesses and oyster beds on the Georgia side of the river to close. While Watkins and his associates regarded the risk to human health as negligible, the event caused a major nega-

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tive public, congressional, and media reaction. Watkins flew to Atlanta to allay public fears—and to chastise news media and public officials “for blowing it out of proportion.” “There never was any danger to the public,” he complained at an early-morning news conference. Watkins said further safety precautions would be taken; and the restart initiative would continue.65 For Watkins, his credibility and control of decision-making on NPR hung in the balance. He had to make Savannah River work.

THE CLEAN-UP FRONT While worrying about NPR and Savannah River in 1991 (as well as a score of other large policy issues, including the formulation of a national energy strategy), Watkins dealt with the contentious nuclear clean-up problem. It could not be separated from other issues regarding the sprawling DOE weapons complex. Specifically, Watkins could not reopen Rocky Flats, much less build a new plutonium trigger facility there, without first finding a way to mitigate the waste problem. Governor Romer of Colorado had secured agreement of an absolute limit on waste stored at Rocky Flats. Beyond 1,601 cubic yards, waste would go to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), being built in New Mexico. “I’ve got to stand tough,” Romer said. “If you take the pressure off WIPP, I don’t know if it’ll ever open.” Romer said he’d not be “the wimp of WIPP.”66 Watkins urgently wanted to open WIPP, years in the building, but delayed by various technical and political problems. He believed that if he could at least begin to solve the storage problem at WIPP, which would take less dangerous waste, that would create greater public confidence for the ultimate nuclear waste repository intended for Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which would entomb the most dangerous waste from civilian as well as military reactors. Yucca Mountain was also on Watkins’ agenda, but it was several years behind WIPP. Watkins considered opening WIPP as evidence of fulfilling the pledge he made to President Bush to end the chaos at DOE. To open WIPP was challenging. Aside from technical problems, there were legal and legislative issues. First, he had to get land from the Department of Interior. In January 1991, Secretary of Interior Manuel Lujan granted the required land to conduct experimental tests. The question was whether this grant was possible without congressional authority. Getting Congress to act on anything related to nuclear waste or WIPP was exceedingly tortuous given opposition in affected states. By mid-1991, the final safety analysis report and the Energy Department’s operational readiness review on WIPP were completed. These two documents certified that the repository was safe to operate. They were reviewed and approved by internal and independent committees.

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The last of the independent panels reviewing WIPP’s readiness issued approvals on September 1, 1991. Watkins was faced with the high cost of maintaining the repository—then nearly $500,000 a day. The strong pressure from Governor Romer continued, and now the governors of Idaho and Nevada, where nuclear weapons waste was also stored, were also anxious to put limits on the waste their states would contain. WIPP was technically ready, but Watkins was concerned that emotionalism could delay the opening. He may not have had all the required congressional approvals, but the legal requirements seem to have been met. Watkins decided to force the issue. On October 3, he notified Lujan, and then alerted the governor of New Mexico that the first truck with four drums of waste would leave Idaho on October 10. One day before, on October 9, the state of New Mexico filed a request to halt the action on the grounds that WIPP was unsafe and that Watkins acted illegally. The state charged DOE with an unlawful exchange of land without congressional approval. A temporary injunction holding up the transfer of waste was issued until the judge ruled on the matter. It took until February 3, 1992, for the judge to decide DOE needed congressional approval for the land transfer and the state of New Mexico’s permission to operate. WIPP would wait some more.67 And so would Rocky Flats. Meanwhile, international developments diminished the urgency to bring the weapons capabilities back on line.

THE COLD WAR ENDS AT DOE On December 25, 1991, the USSR dissolved, Gorbachev resigned, and the Cold War unquestionably ended, almost quietly. Watkins finalized decisions to consolidate the nuclear weapons complex from what was now fifteen production facilities in ten states (itself a diminution from the seventeen sites in twelve states Watkins had inherited) to four production plants in four states (South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri) and a test site in Nevada. The budget would reflect the changes, with money shifting from production to cleanup. To the extent facilities were no longer needed for production, they became clean-up sites in the manner of Hanford. That meant Rocky Flats, like Hanford and most of the other sites, would become part of Duffy’s domain. “Nobody likes nuclear bombs,” Watkins told a press conference in discussing the post–Cold War DOE. “We want to get rid of the nuclear complex to the extent we can.”68 In December, Duffy’s office was upgraded further to reflect its priority, a priority which had been de facto previously. Duffy was appointed assistant secretary of the Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management. This made him a presidential appointee, on organizational par with the head of

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Defense Programs, Richard Claytor. Duffy’s budget for fiscal year 1993 was $4.4 billion and rising. His empire was growing as Claytor’s shrank.69 In January 1992, in his State of the Union address, President Bush offered new arms reductions. The same week, his administration cancelled orders for further W-88 weapons for Trident II submarine-launched missiles. W-88s were the only warheads on order. The cancellation meant that DOE had no customer for new nuclear weapons. In effect, DOE had lost, at least for the moment, its nuclear weapons production mission. For the first time since the nuclear age began, during World War II, the United States was not actively making new nuclear warheads.70 Instead, it was recycling old weapons for materials needed.71 Watkins still persevered on the tritium problem, and thus the readiness of whatever stock of nuclear weapons remained. He had spent over $1.5 billion on repairs to the Savannah River K reactor. After the December spill, he ordered a new monitoring system put in place to check for such problems. He pushed relentlessly to get Savannah River up, and requested another $400 million in the new fiscal year to conduct tests and further refine the changes made. Critics—environmentalists, arms controllers—asked why restart at all? They argued there was enough tritium on hand for three or four years. DOE could extract tritium from deactivated warheads to extend the supply. Why throw more money at Savannah?72 For Watkins, Savannah River was a test of will as much as technology. In May, the K reactor was activated and sprang minor leaks. After a month of repairs, it was restarted and, at last, it functioned properly. Watkins went down to the Savannah River site and celebrated the occasion with the DOE and contractor personnel. Later in the month, having proved his point—that he could get it to work—Watkins shut down Savannah River deliberately, and put it on stand-by.73 It had required four years, and $2 billion to reach this point—a folly to Watkins’ critics, a tour de force to his friends. In July, President Bush announced that the United States would provide no more plutonium or enriched uranium for warheads. In September, Watkins dropped DOE’s plan to build the New Production Reactor. Arms control agreements to reduce the stockpile of bombs had further diminished the need for tritium. Existing reserves would last until at least 2012. “Accordingly, I have decided that the existing new production reactor program should be deferred immediately and the reactor design efforts should be brought to a prompt and orderly closure.”74 Over $1.2 billion had been spent on NPR development up to this point. It would be up to a future DOE secretary to decide what to do about NPR construction. The September decision was a climax in the transition of the DOE weapons complex from an enterprise whose principal mission was weapons making to

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one whose primary role would be weapons research and development and environmental clean-up. Almost half of the entire $12 billion budget of DOE now focused on nuclear clean-up. There was progress, but also plenty of frustration. It was clear that for some facilities, the problems were even worse than earlier thought. The situation at Hanford, for example, was deemed by some environmentalists so huge and so intractable that it might be necessary to fence off the facility and declare it a “national sacrifice zone.” The continuing frustration at WIPP further compounded problems. Watkins seethed as the legal/political process dragged out, with no end in sight. There was “no good reason” for the delays, after what the Washington Post called one more “stinging setback for Watkins.” Letting WIPP sit idle was “costing taxpayers $14 million a month.”75 In November, President Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton. Watkins spent his remaining time in office tying up loose ends and preparing documents to hand over to his successor. It was, for this former Navy man so accustomed to frequent professional arrivals and departures, another changing of the guard.

THE WATKINS CHAPTER CLOSES In January 1993, Watkins gave way to Hazel O’Leary, President Clinton’s appointee as secretary of Energy. To his disappointment, she gave little attention to the transition documents he had painstakingly prepared. He watched despondently as she decentralized much that he had centralized in the department to enhance supervision and oversight. The Nuclear Safety Office he regarded as a critical function was abandoned. As far as Watkins was concerned, she was undoing his reforms.76 Watkins believed he had taken a failing organization and raised it to acceptable levels of performance. In some ways, his achievements lay in what did not happen in his tour of duty—there were no more “Rocky Flats,” no nuclear disasters as he had feared. However, Watkins was only partially satisfied. “I got half way up the mountain of excellence,” he later declared, referring to the fact that he thought it would take eight years or so to really institutionalize reforms he characterized as “Rickover management.”77 He had suffered more than his share of frustrations over four years. He could not get WIPP utilized in spite of a four-year campaign to open this nuclear waste repository. It had taken him four years to get Savannah River operating and, once operating, at a $2 billion cost, it had been shut down. Duffy commented that Watkins had started with tremendous political support at the outset and had seen most of that evaporate over the years.78 One of Watkins’ environmentalist critics, who nevertheless respected him, felt Watkins had personally suffered from the experience of being DOE secretary, and that, criticized from all sides, he was a beleaguered

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man in his last days at DOE. He regarded Watkins as a “tragic figure,” a man from a military background where hierarchy mattered, operating in a department of “robber barons.”79 Watkins himself rejected this characterization. “I was dejected,” he recalled, “because I could not finish the job of reform at DOE I had started. I wanted another four years, and Bush would have appointed me, had he been reelected.”80 When he left, there were many who shared the view of the Washington Post that Watkins had done about as good a job as possible. He “has made the department a much more effective organization than he found it,” the Post said.81 While Watkins had come in with a strong defense background and had worked assiduously to get the nuclear bomb factory up and running again, the end of the Cold War sharply curtailed what he needed to do on that front. Also, what Watkins did that all agreed was critical for the nation was to upgrade safety and establish the clean-up effort as a top priority at DOE. This was a significant legacy.82 Although Watkins was not enthusiastic with his successor’s performance, O’Leary and those who came after her did maintain the environmental clean-up mission that Watkins had established and eventually WIPP did open in 1999. Perhaps his most remarkable legacy at DOE was the downsizing of nuclear defense programs. This fact is ironic, given his previous career in the Navy in building up the nation’s nuclear defenses. Moreover, downsizing met stiff resistance inside and outside DOE. He faced a huge bureaucratic and political momentum. Watkins, a nuclear advocate and true believer in preparedness, became the champion of nuclear weapons cutback. It was his unlikely destiny to be at the helm of DOE at a sharp juncture in world history. To his credit, he recognized reality and navigated DOE from the Cold War to the post–Cold War era.83

NOTES 1. Interview with Polly Gault, May 18, 1998. 2. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins, April 24, 1998, October 14, 1998, and June 30, 1999. 3. Interview with Leo Duffy, July 24, 1998. 4. Interview with Jim Werner, March 20, 1998. 5. Interview with Steve Blush, July 8, 1999. 6. Ed Magnuson, “They Lied to Us: Unsafe, Aging US Weapons Plants are Stirring Fear and Disillusion,” Time, October 31, 1988, p. 60. F. G. Gosling and Terrence R. Fehner, “Closing the Circle: The Department of Energy and Environmental Management, 1942–1994,” Draft Report (Washington, DC: DOE, 1994), n.152. 7. Interview with Henson Moore, July 25, 1998.

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8. Tritium has a 5.5 percent per year radioactive decay rate. Eliot Marshall, “Savannah River Blues,” Science, October 21, 1988, pp. 363–365. 9. On Watkins’ role in SDI, see Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992). 10. New York Times, January 14, 1989; Washington Post, January 15, 1989. Cited in Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” pp. 55–56 n.167. 11. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 12. Ibid. 13. Interview with Henson Moore. 14. Interview with Henson Moore; interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 15. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins; interview with John Tuck, July 14, 1998. 16. Interview with Steve Blush. 17. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins; interview with Leo Duffy. 18. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 57. 19. Interview with Steve Blush. 20. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 58; interview with Leo Duffy. 21. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” pp. 61–63; interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 22. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 61. 23. Interviews with Steve Blush and Leo Duffy. 24. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 59; interviews with Admiral James Watkins; interview with Leo Duffy. 25. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 56. 26. Interview with Richard Claytor, June 25, 1998. 27. Interview with Richard Stephens, October 21, 1998. 28. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 60. 29. F. G. Gosling and Terrence R. Fehner, “Coming in from the Cold: Regulating US Department of Energy Facilities, 1942–96,” Environmental History (April 1996): 20. 30. Interview with Polly Gault. 31. Interviews with Polly Gault, Henson Moore, Leo Duffy, and Steve Blush. 32. Interview with Henson Moore. 33. Interview with Polly Gault. 34. “Rockwell International eventually pleaded guilty to ten charges of violating federal environmental laws. These included permit violations for the storing of pondcrete (solidified pond sludge) and violations of the Clean Water Act. Rockwell defended its management of the site by asserting that it could not comply with the various environmental laws and still maintain the level of production ordered by DOE.” In 1992, Rockwell agreed to pay an $18.5 million fine. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle.” 35. Interview with Henson Moore. 36. Fehner and Gosling, “Coming in from the Cold,” p. 21. 37. Interview with Polly Gault.

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38. “Energy Czar and Environmental Activist,” Business Week, July 24, 1989, p. 54. 39. Fehner and Gosling, “Coming in from the Cold,” p. 22; Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” pp. 64–65. 40. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 66. 41. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” pp. 68, 71, 72. 42. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 43. “Admiral Watkins’ Toughest Command,” US News & World Report, August 14, 1989, p. 29. 44. Ibid., p. 30; Pat Towell, “Need for a Massive Cleanup May Slow Weapon-Building,” Congressional Quarterly (January 20, 1990): 183. 45. William Lanouette, “James Watkins: Frustrated Admiral of Energy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January, February 1990): 40. 46. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 47. Pat Towell, “Need for a Massive Cleanup May Slow Weapon-Building,” Congressional Quarterly (January 20, 1990): 183. 48. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 76. 49. Ibid., p. 77; Richard Seltzer, “Nuclear Arms Plants: Cleanup Efforts Pick Up Speed,” Chemical and Engineering News, March 5, 1990, p. 4. 50. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 78. 51. Interview with Richard Claytor; Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 86. 52. “Used Nuke Test Plant, Good Condition, All Offers Considered,” Business Week, May 21, 1990, p. 50. 53. R. Jeffrey Smith, “DOE Plans for Production of Nuclear Arms Until 2050,” Washington Post, July 15, 1990. 54. Interview with Richard Claytor. 55. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 56. Interview with John Tuck. 57. Sean O’Keefe, former Defense Comptroller, commented to the author that Barker was a zealot on the issue of nuclear preparedness, August 2, 1999. 58. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 59. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” pp. 94. 60. Holly Idelson, “Nuclear Reactions,” Congressional Quarterly (November 9, 1991): 3297. 61. Interview with John Tuck. 62. Idelson, “Nuclear Reactions”; Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 63. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 94–95. 64. Interviews with Polly Gault and Jim Werner. 65. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 95; Charles Seabrook, “Energy Chief: Nuclear Leak Overblown; Media and State Exaggerated Risk, Watkins Claims,” Atlanta Constitution, January 9, 1992. 66. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 92. 67. Schneider, “Wasting Away”; Holly Idelson, “Watkins’ Seizure of Waste Site Meets with Mixed Reviews”; Congressional Quarterly (October 12, 1991): 2945; Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 97.

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68. Keith Schneider, “US Plans Big Cuts in its Production of Nuclear Arms,” New York Times, December 17, 1991. 69. Interview with Richard Claytor. 70. Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 95. 71. Interview with Steve Blush. 72. “The Energy Department Bungles Again,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 16, 1992; “The Tritium Question,” Congressional Quarterly (April 25, 1992): 1072. 73. Eugene Carroll Jr., “Cleanups Should Begin at Home . . . Bush Plan to Aid Europe, Russia Overlooks 3700 Contaminated Nuclear Sites Here,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, June 16, 1992; Gosling and Fehner, “Closing the Circle,” p. 95. 74. Keith Schneider, “US Dropping Plan to Build Reactor,” New York Times, September 12, 1992. 75. Schneider, “US Dropping Plan”; Carroll, “Cleanups Should Begin at Home”; Thomas Lippman, “US Told to Halt Efforts to Open Atomic-Waste Site,” Washington Post, February 4, 1992. 76. Matthew Wald, “Ex-Energy Chief Says Nuclear Safety Gains Jeopardized,” Houston Chronicle, May 2, 1993. 77. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 78. Interview with Leo Duffy. 79. Interview with Jim Werner. 80. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 81. “A New Administration’s Energy,” Washington Post, January 5, 1993. 82. Watkins believed that another important legacy, unrelated to the nuclear weapons complex, was the National Energy Strategy, much of which was put into legislation in 1992. It expedited a reorganization of the utility industry, and attempted to make progress on CO2 reduction for greenhouse gas mitigation purposes. Interviews with Admiral James Watkins. 83. It may be that history will record that the primary success of the Bush administration was the way it handled the demise of the Soviet Union in general. See Paul Mann, “Mixed Prospects at Best for New Start/ABM Talks,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, August 16, 1999, p. 76.

II Civil-Military and Military-Media Relations

5 Generals versus the President: Eisenhower and the Army, 1953–1955 Andrew J. Bacevich

I Between the autumn of 1953 and the summer of 1955, the leaders of the U.S. Army struggled against a national security policy they thought flawed, dangerous, and even immoral. Ironically, in opposing the strategy of massive retaliation, senior Army leaders placed themselves at cross purposes with a former five-star general who had been elected president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. This case is the story of that conflict. It describes the basis of the Army’s opposition to Eisenhower’s policies and the means that Army leaders chose to advance their position. It also describes the response by civilian leaders determined to prevail in a controversy that in their view touched on core issues of civilian control. Elected by a landslide in November 1952, Eisenhower brought to the presidency clear-cut views regarding American national security policy. In the near term, ending the Korean War stood out as his first priority. Beyond that was the challenge of preserving the American commitment to the policy of containment. The West’s struggle to resist the forces of global communism was likely to continue indefinitely. Without American leadership, that struggle would surely fail. Moreover, Eisenhower believed that the moral, political, and economic—not military—dimensions of the struggle against communism were preeminent. As a candidate, he had vowed to put the nation on course to “achieve both security and solvency.”1 A confident society firmly wedded to its

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political ideals and sustained by a vigorous economy was fundamental to the new president’s conception of grand strategy. Eisenhower accepted his party’s time-honored insistence that the twin keys to a healthy economy were a balanced budget and low taxes. The economy that the new Republican team inherited was not being managed in accordance with these principles. The final budget submitted by the Truman administration projected a federal deficit of $9.9 billion on outlays totaling less than $80 billion. Such profligacy, in Eisenhower’s eyes, courted ruin. But with defense-related spending comprising 62 percent of overall federal spending for fiscal year 1953, eliminating that deficit (without raising taxes) would be possible only by targeting defense for major cuts.2 A reduced defense budget and a smaller military establishment made sense for other reasons as well. Were the country to maintain a huge peacetime defense establishment, Eisenhower feared that it might become a “garrison state.” If insecurity induced Americans to trade their democratic traditions for a semiauthoritarian order and an economy organized to service military needs, the United States might become indistinguishable from its adversaries. Thus, it was imperative to craft military policies that would neither corrupt America politically nor inhibit the working of the nation’s market economy. For the Department of Defense, the implications of this line of thinking were profound. Once in office, Eisenhower and his National Security Council (NSC) wasted no time in spelling out those implications. By April 1953 the new administration had already signaled its intentions, declaring in NSC 149/2, “Basic National Security Policies and Programs in Relation to Their Costs,” that a strong American economy was “a vital factor in the long-term survival of the free world” and warning that deficit spending and high taxes would “weaken and might eventually destroy that economy.” Although short on specifics NSC 149/2 committed the administration to a program of economizing on defense, expanding and modernizing the U.S. Air Force while reducing the size of the Army and the Navy.3 In singling out the Air Force for favored treatment, NSC 149/2 was a harbinger of things to come. In spelling out the details of what would become known as his “New Look” military policy, the president did not proceed arbitrarily. He was committed to consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) prior to rendering a decision. But the new president fully intended that they be his chiefs. Accepting frequently expressed Republican complaints that the Joint Chiefs inherited from Truman had been tainted by their support for Truman’s controversial Korean War policies, Eisenhower purged the JCS soon after taking office. Admiral Arthur W. Radford replaced Omar Bradley as JCS chairman. Admiral Robert B. Carney and General Nathan F. Twining became Navy

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Chief of Naval Operations and Air Force Chief of Staff respectively. For the Army, Eisenhower chose General Matthew B. Ridgway. Knowing that the rush of day-to-day Pentagon business made it difficult to contemplate in anything like real depth, the president directed his new team of military advisers to undertake a broad-gauged study of overall defense policy before taking office. Eisenhower asked for “a fresh view” of strategic concepts, roles and missions, force structure, readiness, and weapons technology, a view that would also take into account the budgetary limitations implied by NSC 149/2. Eisenhower hoped that such a perspective from his top military advisers would aid the NSC “in developing policies for the most effective employment of national resources to insure the defense of our country for the long pull.”4 Preparing this analysis took the incoming chiefs the better part of a month. Even so, the report that they rendered on August 8 was disappointing. In large part, it was a brief for the status quo. The president’s new team of uniformed advisers assessed overall U.S. military planning as “sound and adequate.” They avoided prickly questions related to roles and missions and refused to contemplate any cuts in defense spending, warning that any such reduction “would result in an almost equal reduction in overall security.” Only with regard to U.S. commitments overseas did they offer a concrete suggestion. “We are overextended,” the incoming chiefs declared. Their solution to this predicament was to draw down forward-deployed garrisons and to devote greater attention to continental defense, proposals that were largely irrelevant to the emerging outlines of Eisenhower’s national security policy.5

II One week later, on August 15, 1953, Ridgway was sworn in as chief of staff, U.S. Army. By any measure, the new Army chief was one of the outstanding soldiers of his generation. Son of a career officer, Ridgway had graduated from West Point with the class of 1917. He first achieved distinction as a leader of airborne troops in the European theater during World War II. But Ridgway’s finest hour had come in Korea. Assuming command during the desperate days following the Chinese intervention in the fall of 1950, he revitalized a badly demoralized 8th U.S. Army, energized the UN defensive effort, and turned the tide of battle. It was a superlative demonstration of generalship. Subsequently, Ridgway had replaced Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander Allied Powers in the Pacific and, once Eisenhower decided to enter politics, he had succeeded Ike as NATO military commander.6 Ridgway’s public persona was that of the no-nonsense fighting general. It was an image that he carefully cultivated, posing for official photographs in

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“steel pot” with chin strap dangling while affecting hand grenades as essential to his field uniform. To a large extent, image provided an apt reflection of the man. Ridgway the soldier was tough, competent, and personally courageous. Less evident to the casual observer were a deeply felt moral sensibility and an almost mystical devotion to the ideal of the warrior professional. To Ridgway, preserving the ethos of authentic professionalism was something akin to a religious obligation. Officership was a calling. Although that calling imposed heavy obligations, it granted soldiers distinctive privileges and responsibilities and endowed them with a status apart from—and in some respects above—their fellow citizens. Thus, in remarks made upon taking the oath as chief of staff, Ridgway addressed two related themes: “the maintenance of democratic institutions and the protection of the integrity of the military profession.” True professionalism, he reminded an audience that included Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson and other senior civilian officials, requires “the fearless, forthright expression of honest, objective professional views . . . up to the moment of decision by proper civilian authority. It means completely loyal execution of those decisions once announced.” But it also means “the giving by civilian authorities to their military services of the same unqualified loyalty they receive.” It was, therefore, incumbent upon civilians to “scrupulously respect” the “honestly expressed views of responsible officers,” foregoing any temptation “to force unanimity of view” or “to compel adherence to some politico-military ‘party line.’” In short, “loyalty and complete trust cut both ways. They must flow just as strongly from the top down as from the bottom up.” These were not idle reflections. Ridgway’s forceful statement of the mutual obligations inherent in the civil-military compact was both warning and opening gambit in the Army’s efforts to forestall a forthcoming shift in national security policy.

III The magnitude of that shift soon became apparent. Eisenhower’s New Look exacted draconian cuts of the American defense establishment, with the Army especially hard hit. But for Ridgway, the flaws in the new defense policy went beyond simply reductions in troop strength or defense spending, however painful those might be. The manner in which civilian leaders exacted those cuts violated the civil-military compact and presumed a radical change in its in terms. Furthermore, in Ridgway’s interpretation, if left unchallenged that revision threatened the very viability of the military profession. In the fall of 1953, the National Security Council turned to the task of translating Eisenhower’s promise of “security with solvency” into concrete

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policy. Providing the vehicle for this process was NSC 162, initially drafted in September 1953 as a “Review of Basic National Security Policy.” In considering this document throughout the following month, the NSC wrestled with the question of how best to resolve the tension between military requirements and fiscal constraints. Should security or solvency receive first priority in administration programs? Exceedingly reluctant to commit itself to an either/or proposition, the NSC sought alternatives that would obviate the need to make any such choice, allowing the administration to persuade itself that it was indeed delivering an effective defense at reduced cost. Grasping for an economical alternative to a military establishment that it saw as too large and too expensive, the NSC found its solution in nuclear weapons. By placing primary reliance on “the capability of inflicting massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power,” the United States would be able to deter Soviet aggression while also accruing substantial savings. The idea, said Eisenhower, was “to keep the minimum respectable posture of defense while emphasizing this particular offensive capability.” Ike knew that a general war fought with nuclear weapons was madness. In such a conflict, there would be no winners. The proper aim of U.S. military policy was not to win World War III nor to waste American strength in bloody sideshows but to avoid war altogether. That individual members of the JCS might find this formula difficult to digest, Ike viewed as simply too bad. Responding to a suggestion that the NSC proceedings might make note of certain Pentagon reservations, the president “replied, with considerable warmth, that he would tolerate no notice of a JCS dissent in the record of action. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were his military advisers; he made the decisions.” 7

IV Under the tutelage of Admiral Radford, the JCS was soon hard at work translating the New Look into budget share and force levels. But the resulting squeeze did not affect each of the services equally. Rather, it produced clear winners and clear losers. The biggest winner was the Air Force, in particular the Strategic Air Command (SAC). During the lean years of the New Look, the Air Force grew fat. By 1957, for example, the Air Force budget alone fell just $1 billion short of the Army and Navy budgets combined. For Ridgway’s Army, the New Look was an unmitigated disaster. In December 1953, JCS 2101/113 “Military Strategy and Posture” slashed the Army’s budget for fiscal year 1955 from $13 to $10.2 billion and reduced the size of the Army from 1,540,000 to 1,164,000. This was only the beginning. The Army’s end strength continued to spiral downward, bottoming out at

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859,000. In terms of budget, the news was worse still. While Eisenhower remained in office, the Army’s budget never again reached even $10 billion. The regiments and divisions providing the backbone of the fighting army absorbed the brunt of these cuts. In the field, readiness suffered. Re-enlistments dropped. Morale plummeted.8 In the closing days of 1953, of course, much of this lay in the future. But to Ridgway, that future was clearly visible. By enshrining massive retaliation as the centerpiece of American strategy, the United States in Ridgway’s view was effectively abandoning traditional conceptions regarding the nature and purpose of warfare. Implicit in massive retaliation was the notion that the use of force had lost its value as an instrument of statecraft. That the administration was implicating senior military leaders in discussions leading to the adoption of such a policy violated Ridgway’s sense of civil-military propriety. Worse, this new reliance on nuclear weapons, in Ridgway’s view, seemed to legitimize the targeting of civilians. Given the evidence that the Soviets were embarked upon a program of acquiring their own nuclear arsenal, the logic of retaliation could provide a rationale for preventive war waged against civilians, a prospect that Ridgway viewed as unconscionable. As early as October 13, Ridgway insisted that the administration’s reevaluation of basic policy had inadvertently raised fundamental questions about the soldier’s role and relationship to civilian authority. The Defense Department as a whole, he complained, was “living in a vacuum created by the absence of national policy.” That vacuum was drawing the military into precincts that had hitherto been off-limits. As a result, the distinction between soldier and his civilian masters was becoming blurred in ways that struck Ridgway as dangerous. “The soldier should never have to state what the policy should be. He should stand in his role of saying to the statesman: what is it you want? The statesman should say: this is what we want—what are the military requirements for the reasonable assurance of the attainment of such objectives? We are capable of stating requirements to meet stated objectives. We have not yet [received] the objectives.”9 By venturing into the murky world of high policy, Ridgway feared that soldiers would forfeit the role that had been exclusively theirs: offering professional judgment based solely on the military considerations that justified their claim to a unique status. Even as soldiers were venturing beyond the traditional military sphere, civilian officials were intruding into the military’s business with consequences that in Ridgway’s view were likely to produce a calamity. “There are segments of highly placed, very influential people in our Government, who are playing with the idea that because of this tremendous atomic and nuclear capability we are evolving, the time will soon come . . . when we can scrap our conventional weapons, and rely on knocking out any opponent by unrestricted use of the

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unconventional weapons. That too will lead us to disaster.” Committing the nation to a strategy based on an explicit threat of killing civilians was something that Ridgway found repugnant. Comparing the prospect of “fiscal bankruptcy” to that of “spiritual bankruptcy” of waging war against noncombatants, the latter would unquestionably “be the worse tragedy of the two.”10 Like Eisenhower, Ridgway’s concern was corruption: the compromise of moral values and the sacrifice of principle. Whereas the president feared corruption in the guise of a garrison state, Ridgway believed that it would follow from a conception of war that violated the tenets of traditional military professionalism. For Ike, discarding military orthodoxy seemed a small price to pay if it allowed the nation to achieve security while also preserving its political birthright. Ridgway believed just the reverse: adhering to the standards of professional orthodoxy was the best guarantee against corruption; to abandon those standards was to invite ruin.

