Burden of abuse
The optimization of the functioning of the US military organization has always been among the priorities of the leadership of the White House. This primarily means following the unshakable principle of business that underlies American military construction, which can be reduced to the formula "low cost - high efficiency." However, these “rules” were by no means an obstacle to numerous cases of corruption and trivial theft.FIRST STEPS
It is noteworthy that the first stories US steps to combat such abuses were noted back in 1782, when, on behalf of the then highest legislative body of the Continental Congress, the investigation of cases of “fraud, negligence and damage to property when purchasing goods for a revolutionary war” was entrusted to Robert Morris, the finance superintendent. According to the results of the investigation, for the first time in the practice of American defense construction, measures were taken to introduce free market methods, excluding overpayment for goods purchased by the army, various types of property and services. At the same time, the “work” of Morris, as acknowledged by American experts, demonstrated the negative features of the so-called control from above, which have not been eradicated to this day. So, having the powers of a “controller”, he managed to “give” contracts to his relatives and friends, who surprisingly avoided contests and competitions.
The US civil war spawned another surge in abuses in the supply of the army, primarily associated with various types of property and military equipment, as well as the inevitable reaction to this by the authorities. Thus, the shortage of cotton, which was discontinued from the South, for obvious reasons, led to the fact that the military uniform for the northerners was made of absolutely unsuitable materials, but supplied to the troops in large quantities and at inflated prices. A few months after the start of the war, one manufacturer from the North told the London journalist, the Economist, that he had already earned thousands of dollars, fabulous for those times, 200. Often, contractors supplied government with useless and obsolete ammunition and weaponwhich were immediately written off as scrap. Later, the well-known businessman M. Hartley in the country admitted that he had sold a lot of defective muskets to the government. Moreover, this deal was involved young then John Pierpont Morgan, whose group received a one-time profit in the amount of 95 thousand dollars.
Business during the Civil War flourished so much that the factory owners declared 30 percent dividends. Enrichment caused a real orgy of extravagance, which could not fail to attract the attention of the public, who demanded tough measures from the authorities to restore order. In December, 1861, after a series of failures in battles with Southerners, a Joint Committee on the conduct of hostilities was formed in Congress with the broadest powers. In addition to the constant, often with negative consequences, the intervention of congressmen in the sphere of military professionals regarding, for example, the nuances of warfare, the committee assumed the functions of “fair” distribution of contracts and regulating the supply of various types of property to the army. As in the period of the war for independence, it was not without “nepotism” and undisguised corruption. The frauds with the contracts of the committee members were so “counterproductive” that even the commander of the Confederate troops, General Robert Lee, quipped: “The work of the committee enhances our potential for at least two divisions!” One member of the British establishment in discussing the legitimacy of London’s intervention in the Civil War The US stated unequivocally: "The Yankees are fighting only because of tariffs and vanity." The problems associated with the eradication of slavery and segregation in the South did not occupy a priority place in the politics of Washington.
POSITIVE SHIFTS
A significant step forward in establishing order in concluding contracts for the supply of various types of property, as well as weapons and military equipment (AME) to the troops and quality control, was the formation of a special committee by