V In The Soldier and the State, Samuel P. Huntington poses this question: “What does the military officer do when he is ordered by a statesman to take a measure which is militarily absurd when judged by professional standards and which is strictly within the military realm without political implications?” In Huntington’s view, the answer is clear: given such a “clear invasion of the professional realm by extraneous considerations . . . the existence of professional standards justifies military disobedience.”11 Although not conforming precisely to the conditions specified by Huntington, this was the dilemma that the Army confronted at the end of 1953. In Ridgway’s view, massive retaliation was a military absurdity. He responded not with disobedience but by organizing a campaign of resistance. Viewed in retrospect, that resistance proceeded on three distinct tiers. First, there was direct opposition: Ridgway’s exertions within the JCS and the NSC to overturn massive retaliation. As those efforts failed, Ridgway and other senior Army officers took their case to the media and civilian elites outside of the administration. Superseding both of these efforts was a reaffirmation of basic service doctrine that tacitly repudiated massive retaliation and restated the Army’ s adherence to a theory of warfare based on two abiding principles: first, that force retained political utility even in an atomic age; second, that the proper objective of military force was the destruction not of civilian populations but of the enemy’s armed forces. First in line as a target for direct opposition were the Joint Chiefs themselves. Ridgway argued that for the JCS to incorporate nonmilitary factors into

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their deliberations was itself professionally irresponsible. He urged his colleagues to formulate their recommendations strictly according to military criteria unconstrained by extraneous considerations. This meant, in particular, that in offering advice on military policy, the JCS should disregard budgetary constraints. Ridgway complained that JCS 2101/111 had been anything but the product of objective military analysis. Rather, it was a “directed verdict,” the product of arbitrary fiscal limitations imposed by political authorities.12 As such, it was a document to which the JCS should never have been party. Ridgway insisted that the Joint Chiefs should “recommend strategy based on a military estimate of the situation and not on limitations which are unrelated to the threat to our national security.”13 Such a military estimate, in Ridgway’s view, would focus on one crucial fact: that the Soviet Union was acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, the existence of which would negate whatever military logic the policy of massive retaliation currently possessed. If the United States failed to anticipate this development, argued Ridgway, Americans would soon awake to a situation in which the nation’s chief adversary had achieved parity with the United States in nuclear striking power while already commanding superior conventional strength. Facing this predicament, Ridgway feared that the Joint Chiefs would find themselves being backed into a situation of advocating preventive war as “the only course left open to the United States.” For Ridgway, such a prospect represented the ultimate abdication of professional responsibility. Preventive war, he wrote, “must emphatically be rejected.” Yet to forestall that prospect required that the United States first recover from its infatuation with massive retaliation.14 Ridgway’s JCS colleagues were unmoved. Radford remained steadfast in his support of the administration. With the Air Force as chief beneficiary of Eisenhower’s shift in national security policy, Twining had little cause for complaint. Although Admiral Carney sympathized with elements of Ridgway’s critique, he offered little practical support, preferring to focus the Navy’s energies on capturing its own share of the strategic retaliatory mission. Thus stymied in the JCS, Ridgway turned next to the National Security Council. Long after the council had turned its attention to other matters, Ridgway continued to lobby aggressively against massive retaliation. As it was, Secretary of Defense Wilson and JCS Chairman Radford purported to represent the Pentagon’s corporate view within the NSC. From the Army’s perspective, neither of these officials was an acceptable spokesman. Wilson made no effort to conceal the fact that he had no sympathy for the Army’s complaints about administration policies. Meanwhile, Army leaders accused Radford of playing a double game, posing as disinterested agent of the president while actually using his position to advance key Navy interests.

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On December 3, 1954—more than a year after Eisenhower had approved NSC 162/2 and announced that he would brook no further military dissent—the president let Ridgway present his case directly to the NSC. At a meeting convened specifically for the purpose of hearing him out, Ridgway attacked massive retaliation head on. He warned of the consequences of Soviet-American nuclear parity, a condition that he portrayed as imminent. If in the face of this Soviet nuclear capability the United States simply continued on its present course, it would soon “find itself isolated from the rest of the free world” and in a position of overall military inferiority. To forestall this prospect, Ridgway urged the NSC to adopt a strategy based on the requirements of fighting rather than simply deterring war. According to Ridgway, such a war could occur at any time, in any quarter of the globe and it could be fought either “with or without resort to nuclear weapons.” Yet even if nuclear weapons were employed, there was no guarantee that they would achieve a decision. Ridgway argued that only a force possessing the clear capability of prevailing in a wide range of contingencies could claim real credibility as a deterrent.15 In advocating the creation of a “balanced force,” Ridgway also urged the NSC to give up its preoccupation with fiscal constraints. Strategy, he argued, should derive from the premise that “national security is the primary consideration in determining military programs, and cost secondary.” Assigning primacy to a robust military capability rather than scrimping on defense would save Americans from the temptation of preventive war as an answer to Soviet nuclear parity—a prospect that Ridgway denounced as “devoid of moral principle and . . . foreign to the precepts on which the nation was founded.” Reiterating a familiar theme, he concluded by insisting that “national fiscal bankruptcy would be far preferable to national spiritual bankruptcy.”16 Once Ridgway completed his presentation, Eisenhower asked if there were any questions. There being none, Ridgway was dismissed. Once he had departed, members of the NSC took turns critiquing his presentation. Although Eisenhower spoke briefly on Ridgway’s behalf—he thought that the general was “not merely presenting a ‘parochial’ Army viewpoint”—others present made no effort to be kind.17 Having given Ridgway his day in court, Eisenhower expected that he and the Army would now fall into line. To prevent any misunderstanding on this point, the president on December 22 summoned Secretary Wilson and the Joint Chiefs to the Oval Office. Eisenhower used this occasion to reaffirm his support for massive retaliation as the centerpiece of U.S. national security policy. He restated his belief that “a major war will be an atomic war.” If and when that war occurred, SAC would deliver the American retaliatory response. The Army’s job would simply be to “maintain order” following a nuclear exchange. These roles dictated budgetary priorities that the president viewed as

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no longer subject to debate. Eisenhower emphasized that this was his personal decision. As commander in chief, he reminded them, he was “entitled to the loyal support” of his subordinates. He demanded that the Joint Chiefs conduct themselves accordingly.18 Yet far from diminishing, the Army’s resistance escalated with the coming of the new year. Having failed to budge either the JCS or the NSC, Ridgway and his subordinates took the Army’s case to the public. Press reports of the Army’s continuing opposition to administration policy began to appear with increasing frequency. Service journals welcomed expressions of dissent. Senior Army officers launched a concerted effort to cultivate civilian elites for potential allies. The New York Times that landed on the stoop of the White House on January 1, 1955, served notice that the Army’s unhappiness with the New Look had not abated. The New Year’s Day edition of the Times gave prominent coverage to reports of Ridgway’s objections to the next round of money-saving personnel cuts.19 This was only the beginning. In appearances before military audiences, Ridgway became increasingly candid in upholding the Army’s view of warfare. A speech prepared for service school audiences in early 1955 is representative. In a reference to Bernard Brodie’s famous book (The Absolute Weapon: Absolute Power and World Order) and the school of thought that it had inspired, Ridgway insisted that “the only absolute weapon is man.” Despite “remarkable developments in military technology,” the outcome of future conflicts would be decided precisely as they had been in the past—through the clash of opposing armies in battle. When it came to thinking about wars to come, “no concept could be more potentially dangerous, perhaps even fatal” than to assume that nuclear weapons alone would be decisive. Rather, “only when we close with the enemy on the ground—as only armies can do—can we finally defeat his armed forces, and only by defeating enemy armed forces can we win victory over an enemy nation.” Implicitly rejecting the legitimacy of attacks on civilian populations, Ridgway hewed to tradition in asserting that “the military objective in war is the defeat of the enemy’s armed forces.”20 At one level, such appearances were simply exercises in telling the troops what they wanted to hear: offering assurances that they had not yet become entirely redundant, that SAC was not going to put them completely out of business. But the effect of such remarks rippled far beyond the auditoriums of Fort Benning and Fort Knox. Thus, by early 1955, Army journals were featuring articles such as one submitted by a pseudonymous “Colonel Shillelagh” deploring the way that nuclear weapons had corrupted American thinking about war. As a result of the New Look, wrote Shillelagh:

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We have accepted civil destruction as an object of war and a means of war where formerly it was an incident of war. The question raised is not of humanity but of reality—whether we have forgotten that war is still a political instrument which must have political objectives and methods. This delusion may prove the ultimate irrationality. We have rejected the precept that indecisive brutality and destruction which advantages neither side will be outlawed by mutual consent or forbearance. We expect war to take the form of tremendous destruction on both sides, though we find no purpose in it. We have surrendered to the idea that a capability will be exercised merely because we possess it. We have lost sight of our objective of defeating the enemy armed forces as a means to victory and have substituted for it the intangible will of the enemy to resist. . . . This error leads to the brutalization of war without purpose, to a preoccupation with mass de21 struction, to the neglect of the political realities.

Shillelagh was by no means alone. Major General James M. Gavin, the Army’s G3, agreed that the New Look was fundamentally flawed. Gavin began inviting disaffected officers from the Army staff to his Pentagon office on Saturday mornings, there to refine the Army’s critique of massive retaliation. Gavin insisted that the purpose of this “coordinating group” was not to orchestrate “a revolt against DOD’s policies.” According to Gavin, the group sought ways of bringing “to the attention of everyone concerned the intellectual implications of the bombing policy.” The intent was “to help people think through the implications of such a national policy,” something that Gavin insisted “the American people were entitled to.”22 Nor did Army dissenters limit themselves to internal audiences. For example, at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations on February 14, 1955, Ridgway attacked the notion of assigning primacy to deterrence, insisting that the Army which he led existed “for the single purpose of victory in battle and success in war.” For such an Army, deterrence could never be more than a “subsidiary purpose.” Despite the availability of nuclear weapons, the ultimate “object of war” remained what it had been since time immemorial: gaining “control of land and the people on it.” This, of course, was ineluctably the business of ground forces. Nuclear weapons would have a role to play in future campaigns—Ridgway declared it “inconceivable that a nation would not use every weapon at its disposal”—but it did not follow that such weapons would be decisive.23 Gavin’s participation in a council study group convened to examine “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” offered a similar critique of administration policy. At a study group meeting on May 4, 1955, Gavin warned that even if an American attack “atomized” the entire Soviet Union, “the Red Army would still be rolling.” Furthermore, with Western Europeans developing a bad case of “nuclear neurosis” as they contemplated the prospect of a war fought with

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nuclear weapons on their territory, it was imperative that the United States retain the means “to attack the USSR without reducing the Allies to ashes.” The point was not to ignore nuclear weapons, but to avoid becoming overly dependent upon them. Gavin illustrated his point with an analogy. “The patrolman may have a tommy gun back at the station house as his ultimate weapon, but he uses his night stick to subdue the criminal without punching holes in the local populace.” Similarly, he concluded, “the United States has got to demonstrate that it has the power and the discretion to win local scraps without destroying European civilization.”24 Spanning this direct and indirect opposition was a concerted program of doctrinal dissent. In effect, the Army opted out of massive retaliation, declaring its belief in a theory of warfare consistent with traditional concepts of military professionalism. A highlight of Ridgway’s tenure as chief of staff was the revision of Army Field Manual 100–5, Field Service Regulations: Operations.25 FM 100–5 is the bible of Army doctrine, specifying basic operational principles and providing an institutional template for matters ranging from tactics to training to organization. When Ridgway became chief of staff, the Army was still using an edition of FM 100–5 published in 1949. It badly needed overhaul. The revised Field Service Regulations promulgated over Ridgway’s signature in September 1954 responded to that requirement. The new manual incorporated lessons of the Korean War and reflected the latest thinking about how to adapt to a nuclear battlefield. Beyond such operational matters, the new FM 100–5 also incorporated three broad themes. The first theme was an insistence that the use of force retained political legitimacy, in other words, that the role of American military forces extended beyond deterrence. The second theme was that a policy resting on a willingness to wage war against civilians was both politically ill-advised and morally unacceptable. The third theme was that the clash of land armies remained the inescapable medium through which wars were decided—this notwithstanding the advent of new technologies. Thus, for example, chapter 1 of Ridgway’s new FM 100–5 returned to the very taproot of military orthodoxy, restating the principle that “war is a political act.” Viewed in this context, military forces were “instruments of national policy” employed to achieve objectives that were themselves inherently political. “If the policy objectives are to be realized, policy and not interim expediency must govern the application of military power.” Since the single-minded pursuit of military success could produce results that were politically absurd, “victory alone as an aim in war” was unacceptable. To make the point more plainly, FM 100–5 stated flatly that as far as the Army was concerned “indiscriminate destruction is unjustifiable in a military sense.” As a result, for its

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part, the Army did not “deliberately make or invite war upon civilian populations.” Instead, the Army sought “the defeat of an enemy by application of military power directly or indirectly against the armed forces which support his political structure.” In the final analysis, decision over those enemy forces was gained through ground combat, a fact that affirmed the Army’s preeminence as “the decisive component of the military structure.”26 Although published in September 1954, it was January 4, 1955, before the manual came to public attention, courtesy of a front-page story in the New York Times. One day later, an irritated Eisenhower felt compelled yet again to explain—and defend—his views on national security, this time in the form of a public letter to Secretary of Defense Wilson in which he reiterated the major themes of his national security policies. According to the president, the proper basis for “true security” was a “strong and expanding economy.” With regard to defense, Eisenhower emphasized that the “first objective” was “to deter an enemy from attack.” Given the influence of “scientific progress” on the “character and conduct of war,” it made sense for the United States to “base our security on military formations which make maximum use of science and technology in order to minimize numbers of men.” By reducing the total number of military personnel, the United States would avoid having defense become “an intolerable burden” and would be better positioned to compete with the Soviets over the long haul. Just as the Army’s new FM 100–5 never referred explicitly to any specific administration policy, so too the President’s letter of January 5 studiously avoided any reference to Ridgway’s critique.27 VI By early February, even Republican Senate leaders were complaining to Eisenhower of Ridgway’s opposition to administration policies long after the time for debate and discussion had passed. The complaint lodged by Senate leaders provoked Eisenhower to explain his differences with Ridgway in the plainest possible terms. As Ridgway correctly understood, those differences were rooted in contradictory visions of the future of war and of the relevance of the military profession. “You see,” the president explained, the only thing we fear is an atomic attack delivered by air on our cities. Suppose that attack were to occur tomorrow on fifteen of our cities. God damn it. It would be perfect rot to talk about shipping troops abroad when fifteen of our cities were in ruins. You would have disorder and almost complete chaos in the cities and in the roads around them. You would have to restore order and who is going to restore it? Do you think the police and fire departments of those cities could restore order? Nuts! That order is going to have to be restored by disciplined armed forces. . . . That’s what our military is

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going to be doing in the first days of an all-out atomic attack. . . . Anyone who thinks we are going to immediately ship out of this country division after division is just talking through his hat. It couldn’t be done and if I tried to do it, you would want to impeach me. That’s the trouble with Ridgway. He’s talking theory—I’m trying to talk sound 28 sense.

Yet the “theory” that Ridgway espoused was nothing less than the insistence that force retained utility as a continuation of politics, notwithstanding the introduction of nuclear weapons. Whatever the “sound sense” of Eisenhower’s thinking as a basis for national security policy in the particular circumstances of the mid-1950s, Ridgway viewed those policies as a direct threat to the military profession that he cherished and of which he viewed himself as a custodian. In January, published reports had indicated that Ridgway would be appointed to a second two-year term. By March, the administration had reversed course, announcing that the general would retire at the end of June, citing age as the ostensible reason. The truth was that Ridgway had made himself persona non grata and that Eisenhower was determined to replace him with someone more accommodating. In effect, Ridgway was being fired.29 He would not go quietly. If anything, the announcement that he was being eased into retirement freed Ridgway from any need to exercise restraint. Fresh salvos of protest accompanied his departure from active duty. Eisenhower, the revered national hero, remained off-limits to direct attack. The same could not be said for Secretary Wilson, the president’s chief agent in inflicting the New Look on the Army. On June 27, 1955—just three days before his retirement—Ridgway sent Wilson a final report that was a catalogue of his disagreements with the administration over the previous two years: questions about the efficacy of massive retaliation in an era of atomic plenty; the concern that policies based on the possibility of all-out nuclear war were inconsistent with America’s traditional “religious and moral principles”; the warning against allowing military advisers to become politicized and coopted by civilian officials with little appreciation of the soldier’s role; the refusal to abandon the Army’s traditional conception of warfare “in order to accommodate enthusiastic theorists having little or no responsibility for the consequences of following the courses of action they advocate.”30 The report soon leaked to the press where it attracted widespread attention. Attracting much less publicity and yet arguably of greater significance was Ridgway’s testimonial to his fellow soldiers, released on the very eve of his retirement ceremony. In DA Pamphlet 21–70 published over his signature on June 29, Ridgway made one final effort to prescribe “The Role of the Army.”

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Whatever the changes in warfare brought about by modern technology, DA Pam 21–70 declared that the Army remained “the decisive instrument.” As in the past so in the future, wars would be decided by “the trained fighting man who, with his feet on the ground, defeats the enemy’s ground fighters, seizes his land, and holds it.” Directly contradicting one of the abiding principles of Eisenhower’s national security policy, DA Pam 21–70 declared that “We need more men, not less.”31 Having rid himself of one general who epitomized traditional military professionalism, Ike chose as his replacement an officer who personified the new model soldier, the polished, and politically astute Maxwell D. Taylor. In offering Taylor the job of Army chief of staff, the President established two preconditions: he wanted Taylor to give first priority to his duties as a member of the JCS rather than to his responsibilities as service chief; and he demanded Taylor’s pledge that he would “hold views as to doctrine, basic principles, and relationships which are in accord with those of the president.”32 Taylor acceded to both preconditions—and in short order proceeded to disregard them both. Taylor’s own tenure as chief of staff was marked by more friction as Army opposition to the Eisenhower administration’s policies persisted. Yet Taylor achieved no greater success at modifying those policies than had his predecessor. Like Ridgway, his departure from active duty would be an angry one, accompanied by his famous indictment The Uncertain Trumpet, a book that signified the end of the era of massive retaliation and marked the beginning of the era of “Flexible Response.”33

NOTES 1. New York Times, 26 September 1952, p. 12. 2. Federal spending for fiscal year 1953 totaled $74.1 billion. Of that, $44 billion was for defense and another $2.4 billion for veterans affairs. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1975), p. 1114. 3. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954: National Security Affairs, Part 1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1984), pp. 307, 310. Hereafter cited as FRUS. 4. Eisenhower to Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, 1 July 1953, cited in Robert J. Watson, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1953–1954 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1986), pp. 14–15. 5. Ibid., pp. 18–19. 6. There is no adequate biography of Ridgway. The most complete account of his life and career remains his own memoir, Soldier (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956).

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7. FRUS, 1952–1954: National Security Affairs, Part 1, p. 574. The final document approved by the Council as NSC 162/2 “Basic National Security Policy” is reprinted on pp. 578–97. 8. A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986), pp. 15–21. 9. Ridgway, “Memorandum for the Record,” 19 October 1953, Box 28, The Papers of Matthew B. Ridgway, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Hereafter cited as Ridgway Papers. 10. Ibid. 11. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 77. 12. Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army, Subject: Military Strategy and Policy (JCS 2102/111), 9 December 1953, Box 825, Army Chief of Staff Decimal File, 1953, Records of the Army Staff (Record Group 319), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. 13. Memorandum by the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, Subject: Joint Strategic Objective Plan for an Assumed D-Date of 1 July 1956, 10 March 1954, CCS 381 (11–29–49), Sec. 12, Box 115, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Record Group 218), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. Hereafter cited as RG 218. 14. Memorandum by the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, Subject: Basic National Security Policy, undated [October 1954], CCS 381 U.S. (1–31–50), Sec. 47, Box 37, RG 218, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. Section 47 of this file contains two identically titled but substantively different memoranda from Ridgway. The first was drafted sometime after 20 October, the second after 26 October. 15. Memorandum for the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Subject: Review of Basic National Security Policy (NSC 162/2 and NSC 5422/2), 22 November 1954, Box 30, Ridgway Papers. 16. Ibid. 17. FRUS, 1952–1954: National Security Affairs, Part 1, pp. 804–6. 18. Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum of Conference with the President, 22 December 1954, Box 3, Ann Whitman File (Ann Whitman Diary), papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. 19. New York Times, 1 January 1955, p. 5. 20. Ridgway, “Man: The Virtual Weapon,” Army Combat Forces Journal 5 (March 1955): 16, 19. 21. Colonel Shillelagh, “ . . . trouble with cavalry is . . . ,” Army Combat Forces Journal 5 (February 1955): 16, 18. 22. James Gavin, “Beyond the Stars,” pp. 187–90, the papers of James M. Gavin, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. 23. Ridgway, “The Soldier and National Policy,” 14 February 1955, vol. 21, Records of Meetings, Archives of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York. Hereafter cited as CFR.

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24. “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” 4 May 1955, vol. 60, Records of Groups, CFR; in addition, see the remarks by Lieutenant General Lyman L. Lemnitzer as the study group meeting of 21 February 1955, also filed in volume 60. 25. Department of the Army, FM 105–5 Field Service Regulations: Operations (September 1954). 26. Ibid., pp. 4–7. 27. Eisenhower to Wilson, 5 January 1955, Box 27, Ridgway Papers. 28. Robert C. Ferrell, ed., The Diary of James C. Haggerty (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 181–84. 29. New York Times, 21 January 1955, p. 1; 26 March 1955, p. 6. See also Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 234. 30. Ridgway’s final report to Wilson reprinted in Soldier, pp. 323–32. 31. DA Pamphlet 21–70, “The Role of the Army” (29 June 1955), pp. 7, 9, 14; copy filed in Box 28, Ridgway Papers. 32. E. Bruce Geelhoed, Charles E. Wilson and Controversy at the Pentagon, 1953–1957 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), pp. 136–38. 33. Douglas Kinnard, “Civil-Military Relations: The President and the General,” in The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945–1960, ed. Norman A. Graebner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 204.

6 “Rotation from Hell”: The 48th Infantry Brigade, Georgia Army National Guard in Desert Shield/Desert Storm Eliot A. Cohen

“The 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Georgia National Guard appears to exemplify all that can go wrong with the Total Force policy. Some $40 million a year was spent to train and equip the 48th, which was considered a crack Guard unit. In the event of war, it was scheduled to augment the regular Army’s 24th Mechanized Infantry Division. Said General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the 24th before he was tapped to lead Desert Storm: ‘I expect them to fight alongside us. They are, in fact, combat ready.’ “But when the 24th Division was rushed to the Gulf last August, the 48th, which was finally called up on Nov. 30, was replaced by a regular Army brigade. In December the 48th was put through a rigorous desert-warfare program at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. It was not until Feb. 28, the day the gulf war ended, that the 48th was deemed fit to fight. “Brigadier General William A. Holland, commander of the 48th until his dismissal last February, maintains his unit was a victim of Army politics. ‘There is no question I was the whipping boy of the Army,’ Holland said. ‘They had us convinced that we weren’t worth a toot. But in mock battles we did well.’ Army officials, however, insist that the 48th suffered from deficient leadership and training, poorly maintained equipment and key

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FIFTY-SIX DAYS AT THE NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER They still call it that—“the Rotation from Hell.” Normally, a unit sent to the Army’s National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, spends something like three weeks drawing equipment and then engaging in mock tank battles with a Soviet-style enemy in the harsh Mojave Desert. In the winter of 1990, however, the hapless 4,200 National Guardsmen of the 48th Infantry Brigade, Georgia Army National Guard, spent nearly two months training at the NTC. Called up on November 30th, it took the 48th a month to get to Fort Irwin, arriving on December 27, 1990, and remaining until March 4, 1991. It was a bitterly frustrating experience for the Georgians, even though their proficiency in everything from gunnery to maintenance improved markedly, and many thought they had honed their soldierly skills to a fine edge. It was not supposed to have been this way. They were, after all, the third brigade of the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the heavy punch in the XVIII Airborne Corps, the first heavy (i.e., armored or mechanized) division to deploy to the Persian Gulf in the fall of 1990. The 48th Brigade had been told by Schwarzkopf himself, when he had served as division commander, that they would deploy with the 24th, and they had expected—with mixed feelings of pride and anxiety—to go to war with their parent unit. The 48th Brigade had received unusually high priority for the Army’s front-line equipment, including M-1 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Its units had, in fact, undergone regular rotations at the NTC. Even in the midst of Desert Shield, the Defense Department had reaffirmed the principle that “reserve forces should be capable of providing combat as well as support units for contingencies expected to last longer than 60 days. . . . Included in these forces would be roundout combat units.”2 Yet when the time came, the Army replaced the 48th with a regular Army brigade (the 197th Independent Brigade), and sent the Georgians off for protracted training to the NTC. The irony of the 48th being certified combat ready by U.S. Second Army on 28 February 1991, the very last day of the Persian Gulf War, was lost on no one. The new commander of the 48th (his predecessor was relieved at Fort Irwin) came away sobered by the experience: “It showed me what I didn’t know we didn’t know.”3 Officially, the National Guard Bureau viewed the saga of the 48th Brigade as a success for the unit, if not for Army-Guard relations.

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According to Lt. Gen. John B. Conaway, chief of the National Guard Bureau, speaking before the House Armed Services Committee in March 1991 “The 48th is fully trained and ready for worldwide contingency deployment. The brigade completed training with exceptional success.”4 Active duty commanders had a more modest take: Maj. Gen. Thomas H. Tait, deputy commander of Second U.S. Army suggested that “the fact that the 48th Brigade was validated in 120 days was a success story.” The commander of Second U.S. Army, Lt. Gen. James W. Crysel, argued that “The fact that we got the 48th ready to go in 120 (days) is great because in World War II it took over a year.”5 Moreover, Bush administration officials pointed out, the story of the 48th and the two other roundout brigades (which were even less ready for war) was but a small part of a much larger and successful story of the Gulf War reserve call up, which included the mobilization of some 228,000 reservists, 140,000 from the Army Reserve and National Guard.6 Two senior generals who conducted the war—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, and commander in chief of Central Command Norman Schwarzkopf—do not even mention the 48th Brigade in their memoirs. But for other observers, then and later, the tale of the woes of the 48th Brigade was an important, and, unfortunately, a negative story. Since the mid-1970s U.S. Army policy and force structure planning had designated Guard brigades to provide one third of the maneuver forces in divisions like the 24th Infantry Division. For some regular officers, the time taken to prepare the 48th for combat reflected the inability of the National Guard to provide substantial land combat power in a timely fashion. For some Guardsmen, however, the 48th’s tale was one more episode in a story of regular Army mistrust of the National Guard, and indeed, desire to sideline it. For both sides, the “rotation from Hell” confirmed their belief that the other half of the Army simply could not be trusted.

A LEGACY OF MISTRUST The National Guard and the U.S. Army had never really gotten along very well. Rooted in the preindependence tradition of local militias, which were composed of citizen-soldiers reporting for varying amounts of training and electing their own officers, the National Guard was and remains a powerful political as well as military institution. The Army (unlike the Marine Corps and the Navy) has, in fact, two reserve organizations—the National Guard and a smaller Reserve composed of specialized support and training organizations. The latter is under exclusive Army control; the former under a complex system of joint state and federal regulation. (The Air Force, which has both Reserve

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and National Guard components, makes extensive use of part-time airmen in many areas, including airlift, refueling, and combat logistics support.) George Washington, former regular commander of the only semiregular colonial force in Virginia during the French and Indian War, was often exasperated at the militia of the American Revolution, who appeared, consumed rations, and disappeared—sometimes in the heat of battle. He clamored for a system of regular enlistments, and the creation of a small, full-time army, albeit backed by the traditional militia system. During the Civil War the struggle between citizen-soldier and professional grew more acrimonious, as West Point graduates and civilians-turned-general sniped at one another. In the wake of that conflict a brilliant Army officer, Maj. Gen. (brevet) Emory Upton penned a long, vitriolic study that denounced the militia system as the bane of military efficiency. Resurrected during the period of reform following the Spanish-American War, Upton’s book, The Military Policy of the United States, provided the core of the argument against the militia. It was bound, in his view and that of his supporters, to be inefficient (how could part-time soldiers match the efficiency of regulars?) and corrupt, because of the dominance of state governments in the appointment of officers. A small regular army, possibly backed by a completely federal reserve force would suffice for times of peace; in war, the country should rely on systematic conscription into an expansible force, whose skeleton would consist of a cadre of professional sergeants and officers. Guardsmen defended, no less vociferously, the record of part-time soldiers in all of America’s wars, pointing not only to the constitutional case for the militia, but to the talent and cohesion it brought to battle. In a series of bruising political fights following the shambling mobilization of the Army for the Spanish-American War, a compromise evolved, beginning with the Militia Act of 1903. The state militias became largely subsumed into the newly created National Guard. In return for varying degrees of federal control (including the setting of standards for training and equipment, as well as the possibility of mobilization by presidential order), the National Guard preserved its units (many with traditions going back to Revolutionary times) and, indeed, established itself as a force to be reckoned with. To the present day, state adjutants general are powerful figures, some of them elected, who can remain in office for ten years or more, accumulating influence and local political power. In the mobilizations that followed, the National Guard remained a subject of controversy. Between 1940 and 1942 Army Chief of Staff George Marshall ruthlessly purged National Guard divisions of incompetent officers, although he did the same to the regulars as well. Throughout the twentieth century the National Guard lobby—spearheaded by the National Guard Association of the

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United States, which rests on a national network of locally prominent citizens—acquired a formidable reputation, although it could not prevent the slashing of Guard units by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s. During Vietnam, service in the National Guard offered an honorable alternative to draft evasion or resistance. Political leaders shied away from calling up the National Guard, fearing that such a move would require all-out mobilization for war, a highly undesirable escalation of the Indochina conflict. It was, indeed, over the question of a National Guard call-up that the Johnson administration decided to cap American forces in Vietnam and begin serious exploration of a way out of that war. After Vietnam, however, the U.S. Army, in what seemed a reversal of its traditional attitudes, embraced the National Guard. In a Defense Department-wide reversal of traditional practice, the military was now a “Total Force,” in which reservists and regulars were each essential to the nation’s military force. In 1973 the Army went further, adopting the “roundout” concept, which entailed creating divisions with two active and one National Guard brigade. By 1988 a third of the Army’s active divisions had a roundout brigade. The Army had several reasons for making this change. The country’s abandonment of the draft after Vietnam led to a sharp decline in the size of the active duty American military and higher personnel costs associated with the All-Volunteer Force, problems compounded by a declining defense budget. These developments naturally inclined civilian and military leaders to turn to the cheaper reserves to flesh out the force. The Army found the roundout concept congenial for two further reasons: it allowed an expansion of the Army’s force structure from thirteen divisions in 1973 to sixteen and later eighteen divisions by the mid-1980s, even though active duty Army manpower remained static at roughly 780,000. Roundout also addressed one of the Army’s deepest concerns about the Vietnam War—its rupture with American society. For the Army, in the twentieth century the largest service and the one closest to the public, the vilification and abuse experienced by veterans of the Indochina War left indelible scars. Army chief of staff from 1972 to 1974, General Creighton Abrams, in particular, believed that if the Army were ever to become unrepresentative of the broader society, “then it’s not an Army of the United States.” He was determined, moreover, to make sure that Army would never again go to war without public support. General John W. Vessey Jr., who worked closely with Abrams and subsequently became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled it this way:

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“They’re not taking us to war again without calling up the reserves,” he heard Abrams say on many occasions. Was part of the thinking in integrating the reserves so deeply into the active force structure that we were making it very difficult, if not impossible, for the President to deploy any significant force without calling up the reserves? 7 “‘That’s it, with malice aforethought,” said Vessey, “the whole exercise.”

The linkage of the National Guard to the Army through the roundout concept would therefore serve two functions beyond the mere provision of manpower: it would keep the Army out of unpopular wars, and it would help ensure that the Army reflected the society it existed to defend. In the crunch in 1991, however, the Army did not go to war as it had said it would. Many reservists (including soldiers in a National Guard artillery brigade) served in the Persian Gulf, but the most visible units in the National Guard, its maneuver brigades including its premier heavy unit, the 48th, did not. Why?

INVESTIGATIONS AND CONTROVERSY The mobilization of the 48th took place in the full glare of the media, particularly in Georgia, home state of the influential Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the Democratic party’s leading defense experts. Both House and Senate Armed Services Committees held hearings into the reserve call-up, and the government commissioned studies by the General Accounting Office, the RAND corporation, and the Congressional Budget Office. Outside experts added further to the volume of paper, while journalists and publicists continued to report on the experiences of the 48th. The official line of the Bush administration and the Army went as follows. The original roundout concept had assumed a period of mobilization before deployment. Forty-five days was the accepted figure, although experience later suggested that ninety days would have been more realistic. In the emergency of August 1990, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the urgent need was to get forces to Southwest Asia, hence the decision to deploy the 24th Infantry Division without calling up the 48th Brigade. The initial reserve call-up was small (less than 25,000), and all in support units for the immediate emergency in the Gulf. The president did not decide until November to double forces in Saudi Arabia, providing the United States and its allies with an offensive option on the ground. Until that time, the active duty forces present in, or deploying to Southwest Asia sufficed. Furthermore, under the law as it stood in September 1990, the president could call up the National Guard for

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only 90 days, with a 90-day extension at his discretion (Congress later extended this authority to two 180-day call-ups). Once the president decided to deploy an offensive force (continues the official story) , the Pentagon activated the 48th, albeit with some delay. It began to train; various unanticipated deficiencies in the expertise of its junior leaders, plus the sheer difficulty of preparing a force of thousands of part-timers for the complexities of ground warfare, made a fifty-six–day rotation at the NTC imperative. General Edwin Burba Jr., commander of U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) shrugged off criticism-saying “We had planned that there would be sufficient warning time to train them up to go to war. That did not occur in this case.”8 The leaders of Second Army, which assumed responsibility for the 48th Brigade now that the 24th Infantry Division had deployed to the Persian Gulf, insisted on thorough preparation for combat. An unfortunate matter of timing—the Gulf War began some six weeks after the initial activation, and lasted about that length of time thereafter—prevented the 48th from going to the Gulf. According to Second Army, even the relief of Brig. Gen. William Holland, commander of the 48th, was not a dismissal: “The Georgia governor and adjutant general said they desperately needed him in Georgia to command another unit,” said the spokesman for Brig. Gen. Clark, the NTC commander.9 National Guard personnel, beginning with the unhappy soldiers of the 48th Brigade, had a different view from the outset. They interpreted the delay in calling up the unit as a reflection of the regular Army’s reluctance to see any combat units from the Guard sent to Southwest Asia. Grumbled one sergeant in February 1991, “The biggest feeling we’re getting is that the Army doesn’t want us.”10 General Holland insisted that he had been fired, a point on which National Guard officers (including those who believe that he was a poor commander) agreed. He said further that the Army had only called up the 48th because of political pressure from Georgia’s powerful congressional delegation, and that the unit had been treated badly from the outset.11 The remarks of the Second U.S. Army commander, General Crysel, suggest that Holland was not entirely imagining things. Shortly after the 48th had deployed to the NTC, Crysel decided that he or his chief of staff had to stay there at all times to keep an eye not on the unit, but on the resident staff of regular Army officers. They [the NTC staff] knew all the 48th key players so they had already made up their mind, “here comes the Guard.” And it was my job to turn that around. . . . Initially there were incidents of finger-pointing, but after a few days I sat him [the NTC commander, Brig. Gen. Wesley Clark] and some of his people down and said, “You know we’re all in

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this thing together. If the 48th does well out here it’s because we all did a good job. If they fail, it’s because we all failed. And it’s not going to be Second U.S. Army failing or the brigade failing. Colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors and captains, all handpicked 12 to be out here, you have failed also.” That night was a big turning point.

National Guard personnel noted, in defense of the 48th’s performance, that it had drawn worn-out equipment at the NTC, and that it lacked the maintenance infrastructure at Fort Irwin normally provided at home station by civilian experts or by the 24th Infantry Division. Indeed, almost all the base operation units at Fort Stewart, Georgia, had deployed with the 24th Division, complicating the mobilization of some 10,000 reservists (including those of the 48th) who had to flow through that base.13 When the 48th Brigade did deploy to the National Training Center it had with it none of the usual “division slice”—the supporting units from the division that normally support units at the NTC. Furthermore, Guardsmen pointed out that many under-strength active units were brought up to strength by heroic efforts and then trained for periods of time similar to theirs before the ground war began on February 24, 1991. “Had [the 48th brigade] received the requisite resources, which the rest of the Army had ‘hosed’ on the 24th Division, it could have achieved C-1 quickly. The post-mobilization training imposed on the 48th, including Gulf area special training, required less than 90 days.”14 Proud of his unit’s turnout rate and motivation (fewer than one percent of the Guardsmen failed to report for the call-up), the unit’s new commander ascribed the length of the NTC rotation to a variety of causes, including inadequate supplies of spare parts, as well as “a lack of urgency in getting the brigade to Southwest Asia.”15 He would, he said, have recommended deploying the brigade at the end of 41 days, had it been needed.

ALL THAT THEY COULD BE? MANPOWER IN THE 48th BRIGADE The Army and the administration emphasized issues of timing and only a somewhat longer train-up period than expected, while the National Guard brooded on active duty Army attitudes and on an absence of expected logistical support. Other studies probed problems of training and preparation. They told the story of a unit considerably behind its active duty counterparts in a number of respects, but above all, human resources. The National Guard brigades had not trained to maintain vehicles in the field to nearly the levels required for field service, largely because civilian mechanics had taken care of much of that work at home station. Given the limited time available for training in peacetime, the Guard emphasized tactical train-

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ing rather than maintenance. Similarly, the Guard’s unique (and antiquated) supply system meant that supply clerks in the 48th had to wrestle with the regular Army’s unfamiliar computerized system—which led to such errors as ordering M-60 tank parts for their new M-1s. 16 Strict standards for deployability—in particular, medical and dental examinations—meant that at one point nearly 50 percent of the 48th were officially undeployable, although in most cases this simply reflected a lack of a recent exam on the record.17 Ten percent of the assigned strength remained undeployable, however, in mid-February 1991.18 Overall, the unit reported for duty at 89 percent of assigned strength, and with only 71 percent of its troopers qualified in their military occupational specialties. The 48th faced a shortage of key specialties: on mobilization it had only 50 percent of the number of Bradley Fighting Vehicle system mechanics that it required, and although the Army made up that number after mobilization, it put the unit behind from the outset.19 The preparation of unit leaders was another and more serious issue: one tenth of the brigade’s officers were replaced during the four month call-up.20 Barely half of the captains in the 48th had completed their branch’s Advanced Course, as compared to over 95 percent in the 197th Brigade that replaced it.21 Noncommissioned officers (NCOs) were similarly undertrained, although National Guard officers stoutly maintained that the stability of manpower in Guard units compensated for the lack of formal training. In fact, mistrust of the 48th Brigade’s officers and noncommissioned officers ran deep in the regular army. Maj. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division in Desert Storm, said after the war, “I believed that it would have taken 120 days to get the brigade ready for combat. I had intended to infuse active component officers into the brigade and to replace battalion and company executive officers with officers from the active component.”22 McCaffrey was not alone. In an annex to the Department of the Army Inspector General’s report, Sergeant Major Robert D. Easterling was scathing about Guard noncommissioned officers in the three roundout brigades called up, including the 48th:

As a whole, the NCO corps within the National Guard Roundout brigades fail to meet the traditional standards expected of NCOs. . . . Most of the NCOs do not demonstrate an understanding or use of leadership principles. Although the NCO may know his strengths and weaknesses, countless interviews with NCOs reveal no real desire to seek self-improvement. The NCOs see no incentive to put forth additional effort for self-improvement. . . . Most immediate supervisors do not understand the need to care for their subordinates’ physical and safety needs, as well as the need to discipline and reward them fairly. . . . There is little evidence NCOs in the brigades strive to develop a 23 sense of responsibility in their subordinates.

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The Guard, of course, took a very different view, arguing that patterns of discipline were naturally different among part-time soldiers than regular ones, and that the highly structured training regimen at the National Training Center prevented NCOs and officers from displaying leadership qualities. By keeping regular personnel in charge of all training activities, junior leaders were prevented from acting like leaders. “It’s a red herring,” said one senior National Guard officer who participated in the Inspector General’s report.24 Some of the 48th’s problems were known, of course, before the mobilization for Desert Storm, but others were masked by the Army’s readiness rating system. The military evaluates units according to SORTS, the Status of Resources and Training System. Under SORTS units were designated as follows (emphasis added): • C-1. Unit possesses the required resources and is trained to undertake the full wartime mission for which it is organized or designed. • C-2. Unit possesses the required resources and is trained to undertake the bulk of the wartime mission for which it is organized or designed. • C-3. Unit possesses the required resources and is trained to undertake major portions of the wartime mission for which it is organized or designed. • C-4. Unit requires additional resources and/or training in order to undertake its wartime mission, but if the situation dictates, it may be directed to undertake portions of its wartime mission with resources on-hand. • C-5. Unit is undergoing a service-directed resource change and is not prepared, at this time, to undertake the wartime mission for which it is organized or designed.

The 48th, like many active brigades, was rated as C-2 before Desert Shield, based on largely quantitative measures (numbers of soldiers in required specialties, pieces of equipment, and the like). Officially, at any rate, it was as ready as most active units—in fact, more ready than many active units, which were rated C-3.25 Personnel deficiencies, however, suggested that a rating of C-4 would have more accurately reflected the real views senior Army officers had of the 48th. Some analysts came away from the Gulf War convinced that expectations for mobilization training had been seriously wrong for some time. Bernard Rostker of the RAND corporation noted that before the Gulf War estimates of the time required to prepare heavy National Guard brigades for combat ran between twenty and sixty days, but “the actual mobilization experience in Desert Storm ranged from about 100 days to 135 days, with 100 days really being a truncation of training at the end of the Gulf War.” He estimated 128 days as the real norm to prepare a brigade of part-time soldiers for war.26

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Combat support and combat service support units—logistical and technical units—performed well in the Gulf, as did some reserve artillery units. The Marine Corps did deploy reserve maneuver units, including a reserve tank battalion, one of whose companies satisfactorily defeated Iraqi armor in a sharp engagement. The Marines, however, assigned an active duty officer to command the Marine Forces Reserve, and had some 4,500 active duty Marines—roughly 10 percent the size of the reserve force—assigned to reserve units.27 By way of contrast, the Army National Guard had, in the early 1990s, only a few hundred active duty officers assigned to its units, in part because of Guard resistance to Army certification of Guard training. Air National Guard pilots flew combat missions, but the Air Force’s reliance on these fully trained officers (most with prior military service), as well as enlisted personnel, many of whom were applying civilian skills to military life, was not a satisfactory analogy. Ground combat requires not merely the mastery of defined technical skills, but the achievement of organizational qualities of a high order. Clearly, the Army did not feel that the 48th had met those standards.

THE LINGERING FEUD “Relations between the active Army and its National Guard component have never been worse. The rivalry has always been present, but rarely has the internecine warfare been waged in public. That changed with the Persian Gulf conflict.”28 Thus wrote Martin Binkin, one of the leading military manpower analysts in the United States in 1993. The Gulf War occurred just as the American military had begun its substantial reduction from the force levels of the Cold War. As part of this drawdown, the National Guard came in for cuts, paralleling those of the active forces. In truth, the Army National Guard, protected in large part by Congress, took only a 20 percent personnel cut from 1990 to 1997 while the active Army and Army Reserve’s manpower cuts had amounted to roughly 33 percent each. Still, the sense of grievance remained. In 1997 a further reduction of some 38,000 positions out of 367,000 total Guard positions caused vigorous protests by Guard officers, who believed that the active Army had once again singled the Guard out for unfair treatment.29 Such cuts were bound to be painful, but in the wake of the Gulf War, and in particular of the experience of the 48th and its sister roundout brigades, the internal Army debates became acrimonious, and almost immediately turned to accusations of bad faith. Regular Army disdain for the Guard was less openly expressed, but no less strongly felt. Many junior and field grade officers believed that the experience of the 48th merely confirmed what they had always thought—that weekend warriors were not simply less effective than active duty soldiers, but were virtually a different army altogether. In the understated

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words of a GAO report: “Active Army officials said that Guard personnel often do not understand Army training doctrine and need to be more objective in assessments of their training proficiency.”30 For its part, the Guard believed that the Army had never intended to give the 48th Brigade a fair shake. Major General James Delk of the Army National Guard, former deputy adjutant general of the state of California and a member of the Army inspector general’s team studying the mobilization of the National Guard brigades in Desert Storm was still bitter a decade later. In an article in National Guard Magazine he described the episode as “The Army’s Deployment Deception,” and argued that the Regular Army had been out to get the 48th Brigade. “I was convinced that there was almost an unspoken conspiracy . . . I wish I could find a nicer way to put it, but I can’t.”31 Following the Gulf War, the Army made two major changes in its approach to National Guard training. In a program called Bold Shift, it began emphasizing training smaller units (individuals through platoons), relegating training of larger units to the post-mobilization period.32 In a more dramatic shift, it abandoned the roundout concept in favor of “round-up”—dedicating National Guard units to augment active duty divisions rather than form integral parts of them. Although National Guard divisions continued to exist, attention turned to the establishment of fifteen Army National Guard enhanced readiness brigades as the Guard’s main combat force. The 1997 Annual Report of the secretary of Defense declared, in fact, that within a year “the Army will complete a series of enhancements that will result in brigades that are organized, equipped, and trained to achieve premobilization proficiency sufficient to meet full readiness requirements within 90 days of mobilization.”33 Those enhancements took various forms, including increased numbers of active duty soldiers assigned to National Guard units, particularly through the creation of Regional Training Brigades. But the Army was now committed to proving that it could field fully combat ready units in two-thirds the amount of time required to prepare the 48th for deployment—and the 48th, it must be remembered, was considered one of the best Army National Guard units in 1990. The Army no longer formally counted on National Guard brigades to complete its force structure, but it was, in theory, attesting to their fitness for war in a relatively short time after mobilization. Whether that certification would survive a test similar to that of 1990 remained to be seen. In 1995, however, the General Accounting Office estimated that Guard brigades would need as much as five months—nearly twice the Army estimate—to get ready for war. Meanwhile, the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS), the Guard’s lobbying organization, was having none of it. Its executive director excoriated the Army: “The acrimony between the Army Guard

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and the Army stems solely from the actions by, and the attitude of, the Army leadership toward the Army Guard. The historic record is a 221–year litany of duplicity, deception, and defamation, intended to strangle the Army Guard by starving it of public support, equipment, modernization, and missions.”34 Nor was this the view only of one angry member of the NGAUS. In 1998 Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, addressing the national convention of the National Guard Association, declared very simply: “The Army just doesn’t get it.”35

NOTES 1. “The Little Unit That Couldn’t,” Time, 10 June 1991, p. 19. 2. Department of Defense, “Total Force Policy: Report to Congress,” December 1990, p. 65. 3. Quoted in Second U.S. Army, History of Reserve Component Mobilization, Second U.S. Army: Operation Desert Shield/Storm, August 1990–July 1991 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 7–5. Henceforth cited as Second U.S. Army. 4. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, “The Impact of the Persian Gulf War and the Decline of the Soviet Union on How the United States Does its Defense Business: Hearings before the House Committee on Armed Services,” 102nd Cong., 1st session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 183. Henceforth cited as HASC, “Impact.” 5. Second U.S. Army, pp. 2–9, 2–5. 6. The best overall account is Robert L. Goldich, “The Army’s Roundout Concept After the Persian Gulf War,” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 22 October 1991. 7. Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of his Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 364. 8. Ron Martz, “Criticism of Guard challenged: General defends roundout role,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 15 October 1991, p. A3. 9. Kenneth Reich, “Call-up and non-deployment of southern Guard units spark furor,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 8 March 1991, p. A5. 10. A. L. May and Gary Hendricks, “Guard units pawns in power struggle: called up but not deployed, troops fume,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 10 February 1991, p. A1. 11. “Unit was mobilized and badly treated, ex-commander says,” New York Times, 5 March 1991, p. A18. 12. Second U.S. Army, pp. 2–5. 13. Ibid., pp. 6–9. 14. Lt. Gen. Herbert R. Temple Jr. (USA-ret.), “A Double Standard: The Army National Guard Deserves Better than a Prejudicial ‘Cheap Shot,’” Armed Forces Jour-

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nal International (September 1996): 38. Temple was Chief of the National Guard Bureau 1986–1990, and before that Director of the Army National Guard. 15. Second U.S. Army, pp. 7–11. 16. General Accounting Office, “National Guard: Peacetime Training Did Not Adequately Prepare Combat Brigades for War,” NSIAD-91–263 (September 1991): 19. Henceforth cited as GAO, “Peacetime Training.” 17. Mary Gail Brauner, Harry Thie, and Roger Brown, Assessing the Structure and Mix of Future Active and Reserve Forces: Effectiveness of Total Force Policy During the Persian Gulf Conflict (Santa Monica: RAND, 1992). 18. Department of the Army, Inspector General, “Special Assessment: National Guard Brigades’ Mobilization,” June 1991, pp. E-4–5, 9. By mid-January 83 percent of the troops were MOS qualified. 19. Ibid., p. E-7. 20. Gary Hendricks, “The Gulf Crisis: Reserve Forces: Guardsmen need longer training, officer concedes,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 5 April 1991, p. A8. 21. Government Accounting Office, “Army Training: Replacement Brigades Were More Proficient Than Guard Roundout Brigades,” GAO/NSIAD-93–4 (November 1992): 15. 22. Goldich, “Army’s Roundout Concept,” p. 16. 23. “Special Assessment Dept. of the Army,” Appendix D, passim. 24. Telephone interview, MGEN James Delk, USARNG, ret., 14 January 2000. 25. Brauner, Thie, and Brown, Assessing the Structure, p. 19. 26. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, “Reserve and Guard Effectiveness: Hearings before the Military Forces and Personnel Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives,” 103rd Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 5ff. 27. Jeffrey A. Jacobs, “The Conspiracy Theory: Army National Guard’s Complaints of Victimization by the Active Army Ring Hollow,” Armed Forces Journal International (January 1998): p. 30. 28. Martin Binkin, Who Will Fight the Next War? The Changing Face of the American Military (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1993), p. 162. 29. John G. Roos, “Sold Out: Army National Guard Officials Vow to Fight Proposed Cuts,” Armed Forces Journal International (June 1997): 16. 30. General Accounting Office, “Army National Guard: Combat Brigades’ Ability to Be Ready for War in 90 Days is Uncertain,” GAO/NSIAD-95–91 (June 1995): 6. 31. “The Army’s Deployment Deception,” National Guard Magazine, Internet edition, http://www.ngaus.org/ngmag/delk498.htm; Delk interview. 32. Ibid., p. 3ff. 33. http://www.dtic.mil/execsec/adr97/chap22.html. 34. Maj. Gen. Edward J. Philbin (Air National Guard, ret.), as quoted in Jacobs, “The Conspiracy Theory,” p. 30. 35. Quoted in David H. Fautua, “How the Guard and Reserve Will Fight in 2025,” Parameters (spring 1999): pp. 127–49 n.37.

7 Burned by the Press: One Commander’s Experience Richard J. Newman

When the U.S. Army’s First Armored Division deployed to Bosnia late in 1995, there were about two dozen news reporters “embedded” with various units—essentially, living and traveling with them. This was a turnaround from the Army’s media policy during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when few reporters were allowed to accompany Army units into Iraq. The scarce coverage of the Army’s battlefield victories in the Gulf War convinced many Army officers that it was important to include the press in major deployments, despite the intrusiveness and discomfort it might produce. Commanders leading troops into Bosnia, therefore, decided that embedding reporters with units would help get the Army’s story out, generate support for the mission among the American public, and enhance the morale of the soldiers.1 By most accounts, press coverage of the Army’s deployment to Bosnia did just what commanders hoped it would. But inevitably, some stories also produced controversy. One of the most prominent was an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 27, 1995, just days before the Army began to cross the Sava River in force and establish its presence in contested territory inside Bosnia.2 In the Journal article, reporter Thomas E. Ricks profiled Col. Greg Fontenot, commander of the First Armored Division’s First Brigade, whose troops would patrol one of Bosnia’s most fought-over pieces of terrain. The article quoted Fontenot saying, “I think we’ll have a military presence here for a long, long time,” which appeared to question the Clinton administration’s policy of limiting the mission to one year. Fontenot also was

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quoted telling two black soldiers that “It’ll be interesting to hear what you two see, because the Croatians are racist.” Overall, the article produced an immediate controversy inside the Army and almost led to Fontenot being relieved. Ultimately, Fontenot was cleared. No punitive documentation was placed in his personnel file, and he completed his tour of command with the First Brigade on schedule. The incident probably would have faded from the Army’s institutional memory except for something that didn’t happen later: Fontenot, widely viewed as one of the most capable colonels in the Army, was passed over for promotion to brigadier general. He retired as a colonel in 1999. Many other colonels who commanded units during the high-profile Bosnia mission, meanwhile, did squeeze though the bottleneck into the ranks of general officers. Since the deliberations of promotion boards are confidential, it may never be known whether the controversial publicity produced by the Journal article influenced the Army’s decision not to promote Fontenot. But the widespread impression among soldiers is that the Army “punished” Fontenot for producing bad press, by effectively cutting his career short. Within the Army, Fontenot’s story became a kind of word-of-mouth parable on how press attention can be harmful to an officer’s unit and particularly his career. The incident is discussed so frequently at Army forums on military-media relations that the Army’s director of public affairs developed a presentation that reconstructs how the story happened. It concludes that officers must take prudent risks if they want to have their story told by the media, and that the Wall Street Journal article had no bearing on Colonel Fontenot’s future. Many commanders, however, remain unpersuaded.

DATELINE: BOSNIA Tom Ricks began his reporting assignment on a train in Germany, in mid-December, 1995. As part of his embedding arrangement with the Army, Ricks had agreed to travel from Germany to Bosnia with the troops who formed the headquarters element of the First Armored Division’s First Brigade. The Army’s embedding plan offered reporters the chance to experience the deployment as the troops did, from inside the operation. Reporters slept on cots in floorless, unheated tents, ate packaged field rations (referred to as MREs [Meals Ready To Eat]) and otherwise lived with their assigned units 24 hours a day. They were even issued Gore-Tex fatigues, Kevlar helmets, and gas masks. In exchange for the front-row seat, the Army asked embedded reporters to commit to spending two weeks or more with the troops. The Army’s goal was to generate favorable coverage by exposing the press to the challenges and deprivations borne by ordinary soldiers.

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At the time, Ricks was considered one of the most thoughtful and probing journalists covering defense. His stories often went much deeper than routine reporting on daily events, capturing sociological and cultural aspects of military life. For instance, one well-known story he had written the summer before—which formed the basis for a later book—followed a number of Marine recruits through boot camp and depicted how military discipline made them disdainful of the more permissive society they had come from.3 But if Ricks had a reputation for tough, incisive reporting, he also aroused suspicions. “When we got word we were going to have reporters with us,” recalled Fontenot, who commanded the brigade Ricks had been assigned to, “I didn’t feel any particular alarm—until I heard it was Tom Ricks. I thought he liked the Marines at the expense of the Army. I called the division PAO [public affairs officer] and said I was not sure he could be trusted. The PAO said this was the [commanding general’s] intent.”4 So Fontenot dropped his objections. Whatever his reservations, Fontenot offered Ricks a warm welcome at their first meeting. After a week spent trundling across Europe, Ricks and his host unit finally dismounted their trains in eastern Croatia. Ricks and Fontenot first encountered each other at a crumbling Croatian hotel that the brigade was using as a temporary command post. Unlike other reporters who just showed up from time to time looking for a quick interview, Ricks had impressed Fontenot by living with troops in the cramped quarters of a train for a week. Fontenot showed his appreciation by offering Ricks unusual access to the resources of his command.5 He invited Ricks to attend the brigade’s twice-daily staff meetings, and offered him free access to the unit’s operations and intelligence cells, where sensitive planning was done. Fontenot laid down one condition: He asked the journalist not to report any information that was classified. Ricks found himself amidst a unit primed for a mission they had spent months training for, and were finally executing. Morale and enthusiasm were high. With the kickoff of the operation fueling a palpable rush among commanders, Ricks conducted his first interview with Fontenot over 60–cent beers in the hotel lounge. Ricks’ goal was to characterize a new and increasingly prominent kind of mission for the U.S. military. “I wanted to find out, what is this thing called peacekeeping?” he recounted. Fontenot was an appealing vehicle for Ricks’ inquiry. In a peacetime military dominated by cautious, if not careerist, officers, Fontenot was unorthodox. His spicy soldier talk had a bluntness that seemed a throwback to the days of Patton, when warriors were free to speak their minds. It was one reason he was highly popular with the troops he commanded. But Fontenot’s two master’s degrees in history indicated he was much more than a crusty, crude-spoken colonel. Ricks described him as someone “whose salty language

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belies the thinking of a military intellectual.” Fontenot’s fellow officers considered him one of the best tacticians in the Army, and a strong candidate to become a general. “He was by far the best O-6 [colonel] in the Army,” says retired Brig. Gen. Stan Cherrie, who at the time was an assistant commander of the First Armored Division, and one of Fontenot’s superiors. The first interview with Ricks showcased Fontenot’s eclectic qualities. He alternately ruminated over the similarities between the Bosnia assignment and the missions of the nineteenth-century cavalry units on the American frontier, and fulminated over the bloodthirsty belligerents he was sent to police. As Ricks wrote of Fontenot in his article: “ ‘They don’t think I trust them—and they’re right,’ [Fontenot] says of the local factions. ‘These are people who kill women and children and attack their neighbors. They’re offended by me? Hell, I’m offended that I had to come here because of all their fighting.’ ”6 Those remarks made for colorful copy. But they were not as objectionable to Fontenot’s bosses as some other observations, such as one regarding the duration of the U.S. military mission in Bosnia: “Maybe not in groups of 20,000, but I think we’ll have a military presence here for a long, long time.”7 That comment seemed to directly question the Clinton administration’s policy of sending U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia for no more than one year. Fontenot and Ricks never discussed the terms of this first interview: Whether it was “on the record” and therefore attributable to Fontenot by name; whether it was “on background” and attributable to an “Army commander” or some other anonymous identifier; whether it was on “deep background,” in which case the information could be used in the story but not attributed to anybody, by name or otherwise; or whether it was “off the record” and therefore not useable at all for the story, except to educate the reporter. In retrospect, Fontenot feels the interview was “on background,” although he never stipulated any ground rules. Since Fontenot had told Ricks that intelligence data and other information was “off the record,” Ricks believed everything else was, by default, on the record. “I think it was explicit that everything else was on the record because of the stuff that was off the record,” said Ricks. He continued gathering material for his story as the mission evolved. A couple of days after the first interview, Fontenot invited Ricks on a reconnaissance patrol inside Bosnia with about 16 soldiers. For Ricks as a journalist, this was an exclusive of sorts, since only a handful of U.S. troops had entered the country. Most were still massing outside Bosnia’s borders, which in turn was where most of the press attention was focused. While many news reporters were camped out near U.S. troops or at key spots inside Bosnia, few had the entree with the U.S. Army to accompany an unpublicized patrol on one of the first sorties into Bosnia.

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Before the small convoy crossed the Sava River into Bosnia on a military barge, Fontenot conducted a patrol briefing, with Ricks present. Fontenot recalls a brief exchange he had with Ricks beforehand. “I said, I’m gonna say some things I don’t want to read about. Can I trust you to be discreet? [Ricks] gave a head nod, which I interpreted as an agreement. But I did not tell him everything in the patrol brief is off the record.” Again, Fontenot and Ricks agree that beyond that exchange, there was never any formal discussion between them about what was on the record, what was off the record, and what was on background. Ricks: “It was clear I was standing there taking notes, writing stuff down. It was pretty clear what was on the record and off the record.” Fontenot’s earlier experiences with reporters may have contributed to his misunderstanding with Ricks. Earlier in the month, Fontenot had briefed his troops in Germany while reporter Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post looked on. Fontenot made the same request to Atkinson as he did to Ricks: “I’m going to say some things to the troops I don’t necessarily want to read about in the paper.” Atkinson did not publish the remarks, evidently interpreting Fontenot’s disclaimer to mean that the remarks to the troops were off the record. Days later, Ricks interpreted the same request differently. Ricks wrote his story the next day and filed it from the hotel command post back in Croatia. The Wall Street Journal published it a day later, December 27, 1995. The story described the patrol briefing this way: Two days later, Col. Fontenot, who with his scarred face and cropped hair looks like the career tank-unit commander that he is, prepares to lead the first major U.S. military reconnaissance of northern Bosnia. In a pre-mission briefing, he orders his soldiers to adopt a cocky posture. He has Sgt. Scott Jardine demonstrate how to sling a light ma8 chine gun across one’s front. “It’s the casual, yet I’ll kick your a— if you f— with me look,” the colonel says. He then turns to two African American soldiers who will be in the convoy. “It’ll be interesting to hear what you two see, because the Croatians are racist . . . ,” he warns. “They kill 9 people for the color of their skins.”

THE INVESTIGATION Army leaders responded with outrage that stunned many of the troops in the First Armored Division. The day the article was published, Maj. Gen. William Nash, the division commander and Fontenot’s direct superior, got a call from Lt. Gen. John Abrams, who was commander of the Army’s V Corps and Nash’s boss. “He asked if I could recommend a new First Brigade commander,” Nash says. Nash then called Fontenot at his Croatian command post and ordered him “not to make any comments to anyone until I had time to sort out what was going on.” Fontenot interpreted the warning more strictly.

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“He says, I am to remain in my room and not to leave till he says otherwise,” recalls Fontenot. “Call it whatever you want, I was under house arrest.” Nash ordered Cherrie, one of his assistant division commanders, to conduct an official investigation of Fontenot and report back within the day. When he arrived in Croatia, Cherrie told Fontenot he was being investigated for disloyalty (his apparent disagreement with the policy of the commander in chief to have troops out of Bosnia within one year), racism (whether he had used race to motivate the black soldiers going on the patrol inside Bosnia), and “gross lack of judgment,” a little-used catch-all charge reserved for troops who violated the rules of Army decorum, as Fontenot seemed to have done in bluntly sounding off to a reporter. The colonel appeared to be at serious risk of being relieved of command. “Fontenot was on the verge of getting fired,” says Cherrie. “When I left Tuzla [for Fontenot’s command post], it was almost a fait accompli.” Even so, there was little discomfort in the First Armored Division about what Fontenot had said. Nash, the division commander, says that “the only thing that disturbed me—other than Greg being Greg, which I love—was the possible implication that he used race to motivate troops. I was not concerned about his statement about the length of stay.” Several of Fontenot’s subordinate commanders wrote testimonials on his behalf. Nor does there appear to have been much heartburn at Army headquarters in Washington, D.C. Gen. Ron Griffith, who was the Army’s vice chief of staff, recalls of Ricks’ article, “I read all that, the chief [of staff of the Army] read all that and quite frankly we never spent ten minutes thinking about it. I thought, well, that’s pretty damn good. I like what Greg said.” One sign of disapproval did appear in the New York Times, in a story that ran on page A8 one day after the Wall Street Journal story had been published. Halfway through the article, which described a meeting between Nash and leaders of the three warring factions inside Bosnia, the Times quoted a “senior administration official” saying of Fontenot’s statements: “They were very serious remarks of serious concern. Clearly if they are accurately reported they represent bad judgment, extremely bad judgment. . . . The direction he went in his comments is totally unacceptable.”10 This “senior administration official,” it turned out, was a midgrade military officer—of lower rank than Fontenot—who had been assigned as director of one of the departments at the National Security Council. His “director” status at the NSC evidently qualified him as a “senior administration official,” by the ground rules of the New York Times. In an interview, the official said that he had not heard any of his superiors at the NSC express displeasure with the Journal article or with Fontenot himself, although senior NSC officials supported his statement to the Times when he informed them of it.11 There is no

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evidence, however, that anybody at the NSC pursued the matter further. “There was no pressure in Washington . . . to do anything in terms of relief or reprimand,” says Griffith. But those three paragraphs in the Times distressed Army leaders in Europe, who were already edgy about Fontenot’s statements. “The mention of the White House source is what made people [at Army headquarters in Europe] think they had to do something,” says one officer who was involved in the matter.12 Nash felt the pressure directly. “I sure could’ve used somebody to get those [guys] off my back,” says Nash, referring to Abrams and his superior, Gen. William Crouch, commander of U.S. Army Europe. Cherrie, the assistant division commander, interviewed about 15 soldiers as part of his rapid-fire investigation, including several black troops. He concluded that all of the quotes attributed to Fontenot were accurate. He also noted that nobody in the brigade had taken Fontenot’s statement about the length of stay as disagreeing with the intent of the commander in chief. Interviews with soldiers revealed no evidence that Fontenot was racist or had used race in a way that had made troops uncomfortable. In fact, Cherrie found that Fontenot’s soldiers were devoted to the colonel. “I felt that if he was fired, about two-thirds of the brigade would sit down and refuse to cross the Sava River,” Cherrie says. After Nash received Cherrie’s report, he freed Fontenot from “house arrest.” But he stalled on what to do next. “I figured that after some amount of time had passed, I would get a read on how important it was,” says Nash. Plus, there were more pressing requirements: “I had to get across that river.” In retrospect, Nash feels that he may have prolonged the controversy by letting it percolate too long. But the delay may also have saved Fontenot’s job, since the “Fontenot story” was soon overtaken by the news of the Army crossing the Sava River. In the first week of January, about ten days after the story broke, Nash sent a memo to Abrams saying that he felt Fontenot should be retained. He also sent Abrams a copy of the official investigation clearing Fontenot. Nash also proposed that Fontenot be issued a searing letter of reprimand. Abrams, apparently appeased, let the matter rest. At that point Nash told Fontenot he was on “probation”—an informal understanding between the two officers, not an official Army status—and issued him a copy of the reprimand. Nash also kept a copy for himself, although nothing relating to the incident was ever placed in Fontenot’s official personnel file. In addition, Nash told Fontenot to restate his commander’s intent to each company-sized unit in his brigade. “He wanted me to apologize, without apologizing,” is Fontenot’s interpretation. And there was a final punishment, according to Fontenot: “A couple of formal ass chewings.”

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GROUND RULES: AN UNWRITTEN CONTRACT What could Fontenot have done differently to avoid a controversial story? For one thing, some of his fellow officers think he was indiscreet. “He was a little bit reckless in making his observations,” says Griffith. “He failed to recognize that a reporter was present. He probably should have been less profane, shown less bravado.”13 Many journalists and media critics insist that a clear understanding of ground rules is the best form of protection for sources worried about how they will be portrayed in a story. But even clearly stated terms of attribution can have loopholes. Rick Atkinson of the Post, for instance, was embedded with Nash, the division commander, at the same time Ricks was embedded with Fontenot. Atkinson and Nash had an agreement that everything they discussed was off the record; when Atkinson wrote his stories, he would have to check with Nash before attributing any quotes to him. That arrangement seemed to suit Nash and Atkinson well. But confusion developed over whether the off-the-record ground rules extended to the staff officers and aides who worked around Nash. “If you’re off the record with the [commanding general], does that extend to others in your command?” asks Nash. Eventually, he and Atkinson agreed that Atkinson should apply the same ground rules to all the troops the reporter encountered while embedded with Nash.14 Embedding arrangements, where reporters have prolonged exposure to the subjects of their stories, also present dilemmas not easily resolved by black-and-white agreements about whether a reporter is operating on the record, or on some other condition. What should the ground rules be, for instance, when reporters are living with troops and may literally scrutinize their actions around the clock? Should troops’ every remark, whether uttered while on duty or while relaxing in their quarters, be considered on the record? Is there a practical way to draw a line between types of comments and behavior that are on the record, and those that are not? How receptive will reporters be to restrictions on what they are allowed to report? Nash believes that when reporters embed with troops, “there needs to be an accommodation reached with the media that says, I’m going to let you watch what I do, but you’ve got to be sensitive about it because it looks different when it’s written down than when it’s done.” Clearly, members of the military believe that media exposure is risky. In a 1999 Gallup survey for the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, more than half of the one- and two-star military officers surveyed felt it is “fairly” risky or a “very” serious risk to discuss any of several subjects with the press.15 Members of the military and the media disagree on the extent to which talking on “background” or “off the record” reduces those risks. Nearly all media re-

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spondents—95 percent—believe talking on those terms reduces risk.16 But only 43 percent of military respondents thought so.17 Does that gap indicate that officers don’t trust reporters to abide by ground rules? Could it mean that the military and the media understand ground rules differently? Out of all subjects, military respondents thought it was most risky to criticize current national security policy—as Fontenot appeared to be doing when he predicted U.S. troops would be in Bosnia far longer than a year—or to say something that could embarrass a senior officer.18 But others see significant benefits to media exposure. As Nash wrote after his tour in Bosnia: We wanted to use the power of the world press to influence compliance by the former warring factions with the Dayton Accords, and we wanted to use it to enhance the soldiers’ morale. . . . We recognized also that many journalists had been in Bosnia for a long time and had developed a level of expertise from which we could learn. We intuitively felt that they had great potential to wield influence—and we sought to turn that to our advantage. . . . We believed that public support for our conducting the mission would be immeasurably heightened by the stories written or broadcast by reporters who had true access to the soldiers doing the real work. We often allowed media representatives to be present at points of confrontation. . . . What a great story to show the 19 American people!

Even Fontenot believes that the Wall Street Journal story that may have cut short his career ultimately had a positive effect on the mission. To his surprise, the commanders of both the Croat and the Serb forces in Fontenot’s sector of Bosnia had read the Wall Street Journal story by the time he and his troops arrived in the country. Originally, Fontenot says, “I thought the story could be so embarrassing it could hurt the mission. But it played to the benefit of the mission. It showed how seriously I took it.” THE AFTERMATH I: THE END OF A CAREER If the story aided the mission, however, it did little for Fontenot’s career. By February 1996—two months into the mission—Nash had taken Fontenot off “probation.” Fontenot remained in Bosnia until November 1996, when his unit returned to Germany. Fontenot was interviewed by many other reporters during the rest of his tenure in Bosnia and quoted frequently. By his own account, “the rest of the stories were pretty positive.” In February 1997, Fontenot was first considered for promotion to brigadier general. Numerically, the odds of promotion were excruciatingly small. Of 3,500 candidates, only about 35 would be selected for brigadier. But Fontenot seemed to rank among the top contenders. He was a “fast-riser,”

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having been promoted to colonel two years before others from his peer group. Like many of the senior field commanders who had served in Bosnia, his officer evaluation report, or performance review, was “immaculate,” according to Nash—who had filled it out. Those qualifications failed to carry the day. Fontenot was not promoted by the board that met in 1997, or at subsequent promotion boards that met in 1998 and 1999. He retired in the summer of 1999. While the proceedings of promotion boards are confidential, the widespread conclusion among those familiar with the controversy is that a small number of the generals who sat on the 1997 board—perhaps just one—had blocked his promotion, out of bitterness over the Wall Street Journal article. “He was not promoted because he got blackballed—period,” insists Cherrie. Griffith, the second-highest-ranking Army officer at the time, tends to agree: “I thought he should have been a general, and I still think he should have been a general. I suspect the article did [affect his promotion], because he was on a path to become a general.” But some argue that it could have been Fontenot’s unorthodox style—rather than a single case of controversial press—that stood in the way. “Fontenot did not fit the mold of a general,” says an Army officer familiar with the case.

THE AFTERMATH II: THE MEDIA-MILITARY RELATIONSHIP Whether Fontenot’s career really was cut short by a newspaper article will probably never be known with certainty. But the incident left the strong impression throughout the Army that Fontenot was penalized for taking a risk in talking to the press, and being portrayed less than favorably. Maj. John Suttle, who was the public affairs officer for the First Armored Division in Bosnia, says that when he participated in the Army War College’s 1999 seminar on the media, he was besieged with questions about Fontenot. “That’s immediately what they zeroed in on,” he says. “They said, ‘why should I talk to the media after what happened to Fontenot? I have nothing to gain from talking to the media.’ ” Military sociologist Charles Moskos argues that the Fontenot story has had long-lasting repercussions: “This incident has consequences beyond its immediate effect on Colonel Fontenot’s career. At one level is the question of the impact on unit morale when a respected commander is rebuked in the [New York Times]. The other is the chilling effect on military personnel when journalists are around. The message is clear: stay clear of reporters, even friendly ones, lest one’s career might be jeopardized.”20 Ricks faults the Army as an institution for failing to support Fontenot. “The Army really mishandled the whole thing,” he insists. “Nash told Fontenot: ‘You will have reporters with you. Be clear and candid with them.’ ” Once the

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Wall Street Journal story ran, says Ricks, “Nash should’ve said, ‘look he’s a field commander, not a diplomat. Yeah, he’s a soldier, he talks like a soldier. You got a problem with that?’ The Army needs to show more loyalty downward.” On this point, Ricks and Fontenot seem to agree. “There was absolutely no top cover from any senior officer in the Army,” Fontenot maintains. Some fear that the lack of “top cover”—either perceived or real—may produce problems beyond strained military-media relations. “I hope we’re not growing an Army of leaders who are afraid to be risk takers,” says Griffith. “If you’re so damn afraid you’re going to make a mistake in an interview with the press, you’re probably not the kind of guy we need leading troops.” But that doesn’t resolve the practical problem of accommodating journalists’ needs when senior military leaders may react harshly to negative press coverage. Some experts believe that a better understanding of the military-media dynamic can ease strains on both sides of the relationship. Veteran military reporter Joe Galloway of U.S. News & World Report calls the cultural gap between the two groups a struggle between the “anarchists” and the “control freaks.”21 Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor, who served as a defense correspondent for the New York Times after his military retirement, explains further: “The military and journalistic professions are almost contrary to one another, and they do attract people with very different views. A journalist tends to be a very independent person, while the warrior is more of a team player. Journalists are generally disorganized, while military types are very organized. The journalist tends to be skeptical by nature, while the military man tends to take people and things at face value. Journalists are antiauthoritarian, while the soldier by his or her very nature is obedient.”22 Beyond that, there are times when journalists and the military people they cover will inherently be at odds, merely by virtue of their professions. “Whenever you have aggressive reporting on the one side, and on the other an institution that will likely try to avoid or cover up any embarrassment, then there’s going to be a natural tension,” says Bradley Graham, who spent several years covering defense for the Washington Post.23 Nor is press coverage of the military as negative as is routinely believed. A 1999 study by two professors at Duke University, for instance, found that contrary to the beliefs of many in uniform, media coverage of the military is most often neutral or positive. A review of six months’ worth of stories in the Washington Post, New York Times, Washington Times, and three trade publications found that “there are hardly any negative depictions of the military. . . . Coverage of elections, the president, and Congress is often critical . . . even hostile, but not of the military.”24 The study further found that “our data directly contradict the conventional wisdom that the media are very interested in scandalous stories about sex, promiscuity, adultery, women, and gays in the military at

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the expense of organization, administration, retention, readiness, and retirement.”25 Such relatively favorable coverage, the study concluded, contributes to the generally high standing the military enjoys in polls of how Americans view various institutions.26 Such findings don’t eliminate the risks associated with allowing reporters wideranging access to military units or operations. But can an improved understanding of how the press operates help commanders break down defensiveness and build a better rapport with the press? In Bosnia, Nash took an unusually personalized approach toward handling the media. He spent a considerable amount of time developing personal relationships with reporters. That commitment typically went far beyond the time allotted for an on-the-record interview. “I made some big interviews,” says Nash. “Dan Rather. Tom Brokaw. We would always talk off the record before I would do an interview. You would not get to interview me unless you’d spend some time getting to know me. The off-the-record stuff was not particularly revealing, it was just getting to know each other. During the first 30 minutes, I get to ask more questions than you do.” Of course, many military officials faced with interview requests won’t have the standing a two-star field commander has to simply turn down or avoid reporters who are unwilling to meet his demands. Yet even when there is no choice but to submit to an interview, Nash and others highlight several tactics that can help ease relations with reporters. Cherrie recommends that “anyone in a command billet should do some kind of role playing,” referring to the mock interviews or press conferences public affairs officials often set up to train military officials in how to deal with the media. Cherrie says he has also successfully set a kind of iron-fist rule with reporters. At the first press conference Cherrie held in Bosnia, he says, “I didn’t want [the press] screaming at me. I told them, if they start yelling at me I’ll walk out of the room. I set tough ground rules. Amazingly, they did [abide by them].” While such tough discipline might work in the midst of a military operation—where the military has control of the asset dearest to the press, information—would it work for stories about weapons programs or personnel policies or other subjects on which there are alternate sources of information? How likely is it that a hard-line policy on media conduct could produce stories that portray the military as defensive, uncooperative, or maybe even hiding something? Most military officials, and even many journalists, agree that before an interview or embedding arrangement it is helpful to learn something about the particular reporter, to determine how trustworthy he or she is, how accurate, and what sort of stories he or she typically produces. “Vetting [reporters] is very important,” continues Nash. “Christiane Amanpour you don’t need to check out. But others . . . I would particularly like to see something they’ve

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written.” Nor is Nash above courting the press: “Journalists are very susceptible to praise of their work. I’d make a comment about their article. You need to know who the hell you’re talking to. If you’re talking to U.S. News & World Report, make sure you understand that that’s not Time. You ought to read bylines, a little media gossip now and then.” Many commanders, however, don’t have the time, resources or interest to do such vetting on their own. Ideally, public affairs officials should have generally good knowledge of reporters’ reputations, or ought to be able to find out. But like all intelligence, their reports may lack important details, leaving commanders with imperfect information. Reporters covering military operations may also be unfamiliar with how the military works. They may have little or no reputation, beyond that of their news organization. That’s partly on account of how the news business works—reporters are expected to be able to report about unfamiliar subjects on short notice. But it’s also due to post–Cold War trends away from coverage of the military. In a recent survey, 78 percent of reporters polled said their news organizations’ budgets for covering the military have declined.27 The same percentage said that fewer reporters are assigned to cover the military than in the past.28 That means more general-assignment reporters, and fewer specialists, may end up covering important military news. That puts a greater burden on commanders and public affairs officers to provide rudimentary education on military matters to reporters who come calling, and to patiently entertain questions that may seem naive. Some service members express frustration with journalists’ and even the public’s limited understanding of their profession. That supposed “gap” between the military and society it serves has been the subject of considerable research.29 If there is a growing culture gap between the military and society, that would make a healthy relationship with the press, as one of the principal conduits through which the public gets information about the military, increasingly important. That may be especially true given that modern military operations generally are not mounted in response to events like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which rapidly galvanize the support of the American public. Instead, missions like peacekeeping in the Balkans and the containment of Iraq tend to be ones in which American interests are ambiguous, which places a premium on informed press coverage to help maintain public awareness and support for the military. Those trends arguably make it more important for military officials to provide media access to military units and commanders. As journalist James Kitfield of the National Journal wrote in a recent white paper for the Robert R. McCormick Foundation: “If [the cultural gap between the military and the media] is allowed to widen to the point where the two sides once again stare across at one another not only with a lack of recognition, but with an open dis-

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dain born of ignorance or supposed grievance—as certainly happened in the period following Vietnam and Watergate—then both professions will have failed the American people in a fundamental duty, and the nation will be the weaker for it.”30 In that context, military officials face a conflict: Bearing the personal risk of media exposure, not for their own benefit but for that of the mission or the institution. “One of the sad things about what happened to me,” says Fontenot, “is guys tell me, damned if I’ll ever talk to the media after I saw what happened to you. But this is not about you, it’s about the mission. It’s a bad thing if people conclude they shouldn’t talk to the media.” Still, even some journalists acknowledge that it may be prudent to shrink from media coverage. “The sad answer,” says Ricks, “is that given the way the Army behaves, [commanders] should probably think twice [about talking to the press].” But ultimately the risk of engaging with the media falls in line with other risks military commanders are expected to take in the course of leading troops and winning battles. “You do it because the institution is something we ought to be proud of,” says Griffith. “Sometimes you’ve got to take the risk. Sometimes I’m going to get burned and I’m not afraid to get burned.” NOTES 1. One of the best indications of this is William L. Nash, The Military and the Media in Bosnia (Boston: The President and the Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998). 2. Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S. Brings to Bosnia Tactics That Tamed Wild West,” Wall Street Journal, December 27, 1995, p. 1. 3. Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps (New York: Scribner, 1997). 4. Unless otherwise indicated, quotes are from interviews with the principals. 5. The author of this chapter was also embedded with Fontenot’s unit, and covered the Bosnia deployment for U.S. News & World Report. 6. Ricks, “U.S. Brings to Bosnia Tactics That Tamed Wild West.” 7. Ibid. 8. According to Fontenot, he demonstrated the gun-toting technique to another soldier, not to Jardine. Fontenot also believes Ricks omitted important context in this passage, namely that he was demonstrating a less threatening way to wield a weapon than had been the practice until that point in the operation. 9. Ricks, “U.S. Brings to Bosnia Tactics That Tamed Wild West.” 10. Ian Fisher, “U.S. General Has Talks on Bosnia Accord,” New York Times, December 28, 1995, p. A8. 11. This officer is still on active duty and agreed to discuss the incident only on condition of anonymity. 12. This is another officer who is still on active duty and agreed to discuss the incident only on condition of anonymity.

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13. More dramatic than the Fontenot case was that of Adm. Richard Macke, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, who was relieved for a casual but brusque comment made to a group of reporters in November 1995. After the formal question-and-answer session at a press breakfast had ended, one reporter asked Macke about the rape of a 12–year-old girl in Okinawa, Japan, by three U.S. servicemembers. Macke’s response: “I think it was absolutely stupid. I’ve said several times, for the price [the servicemen] paid to rent the car, they could have had a girl.” The impression of insensitivity got him fired within twenty-four hours. He later admitted that it was inappropriate—if not foolish—for a four-star commander to make such a statement. See James Kitfield, “The Media are from Mercury, The Military from Mars” (paper presented at the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation & The Media and Security Project conference on military-media relationships, Chicago, August 1999). 14. From an interview with Nash. 15. Michael Cohen, “The Military and the Media,” Final Report, The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation Contigny Conference Series, Wheaton, Illinois, 1999. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Nash, “The Military and the Media in Bosnia.” 20. Charles C. Moskos, “The Media and the Military in Peace and Humanitarian Operations,” Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation (2000). 21. Kitfield, “The Media are from Mercury.” 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Krista E. Wiegand and David L. Paletz, “The Elite Media and The Military-Civilian Culture Gap” (paper presented at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies conference on civil-military relations, Chicago, October 1999). 25. Ibid. Critics of this study have argued that it may underrepresent the extent to which coverage of the military focuses on scandals and other “sensational” topics. The study authors analyzed newspaper and magazine stories over a six-month period during which no major scandals involving the military were publicized. Had the study examined news coverage during the Kelly Flynn controversy, for example, or during the Navy’s Tailhook scandal, the results may have shown a much heavier emphasis on stories involving sex, misbehavior, and other sensitive topics. 26. See, for instance, a Harris poll of 1,010 adults, conducted in January 2000, and a Gallup poll of 1,016 adults, conducted in June 1999. In each of these polls, the military ranked first among institutions Americans said they have the most confidence in. 27. Cohen, “The Military and the Media.” 28. Ibid. 29. Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

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2001), and Joseph A. Collins, “American Military Culture in the Twenty-First Century,” A Report of the GSIS International Security Program (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & Internationl Studies, February 2000). 30. Kitfield, “The Media are from Mercury.”

III Technology and Industrial Policy

8 Breaking the Market or Preventing Market Breakdown: The Technology Reinvestment Project Sean O’Keefe and Volker C. Franke

“Today, commercial firms are the source of many of the advanced technologies that are needed to keep our military the most powerful in the world. . . . The winning projects I am announcing link commercial industry and defense needs, to keep America strong, militarily and economically.” President Bill Clinton, October 19941 “Our technology reinvestment strategy is one step in fully integrating the civilian and military industrial and technology bases, but we must also radically change the way we currently do business. . . . As we embark on the implementation of the technology reinvestment strategy, we look for incremental successes and evidence of a leverage for a growing economy, long-term jobs, and a prepared defense for future contingencies.” Gary Denman, Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency, July 19932

Today, two developments—the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the global marketplace—are presenting an unprecedented historic challenge for the United States. How can the United States stay militarily superior and economically competitive in the face of uncertain threats, growing fiscal constraints, and revolutionary changes in technology? The end of the Cold War and the advent of numerous smaller, regional skirmishes has forced the U.S. military to shift focus and to accept that in the future versatility will be as im-

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portant as outright strength. New technologies can help develop that versatility. But we now live in an era when the defense community can no longer presume that it produces the most advanced technology. Global competition has created a more dynamic, integrated, and sophisticated economy, one where the defense and commercial sectors must share know-how and pool resources to develop technologies that promote both military and economic excellence. This case examines the merits of one effort to develop dual-use technologies with both military and commercial applications: the Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP). In one of a series of contract announcements, $200 million was awarded in federal matching funds from the Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) for research efforts proposed to create dual-use technologies in October 1994. The announcement took the form of a White House press release indicating the importance the Clinton administration placed on TRP to promote economic growth while developing national security technology. These contract awards were one of the installments of a total of over $820 million of federal matching funds awarded under the TRP to 251 technology development projects between 1993 and 1995.3 Among the recipients of TRP grants, $19.6 million was awarded to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco and Hughes Aircraft for their proposal to develop an advanced subway location control system (total cost: $44.3 million), which will be explored later in the case.

ORIGINS OF TRP Initially, the Clinton administration had planned to spend upward of $500 million annually for dual-use technology efforts. Critics openly wondered what these projects have to do with national security and why the federal government should get involved in subsidizing this type of projects at all. Advocates heralded TRP as the dawn of a new approach to public-private cooperation for high-tech advances. At the center of the TRP debate is the question whether and to what extent the government can predict reliably what future technology needs will be and how best to meet them. Historically, times of economic downturn have often challenged the federal government to devise economic policies to help alleviate the negative effects brought on by recession. In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned to be president with the promise to help the recovery of a sluggish economy. Fiscal Year 1992 saw a decline in the gross domestic product (GDP) for the first time in a decade. Interest rates had reached a post–World War II low, but the trade deficit had widened significantly and businesses had filed for bankruptcy in record numbers. During his campaign, then-Governor Clinton had pledged to funnel

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some $20 billion a year into the nation’s infrastructure, from roads and bridges to water treatment plants, high-speed trains, and the “information superhighway.” Congress rejected President Clinton’s first $19.5 billion economic stimulus package as unnecessary in light of the economic upswing evidenced in early 1993. Despite the setback, the new administration persisted in its initiative to stimulate economic growth by sponsoring an alternative endeavor, involving dual-use technology development. With the end of the Cold War the debate over defense research and development had entered a new phase. The new secretary of defense, Les Aspin, urged a shift in R&D from development of new weapons systems to exploration of emerging technologies. Aspin championed TRP as a way to simultaneously stimulate economic growth and develop products that embodied the latest technological advances, ready for use when needed. His successor, William Perry, saw even greater benefits in the project. Perry was convinced that dual-use initiatives would stimulate research on and development of technologies that would not otherwise be developed. Both Aspin and Perry argued that new technologies which emphasized dual-use features would facilitate application and greater market access for defense-related activities. The Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) was the Clinton administration’s signature initiative for developing dual-use defense technology. The uniqueness of TRP lay in the fact that its R&D projects were conducted as collaborative efforts between industry, government, and academia, all of which shared know-how, skills, and costs. The perceived earlier success of merging private and public resources into the SEMATECH consortium to produce internationally competitive semiconductors (explored later in the case) encouraged the Clinton administration in its efforts to pursue the development of dual-use technology through partnering arrangements between the public and private sectors. Quickly TRP renewed the controversy over the economic priorities of government policies. Should the government sponsor R&D efforts to help promote the competitiveness of the U.S. defense industry in the global marketplace? This case presents an overview of the TRP, explains the main points of contention in the debate around the merits of government-sponsored dual-use technology R&D, and examines the merits of two specific projects.

THE TECHNOLOGY REINVESTMENT PROJECT In 1993, the Technology Reinvestment Project became the centerpiece of the new Clinton administration’s initiative to integrate selected commercial and defense R&D into a single, leading-edge technology and industrial base to promote economic growth while, at the same time, protecting national secu-

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rity after the end of the Cold War. The TRP mission was to “stimulate the transmission to a growing, integrated, national industrial capability that provides the most advanced, affordable, military systems and the most competitive commercial products.”4 TRP projects were solicited, selected, and implemented by the multiagency Defense Technology Conversion Council (DTCC) chaired by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the Department of Defense’s central R&D arm.5 ARPA collaborated in these efforts with the military departments (Army, Navy, and Air Force), the Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Transportation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. Initially, TRP activities were split into four programmatic areas: • Technology Development, promoting the development of dual-use technologies; • Technology Deployment, improving the diffusion of technical know-how, projected to result in a stronger, more productive, and more innovative supplier base; • Small Business Innovation Research, establishing links between existing technology capabilities for small and medium-sized businesses; and • Manufacturing Education and Training, creating programs for the retraining of defense workers and improving the manufacturing curricula in U.S. colleges and universities.

TRP focused on research and development projects deemed to be militarily useful and commercially viable. Indeed, ARPA widely advertised examples for dual-use projects to emphasize benefits for the defense and commercial sectors: For example, cheaper infrared sensors can help soldiers spot the enemy despite poor visibility and allow industry to detect energy losses in its buildings; improved radar systems can guide both military and commercial aircraft to a safe landing during bad weather; an emerging technology that merges light signals with electronics, called optoelectronics, can give the military smaller, more accurate sensors and civilians faster, clearer communications systems; and digital imaging technology could save the lives of both soldiers and civilians by allowing physicians to instantly diagnose patients many 6 miles away, whether they’re on a battlefield or in a rural farmhouse.

Initially, the TRP concept was developed directly from provisions in the Defense Conversion, Reinvestment, and Transition Act of 1992, which assigned DOD several statutory programs related to defense conversion. The Department of Defense implemented these statutes with three purposes in mind: (1) to ease the transition of defense personnel to nondefense endeavors, (2) to assist communities affected by base and other DOD facilities closures, and (3) to administer technology and industrial base conversion, reinvestment and tran-

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sition assistance programs. Since many of these statutes were complementary, ARPA managers decided to execute them as an integrated project through the TRP initiative. The integrated interagency approach produced a single, clearly visible target for proposers, whose projects were required to have some connection to national security. ARPA identified seven categories of military need that have solid dual-use applications: • military mobility and deployment; • casualty treatment; • battlefield sensors; • command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C I); 4

• weapons and survivability; • electronics design and manufacturing; and • mechanical systems and materials.

Four requirements became common to all TRP efforts: (1) proposals were solicited nationwide and selected competitively, (2) selected projects had to have dual-use applications and contribute to improving the national defense (capability, affordability, etc.), (3) TRP efforts required a partnership between the government, defense industry, and commercial technology providers, and (4) at least 50 percent of the project costs had to be incurred by the private sector. Gary Denman, ARPA’s director, asserted “this dual use strategy is one key strategy the Administration is pursuing to create long-term jobs and stimulate economic growth; and at the same time posture the nation for the requisite defense to meet our future national security challenges. This is a win-win strategy.” Testifying before a House Committee, Denman conjectured that, “the partnerships we have established, formal and informal, are an unprecedented display of successful cooperation and collaboration across the government, that will ultimately lead to a strengthened, integrated defense and commercial industry.” TRP’s mission, Denman concluded, was to transition to a “growing, integrated, national industrial capability that provides the most advanced, affordable, military systems and the most competitive commercial products.” 7 Ultimately, the TRP was intended to simultaneously stimulate economic growth and bring defense and commercial industries closer together. But the administration’s broad interpretation of the merits of this approach troubled some critics. In addition, initial enthusiasm for venture capital from private investors dissipated after about eighteen months, because shareholders did not see anticipated market returns.8

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The predicted success of TRP rested on two fundamental assumptions: (1) government could reliably predict future technology and defense needs, and (2) market demand for the TRP-subsidized technology would emerge once supply was provided. The record of predicting future needs yields mixed returns. In 1954, for instance, Congress enacted the National Defense Stockpile Act and the Department of Defense (DOD) began warehousing various materials that, at the time, were deemed essential to American war readiness. The United States presently maintains the world’s largest reserve of asbestos, then thought to be a valuable commodity, later found to be a serious liability rather than an asset for the federal government. TRP critics have argued that the concept is dependent on some pent up demand in the economy waiting to be satisfied. The assumption is that all defense contractors have to do is develop these new technologies and buyers will flock toward the resulting products. However, the conversion of military resources into peaceful pursuits has rarely been successful. Norman R. Augustine, former chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, suggested that “defense work has little in common with commercial work. Each demands different production skills and marketing techniques; each depends on different cultures and organizations to succeed. Rocket manufacturers cannot make and sell toothpaste for the same reason toothpaste makers cannot make and sell rockets.”9 In part, Augustine’s view arises from the assumption that in the latter part of the twentieth century, U.S. defense contractors became accustomed to the government as a single, guaranteed buyer for their products. Government specification, regulatory oversight, and limited market opportunities yield higher overhead costs characteristic of the defense industry. Commercial success, by contrast, has typically required stronger, more widely focused marketing skills and production flexibility.

WHY GOVERNMENT SPONSORSHIP? A 40 percent drop in the Department of Defense (DOD) budget since its peak in the mid-1980s, subsequent base closures, layoffs in defense and defense-related industries, and the shrinking demand for military technology revived the debate over the federal government’s role in the market. The prospect of losing defense-based technologies and fear of severe employment reductions in the defense and defense-related industries prompted the Clinton administration to devise a plan to smooth the transition for the defense industry. ARPA director Denman asserted the need for integration of the defense industry “arises from a dramatically altered worldwide security environment that calls for high technology products in spite of steeply declining defense budgets. . . . The strategy to maintain a healthy industrial base emphasizes the need

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for integration of the military and commercial sectors in light of the downsizing of the defense industry.”10 TRP proponents argued that the government could play a key role in facilitating technology applications for commercial use and pointed to Lockheed Martin’s efforts to develop and subsequently market the Global Positioning System (GPS) as a successful example of this strategy. Initially created as a military navigation and targeting system, GPS has become a valuable addition for off-shore oil exploration and commercial as well as sport fishing. To the advocates this is evidence that “if you build it, they will come,” and the market will support it. To ensure that the United States will be competitive in important high-tech markets in the future, some analysts recommend a more aggressive government involvement, that is, identifying strategic industries and fostering their growth by restricting foreign competition, subsidizing exports, and supporting corporate research and development efforts. One of the key problems is determining which industries should receive special government support. Charles L. Schultze, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter administration, has argued that America’s pork barrel political system often made it difficult to separate industrial policy decisions from political pressures.11 Advocates of stronger government involvement maintain that the Congress must devise special policies in support of high-tech industries for the United States to remain competitive in the global economy. In fact, an increasing number of Americans believe that national security can no longer be devised solely along military lines, but must include effective measures to battle economic threats, perceived to come from international high-tech industries.12 The concept of a “free-market” economy, Adam Smith argued, implies that national wealth would increase through comprehensive economic growth that was only possible by relying on the self-regulating capacity of the market. Government interference in the market in support of particular industries was warranted, according to Smith, only to levy taxes on imports or when matters of national security were concerned. Industrial policy advocates generally see two additional reasons for justifying government intervention in the market: (1) equity, when a more desirable distribution of wealth is fostered or (2) when the market is performing poorly or not at all. Market failures may occur for a variety of reasons, including:13 • Lack of competition due to the monopoly power of only a small number of producers. • Missing markets, where transactions involve outcomes that are uncertain and difficult to control. Insurance trade is one example. Those who choose to purchase insurance are typically a selected and biased sample with worse-than-average expected

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performance. Moreover, their efforts to avoid unfortunate outcomes will be reduced once insurance is provided. • Public goods, the purchase of which would provide so small a share of the total benefit for each buyer that no one will be inclined to buy the good on his or her own. Public goods and services affect the common interests of the citizens and, when provided, their consumption cannot be limited to specific buyers. Among the more obvious examples of public good are wilderness areas, national defense, and flood-control projects. • Externalities or actions of one individual that affect the welfare of others who may not even be involved in the market exchange. For example, market processes on their own will not yield sufficiently pure air and water supplies or search for alternatives to using finite resources such as timber as a raw material, when timber supply seems abundant, at least for the short term.

Although government intervention may be warranted when markets perform poorly or undesirably, it may also create externalities that would not otherwise exist. For instance, resources provided by the taxation and welfare system or through specific government subsidies impose costs that often are shared by society as a whole (e.g., Medicare/Medicaid, public education, job training programs). These mechanisms for achieving social objectives might encourage individuals to free-ride on the efforts of others and, in doing so, obstruct the efficient functioning of the market. Analysts are divided in their opinions on the role of government when market failures occur. Adam Smith purists suggest the government should do nothing, thereby recognizing that any direct action may actually create further problems and that commercial providers might perhaps find a more efficient way to tackle the market failure. By contrast, advocates for stronger market control typically argue that government can take measures to improve the workings of the market and provide special incentives to stimulate certain market activities. In the case of TRP, specific government grants for R&D were envisioned to encourage the development of dual-use technologies to keep American industries globally competitive. For free-market advocates, TRP presented a troubling diversion of defense funds that opened the door for government intervention in the economy and, ultimately, contributed to picking “winners and losers.” Embracing this view, the Bush administration all but ignored defense conversion programs created by Congress. Instead, President Bush strongly believed that the development of competitive high-tech products should be left to the supply-and-demand forces of the private sector. At the same time, some members of Congress such as Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D., New Mexico), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Defense Technology, and then-Sen. Al Gore (D., Tennessee) noted that, during the

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Cold War, federal spending on defense-related R&D had underwritten the domestic computer, semiconductor, and aviation industries. With Clinton’s election came a significant change in attitude toward funding high-tech R&D. Viewing technology as “the engine of economic growth,” Clinton advanced TRP as an appropriate federal subsidy program to integrate commercial technological advances in defense systems, and vice versa. Ultimately, TRP was intended to help position high-tech growth industries so they could compete most effectively with economic rivals in the global marketplace. From its beginning in 1993, TRP faced enormous criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Economic conservatives viewed the program as an economy-distorting federal intervention in the private sector. Murray Weidenbaum, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, argued that the technologies fostered by the TRP would “prosper on their own, without federal subsidies, if the government would promote economic growth by reducing its own role.”14 By contrast, for strong defense conversion advocates the TRP subsidies were too small. In addition, they criticized the project as focused too much on “defense reinvestment” and futuristic technology at the expense of creating jobs for laid-off defense industry workers. In their view, TRP was merely a token gesture toward the goal of further defense reductions and the conversion of the defense industry to peaceful pursuits. Some even viewed TRP as window dressing for a program driven by DOD research priorities. By 1995, the new Republican majority in Congress placed great emphasis on stretching defense budgets by eliminating funding for programs that, in their opinion, siphoned off scarce Pentagon funds to pay for nondefense purposes. The targeted programs were a mixed bag worth more than $2.5 billion, including dual-use research, the clean-up of toxic and hazardous waste on military bases, the Nunn-Lugar program to help former Soviet states dispose of nuclear weapons, and humanitarian assistance overseas. While the House voted to eliminate dual-use projects altogether for the FY96 defense authorization bill, the Senate endorsed a scaled-down version of the program championed by Jeff Bingaman (D., New Mexico). The Bingaman amendment specified that, “(1) cost-shared partnerships between the Department of Defense and the private sector to develop dual-use technologies . . . are increasingly important to ensure efficient use of defense procurement resources, and (2) such partnerships, including SEMATECH and the Technology Reinvestment Project, need to become the norm for conducting such applied research by the Department of Defense.”15 Congress ultimately appropriated $200 million to continue “dual-use” projects that had already been started. By the following year, Congress eliminated funding for “dual-use” projects alto-

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gether to offset additional appropriations believed to be more vital to combat efficiency. The controversy over TRP and dual-use technology raised two basic questions: First, was there a market failure, specifically related to research and development deficiencies and if so, how did it fail? And second, if there was a market failure, do programs like the TRP address the failure and provide a solution? Two examples illustrate this dilemma: SEMATECH, viewed as the “poster child” for a successful cooperative R&D initiative; and BART, one of the first projects to receive a dual-use technology grant through the TRP. Both will be explored hereafter to examine the efficacy of government sponsorship for the development of dual-use technologies.

SEMATECH The U.S. electronics industry had lost its preeminence by the mid-1980s, partially due to government supported R&D activities by overseas competitors.16 At the time, half the computer chips in the F-16 fighter’s fire-control radar came from Japan. Concerned about the growing dependence on foreign supplied semiconductors and components for advanced weaponry, the Reagan administration supported efforts to reinvigorate the U.S. semiconductor industry and to recapture the market. The goal was to assure that the American military could rely on domestic chip manufacturers, not to stop foreign manufacturers from producing high-quality technology. SEMATECH (SEMiconductor MAnufacturing TECHnology) was formed as a non-profit consortium of U.S. semiconductor manufacturers in 1987. The initial 14 members of the consortium included such industry leaders as Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, AT&T, Motorola, and Texas Instruments. SEMATECH’s mission was to work with government agencies and universities to sponsor and conduct research aimed at assuring U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing technology. The original SEMATECH membership represented 85 percent of America’s semiconductor capacity by sales. The Defense Departemnt and the consortium members split the contribution of $200 million per year for the project’s initial five-year tenure. The original plans were to build and run a semiconductor manufacturing plant, provide research grants to equipment suppliers, and buy equipment for testing. Fierce resistance to these plans emerged from the membership owing to a fear that the consortium might emerge as a domestic competitor. The objective was refocused to distribute the yielded technology among the consor-

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tium members and the plans were scaled back to a set of chip manufacturing research goals using only American-made equipment. Although SEMATECH preceded TRP, both initiatives were based on the belief that trying to predict future market demands would lead commercial industry to focus on short-term R&D, thereby neglecting potentially important long-term research. Convinced that SEMATECH was a success, the Clinton administration modeled its TRP initiative largely after that experience. Many of the SEMATECH objectives were characteristic of the kinds of joint R&D projects envisioned to be supported through TRP funding. The difference between these initiatives was that the SEMATECH efforts were focused on a specific end-product (i.e., semiconductor chips) whose development required a consortium of most industrial players. TRP, on the other hand, envisioned the joint cooperation of players in government, industry, and academia sharing know-how, skills, and costs to develop technological advances with multiple applications. The goals for SEMATECH’s first five-year plan were set very narrowly in terms of line-widths—the size of the smallest chip features producable through fabrication technology—and wafer sizes. Smaller features mean more, faster circuits in a chip. Larger wafers mean more productive data handling capacity. SEMATECH’s success in achieving these specific technology goals was quite impressive. By early 1993, SEMATECH members produced chips with technological capabilities unmatched in the industry. The Clinton White House was so impressed with the success of SEMATECH that the research consortium was heralded as a model for the TRP partnerships for future endeavors. Because of the consortium’s perceived success during the initial phase, government funding for SEMATECH was extended for a second five-year period. Under the guidance of CEO William Spencer, SEMATECH adopted a broader mission for the second funding period: “to create shared competitive advantage by working together to achieve and strengthen manufacturing technology leadership.” The SEMATECH II plan called for the design of facilities, tools, and processes that would allow manufacturers to shift quickly from one product to another. The revised mission encouraged consortium members to expand their efforts in the area of computer integrated manufacturing and to undertake projects deemed too risky to tackle for a single company. While the most prominent manufacturers joined the consortium, some 200 smaller chip-makers stayed out, steered off by the financial requirements or because they feared the larger companies would dominate the research agenda—a suspicion that led two members, Micron Technology and LSI Logic, to leave the consortium in 1991. Many of the smaller chipmakers felt that they had established themselves in niche markets and did not fear any

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competition. T. J. Rodgers, president of Silicon Valley’s Cypress Semiconductor, asserted: “Consortia are formed by people who have lost.”17 In addition, some critics argued, by helping one set of companies, SEMATECH effectively shut out those manufacturers whose products and research ideas it opted not to support. While SEMATECH primarily fostered new technology, that alone was not sufficient to ensure the program’s success. In 1989, the consortium invested millions in the GCA corporation, a small company based in Andover, Massachusetts GCA had pioneered the technique of burning the pattern of circuitry onto semiconductor chips. During the 1970s and early 1980s GCA held most of the world’s market for this equipment, known as “steppers.” By the late 1980s however, steppers produced by two Japanese companies, Nikon and Canon, surpassed GCA’s quality and took over 80 percent of the world market. By 1993, with more than $60 million of SEMATECH subsidies, GCA was able to develop a line of steppers better than any other in the world. But it was too late. Many American microelectronics companies had already placed their orders for new steppers a year earlier and decided to stay with Japanese product lines. The SEMATECH subsidies ended and GCA went out of business. Similarly, SEMATECH took a keen interest in Semi-Gas Systems, a small company specialized in making gas-purification equipment essential to the chip manufacturing process. Under contract from SEMATECH, Semi-Gas accomplished a ten-fold improvement in purity levels, giving it at least a two-year edge over its biggest Japanese rival, Nippon Sanso. In late 1989, Hercules, Semi-Gas’ Delaware-based parent, elected to sell its subsidiary as part of the company’s decision to exit its electronics and printing products business line. The highest competitive bidder was Nippon Sanso, whose offer would have bought the gas purification technology for less than it had cost SEMATECH to develop. The extent to which this kind of foreign direct investment might affect U.S. national security was heavily debated. Although the Bush administration showed little interest in aiding American semiconductor manufacturers, the industry found a number of supporters in Congress. Senator Al Gore, then chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, repeatedly criticized the administration’s attitude toward the industry:

The administration’s posture has been to repeat a few proposals, such as a capital gains tax cut and antitrust changes. . . . Some may be valuable [but] they do not add up to a comprehensive or even credible blueprint for keeping the United States competitive in the field of high technology. Our companies will not stay competitive if the government abandons them. . . . Will government stand on the side of American industry? Or simply 18 stand by as technological leadership, profits, and jobs move steadily offshore.

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Despite a fierce political and legal campaign waged by SEMATECH to prevent the sale, the courts permitted a New Jersey based Nippon Sanso subsidiary to buy Semi-Gas. Sharing R&D risks is much less ambitious, of course, than saving an entire industry and, ultimately, preserving national security. SEMATECH’s initial goal was achievable, indeed it had been achieved by early 1993. Between 1990 and 1993, American chip-makers had increased their world-market share from 44 percent to 54 percent, while the share of their Japanese competitors had dropped from 48 percent to 38 percent. However, it is difficult to determine how much of the recovery of the American semiconductor industry had to do with SEMATECH. Many other factors may have also contributed to reestablishing the dominance of U.S. chipmakers. For one, American interest rates dropped in the late 1980s, making capital investment more available. The rebound of the American economy coupled with a prolonged recession in Japan and the price-cutting efforts by South Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers rendered many of Japan’s leading microelectronic firms barely profitable. In addition to these macrotrends, some observers also credit innovative company strategies with the success of American manufacturers. Congressman Robert Walker, Republican of Pennsylvania, put it bluntly: “We made marginal improvements in our ability to manufacture chips. But in reality, it was the aggressive entrepreneurial companies that regained market share.”19 Others are more generous in their support of dual-use technology development. Robert Galvin, chairman of the executive committee of Motorola, Inc. and the SEMATECH board explains: “Here is a case where the private sector has very efficiently defined a problem and shown leadership. We can do it collectively but we’ll need some help if we want to do it at the same speed as the Japanese.”20 The SEMATECH experience also revealed a difficult lesson for government support of one industry—knowing when to stop. The original aim was met, so the objectives behind SEMATECH II were expanded to promote new consortium goals. As Michael Borrus, an industry expert at the University of California, stated: “If the industry maintains parity with the Japanese and if it continues to be well positioned in the world market, the United States should reduce or eliminate support to SEMATECH.”21 With that philosophy in mind, Congress discontinued federal support of the consortium ten years after it was first conceived.

BART Using some of the SEMATECH contract methodology, namely the creation of partnering arrangements between government, industry, and acade-

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mia, cost-sharing, and the establishment of development milestones, the TRP placed special emphasis on the dual-use of technology for defense and commercial application. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco, in conjunction with Hughes Aircraft, headquartered in El Segundo, California, received a $19.6 million grant from ARPA to develop a new computer control system to better pinpoint the location of subway trains (funded as a C4I project; total cost: $44.3 million).22 The new system was intended to replace track circuit technology developed in the 19th century, and would allow BART to run trains faster and closer together. For the project, BART and Hughes engineers made use of the U.S. Army’s Enhanced Position Location Reporting System (EPLRS), a radio communication network device for application in battlefield situations to determine the precise location of friendly combat vehicles on front lines and to report that information to tactical commanders. Used within the BART system, this technology, according to Eugene Nishinaga, BART’s R&D Manager in San Francisco, would enable BART to position trains within 15 feet accuracy and receive position updates every half-second.23 Ultimately, the new system would make it possible to run the rail system with fewer cars. BART could save some $100 million in the long run. Excited about the prospects of the new system, Nishinaga was convinced that “this technology will have major impact on the rail industry. Many other companies have tried to develop this technology, but nobody has come up with anything comparable. We expect the new system to become the standard in the future.” Besides the vast commercial advantages, Nishinaga also saw invaluable benefits for the defense industry from the BART initiative. “I believe this project has not only benefited transportation but also defense. We have taken the commercial version of defense technology and applied it widely, thereby reducing the cost of the radios for the Army by at least 50 percent. If these radios will be used even more widely, the cost will come down even further. We’re talking about saving tens of thousands per radio, if the Army buys only 2–3,000 of these radios.” In addition, Don Johnson, program manager for Hughes Aircraft, asserted that repairs in the communications system will become much easier with the new technology. “We don’t have to stop traffic to repair circuits.” Beyond that, Johnson added, “BART will be able to control electric power much better and can save millions of dollars in electricity.” According to Johnson, the commercial software used to program the new rail circuits could also be employed for programming processors in military radios. In this specific area, Johnson concluded, “the military benefits result not so much from the parts per se, but from the experience. There are huge expenses involved when one goes through the initial product development stages. The expertise

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gained in the developmental phase of this project presents tremendous intangible benefits for the military.” A part of the TRP strategy was to encourage manufacturers to identify dual-use purposes for the developed technologies. Clearly, this public policy objective influenced the BART-Hughes initiative. Nishinaga suggested: “We would have never gotten this far without government involvement. Initially, the project was viewed with a high deal of skepticism within BART. Getting the money would never have been possible without ARPA. That’s what really kick-started the program.” Johnson concluded similarly, “there are a number of companies that have attempted to adapt the new communications technology, but have failed to develop the necessary robustness in their radios. Would somebody ultimately have dealt with this issue? Maybe! Have they? No! I can almost guarantee, we would not have this technology now without government funding.”

NOTES 1. White House Press Release, October 25, 1994. 2. Statement before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—Subcommittee on Technology, Environment, and Aviation, July 20, 1993, p. 6. 3. ARPA, The Technology Reinvestment Project: Dual-Use Innovation for a Stronger Defense, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 16. 4. ARPA, “Program Information Package for Technology Reinvestment Project Focused Competition,” Arlington, VA, 1994, p. 1. 5. Created in 1958, ARPA’s initial emphasis centered around space, ballistic missile defense, and nuclear test detection. In the late 1960s, with the transfer of most of these programs to the armed services, ARPA redefined its role and focused on diverse, yet relatively small and essentially exploratory research programs. In 1972, the agency was renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but in reference to the wider focus of the TRP, the name was changed back to ARPA in March 1993, signaling the introduction of a broader mission for the research agency. In February 1996, following the elimination of appropriations for dual-use programs, Congress changed the name back to DARPA (see FY96 Defense Authorization Act, PL 85–325). 6. ARPA, The Technology Reinvestment Project: Dual-Use Innovation for a Stronger Defense, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 1. 7. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—Subcommittee on Technology, Environment, and Aviation, July 20, 1993, pp. 3–4. 8. See Charles Wildman and Sean O’Keefe, “An Analysis of the Technology Reinvestment Program as a Method of Defense Conversion and Industrial Policy and its

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Effect on Shareholder Wealth,” Case File: Smeal College of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University, June 1996. 9. Norman Augustine, “Defense Conversion: Promise, Not Panacea,” Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy (winter 1995): 16. 10. Statement before the Subcommittee on Technology, Environment, and Aviation of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; U.S. House of Representatives, July 20, 1993, p. 1. 11. Charles L. Schultze, Memos to the President: A Guide Through Macroeconomics for the Busy Policymaker (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1992). 12. For instance, a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in November 1991 revealed that almost two-thirds of respondents (62%) believed that increased Japanese investment in the United States posed “a threat to American economic independence.” See Robert L. Lineberry, George C. Edwards III, and Martin P. Wattenberg, Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy, 6th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). 13. A detailed description of modern market failures is presented in Edith Stokey and Richard Zeckhauser, A Primer for Policy Analysis (New York, London: Norton, 1978). 14. See Congressional Quarterly, July 23, 1994, p. 2003. 15. See S. Amndt. 321 to Fiscal 1995 Defense Supplement Appropriations—HR 889 (PL 104–6), March 7, 1995. 16. Many countries have experimented with a variety of industrial policy and defense conversion efforts. Unfortunately, exploring the range of these endeavors would be beyond the scope of this case. 17. The Economist, April 2, 1994, p. 78. 18. Harvard Business School Case 9–792–040, “The Sale of Semi-Gas Systems (A),” 1993, p.11. 19. Katie Hafner, “The Consortium is a Hero in Washington, deservedly or not,” New York Times, November 7, 1993. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence. 23. This information is based on interviews the authors conducted with BART and Hughes officials.

9 Searching for a Safer Technology: Army-Community Conflict in Chemical Weapons Destruction W. Henry Lambright

On July 14, 1998, Ted Prociv, deputy assistant to the secretary of the Army for Chemical Demilitarization, attended a meeting at the Crystal City Hilton Hotel, across the bridge from Washington, DC. He sat at a large rectangular table, around which approximately forty people had gathered. Small name signs in front of the individuals identified them and their affiliations. Except for Prociv and two others from DOD, along with two young women from an entity called the Keystone Center, an organization which mediates environmental and health conflicts, the individuals were from different state governments and community organizations. Prociv was discussing the next steps in the program for which he was responsible called the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA). He pointed out that budget constraints meant that it was highly likely that all but two or three competing contractors would be eliminated from the program as it moved to the next stage, that of technology demonstration. Prociv’s remarks caused a half-dozen contractor representatives seated behind one end of the table to scurry from the room to the nearest phone to inform their companies. All the people at the table stared, some angrily, at Prociv. His statement, made almost casually, came as a surprise and shock to most attendees. Some people around the table peppered the Army official with questions. How could you make this decision? We understood six contractors had met the criteria we set and it was a wide open question as to which technological approach among the six was best. One individual from Alabama accused

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Prociv of presiding over a program that was a “sham.” Prociv took umbrage at that remark and strongly defended the sincerity of DOD’s effort to allow state and local participation in DOD decisions. Individuals from other states at the table defended Prociv and encouraged him to stick to his guns. Above all, they demanded he not assuage his critics by robbing Peter to pay Paul—that is, taking money from a program they preferred to help one they clearly did not. An individual who seemed not to favor one side or the other pointed out that cutting back on the number of finalists was “routine” acquisitions procedure. To which another voice countered that the ACWA process was not supposed to be routine. And still another declared: Congress, not DOD, was the decision-maker. The meeting grew increasingly heated, with various individuals attacking one another’s positions. Prociv found himself pressured by all sides. As the meeting was about to get out of hand, Kristi Parker, one of the representatives from the Keystone Center at the table, spoke up. “Take a deep breath,” she said. “Imagine yourself in the seat next to you, and what you’d be feeling and saying!”1

DIALOGUE Welcome to “Dialogue!” This is a new form of participatory decision-making for DOD and the Army, a product of post–Cold War environmentalism, aimed at ending a logjam in chemical weapons destruction. In what was seen as a major foreign policy victory by the Clinton administration, Congress in 1997 ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The subsequent problem was to implement this treaty. The United States promised to destroy its stockpile of 30,000 tons of chemical weapons, located at eight continental sites and a remote South Pacific atoll, by 2007. In point of fact, the Treaty reinforced a 1985 legislative mandate to dismantle such weapons. There had been earlier deadlines, all missed. As Prociv spoke, two sites (Colorado and Kentucky) were on hold, and most others were moving very slowly, and unevenly toward destruction. Many of these weapons were considered volatile and dangerous. The delays were due in part to public perception of the risk of incineration, the Army’s preferred demilitarization technique adopted in 1988. The public perception, which the Army and National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (NRC) regarded as unfounded from a scientific point of view, fueled environmental opposition and slowed state permitting. To find a more publicly acceptable technology, the Army had decided to use a novel chemical neutralization technique at two sites, in Maryland and Indiana, where chemical agents were stored in bulk containers. This technology was not suitable when the agents

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were integrated into rockets and munitions, that is, assembled weapons. Hence, Congress ordered DOD to go back to research and development and demonstrate not less than two alternative technologies for assembled chemical weapons, the kind found at the Kentucky and Colorado sites. In dealing with assembled weapons, where a technology had yet to be developed and demonstrated, the Army, which was DOD’s administrative agent for Chemical Demilitarization (Chem Demil), decided it would engage the states, communities, and relevant interest groups at the “front end” of decision-making rather than after the fact. It had a third party—the Keystone Center—design a process of decision-making new to the Army that would allow for citizen and state participation, yet retain for government the ultimate technological choice. The result was what was called “the Dialogue,” which was in its eighteenth month when Prociv made his presentation in Crystal City. Each of the participants at the Dialogue from the various eight states had an agenda, and so did DOD. Prociv, in charge of the Chem Demil program, was mindful of the CWC deadline as well as budget constraints. Having let a range of interests into the process, the Army found the participants wanted control of decision-making. If the Army would not obey, certain opponents would take their case to Congress. Who was really in charge of chemical weapons destruction in the United States? How did DOD and the Army get to this point? How were safety risks assessed? How were tensions between scientific and policy decisions resolved? How did the Army decide on a strategy and how did it sell its decision to the public and the various opposition groups? Was the Army in error in using participatory-process strategies to achieve its destruction goals? How did the ACWA process (Dialogue) relate to other parts of the chemical demilitarization program? Who was to say? How could the United States tell Russia and all the other nations of the world to abandon chemical weapons if it could not destroy its own stockpile?

BACKGROUND AND SETTING In ensuing sections, we go back in time to the origins of conflict between Army and community/state forces, and trace how the Army came to alter its course in achieving Chem Demil goals. What started out as a relatively straightforward technological choice for the Army, made on rationalistic grounds, ended up mired in a political conflict. The Dialogue is both a symbol of the long-term struggle and most recent attempt by the Army to achieve consensus. Begun by act of Congress in 1985, Chem Demil was to complete its work by 1994 at a cost of $1.7 billion. By 1999, the deadline for all practical

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purposes had slipped to 2007, the Chemical Weapons Convention target date, and cost risen to approximately $16 billion.2 Along the way, with difficulty, the Army secured acceptance for its approach—called baseline incineration—from the following sites: Utah, Oregon, Alabama, and Arkansas. Its greatest problems lay with the remaining four: Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, and Colorado. The emphasis of this case is on decisions for alternatives to baseline incineration. The issue has been, if not incineration, then what? There has been a search for a magic bullet, a safer technology, in the course of which the Army has had to react to the protests coming from a passionate opposition particularly in certain states and communities. In order to provide insights into local forces at play, with which the Army must deal, the states of Maryland and Kentucky are treated in depth. Other states are mentioned as relevant. In dealing with the anti-incineration forces, the Army has been cognizant that if it gave in too much on the alternative technology route, it would be undermining its case for incineration in the four states that had accepted it. There were vocal opponents in the proincineration states who wanted to reverse earlier decisions and not build or retrofit incineration facilities. Hence, the search for alternative technology in a few states was fraught with risk for the entire program. Also, congressional and CWC deadlines loomed large in the Army’s mind. There were requirements to be met. Many environmental activists and others in the states and localities regarded those mandates as having no force for them. With visions of nerve and mustard gas leaking from incineration facilities, their ultimate desire was to come up with a safer technology. The Army called baseline incineration 99.9999 percent safe, and had the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval for moving forward. But the Army’s standard was not safe enough for communities and states affected. Thus, Chem Demil is not just another case of “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY. Rather than transfer its waste to another state, the opposition to incineration has come to argue for a newer and safer technology. It has been the involvement of citizen opponents in the Army research, development, and demonstration process that makes Chem Demil particularly novel, and precedent-setting. The issue of Chem Demil illuminates how local environmental concerns and global issues of arms control can collide, with the Army uncomfortably in the middle.

ORIGINS OF THE ARMY-CITIZEN CONFLICT: KENTUCKY The seeds of controversy, leading ultimately to the Dialogue mechanism 18 years later, were sown in 1979. The point of origin was the Lexington–Bluegrass Army facility in central Kentucky, near the city of Richmond. A group of

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Army personnel burned materials that were used to create smoke to obscure troop movements. In doing so, they violated Army rules by several orders of magnitude in the amount burned and lost control of the operation. Smoke billowed high above the depot. It formed a cloud that traveled slowly across a highway, which separated the facility from nearby Richmond. Reaching the civilian population, the smoke caused respiratory problems that were so severe that over forty people had to be hospitalized. Medical personnel frantically attempted to find the cause of the illness and called the Army depot, having heard a report of smoke emanating from that source. The Army denied any connection and a public information officer suggested that local pranksters from either of two colleges in the area, Eastern Kentucky University and Berea College, might be responsible.3 While the Army issued denials, a local television station sent a plane aloft. Lo and behold! It found a trail of smoke from the facility to the populated area. A television report soon juxtaposed pictures of an Army spokesperson denying involvement and smoke coming from the depot. The incident highlighted to the people of the region that old chemical weapons were stockpiled at Lexington–Bluegrass, a fact of which there was vague awareness. More important, it also caused them to greatly distrust the Army.4 At the national level, in 1981 the Reagan administration began pushing hard for weapons modernization, including a new generation of chemical weapons, called binary. These newer binary weapons were viewed as being safer because the chemical agent and munitions remained separated until they were assembled for military use. It was not until 1985 that the administration got the legislation it wanted to develop binary weapons. Destroying the old stockpile was coupled with developing new weapons. Even before the law had passed, the Army went to various states to discuss options for getting rid of the stockpile. In 1984, a group from the Army held an open meeting at the Kentucky depot. A large number of citizens attended. The Army said that the best available technology to destroy the old weapons was incineration. The only question, assuming legislation passed, was whether the weapons should be burned at one or two national facilities or be burned on site, where they were. Doing nothing, the Army stressed, was the greatest risk of all, given the deterioration and volatility of some of the weapons, especially the rockets. Kentucky had fewer weapons than other sites, but it had the kind of weapons that were particularly high-risk. The site was also near a civilian population. After the meeting, a number of concerned citizens gathered and discussed the situation. Many remembered with bitterness the 1979 “smoke pot” incident, and distrusted the Army. Driving home, Craig Williams and his wife continued the conversation. Originally from New York, Williams was a Vietnam

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veteran whose experience in Southeast Asia had transformed him into an antiwar protester in the United States from 1969–1974. Williams wound up in central Kentucky, a self-styled “hippie-type,” making his living as a cabinet-maker. On the drive home, Williams’ wife looked at him. Reflecting on the meeting with the Army, she declared, “Craig, somebody’s got to do something about this!” Williams recalled this moment as the time when he decided “to dust off my activist boots.” Williams and others soon established a local group, called Common Ground, whose major plank was that the chemical weapons be taken out of Kentucky.5 In 1986, Army representatives, coming down to Kentucky, found an organized opposition. Hundreds of people showed up at Lexington–Bluegrass, with some children wearing gas masks. The meeting was rancorous, lasting well into the early morning hours. In 1987, another public meeting took place at Lexington-Bluegrass. Again, hundreds attended. Again, emotions ran high, leaving a sense of bitterness on the part of many participants.6 A year later, the Army made its “baseline incineration” decision. This meant that it was not going to transport the weapons from Kentucky and other states. Instead, it was going to build a facility at each site and burn the weapons there. Kentucky thus did not get the decision it initially wanted—send the weapons someplace else. This meant Kentucky’s dealing with incineration in Kentucky was the issue for the state. It meant the Army having to cope with Kentucky.

THE MARYLAND OPPOSITION The opposition in Maryland was slower to materialize, in part because there was no dramatic smoke pot incident as in Kentucky. It also took a different tone, owing to the nature of its constituency and leadership. The stockpile in Maryland is at the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground, near Aberdeen, twenty-five miles north of Baltimore. Unlike Lexington–Bluegrass, Aberdeen is a major employer in its county (Harford). Hence, there is a built-in base of support in the community immediately adjacent to the facility. There was some opposition in Harford County; however, most of the opposition has come from Kent County, which has no economic stake in Aberdeen. Kent County is a short distance from Aberdeen, as the crow flies, across the Chesapeake Bay. It is downwind of Aberdeen. A prosperous county of rolling hills, large estates, and many retired people, Kent is Maryland horse country. Many of its citizens have good educations and ample financial resources. As in Kentucky, so in Maryland, there was a pre-history to Chem Demil that affected later attitudes toward the program. Kay Hutchinson, a Kent County resident and incineration opponent, remembers a fire at Aberdeen in 1987 that burned for several days. It was clearly visible from her porch across the bay.

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This fire had little to do with Chem Demil, as far as she knows, but it contributed to her negative reaction when she first heard about incineration plans. Others who later also formed part of the opposition recalled news of three top civilian managers at Aberdeen who illegally treated, stored, and dumped poisonous chemical warfare materials from 1983 to 1986. They were indicted for environmental crimes in 1988. Also, about the same time, there was a considerable controversy in Baltimore about garbage incineration and its hazards. If incinerating garbage was dangerous, what about chemical weapons?7 When Kent Countians heard about what the Army had in mind, they and others mobilized a petition against incinerating chemical weapons, which 500 people signed. The petition did no good. In 1988, the Army made clear its decision was made, with the publication of the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, a decision acceptable to EPA. The chemical weapons stockpile at Aberdeen would be burned. KENTUCKY CHANGES STRATEGY In 1990, Kentucky’s Common Ground formed the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF). Its purpose was to “further the cause of safe disposal of chemical weapons and environmental democracy by improving public access to information, coalition building, fostering cooperation between government and citizens, and encouraging grass roots participation in the decision-making process.” The KEF was organized so as to be able to raise funds. It was an extension of Common Ground and was based at Berea College. The head of KEF was Craig Williams.8 KEF was invited along with other environmental interest groups from states around the country to a conference DOD was sponsoring in Washington on Defense and Environment. There, Kentucky activists mingled not only with other Chem Demil people, but also with national and international environmental group representatives from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. It was during this conference that Williams decided that Kentucky interests would best be served by uniting with other states and forming a broad political coalition. Kentucky had been arguing that its chemical waste be exported to some other place, a strategy that put it in conflict with other states. Far better, he concluded, would be a strategy that united the states together against incineration anywhere, and in favor of an alternative, safer technology. It was also at this meeting that the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), as a coalition of local groups concerned with the Chem Demil issue, was conceived. Such a body could not only be national, but international, as the issue was international. Finding an alternative technology was a positive strategy. “Not in my back yard” (NIMBY) could be converted to “not on planet Earth” (NOPE).9

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The next year, 1991, with support from Greenpeace, the Military Toxics Project, and Tides Foundation, KEF organized the first Citizens’ Summit on chemical weapons disposal in Richmond, Kentucky. KEF brought together citizen activists from all eight U.S. continental sites, the inhabited territory closest to Johnston Atoll, and Russia to share concerns about safe disposal as well as work on joint strategies. This was the first official CWWG conference. Decisions were made by consensus, and all agreed that to win on this issue, citizens from all affected sites would have to continue to work together, share information and strategies.10 The following year, 1992, CWWG was solidified as a formal organization. KEF was elected to serve as lead organization of CWWG and Williams elected as national spokesman. CWWG moved from local organizing to influencing policy. A specific strategy was to enact state laws that would create safety and environmental requirements so high that incineration would all but be prohibited. CWWG got the first law passed in Kentucky that year, as a “model” for other states.11 Another strategy was to have Citizen Advisory Commissions (CACs) appointed in each state. Such CACs would be appointed by governors, be independent of DOD, and would assist state governments. In addition to citizens, these bodies would include two state governmental officials. In many instances these were the state environmental regulatory director and the state emergency management director. Williams found easy access to Kentucky legislators in Washington. Kentucky’s congressional representatives were aided by those from Maryland in support of the bill on CACs, passed in 1993. As a follow up to that legislation, the Kentucky CAC was appointed. The CWWG and environmental activists dominated the Kentucky CAC. Also in 1993, KEF decided it would spend 95 percent of its resources on national activism, just 5 percent on local action. On April 30, CWWG held a news conference to announce a national challenge to Army plans to burn chemical weapons at storage sites across the nation. Williams challenged Army representatives, “You haven’t heard of CWWG—but you will!” At a later public meeting attended by Williams and General Walt Busbee, program manager for Chem Demil, the two men confronted one another. Williams shook his finger at Busbee, declaring that unless the Army showed more flexibility on the incineration issue, “we will be forced to shut you down.” To which the general responded, “Sure, pal, I’m scared.”12 THE MARYLAND FRONT Compared to Kentucky, the Maryland opposition had been relatively quiet, but in 1992 the pace picked up. In February, the first meeting of what became the Coalition for Safe Disposal of Chemical Weapons (CoSAD) took place. It

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represented a range of Kent County civic organizations. The fear was that once a Chem Demil facility was in place, it would be used for all kinds of hazardous waste, indefinitely.13 In March, the Kent County League of Women Voters and two neighborhood associations passed resolutions opposing the incinerator. The Kent Council of PTAs joined in, citing a front-page article in the Baltimore Sun that Maryland had the highest rate of deaths from cancer in the United States. Two Maryland congressmen spoke. They said they had talked with the Army and that there were potential alternatives to incineration, particularly neutralization through chemical processes. “We feel if the same amount of effort is put into neutralizing the agent that was put into incineration, an answer can be found,” they declared.14 In April, a symposium was held at Washington College on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A large number of people spoke against incineration. Only Charles Baronian, the Army’s top manager on the scientific-engineering side of Chem Demil, came to make the Army’s case. By this time, over 1,000 Kent residents had signed petitions against incineration. The Kent County Commissioners announced they not only were opposed to an incinerator at Aberdeen, but they would not take any federal emergency planning funds available for the program lest taking money be seen as an indirect endorsement of the program. They would use their own county money to prepare for an emergency.15 In June, a busload of Maryland citizens traveled to Washington to talk to local representatives about the Aberdeen incinerator. Kent County activists claimed they had 7,000 signatures on a petition against the Aberdeen incinerator. In 1993, a Maryland state law was passed requiring the Army to “fully” investigate alternatives to incineration, and Maryland’s CAC came into existence.16

THE ARMY LOOKS AT NEUTRALIZATION Pushed by the environmental activists and their allies in Congress, Baronian, in 1993, asked the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council (NRC) to take another look at alternative technologies.17 His view was that he and the Army had studied alternatives and none were as ready as baseline incineration. The Army’s technology worked, was safe enough, and should be deployed. Strong-willed, energetic and highly regarded as an engineer and technical manager, Baronian had spent his early years making chemical weapons more lethal and now he was spending his last years in government trying to destroy them. He was acknowledged the “father” of the baseline incineration process, and he strongly defended this approach. He believed that some day, with enough time and money, better technology might come along.

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But, as the chief technical man behind the program, he had been told to find a way to destroy these weapons by a politically-established deadline. Only baseline incineration would do that. Prior to the baseline incineration decision made by the Army in 1988, he had looked specifically at neutralization, the most promising alternative, and found that it left a residue that was itself toxic. On the other hand, he knew research had been under way on neutralization, including work in Aberdeen’s own labs. Perhaps another look would not hurt. He’d gone the last mile in his view. He’d go one more beyond that. Hence, he asked the NRC to look at the best alternatives to baseline incineration. In February 1994, the NRC said that while delaying incineration of some stockpiles posed unnecessary safety risks, those risks were far lower at the Aberdeen, Maryland and Newport, Indiana sites. This was because those sites had only agents, not munitions. “For the first time, they are finally separating Aberdeen and Newport,” said John Nunn, co-chair of the Maryland CAC. “That’s a big change from the one-size-fits-all mentality.”18 In contrast to Kentucky, home of CWWG, Maryland did not adopt a national/international strategy. It focussed on differentiating its problems from those of other states, except Indiana. Neutralization was not going to be enough, the NRC pointed out, because of the residue problem which would require further treatment. That treatment, the Maryland CAC determined from discussions with Aberdeen researchers, could be biodegradation. In March, the CAC formally recommended the Army adopt for Maryland neutralization followed by biodegradation.19 In April, the Army sent a report to Congress calling for continuation of incineration plans at all sites but exploration of alternatives at Aberdeen and Newport. It pointed out that the cost of shifting to neutralization at Aberdeen alone could be $900 million compared to the estimated $489 million for incineration.20 A General Accounting Office report released later that month found that none of the alternatives to incineration, including neutralization, could be fully operational within ten years. That meant that the Army could not make the existing congressionally set deadline, 2004.21 In May, two Maryland legislators said they would push the Army to adopt neutralization for Aberdeen. To help keep the heat on, the Maryland interest group, CoSAD, made another excursion to Washington.22 The Army allocated $21 million to begin researching the possibilities of neutralization followed by biodegradation at Aberdeen. It also said that the risk of accidents at Aberdeen from aircraft landing at a strip near the stockpile might not be as great as first thought and could be further mitigated by actions to better pro-

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tect the stockpile. Previously, the Army had used the airfield problem as part of the risk assessment necessitating fast action on Chem Demil at Maryland.23

DECKER TAKES CHARGE By late summer 1994, the Chem Demil program had been reorganized within the Army and Gil Decker, assistant secretary for Research, Development, and Acquisitions was put in charge. A successful high-tech executive from California, vigorous and accustomed to running large-scale enterprises, Decker subsequently appointed Gen. Robert Orton as program manager. Another official advising him was Ted Prociv, deputy assistant to the secretary of Defense for Chemical/Biological Matters. Also providing advice to him was Sherry Goodman, assistant secretary of Defense for Environmental Security. At the same time, the Army’s principal technical advocate behind baseline incineration, Baronian, decided to retire. Decker agreed with existing Army policy, that incineration was the optimal technology for Chem Demil. However, he soon found himself caught in a bind. Here he was, arguing as strenuously and sincerely as he could, that incineration was the way to go in Alabama, Oregon, Arkansas, Colorado, Utah, and Kentucky, while saying to Maryland and Indiana that neutralization might be possible—for them. He pointed to the fact that these two sites had only chemical agents, not agents assembled into rockets and other weapons. Still, acquiescing in two states weakened his overall argument. While there were assembled weapons at all other sites, there were also chemical agents stored separately in bulk containers in those states. Moreover, Kentucky pointed out that federal legislation had been enacted directing the Army to explore alternatives to incineration at “low volume” sites. Kentucky had been dropped when the Army artfully drew the alternative technology line at “bulk” sites.24 In 1994, there was no guarantee neutralization would work even at the bulk sites on an operational scale. There were theories, limited tests, and some experiences indicating residue as a hazardous by-product. Decker decided to take a cautious approach to a decision on neutralization—conduct research and development, perform tests before making a firm decision. Meanwhile, Decker continued to promote incineration as actively as he could, seeking state permits wherever possible. All this was taking place while the Clinton administration sought a worldwide ban on chemical weapons through a Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The State Department, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and National Security Council were a growing pressure on DOD and the Army to accelerate U.S. Chem Demil efforts as an example to the world, especially Russia. The Cold War had ended and the binary weapons development program

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terminated along with it. Now, the priority was to destroy existing chemical weapons. The United States was working with Russia on how to destroy that country’s huge stockpile.25 Thus, in 1994, Decker established a two-year neutralization research and development program. He raised the allocation for neutralization to $52 million.26 As the new Army research and development project got underway, pressures mounted on Decker. There were people in the Army who hoped the R&D effort would fail. The Army as an organization was still on record as favoring incineration. It worried that legitimating neutralization could play into the hands of the anti-incineration forces in all of the states. At the same time, the environmental movement had come to DOD, and it influenced different offices to different degrees in the post–Cold War period. The Army’s chemical weapons division, its work historically shrouded in secrecy, was one of the last parts of the department to become sensitive to environmental concerns.27 Conscious that he was part of a cultural change process, Decker sought to make Chem Demil a more open program, working to declassify information about the stockpile and giving greater emphasis to public outreach activities at every site. Decker tried to balance all the conflicting pressures and keep the program moving. Far more than his predecessors, Decker went to the various sites and spoke with CACs and other community interests, and became familiar with their complaints. Technically trained, Decker saw baseline incineration as a viable and safe technology. He was pleased that four states were moving forward on incineration. His dilemma was to get forward motion in all the states.28 If neutralization proved viable, then Decker could at least get Maryland and Indiana off dead center. October 1996 was set as a deadline by the Army for deciding whether or not to adopt neutralization. If 2004 was a serious deadline, and Decker regarded it as such, then the Army either had to move ahead to the pilot project stage with neutralization, or press once more for permission from Maryland and Indiana regulators for a permit for incineration. In both states, leading politicians were on record against incineration, and the regulators thus not taking action. In the summer of 1995, Decker decided to go beyond Army R&D to see if the hazardous waste industry had any new ideas about alternatives to incineration. A request went out asking companies to demonstrate on a small scale, using their own money, any technologies they felt were viable options. The incentives for industry were the larger pilot scale and operating plants. Moreover, as the CWC negotiations continued, there was the likelihood that Chem Demil would be a huge market in Russia and other countries. Russia, receiving technical assistance from the Army, indicated a preference for neutralization over incineration. The stakes were high and many companies wished to get in

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on the ground floor. Three companies were selected to demonstrate alternative Chem Demil techniques and each moved ahead in 1995.

THE NEUTRALIZATION DECISION Between November 1995 and September 1996, the Army narrowed various technical options, both in-house and with industry. The NRC was involved in the winnowing process. So were the Maryland and Indiana CACs. The CACs did not make decisions but were allowed to make suggestions, raise questions and give their sense of what safer technology meant for them. What was clear was that the CAC members did not want a facility emitting smoke (i.e., even the appearance of poison gas); also, they wanted a facility that would do a specialized job and then be dismantled. They did not want a facility that would be used later for hazardous waste in general. Under Decker’s leadership, the Army Chem Demil program was becoming increasingly participatory. The CACs were involved in development of assessment criteria for technologies, for example. In September 1996, the Army produced a report recommending a neutralization approach developed in-house. Later that month, the NRC seconded the Army’s conclusion. In September, the Maryland and Indiana CACs enthusiastically endorsed the neutralization choice. What was entailed was a major decision, a genuine change of technical course for the program. Also, the costs of change were considerable, estimated now at over $1 billion for the two pilot plants.29 The Chem Demil program was already a classic case of cost overrun and schedule delay and neutralization could add to both. Decker’s recommendation was reviewed under formal acquisition procedures in both the Army and DOD. These involved committees of high-ranking officials who were knowledgeable, yet not seen as advocates of particular outcomes. At the final decision points, first in the Army and then in the DOD, the Maryland and Indiana CAC chairs were present, along with the chair of the NRC Committee on Chem Demil. This public involvement in acquisitions decision-making was highly unusual, but Chem Demil was an unusual program. After the nongovernmental officials stated their views, they departed and a decision had to be made by governmental officials. The Army committee went along with Decker’s recommendations with only one dissent. Then, in December, it was up to the departmental level where another acquisitions committee composed of assistant secretaries and other top decision-makers met. Sherry Goodman, DOD’s top environmentalist, spoke enthusiastically about the way citizens had been involved in the process, and argued strongly for neutralization.30

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On January 22, 1997, DOD announced official approval of the Army’s plan to neutralize the bulk materials at the Maryland and Indiana sites. The decision signaled the intent to build pilot plants at full scale, making it possible to go operational in 2002 or 2003. If that happened, all mustard and nerve gas agents at Aberdeen and Newport could be destroyed by the congressional deadline of 2004.31 Such action would be possible only if everything technical and political went right. The Maryland and Indiana CACs, which included state regulators involved in permitting, presumably now would be advocates rather than opponents. That, at least, was the hope behind the Army/DOD decision to neutralize.

THE ASSEMBLED WEAPONS DECISION Kentucky watched from the sidelines as neutralization discussions moved forward. Once it became clear in September 1996 that the decision for neutralization was likely to become a reality, opponents of incineration spoke of a “breakthrough.” Craig Williams declared this was “the first real demonstrable shift in the whole program.” Wendell Ford, senator from Kentucky, agreed, and said what was happening with neutralization “bodes well for what we’ve been trying to do.”32 CWWG viewed the neutralization decision in Maryland and Indiana as a victory, a break in the Army’s dike. There were some in the Army who agreed, and who criticized Decker for surrender to the opposition. Without question, CWWG was encouraged. It decided to press harder. Through the aid of Kentucky and Colorado federal legislators, CWWG had an amendment to the 1997 Defense Authorization Bill passed that provided $40 million to conduct a pilot program to identify and demonstrate two or more alternatives to the incineration process that would be relevant to assembled weapons (not just bulk materials). This amendment barred the Army from building any incineration plants in Kentucky and Colorado while the program was underway and also required the Defense Department to organize a separate assembled weapons program. The neutralization decision, while strongly pressed by Maryland and others, was substantially steered and to some extent controlled by Army/DOD insiders, especially Decker. The assembled weapons decision, in contrast, was forced on the Army and DOD by outsiders, led by Williams. Army/DOD had to react in this latter case, and do so in the context of increased pressure from the White House to hurry up because of the CWC.

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THE ASSEMBLED CHEMICAL WEAPONS ASSESSMENT (ACWA) PROGRAM In 1997, the U.S. Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, thereby replacing the 1994 congressional deadline with a treaty deadline of 2007. The Army had more time, if it needed that time. While the Army still spoke of 2004, virtually everyone knew it would need all the time to 2007—and maybe more—thanks mainly to CWWG. General Orton retired in 1997 and was replaced by James Bacon, a civilian. This decision to choose a civilian was made by Decker because he believed a civilian was more likely to have credibility with the public and would provide greater leadership stability. Chem Demil had seen a succession of military managers and Bacon was in a position to stay longer. Bacon had responsibility for baseline incineration and neutralization.33 Who was in charge of assembled weapons? The decision on “who” was all-important. Decker was anxious to leave government and return to his home in California. However, he wanted Chem Demil well organized and on the right trajectory before he left. The choice of civilian Bacon was part of his strategy. So was the choice of the leader for Assembled Weapons, Mike Parker. A mechanical engineer by training, with Senior Excutive Service (SES) standing in the civil service, Parker was a seasoned manager (twenty-nine years) in the Army who had acquired a considerable reputation for “breaking log jams.” Quiet and diplomatic in manner, the 52-year-old Parker had spent some time in Utah as a trouble-shooter trying to get implementation in Chem Demil in that state when it appeared to have bogged down. To give him more credibility, he was assigned an assistant, Bill Pehlivanian, a 40-year-old environmental engineer and avowed environmentalist, who came directly from Goodman’s DOD environmental office.34 The Parker/Pehlivanian team had an unenviable job, given the level of distrust between Kentucky and the Army and the demonstrated political clout of CWWG. Decker had no particular expectations concerning Kentucky, and was not sure the Chem Demil issue could be resolved there. He did want Parker/Pehlivanian to try and was firm that the Army had to be responsible and do the best it could to implement the new legislation. At the same time, he had been told by a senior administration official connected with the National Security Council that the White House took CWC very seriously, and that environmental issues had better be resolved, lest they be a barrier to CWC.35 Parker and Pehlivanian soon set up shop in a building a few hundred yards down the road from Bacon and the existing Chem Demil program. Parker and Bacon were organizational equals. The reporting assignments were extremely

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muddled in Parker’s case because he was supposed to report to the DOD rather than the Army. With Decker’s leaving government, both reported to Ted Prociv, who was then in DOD. Under a reorganization engineered by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Prociv was to be transferred to a new job being established in the Army for leadership of Chem Demil. The reorganization was taking place very slowly, so slowly that eighteen months later, Prociv could speak of having “one leg in the DOD, one leg in the Army.” Whatever the organization, Bacon and Parker knew they had to operate as independently from one another as possible. In Bacon’s case, implementation was relatively straightforward. Incineration was making progress in four states. To carry out implementation of neutralization, he needed permits to build in both Maryland and Indiana. He had to keep the CACs and political establishments of the states fully informed of what was taking place. He was responsible for six states. The issue for him was to move ahead and implement technological choices already made. In Parker’s case, there was no technological choice to implement. There was no decision, save to do research and development. He had to develop not only a technology, but a process for deciding on a technology, so that the end result would have credibility. He had to do this fast, because the CWC deadline was meaningful to those to whom he reported. Managing ACWA was, by any measure, a daunting task. There was still another problem. Craig Williams and his allies in other states read the Assembled Chemical Weapons law very broadly. Did it apply just to Kentucky and Colorado? Or did it apply to the program as a whole? Williams said this was a generic law. The aim was to develop and deploy the safest possible technology in all the states, starting with Kentucky and Colorado. If that meant retrofit in other states, so be it.36 The passage of CWC was an invitation for CWWG to extend its reach to Russia and other countries. Williams had come a long way from his cabinet-making job in Kentucky in 1984. As Chem Demil grew as a national issue, he was quoted in the media as the opposition spokesman. As Chem Demil became an international issue with the ratification of CWC in 1997, he was invited to international conferences. Companies and former high-ranking government officials lobbying for them sought his favor—and possible endorsement of their alternative technologies. Whatever others might have thought of Williams, Parker and Pehlivanian took him quite seriously. Parker avowed an intense loyalty to the Army as an institution. Nevertheless, he believed that his institution had to adapt to new times. Like Decker, he felt he was involved in a cultural change process. Pehlivanian, coming from DOD’s environmental office, agreed.37

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In January and February 1997, Parker gathered a staff of technical, business and public affairs people. He found total cooperation on the part of the Army. The problem was what should he do? He recalled he had once gone to a seminar and heard a risk communication expert talk about situations of communication in low-trust settings. He gave the expert a call and had him come to Aberdeen for a half-day in January. Pehlivanian, who joined Parker officially in late February, suggested that in line with the risk consultant’s suggestion, they get a third party to help them with the process of establishing a trust relationship with opposition in the states. Pehlivanian recommended an organization called the Keystone Center, with which he had familiarity.38

ESTABLISHING A DIALOGUE Keystone had been launched in the 1970s. It had carved out a role as a go-between in difficult, contentious environmental/technological conflicts such as that involving nuclear waste. Its job was to establish a dialogue where there was confrontation and legal action. It got involved in disputes only where some compromise was possible. In this case, Keystone determined solution was possible. Everybody agreed on the need to get rid of chemical weapons. The issue was “how?”39 Months passed while Keystone surveyed the various communities. Kentucky was at first hostile, but Keystone was based in Colorado and the Sierra Club in Colorado told its allies in Kentucky that Keystone could help, and had no axe to grind, even though DOD might be paying the bill.40 In the spring of 1997, Keystone became a participant in the Chem Demil controversy. It had first to decide who would come to the table. The basic choices involved key interests in each state, such as those pro-and-con incineration. People were gathered from the community level, as well as state regulators. CACs were represented, but Keystone’s net went beyond CACs. About forty members of the “Dialogue,” as it was called, came to the first meeting in May 1997. At this meeting, Williams noted that, “The good news is that I am at the table after thirteen years. The bad news is that I am at the table.”41 Those opposed to the Army and incineration were clearly worried about being coopted. The Army was concerned about losing control of the ultimate decision to any other group. Pro-incineration people who were from states that had already made choices for incineration were quite aware that the opposition wanted to unravel their decisions and go for retrofit. There were people from the same state who had fought one another at home and who brought their intrastate bitterness to the Dialogue table. Everyone around the table had an agenda and everyone knew who had what agenda. Yet forty people plus came because, as

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Keystone said, they had no real alternative. Letting the weapons sit indefinitely was not an acceptable option. The ticking of a chemical waste time bomb could be heard. Something had to be done. The goal of the group was to establish a consensus on at least two technologies other than incineration that could be demonstrated for assembled weapons. That took time. To get to that point, the Dialogue had to meet every few months for two or three days and reach certain decisions that would guide Army actions. By July 1997, there was agreement on various criteria including efficacy and safety. By September, requests for proposals (RFPs) were prepared by the Army for companies to come forth with technologies to meet these criteria. By February 1998, there were twelve proposals. The Dialogue participants selected a subgroup that would represent it in technical/procurement negotiations and help screen the various proposals. The Army paid for an independent technical consultant to work with the subgroup. Aided by the subgroup, which included a Kentucky representative, the Dialogue whittled down the twelve proposals to seven and then to six by April.42 On July 14, 1998, a meeting was held at the Crystal City Hilton, outside Washington, to discuss the next step. At this point, a number of Dialogue members clearly wanted to keep options open—let the six finalists continue because they all met the criteria, and decide later when more was known. Prociv, leader of the overall Chem Demil program, explained the Army had money for only two. The law said, “at least” two, critics noted. Williams pointed out Kentucky’s Senator Ford had a letter from President Bill Clinton saying he took the Assembled Weapons law seriously. Prociv said the President also took CWC seriously and wanted the treaty implemented on time. Williams and a number of the Dialogue members attacked Prociv and came very close to questioning his (and the Army’s) integrity. Prociv defended himself. Anti-incineration voices told him to take money from the incineration states. Kristi Parker, Keystone’s representative trying to keep everything under control, saw the meeting about to explode and declared, “Take a deep breath. Imagine yourself in the seat next to you, and what you’d be feeling and saying!” Dialogue members gradually cooled and the meeting ended shortly thereafter, with no one quite sure whether Prociv’s decision would stand in the face of inevitable efforts to overturn it. What was for certain was the Dialogue would continue. NOTES 1. Notes on Dialogue on Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment, Washington, DC, Crystal City, VA, meeting, July 14, 1998. Attending this meeting and monitoring events with Professor Lambright was Agnes Gereben, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the Maxwell School. Ms. Gereben also assisted Professor Lambright in final preparation of the case.

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2. C.A. Robbins, “Army’s Huge Supply of Nerve Gas Poses Unnerving Questions,” Wall Street Journal, June 1, 1999, p. 1. 3. Interview with Craig Williams, July 14, 1998. 4. Interview with Mike Parker and Bill Pehlivanian, May 21, 1998. Interview with Craig Williams. CWWG, “Chemical Weapons Disposal Chronology,” http://www.CWWG.org/chronology.html. 5. Interview with Williams. 6. Ibid. 7. Interview with members of Maryland Citizens Advisory Commission, March 11, 1998. Kay Hutchinson, “Chronology of Kent County, MD, involvement with Chemical Demilitarization Operations in Maryland,” in an unpublished document supplied to the author. 8. CWWG, http://www.CWWG.org/KEF.html. 9. Interview with Williams. 10. CWWG, “Kentucky Environmental Foundation Organizational History,” http://www.CWWG.org/KEF.html. 11. Ibid. 12. The Reuter Washington Report, April 30, 1993. Interview with Williams. 13. Hutchinson, “Chronology.” 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Bruce Reid, Baltimore Sun, January 8, 1995, p. 5C. 17. Interview with Charles Baronian, March 11, 1998. 18. Reid, Baltimore Sun. 19. Hutchinson, Chronology. Interview with Maryland CAC. 20. Bruce Reid, Baltimore Sun, April 13, 1994, p. 1B. 21. John Conyers, Congressional Press Release, April 21, 1994. 22. Bruce Reid, “Lawmakers Seek to Block APG Chemical Incinerator,” Hazardous Waste News, no. 22, vol. 16 (May 30, 1994); Hutchinson, Chronology. 23. “Maryland: Army Looks at Safer Chemical Storage at Aberdeen,” Greenwire, August 25, 1995; Bruce Reid, Baltimore Sun, August 25, 1994, p. 12B. 24. Interview with Williams. 25. W. Henry Lambright, Agnes Gereben, and Lee Cerveny, “The Army and Chemical Weapons Destruction: Implementation in a Changing Context,” Policy Studies Journal 26(4) (winter 1998): 703–718. 26. Interview with Steve Landry, March 11, 1998. 27. Interview with Maureen Sullivan, July 23, 1998. 28. For more on Decker, see W. Henry Lambright, “The Battle to Destroy Chemical Weapons,” chapter 3 of this volume. 29. Interview with Joseph Pecoraro, March 11, 1998. 30. Interview with Steve Landry. 31. “Plan Approved to Neutralize APG Mustard Agent,” Baltimore Sun, January 23, 1997, p. 6B. 32. Mike Brown, The Courier-Journal, September 25, 1966, p. 3B.

168 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Technology and Industrial Policy Interview with James Bacon, March 12, 1998. Interview with Parker and Pehlivanian. Interview with Maureen Sullivan. Interview with Williams. Interview with Parker and Pehlivanian. Ibid. Interview with Kristi Parker, June 15, 1998. Ibid. Interview with Parker and Pehlivanian. Ibid.

IV Resource Management (Exercises)

10 Four Days in December L. Paul Dube

SCENARIO It is December, about three weeks after a presidential election. In a stunning political upset, the American people last month cast an impressive majority of their votes for a third party candidate who defied virtually every tenet of conventional wisdom about campaigning for the presidency. During her campaign, she never uttered a negative word about her opponents, arguing that they were good people representing parties whose platforms were rooted in mainstream American thinking. She argued that despite the good intentions of good people, the political system required her opponents to make promises to their respective special interest constituencies and to try to honor those promises after the election. Confounding the pundits and pollsters, her campaign succeeded in convincing the American people that values were more important than promises and that the two major parties were more likely to serve specific interest groups than basic American values. The American people apparently agreed that she was in a unique position to lead the nation toward a federal government that would be sized, shaped, and managed in a manner totally devoted to serving and advancing basic American values, which she identified only in the broadest of terms.

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DESCRIPTION OF THE EXERCISE The participants have been temporarily assigned to the President-elect’s transition staff. Her chief of staff has assigned them to separate teams (if warranted by the number of participants) and assigned to each team the same task. The assigned task is to advise the President-elect how her predecessor’s Defense program should be revised or whether she should be satisfied that current plans reflect sound thinking about what the nation needs to be doing, what it needs to be prepared to do and what it takes in terms of strategy, policies, programs, and resources to satisfy its National Defense needs. The task is accomplished in two steps. First, participants are expected to make any changes they consider appropriate to the Defense Program Guidance, an internal DOD planning and programming guidance document issued by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to shape the plans and programs of the military departments and agencies. Second, they are expected to prepare and present a briefing to the President-elect identifying the strategy, policy, program, and resource changes they recommend that she adopt and present to the Congress.

THE CANDIDATE’S BASIC CAMPAIGN SPEECH Note for Local Campaign Coordinators The candidate will deliver the following speech at every stop throughout the campaign. The first paragraph is yours to devise to allow her to connect with the audience at your location. She will not tailor the rest of the speech to your constituency’s particular interests. You may suggest areas to be expanded slightly to recognize particular local focus areas, but no part of the speech will be skipped, even if you are convinced that the message is not what your people want to hear. My Fellow Americans: It’s great to be here in , home of the . My visit here is particularly significant to me because of yadda, yadda, yadda, . . . I am here to ask you to join me in doing something unprecedented in the history of this great nation, which became great by being willing to meet its challenges with new ideas and approaches. To remain a great nation, we must be willing once again to seek and find the particularly American solution to problems that other nations have, for whatever reason, been unable to understand and solve. When I speak of doing the unprecedented, I do not mean electing a woman to be President for the first time in our history. While unprecedented, this out-

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come would simply be the occurrence of the inevitable. It would be a significant milestone, to be sure, but not one that decades and centuries from now would be regarded as a fundamental turning point in the direction of the nation’s destiny. The most important precedent that I am asking you and the rest of the American people to set is that of electing a third party candidate to be President. I am asking you to cast your vote for a change in the way we elect people to this high office. I am asking you to send the strongest possible signal that the American people want and expect more from our election process than deciding which candidate ends up with the lowest mud-covering after months and months of mud-slinging. I have chosen to run as a third party candidate rather than as a Republican or Democrat. There are many who believe that my choice merely reflects the fact that I could not win the nomination of either party. That’s probably true, but it’s not the reason I have chosen this course. Both major parties have made great contributions to the rich political history of our country, and each party is guided by a set of principles that are firmly rooted in fundamental American values. Except for small fringe groups at each end of the ideological spectrum, both parties represent mainstream American thinking. Both are populated with truly outstanding individuals, including my two opponents, who are capable of making great contributions to our nation’s future. No, the problem with the two parties is not their vision, their ideas, or their values. The problem is that the politics of special interest groups has overwhelmed the presidential election process. Up to now, getting elected has required candidates to make specific promises on specific subjects in order to appeal to specific interest groups. The promises you hear on the campaign trail are largely worthless. That’s not because the candidates are lying or misleading. It’s because of two basic realities that tend to be ignored in the election process. First, nobody running for the office who is not the President has all of the information and insight that comes to the President. Campaigning for election is one thing. Governing after election is a very different thing. I firmly believe that most broken campaign promises are more the result of the realities of governing than of dishonesty of the people who made the promises. Implementing policy changes is much more burdensome and challenging than identifying the need for such changes. Second, we enjoy the fruits of a democracy, not a dictatorship. A President plays a big part in determining where the country is going, but America’s ingenious system of checks and balances places clear limits on the President’s ability to implement promised changes. Only the Congress can enact legislation, and,

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regardless of the party affiliation of the majority, the President must be willing to compromise with leaders in the Congress who have views and visions of their own. In addition, the Supreme Court occasionally constrains the ability of the President to deliver on campaign promises. Because I recognize these realities, I am making no promises about specific programs to the American electorate in my campaign. Instead, I am describing to you and anyone who will listen the way I intend to approach making decisions on the multitude of issues that the President will have to deal with in the next four years. Instead of misleading you with specific promises I probably could not keep, I am asking for your vote to let me change the way Washington goes about dealing with the problems and issues facing the nation. I firmly believe that there is a core of fundamental American values that make us unique in the world and which derive, not from the political party in power at a particular time, but from the nature of our society and our history. American values are not and should not be shaped by its political leaders. Political leaders do have a role in reminding us of those values and helping us to understand the manner and extent to which different programs and processes serve those values. Americans cherish individual liberty, personal responsibility, and universal opportunity. Americans want a society with unlimited rewards for personal initiative, competence, and effort, but with enough compassion not to relegate those of lesser capability or ambition to grinding poverty or second-class citizenship. They want a society with a social conscience, committed to fairness and equity and tolerant of dissent and unpopular views, aware of and grateful for its global stature, protected from external threat by a strong and capable military, and protected internally by a fair and consistently applied system of civil and criminal justice. Don’t get me wrong. Both of my opponents, and the political parties they represent, subscribe to and espouse these same values. The choice you are about to make is not between two or three competing value systems. Your choice should be based on your judgment about and confidence in how the people you elect are going to go about resolving the inevitable conflicts between the sometimes competing values we all share. The two major political parties have become encrusted with political baggage that makes them beholden to particular interest groups or constituencies. It should be no surprise that their policy choices and program direction will be greatly influenced by the positions and expectations of the specific groups whose votes they believe got them elected. I have the burden and the luxury of attempting to convince substantial numbers of all of these groups to vote for me. If elected, I will owe no alle-

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giance to any particular groups, since I will have made no promises to anyone or anything, other than an unswerving commitment to basing every decision I make as your President on a careful and sensible assessment of how that decision squares with fundamental American values. Having said that, there are two promises that I do want to make to the American people. First, we will meet our National Security needs in a way that leaves no doubt in the minds of the American people, our allies and our potential adversaries how much we value our security. Our security is indispensable to the fulfillment of the benefits of all our other values. Second, whatever we ultimately decide that the federal government should be doing will be fully and properly financed. There is no real disagreement among the American people that we need and want a strong and ready military capability to properly play our role as the world’s only superpower and to be sure that we stay in that position. There is, however, some real uncertainty about what we need to be doing to meet our needs in this area. I am not convinced that we have fully and accurately determined the proper strategy and policy underpinnings that dictate what we need to prepare for. I am not sure that we’ve asked ourselves the right questions or based our Defense planning on the answers to those questions. As I have succeeded in doing throughout my career, I will ask the right questions about our Defense strategy and policy assumptions and subject the answers I get to an honest and thorough review, getting the advice I need from a variety of sources to be sure that I get the whole story before deciding. I don’t yet have the information I need to tell you whether I’ll be proposing major changes, minor changes, or virtually none at all. I don’t know how the results of my review will affect the Defense budget. We might need to spend more, we may be able to spend less, or we might need to spend about the same as planned, but possibly in different ways. I do know that it is crucial that the nation determine its Defense needs and make the resulting resource decisions on National Security considerations, not on the basis of partisan political viewpoints and agendas. To keep politics out of this debate, I will announce my decisions and recommendations to the Congress and to the American people in the State of the Union Address in January, long before I submit my first budget. Whether my first budget contains revenue increases or decreases, more or less spending in other areas, or smaller surpluses than I would like will be based on considerations unrelated to what it takes to meet our Defense needs. To keep the politics of the federal budget debate from affecting how the Congress treats my proposals, I will promise to veto any legislation that would increase Defense spending above my proposals unless those increases are financed by a specific, dedicated revenue increase. I will also promise to veto any legislation

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that would decrease Defense spending in my proposal unless the reduction is to be applied solely to reducing the national debt. With this approach, the American people can have confidence that my administration and the Congress will set the course for meeting our National Defense needs based on sound thinking about what those needs are and how to go about meeting them rather than on political considerations that should not enter into an area of this overwhelming importance. The only other promise I am making to the American people is that I will be guided by the principle that almost all Americans know to be true—there is no free lunch! What the American people ask or accept from the government has to be paid for by the American people. By the end of my first term, my administration will have completed a thorough review and assessment of everything the federal government does. Every single program will have to pass three simple tests: • Is it fully consistent with American values? • Is it appropriately done at the federal level rather than at the state or local level or by the private sector? • Is it done well enough to be worth its cost?

Programs that do not meet both of the first two tests will be terminated as federal programs. Those that fail the third test will be either changed or terminated, depending on whether or not there is a real prospect of making the kind of changes that would allow it to pass the test. Whatever set of programs and policy choices emerge from this review will be fully paid for from current revenues. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to pay for it. And we’re going to pay for it now, not some time in the future. This approach is not a promise to dramatically shrink the federal government. I do not agree with statements like “The era of big government is over” or “Government is too big.” The United States is a huge nation. It will never have a small government. Smaller maybe, but not small. I’ve never heard anyone advance a sensible measure of the size of government that included a way to tell what the right size would be. The tests I will apply won’t prejudge the right size of the federal government. My tests will deal with why the government does things, should somebody else be doing them, and are they being done well enough to expect the American people to pay for them. I intend to develop a fairer and simpler tax system to raise the money required, but I believe we should carefully define our needs and determine their costs before we wrestle with the tax system. Our real needs should define our revenue requirements, not vice versa.

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If you are confident that one of the other candidates will be willing and able to separate his allegiance to his particular constituencies to achieve the needed results, you should probably vote for him. But if you believe, as I do, that political realities are likely to make it difficult or impossible for even a well-intentioned Democrat or Republican President to deviate from his party’s constituency in favor of the broader American value, a vote for me is a worthwhile investment in the future of America.

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF Memorandum for National Security Transition Team FROM: Chief of Staff to the President-Elect SUBJECT: Your Mission DATE: December 8, 20XX Congratulations or condolences on your assignment, whichever you consider appropriate. Your task is difficult but important, time is limited and there will not be much help available to you to get it done. You should be used to that by now, given your backgrounds. Attached is the information you need to understand the dimensions of your task. I don’t need to tell you how important it is. One of your three groups will produce the vision, the blueprint and the basic framework for the National Defense Program to be presented shortly to the Congress and to the American people. Your selection to participate in this important endeavor is clear evidence that your capability and your experience place you on the threshold of significantly greater leadership and managerial opportunities. Whether reaching that threshold, which is a substantial and successful achievement, marks a culmination or a beginning will vary among individuals based on a wide variety of considerations. As you approach this task, your knowledge, experience, and effectiveness will help to shape the ultimate product of your group. In applying your talents, you will have the opportunity to decide whether the advice you want to give is based on looking back to where you’ve been, across where you are, or forward to where your potential can take you. Each approach can have real and substantial value to the decision-making process. The administration, over the next eight years, will be appointing individuals of proven talent and thinking to the critically important leadership positions within the Defense Department and the many other areas requiring

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effective advisors and decision-makers. Your efforts in this task will be carefully considered when those appointments are made.

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF Guidance to the National Defense Transition Team The President-elect’s stunning victory in the recent election is only the first surprise in store for the American people. They will soon learn that she meant what she said in her campaign. She did not make many promises about specific solutions and programs. She did promise the American people that she would ask the right questions, look for the answers in the right places, consider potential answers in the context of American values and make decisions that would lead the nation toward achievement of goals and objectives that reflect and advance those values. You have been provided with a copy of her basic campaign speech. You should regard it now less as a campaign speech than as a reliable exposition of how she plans to approach her responsibility as President. Transition teams like yours have been established covering all the major areas of the federal government. The President-elect intends to base her initial State of the Union Address on the decisions she makes concerning how well the recommendations of these teams comport with the American values she promised to promote and advance. The President-elect has made it clear that what she proposes in the forthcoming budget will be paid for, and that she places great value on not only keeping the budget balanced but to make substantial inroads into the national debt. As you pursue your task, you, like the other teams, will not have any insight into or influence upon the recommendations being presented in the other areas. As you may recall, during her campaign she expressed some uncertainty about:

(a) Whether the underlying strategy and policy thinking of the Defense program is soundly conceived, properly developed, and fully in tune with the best definition of the nation’s needs as America determines and carries out its proper role in the world as it now exists and can be expected to evolve over the coming decades. (b)Whether the specific plans and programs underway and planned are the right ones to carry out either the current or potentially more appropriate strategy and policy foundations for the nation’s security efforts.

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She did not promise a change in this area, nor did she promise continuation of the current thinking. She promised a careful, effective examination of the relationship between the nation’s values, the international environment, America’s proper role in that environment, and what we as a nation must do and be prepared to do to meet our needs, expectations, and responsibilities in the uncertain world we can expect to face well into the new century. The President-elect made clear in her campaign that the nation can afford whatever it needs to spend on National Defense. She was equally clear in expressing her belief that spending money to achieve and maintain capabilities we don’t reasonably need, or on programs that don’t contribute substantially to the capabilities we do need, is a disservice to the American people. She promised the American people that her administration would develop the means to determine what we need to be able to do, what it takes to do it, and what it will cost to do it in a hard-nosed, sensible, business-like manner. Because of her concern that Defense spending levels have become associated with partisan political labels, hopelessly entangled with unrelated agenda items, she devised and announced an unusual approach to the Defense issue. She promised that her first State of the Union Address would, in addition to describing her broad vision for her Presidency, spell out the results of her complete reexamination of the National Security strategy and policies. She promised to commit at that time to the annual resource levels required to carry them out. She announced that the budget amendment that she would submit two to three months later would include the amounts that she had committed to in the State of the Union Address. She promised that she would submit to the Congress a fully and properly financed total federal budget, regardless of whether her decisions involved an increase, decrease, or no change to previously planned Defense funding levels. She did not commit to how she would finance any increases she deemed necessary. She argued that making the choices on how to finance the Defense requirement, namely other program reductions, tax increases, or deficit spending, should follow the decision about what is needed for Defense, not be a part of it. To ensure that the Congress acted accordingly, she promised to veto any legislation that would increase the Defense budget she submitted unless the increase was financed by a specific, dedicated tax or surtax enacted for that purpose. She also promised to veto any legislation that would reduce the Defense budget she submitted unless the savings are applied entirely to reducing the national debt and not be used to finance other programs. In advancing this approach, the President-elect sought to neutralize the political aspects of earlier debates surrounding the Defense program. She fully

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understands that politics must play a role in the debate. She simply wants to assure that politics does not overwhelm reason in the search for the best answers in all areas of government, especially those involving the National Defense. Thus the stage is set for the effort you are about to undertake. Your work can be expected to have a direct bearing on the President-elect’s decisions about where we go from here. She needs two things from you—a narrative document along the lines of the Defense Program Guidance documents issued in the past, and a briefing consistent with your document. The briefing should describe the fundamental strategy and policy premises on which your proposals are based, the missions DOD must be prepared to undertake, the capabilities required to succeed in those missions, and the programs and funding required to achieve and maintain those capabilities. Your team will be expected to brief your proposals to the President-elect and her senior advisors at 1PM next Friday. Plan on a briefing of 40 minutes or less, with 20 minutes or more available for questions. Be sure that your briefer or briefers know their presentation well enough to ensure that unexpected questions or lengthy answers and discussion do not prevent completion of the briefing within the hour allotted. No time extensions will be granted. The President-elect does not appreciate unwarranted intrusions into the Friday afternoon cocktail hour. In addition to the briefing, you are expected to submit your proposed revision of the Defense Program Guidance by Thursday morning to allow adequate preparation by the President-elect’s advisors for your briefings. The format and method of presentation of both products are entirely up to you.

DEFENSE PROGRAM GUIDANCE: NATIONAL SECURITY IN TODAY’S WORLD The changes that have taken place over the last decade or so have fundamentally changed the context in which national security planning takes place. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, along with a clear trend among most nations of the world toward more democratic institutions and market-oriented economies, has replaced the old challenges facing the United States with a new and less clear set of challenges. Although the threat of either conventional or nuclear confrontation between two military superpowers has receded and the United States enjoys clear military superiority over any potential adversary or group of adversaries, the national interest is not assured. There remain nations with substantial military capability that espouse and are likely to pursue objectives inimical to the interests of the United States. Protection and advancement of the interests of the

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United States requires an ability to deal effectively with the uncertainty surrounding the near-term, mid-term, and long-term potential of those adversaries to undertake actions that will require appropriate military response by U.S. forces, acting either alone or in concert with our allies. In addition to maintaining the capability to counter any potential direct military threats to the interests of the United States and our allies, national security planning must also consider the likelihood that the capabilities of the Armed Forces of the United States may need to be brought to bear in furtherance of the international responsibilities of our nation that result from our unique position as the only superpower and the recognized leader of the free world. The precise nature and extent of the international responsibilities thrust upon the United States will be affected over time by various combinations of events outside the control of the United States, including natural forces, regional unrest and ethnic, religious, and national rivalries. The role that America is to play as these events unfold will be determined by the interplay of the elements of the American political process. The executive and legislative branches of the national government, with the advice of the Defense leadership, will decide whether, when, and how to employ U.S. forces to achieve national goals. Defense planning and programming must provide all of the capabilities that may be needed to implement the full spectrum of those potential decisions.

THE NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY Given the uncertainty that exists and can be expected to continue to exist for the foreseeable future, the Defense strategy of the United States is to participate in the shaping of the international environment and the events that result from that environment; to maintain and improve the ability of U.S. forces to respond to and defeat any aggression mounted from any quarter against the United States, its allies, or its interests; and to prepare for the more distant future by modernizing existing capabilities and developing new capabilities to ensure that the United States remains the unquestioned leader and most potent military force as long as the need exists. Each of the three primary elements of the Defense strategy—shaping, responding, and preparing—involves a different set of uncertainties to be resolved, a different set of capabilities required, and a different set of resource equations. Nevertheless, each element has some relationship to the other elements. Effective resource planning must be based on a clear understanding of those relationships in order to develop the optimum balance of the application

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of resources in order to support the unique needs of each element while exploiting fully the capabilities that support multiple elements. Shaping the security environment requires a set of forces and capabilities that can be applied in a wide variety of situations and circumstances to advance United States interests, including selective humanitarian, peacekeeping, and aggression prevention missions, along with a variety of forward presence and joint training activities that both enhance the likelihood of allied participation and success in these missions, and signal a clear resolve to both allies and potential adversaries of U.S. commitment to the protection and advancement of U.S. national interests throughout the world. Responding to the full spectrum of crises requires a set of forces and capabilities that are able to execute the entire range of potential military operations, from deterring an adversary’s aggression or coercion in crisis and conducting concurrent smaller-scale contingency operations, to fighting and winning major theater wars. Preparing for the future requires looking beyond current situations, threats, and capabilities to ensure the ability of the United States to remain the most formidable military force in the world for the next several decades. Such preparation involves carefully planned replacement and modernization of existing weapons and platforms, development and implementation of improved operational and organizational concepts, reengineering DOD’s infrastructure and business practices, and continuing a broad research and development effort to maintain a substantial technological advantage over any adversary or group of adversaries that may emerge in the future. All elements of the strategy require top quality, superbly trained, highly motivated people, organized into effective forces employing effective tactics and doctrine, equipped with superior modern weapons and platforms that incorporate a substantial technological edge over the long term.

PLANNING GUIDANCE Consistent with effective execution of the strategy described above, Defense planning must, within the context of the nation’s economic and political values, address and meet the challenges presented by each of the following areas:

People America’s armed forces are the best in the world and the best in our history, primarily because of the quality of the people who serve in them. Maintaining and enhancing current levels of quality represents the most important and possibly most challenging requirement to be met in the coming decades. Service

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plans should demonstrate careful attention to and resolution of potential problems in recruiting the kinds and numbers of people required, training them in a cost-effective manner, developing fully their capabilities to advance to leadership positions, motivating them to serve with pride and dedication, and meeting their economic, personal, and family needs through sound, well-conceived military personnel management and compensation systems. Forces Service plans should postulate the force levels required to carry out the strategy articulated above, assuming that the most demanding scenario to be met will involve two near-simultaneous major regional conflicts, and that if such a scenario should occur, forces committed to less intense missions such as presence, peacemaking, peacekeeping, or aggression prevention may be reapplied to the major regional conflicts. In planning the size and composition of its forces for the future, Services should carefully examine and understand the relationship between the capabilities of those forces and the requirements of the various elements of the National Security Strategy. Services should place particular emphasis on maximizing the capability of force elements to meet multiple mission requirements. Of critical importance to effective force planning will be Service consideration and resolution of the personnel management challenges inherent in matching force levels to uncertain potential mission requirements. Tactics and Doctrine The evolving nature of the international situation and the uncertainty surrounding the nature, extent, and source of possible threats to the security of the United States places a particular premium on Service planning with respect to tactics and doctrine. The right kind and number of well-trained people, manning the kind and number of force units required, properly supported by the best and most capable weapon systems available, must be complimented by a body of appropriate and effectively tailored doctrinal and tactical approaches to Service planning. Weapon Systems Modernization Service plans and programs must make careful and smart choices in proposing the most effective modernization programs possible in the current strategic environment. The length of time and the magnitude of resources involved in modernization dictate that these decisions be based on careful assessment of

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relative contributions to joint mission accomplishment, with particular emphasis on maximizing each system’s potential for supporting multiple missions and its ability to support both evolving mission requirements and changing approaches to tactics and doctrine. Decisions concerning the priorities for which systems require upgrade/modernization/ replacement, the pace at which the effort should proceed, and new and improved capabilities to be sought should be based on extensive consultation and coordination with the Joint Staff and with the appropriate organizations in the other Services. At all stages of the process, a clear understanding must exist in each Service and in the Joint Staff of the potential interaction of their respective modernization initiatives. Both to avoid unneeded redundancy and to capture the full benefit of increased capability of other Services in the conduct of joint operations, close and effective coordination is an absolute necessity. Each modernization program proposed by the Services must be based on a sound assessment of a need to be met in the future and the best, most cost-effective way to meet that need. Additionally, each major investment in modernization must be rooted in a sound and sensible acquisition strategy that is appropriately tailored to the specific combination of risks and rewards associated with that particular system. Maintaining the Technological Edge As we prepare for the future, we must continue to invest wisely in the appropriate levels and areas of basic and applied research that are likely to pay the highest dividends in the future. We must be both diligent and perceptive in exploiting the potential of technology. Striking the best balance between research into areas with potential payoff and development of the best answers to our modernization needs will be critically important to our long-term continued success. Service plans should reflect continued emphasis on the need to insulate these longer-term efforts from the pressures of more immediately pressing financial needs. Readiness Service plans and programs should assume and provide for the level of readiness required by existing forces to meet current mission requirements. Meeting those requirements will require balancing considerations related to the kind and intensity of training required to achieve and maintain appropriate proficiency, the nature and extent of forward-basing requirements, and the uncertain potential for periodic deployment requirements in response to taskings involving a wide variety of missions.

11 Nationland James S. Blandin and Sean O’Keefe

INTRODUCTION Nationland is an imaginary country that faces some difficult budget and defense policy choices. You will be asked to work within groups and, acting as the leaders of Nationland, decide how to allocate Nationland’s budget and resolve a number of national defense policy issues. After the groups reach their decisions, representatives from each group will present their decisions in a meeting of all participants. The game is divided into three parts. In Nationland I, each group will review the national security function of the government, establish a national security policy and determine the proper roles, missions, and functions of the armed forces. In Nationland II, the groups will determine how important defense spending is compared to other national needs. In Nationland III, the groups will decide how to structure Nationland’s defense budget and how to allocate funds consistent with its policy and strategy objectives.

GAME BACKGROUND/COUNTRY DESCRIPTION Nationland is a relatively mature democracy that must deal with a number of political, social, and economic security concerns. A variety of internal and external contingencies shape the domestic, foreign, and military security policy of the nation. Nationland is currently experiencing rapid economic growth

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and becoming more productive as market-oriented reforms take hold. In the near future Nationland is expected to be a significant player in the global economy. However, not everyone has benefited equally from rapid economic growth. Unemployment is growing in the country as the government eliminated state subsidies from unproductive enterprises. As these bankruptcies grow—an inevitable part of the economic transformation—the government must decide how much social protection to provide for those who are left behind Nationland’s “economic miracle.” Government leaders are also mindful of some of the environmental costs of rapid growth and do not want to repeat the environmental errors of other countries. Some of Nationland’s leadership also believe that the entire educational system needs to be reexamined if the country is to be truly competitive in the global environment. Meanwhile, inflation is a concern of Nationland’s leaders. Presently, the leadership of Nationland is concerned with a wide array of issues including: • border security • insurgency • protection of fishing zones • maintaining collective security arrangements with other nations • social/economic development • maintaining internal security • regional uncertainty driven by racial, ethnic, religious and nationalistic forces • growing domestic isolationist sentiment • increasing crime/drug problems from domestic and international sources • environmental degradation

Given this environment, the leaders of Nationland must establish firm priorities between defense and nondefense spending and decide which programs deserve the most resources. Citizens must also decide what purposes the military should serve and what roles the military should play in solving domestic problems. For example, should the military be given the role of infrastructure development? If so, should the funding be cut for civilian agencies (or private businesses) that would otherwise be providing infrastructure? Should the military be assigned a police function and fight crime? Alternatively, should some functions such as finance/accounting, base operations, family housing, etc., which are currently being provided by defense be privatized or assigned to other government agencies?

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The people of Nationland must also consider the problems that might be created if military funding is reduced far below current levels. Although Nationland faces no immediate dangers, the future is always uncertain. How much should Nationland pay today to guard against unknown dangers in the future? NATIONLAND I National Security Policy and Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces Congratulations! The President has recently appointed you to a special senior level working group that will review the national security function of the government. In addition to senior military officers and civilian officials appointed by the President, several key staff members of the Defense Committee of Parliament will also participate. Your task is outlined in the attached Memorandum from the President. MEMORANDUM From: The President To: Senior National Security Working Group Given recent events, I believe that now is the time to undertake a comprehensive review and evaluation of the national security function of the government. Your review should be future oriented and explicitly: 1. Identify the national values and security interests 2. Assess the threats to the national values and interests 3. Formulate a defense policy and strategy for responding to the threats in order to secure the national interest 4. Specify the required internal and external roles, missions, and functions of the armed forces and police that are required to implement 3.

I want to thank each of you for your willingness to serve on this group and I look forward to being briefed on your results. ALBERT MOTI President NATIONLAND II National Priorities Using the results generated in Part I of the game, each group must now determine how important defense spending is compared to other national needs of Nationland. Your group will present its answer in three ways.

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First, you will develop a display of government functions for Nationland. Categories should include, but not be limited to: • Education • Health Care • Agriculture • Transportation • Justice System • Economic Development • National Security

Second, you will determine budget priorities allocating 100 resource units to these functions. The 100 resource units represent the entire budget of Nationland. Third, you will be asked to develop a plan on how you would allocate a 10% increase and a 10% decrease in the budget should it occur. NATIONLAND III The Defense Budget In Part I, your group decided the national security policy and strategy for your vision of Nationland. In Part II, your group determined how important defense spending was compared to other national needs. Using the results from the first two parts, each group must decide how to structure the Nationland defense budget and how to allocate funds in a way that fulfills the policy and strategy objectives. The Nationland Defense Budget Budgets are the monetary, financial expressions of policy priorities. Each group has determined the list of functions that the military should perform in each group’s description of “Nationland.” Given those priorities and in the absence of any immediate military threats to Nationland, how should the defense budget be allocated? Why types of forces (size and composition) and weapon systems/equipment are necessary? How much should be spent on personnel compared to procurement and construction? How much should be allocated for operations compared to research and development? Your group should present answers to these issues in two ways. First, each group should decide how to separate the overall defense allocation into program budget elements that are mission- or capability-oriented. You may con-

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figure these elements in any way you feel best represents the program proposed, but the elements must be mutually exclusive—that is, the programs should not overlap. The program structure you propose should include all the spending for the Nationland national security. Second, given your assessment of the military threat to Nationland, configure these program elements by allocating 100 resource units across the entire defense budget proposed within the fiscal targets the groups set in Part II. Finally, each group will be asked to provide an assessment of the relative adequacy of the fiscal limitations in meeting the policy and strategy objectives.

Index

Aberdeen, Maryland, 31, 51, 158–59, 162 Aberdeen Proving Ground, 154 Abrams, Creighton, 105, 119, 121 The Absolute Weapon: Absolute Power and World Order, 92 Accident Investigation Board, 19 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 136–37, 146, 147 n.5 Air Force, U.S., 84, 87, 103–4. See also Plane crash Air Force Flight Standards Agency, 13, 16, 19, 23–24 Air Force Instruction (AFI) 11–206, 15 Air Force Instructions (AFIs), 14, 24 Air Mobility Command, 17 Air National Guard, 111 Alabama, 51, 152, 159 Ambrose, James, 27–28, 32 American Revolution, 104

American values, 171, 174, 175, 176 Anniston, Alabama, 31 Arkansas, 51, 152, 159 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 159 Army, U.S., 103–6. See also Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program; Chemical weapons destruction technology; Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy Army Audit Agency, 44 Army Cost and Economic Facility, 44 Army Materiel Command, 30, 31 Army Reserve, 103 Army War College, 124 Aspin, Les, 135 Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA), 149–50, 163–65 Atkinson, Rick, 119, 122 Atwood, Donald, 39, 43

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Augustine, Norman R., 138 Automatic Direction Finder (ADF), 18 Bacon, James, 163, 164 Baker, James, 39 Baltimore, Maryland, 155 Baltimore Sun, 157 Barker, Bob, 70 Baronian, Charles, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 48, 157 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), 134, 145–47 Berea College, 155 Berlin Wall, 1 Bingaman, Jeff, 140–41 Binkin, Martin, 111 Bluegrass, Kentucky, 51 Blush, Steve, 59–60, 61, 63, 66, 67 Bold Shift, 112 Borrus, Michael, 145 Bosnia, 14, 16–17. See also Fontenot story Bradley, Omar, 84 Brodie, Bernard, 92 Brown, Ron, 11, 16–17 Burba, Edwin, Jr., 107 Busbee, Walter, 36, 38, 41, 42, 44, 48, 156 Bush, George, 55–56, 57, 58–59, 70, 75 Bush administration, 140, 144 Campaign promises, 173–74 Campaign speech, 172–77 Canon, 144 Carney, Robert B., 84–85, 90 Carter, Jimmy, 56 Carter administration, 29 Case studies, 3 Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System (CAMDS), 29

Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), 34, 38, 46–47, 50 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), 48, 52, 150, 151–52, 159, 164 Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program: Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment and, 149–50; background/setting of, 28–30; citizen opposition and, 31–32, 48–51; cost of, 34, 43, 44, 45, 48, 52; deadline and, 33–34, 38, 43–44, 45, 48, 52, 150, 151–52; decision to destroy and, 30–32; Decker’s management of, 47–49; emergency preparedness and, 34, 46–47, 50; environmental impact and, 30–31, 33–34; German stock and, 38–43; Livingstone’s management of, 36–38; operational verification and, 39, 40–42; organizational shifting of, 27–28; Owen’s management of, 45–47; place of operations and, 31–32; Shannon’s management of, 32–34; uniqueness of, 37 Chemical weapons destruction technology: assembled weapons decision and, 162–65; baseline incineration and, 31, 34, 35–36, 152, 153, 156–58, 159, 160; biodegradation and, 158; citizen opposition and, 153–57; citizen/state participation in decision-making and, 150–51, 161; cyrofracture and, 44, 45, 46; deadline and, 158; Decker and, 159–61; “Dialogue” and, 165–66; neutralization and, 51, 150–51, 157–59, 160–62; states’ divisiveness on, 152

Index

Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), 49, 50, 155, 162, 164 Cheney, Dick, 41, 61, 69, 70 Chernobyl, 56 Cherrie, Stan, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126 Citizen Advisory Commissions (CACs), 156, 161, 162 Civil-military compact. See Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy; Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) Civil War, 104 Clark, Wesley, 107 Claytor, Richard, 69, 74–75 Clinton, Bill (Clinton administration): Bosnia and, 115, 118; chemical weapons ban and, 159; chemical weapons destruction and, 166; Department of Energy (DOE), 76; economic stimulus package of, 135; private-public technology development and, 133, 134, 141; SEMATECH and, 143 Cliver, Jeffrey G., 21, 22, 23 Cohen, William, 164 Cold War, 1, 28–29, 74–75 Colorado, 50–51, 152, 159, 162, 165 Commerce Department, 17 Common Ground, 154, 155 Communism, 1, 83 Conaway, John B., 103 Congress, U.S.: chemical weapon opposition and, 50–51; Chemical Weapons Convention and, 150, 151; chemical weapons destruction technology and, 34, 35–36, 37, 49, 151; chemical weapons modernization and, 29, 30; Clinton’s economic stimulus package and, 135; Department

193

of Energy and, 62; dual-use projects and, 141–42; New Production Reactor and, 71; nuclear budget and, 68; nuclear waste and, 74, 76; nuclear weapons complex and, 57; presidential campaign promises and, 173–74; SEMATECH and, 145; Shannon and, 32; Stello and, 67–68; Watkins and, 60 Congressional Budget Office, 106 Containment, 83 Coolidge, Charles H., 19 CoSAD, 158 Court of Appeals, U.S., 50 Croatia, 16–17 Crouch, William, 121 Crysel, James W., 103, 107–8 CT-43 A, 11 Cypress Semiconductor, 144 Cyrofracture, 35–36, 37, 39, 44, 45, 46 The Dash 1 Flight Manual, 13–14, 18 Davis, Ashley, 17 Dayton Accords, 123 Decker, Gilbert, 27–28, 47–50, 51, 159–61, 162, 163 Defense Authorization Bill, 162 Defense Conversion, Reinvestment, and Transition Act, 136 Defense Programs, 62, 67, 69 Defense Technology Conversion Council (DTCC), 136 Defense Waste Management, 59 Delk, James, 112 Denman, Gary, 133, 137, 138 Department of Commerce, 136 Department of Defense (DOD): chemical weapon expenditure and, 34; chemical weapons and, 34, 36, 38, 41; Citizen Advisory Commissions and, 156; Depart-

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ment of Energy and, 56; Eisenhower’s defense policy and, 84, 88; future needs and, 138; National Guard and, 105; Rocky Flats raid and, 64; SEMATECH and, 142; state-local participation and, 150; Technology Reinvestment Program and, 136, 138, 141 Department of Energy (DOE), 55; accountability and, 61–62; Bush and, 55–56; clean-up priority and, 68–69, 73–75, 76; Clinton’s appointee to, 76; Cold War termination and, 74–75; Department of Defense and, 69–70; modernization of, 68–69; New Production Reactor and, 70–72, 75; reform plan for, 65–67; Rocky Flats raid and, 55, 62–64; Savannah River leak and, 72–73; Stello and, 67–68; Technology Reinvestment Program and, 136; tritium demand and, 70, 75; Watkins’ appointment to, 57–58; Watkins’ confirmation and, 58–59; Watkins’ initial actions and, 60–62; Watkins’ legacy and, 76–77; Watkins’ team and, 59–60, 67–68, 69; weapons complex of, 56–57 Department of Interior, 73 Department of Transportation (DOT), 136 Desert Storm, 101, 106, 115. See also 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Deutch, John, 27, 28, 47 “Dialogue,” 150–51, 165–66 Distinguished Visitor (DV) missions, 15 DOD Appropriations Act, 50–51 Dubrovnik, Bosnia. See Plane crash

Duffy, Leo, 59, 61, 63, 66, 67, 68–69, 74–75, 76 Easterling, Robert D., 109 Economy and technology, 133–34. See also Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) 8th U.S. Army, 85 86th Airlift Wing, 14–15 Eisenhower, Dwight D.: economy and, 84; election of, 83; Joint Chiefs of Staff for, 84–85; security policy of, 83, 84. See also Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy: corruption avoidance and, 89; defense reductions and, 86–88; Eisenhower’s explanation of policy and, 91–92, 95–96; field manual revision and, 94–95; Gavin and, 93–94; Joint Chiefs and, 89–90, 91–92; massive retaliation policy and, 88–89; media and, 92–93, 95, 96; military disobedience and, 89; National Security Council and, 90–91; Ridgway’s departure and, 96–97; Ridgway’s resistance measures and, 89–95 Enhanced Position Location Reporting System (EPLRS), 146 Environmental impact statement (EIS), 30–31 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 33, 55, 60–61, 62–63, 64, 152 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 55, 62–63 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 34, 38, 46 Fernald, Ohio, 65–66 Field Service Regulations: Operations, 94–95

Index

Final approach fix, 24 Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, 155 Flight Control Information File (FCIF), 14, 16, 24 Fontenot, Greg, 115 Fontenot story: career impact of, 116, 123–24; Fontenot quoted in, 115–16, 118, 119; Fontenot’s qualities and, 117–18; ground rules for reporters and, 122–23; investigation of, 119–21; leadership support and, 124–25; leaders’ reaction to, 119–21; media embedding arrangement and, 116; media-military relationship impact of, 124–28; mission impact of, 123; reconnaissance patrol and, 118–19; Ricks-Fontenot relationship and, 117; Ricks’ reputation and, 117; risks/benefits of media exposure and, 122–23; terms of interview and, 118, 119 Ford, Wendell, 162, 166 Fort Irwin, California, 101, 102 Fort Stewart, Georgia, 108 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, 101; Army-National Guard relations and, 107–8, 111–12; assessment of, 101, 102–3; mobilization of, 106–7; nonarmy reserves and, 111; officer training and, 109–10; readiness rating system and, 110; specialty inadequacies and, 109; supply system and, 109; training center and, 101–3; training changes and, 112–13; training inadequacies and, 108–9; training-time expectations and, 110 Galloway, Joe, 125 Galvin, John, 42

195

Galvin, Robert, 145 Gault, Polly, 59, 62, 63, 64 Gavin, James M., 93–94 GCA corporation, 144 General Accounting Office (GAO), 44, 46–47, 106, 158 General Atomics, 35, 71, 72 Georgia National Guard. See 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade German Air Force, 13 Germany, 1, 30, 38–43 Global Positioning System (GPS), 139 Goodman, Sherry, 159, 161 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 71, 74 Gore, Al, 140–41, 144 Graham, Bradley, 125 Greenpeace, 155, 156 Griffith, Ron, 120, 121, 124, 125, 128 Hanford, Washington, 60–61, 68, 69, 74, 76 Hanford Operation Office, 60–61 Hansen, Roger W., 21 Happer, Will, 72 Heflebower, Charles, 16, 22, 23 Hercules, 144 Heydeck, Andrew W., 22–23 Holland, William A., 101, 107 Hopkins, Larry, 32, 33 House Appropriations Committee, 35 Hughes Aircraft, 134, 146 Huntington, Samuel P., 5, 89 Hutchinson, Kay, 154–55 Idaho, 74 Indiana, 152, 158, 159, 160 Inouye, Daniel, 39 Installations, Logistics, and Environment, 28, 30–31 Interest groups, 171, 173, 174–75

196

Index

Japan, 142, 144, 145 Jardine, Scott, 119 Jeppesen, Sanderson, Inc., 14, 24 Jeppesen procedures, 14, 16, 17, 19, 23, 24 Johnson, Don, 146 Johnson, Lyndon B., 105 Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS), 29; emulation of, 32, 34; German stock and, 40–41; Kentucky Environmental Foundation and, 156; Livingstone and, 39; operational verification and, 41–43; operational verification at, 46; technical problems at, 43–44; Tooele facility and, 37 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 84, 89–90, 91–92 Justice Department, 62 Kent County, Maryland, 154–55 Kent County League of Women Voters, 157 Kentucky, 33, 49, 50–51, 152–54, 159, 162 Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF), 155–56 Keystone Center, 165–66 Kitfield, James, 127 Kohl, Helmut, 38, 42 Korean War, 83 Lexington–Bluegrass Army Depot, 31, 32, 152–54 Livingstone, Susan, 36–38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44–45, 46 Lockheed Martin Corporation, 139 LSI Logic, 143 Lujan, Manuel, 73, 74 MacArthur, Douglas, 85 Madsen, Norbert, 14 Marine Corps, 111

Market failures, 139–40 Marshall, George, 104 Maryland, 31, 51, 152, 154–55, 156–57, 158–59, 160, 162 Massive retaliation policy. See Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy Mazurowski, John E., 14–15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23 McCaffrey, Barry R., 109 McNamara, Robert, 105 Media, 92–93, 95, 96, 115. See also Fontenot story Micron Technology, 143 Military. See U.S. military The Military Policy of the United States, 104 “Military Strategy and Posture,” 87 Military Toxics Project, 156 Militia Act, 104 Missed approach point, 24 Missouri, 74 Mojave Desert, 102 Monetta, Dominic, 70, 72 Moore, Henson, 59, 63–64 Moskos, Charles, 124 Murtha, John, 35 Nash, William, 119–20, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126–27 National Academy of Sciences, 29, 68, 150, 157 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 136 National Defense Stockpile Act, 138 National Guard-Army relations, 103–6. See also 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade National Guard Association of the United States, 104–5, 112–13 National Guard Bureau, 102–3 National Guard Magazine, 112 National Journal, 127

Index

National Nuclear Stockpile Memorandum, 56 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 16 National Research Council (NRC), 29–30, 36, 39, 49, 150, 157, 158 National Science Foundation, 136 National Security Council, 84, 85, 86–87, 90–91, 159 National Training Center (NTC), 101, 102 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 62 Navy, U.S., 57, 84, 87 Neutralization, 51, 150–51, 157–59, 160–62 Nevada, 73, 74 New Mexico, 73, 74 Newport, Indiana, 31, 51, 158, 162 New Production Reactor (NPR), 68, 70–72, 75 New York Times, 57, 92, 120, 125 Nikon, 144 Nippon Sanso, 144, 145 Nishinaga, Eugene, 146, 147 Non-DOD Approaches, 24 Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS), 20 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 67 Nuclear Safety Office, 76 Nuclear weapons. See Department of Energy (DOE); Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy Nunn, John, 158 Nunn, Sam, 71, 72, 106 Nydam, David, 33, 36 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 64 Office of Environment, Safety and Health, 62

197

Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (ERWM), 66, 74 Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), 34, 36 O’Leary, Hazel, 76, 77 Operational Verification Test (OVT), 39 Oregon, 51, 152, 159 Oregon Environmental Quality Commission, 50 Orton, Robert, 48, 50, 159, 163 Owen, Mike, 31, 33, 35, 36, 41–43, 45–47 Parker, Kristi, 150, 166 Parker, Mike, 163–65 Pehlivanian, Bill, 163, 164, 165 Perry, William, 47, 135 Persian Gulf War, 101, 106, 115. See also 48th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 31 Plane crash: Air Force actions from, 20–22; approved approaches and, 13–14, 15–16; causes of, 11–12, 19–20; communications and, 15, 16, 19, 22–23; crew and, 17; flight and, 17–19; investigation of, 19–20; leadership/accountability context of, 12–14; Mazurowski and, 14–15; military resources and, 14; missed approach and, 18–19; mission and, 15–17; officer accountability and, 20–21; pilot accountability and, 22; pilot training and, 17; public disclosure of, 20; questions raised by, 12 Powell, Colin, 103 Presidency resource management exercise: campaign promises and, 173–74; campaign speech and,

198

Index

172–77; defense budget and, 175–76, 178–79; exercise description and, 172; force levels and, 183; national defense strategy and, 181–82; national security transition team and, 177–80; people resources and, 182–83; readiness and, 184; scenario for, 171; security in a changing world and, 180–81; tactics/doctrine and, 183; technological edge and, 184; weapons systems modernization and, 183–84 Presidential commission on AIDS, 58 Press, Frank, 68 Prociv, Ted, 149–50, 151, 159, 164, 166 Programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS), 33–34 Project Eagle, 29 Pueblo, Colorado, 31, 51 Radford, Arthur W., 84, 87, 90 Ramstein Air Base, 13, 14 RAND Corporation, 106 Reagan, Ronald, 38, 57 Reagan administration, 29, 142, 153 Regional Training Brigades, 112 Research, Development, and Acquisition, 28, 31, 32 Resource management exercise, 185–89. See also Presidency resource management exercise Richmond, Kentucky, 153 Rickover, Hyman, 57, 58 Ricks, Thomas E. See Fontenot story Ridgway, Matthew B., 85–86. See also Eisenhower-Ridgway controversy Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, 122

Rockwell, 64 Rocky Flats, Colorado, 55, 62–64, 68, 69, 73, 74 Rocky Mountain Arsenal, 29 Rodgers, T. J., 144 Romer, Roy, 63, 64, 73, 74 Rostker, Bernard, 110 Royal Air Force, 13 Russia, 156, 160, 164 Ryan, Michael, 19, 21, 22 Saint, Butch, 42 Sasser, Jim, 60 Saudi Arabia, 14, 106 Savannah River nuclear plant: accountability and, 62; new reactor for, 68, 71; priority of, 60, 72; safety and, 61, 70; spill at, 56, 72–73; tritium supply and, 69, 75 Sava River, 121 Schultze, Charles L., 139 Schwarzkopf, H. Norman, 101, 102, 103 Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), 44 Scowcroft, Brent, 70 SEMATECH (SEMiconductor Manufacturing TECHnology), 135, 141, 142–45 Semiconductor manufacturing, 142–45 Semi-Gas Systems, 144–45 Senate Budget Committee, 60 17th Air Force, 13 76th Air Squadron, 13 Shafer, Thomas, 17 Shannon, John, 32–34, 35–36, 45, 46 Sierra Club, 50, 155, 165 Smith, Adam, 139, 140 The Soldier and the State, 5, 89 South Carolina, 56, 71, 74 South Korea, 145

Index

Soviet Union, 1, 28–29, 70, 71, 74, 90 Spanish-American War, 104 Spencer, William, 143 State Department, 159 Status of Resources and Training System, 110 Stello, Victor, 67–68 Stevens, William E., 14, 21, 22 Strategic Air Command (SAC), 87 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), 70 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 57 Subway control system, 145–47 Sununu, John, 64, 65, 67 Supreme Court, U.S., 174 Suttle, John, 124 Taft, William, 36 Tait, Thomas H., 103 Taiwan, 145 Taylor, Maxwell D., 97 Technology, 2, 133–34, 184. See also Chemical weapons destruction technology Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP), 134; Bay Area Rapid Transit and, 145–47; criticism of, 138, 141; defense-commercial compatibility and, 136–37; future needs and, 138; government sponsorship and, 138–42; institutional collaboration and, 136; market demand and, 138, 139, 143; market failure and, 139–40, 142; mission of, 136, 137; origins of, 134–35; program division of, 136; requirements of, 137; success of, 138 Tennessee, 74 TERPS (Terminal Instrument Procedures), 16, 24 Texas, 74

199

Thompson, Tommy, 113 Thornburgh, Richard, 62–63, 64 Three Mile Island, 31 Thurmond, Strom, 71 Tides Foundation, 156 Tooele, Utah, 29, 31, 37, 38, 44, 48, 50 Trainor, Bernard, 125 Tritium, 57, 70, 75 Truman, Harry, 84 Tuck, John, 59, 67, 72 Tuzla, Bosnia, 17–18 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, 101, 102, 103, 106, 108 Twining, Nathan F., 84–85, 90 Umatilla, Oregon, 31 Umatilla Chemical Depot, 50 Umatilla Indian Tribe, 50 The Uncertain Trumpet, 97 Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 21 U.S Air Force Europe (USAFE), 13, 14, 16 U.S. military: accountability in, 13; Air Force, 84, 87, 103–4; Army, U.S., 103–6; budget for, 2; capability of, 2; Eisenhower’s chiefs for, 84–85; Eisenhower’s defense policy and, 84, 87; Marine Corps, 111; Navy, 57, 84, 87; public opinion on, 2; resource management exercise and, 181, 182–84, 187; technological advances and, 2, 133–34. See also Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program; Chemical weapons destruction technology; EisenhowerRidgway controversy; Fontenot story; Plane crash; Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP) U.S. national security, 1–3. See also specific subject matter

200

Index

U.S. News & World Report, 125 U.S. Second Army, 102, 103, 107 Upton, Emory, 104 Utah, 49, 152, 159 Utah Board of Solid and Hazardous Waste, 50 Values, American, 171, 174, 175, 176 Vessey, John W., Jr., 105–6 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 50 Vietnam War, 105 Wade, Troy, 63, 66 Walker, Michael, 27, 47 Walker, Robert, 145 Wall Street Journal, 6. See also Fontenot story Warren, David, 46

Washington, George, 104 Washington Post, 76, 77, 125, 119 Washington Times, 125 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), 73–74, 76, 77 Watkins, James. See Department of Energy (DOE) Wegner, Bill, 60 Weidenbaum, Murray, 141 Westinghouse, 61 West Valley Demonstration Project, 65 Williams, Craig, 153–54, 155, 156, 162, 164, 165, 166 Wilson, Charles E., 86, 90, 96 Wirth, Tim, 67 Wolter, Michael, 23 World War I, 28 Yeltsin, Boris, 71 Yucca Mountain, 73

About the Editor and Contributors

ANDREW J. BACEVICH is Professor of International Relations at Boston University where he also serves as Director of the University’s Center for International Relations. JAMES S. BLANDIN is Professor of Management, Naval Postgraduate School. Dr. Blandin has been a consultant to the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), the Center for Naval Analysis, the Defense Security Assistance Agency, and the Joint Staff (J-5). During his career at the Naval Postgraduate School, he has held a number of management positions including Executive Director, DRMI (1983–1992), Director, Center for Civil-Military Relations (1992–1996), and Dean of Management and Security Studies (1995–1997). He is currently a Fellow at Syracuse University’s Maxwell Center for Advanced Public Management where he additionally serves on the Board of Advisors for the National Security Studies Program. ELIOT A. COHEN is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Cohen taught in the Department of Government at Harvard University for several years and has also taught in the Strategy Department of the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author and co-author of numerous books and articles, including Military Misfortunes (with John Gooch), and directed the U.S. Air Force’s official study of the 1991 Gulf War.

202

About the Editor and Contributors

L. PAUL DUBE served for more than thirty years as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, primarily in the Office of the Secretary of Defense after roughly six years with the Navy Department. He served in a wide variety of positions in the budget area, retiring in 1993 as the Deputy Comptroller for Program/Budget in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He was a charter member of the Senior Executive Service. VOLKER C. FRANKE is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Western Maryland College in Westminster, Maryland. Dr. Franke also serves as Director and Managing Editor of the Maxwell/SAIS National Security Studies Case Studies Program. He is the author of Preparing for Peace: Military Identity, Value-Orientations, and Professional Military Education (Praeger, 1999) and numerous journal articles on social identity and military socialization. PATRICIA W. INGRAHAM is Distinguished University Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School. She is the Director of the Alan Campbell Public Affairs Institute and also directs the Government Performance Project, a multiyear analysis of management capacity at all levels of government in the United States. W. HENRY LAMBRIGHT is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration and Director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, where he teaches courses on environmental policy and science and technology policy. His writings include numerous books, articles, and reports. His most recent book is Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA (1995). His current research projects include analyzing results from a National Science Foundation/American Association for the Advancement of Science grant to study research competitiveness in universities and states within the United States and a project for NASA looking at “Space Policy in the 21st Century.” RICHARD J. NEWMAN is a senior editor covering defense at U.S. News & World Report. He has reported on-scene from Kosovo, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Latin America, Germany and numerous other places where U.S. troops are stationed. Recent cover stories have included features on space warfare, how submarines conduct surveillance and other missions, the increasing prominence of special operations forces, and the toll taken on the force by today’s numerous missions. The Honorable SEAN O’KEEFE is Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Prior to his appointment, Mr. O’Keefe served as the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair, and the Director of National Security Studies Program at the Maxwell School

About the Editor and Contributors

203

of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Appointed as Secretary of the Navy in 1992 by President Bush, he previously served as the Department of Defense Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer from 1989–1992. Before joining Secretary Dick Cheney’s management team at the Pentagon, he was a professional staff member on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee and staff director of the defense subcommittee. BARBARA S. ROMZEK is Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas where she teaches public management. She has concentrated her research on the issues of accountability, government reform, privatization, and intergovernmental relations. Her work has encompassed a variety of complex work settings: from federal agencies like NASA, Congress, and the U.S. Air Force, to state social service agencies, local governments, and nonprofits. Romzek is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, is listed in the Who’s Who of American Women, and is a recipient of the Mosher Award from the American Society for Public Administration.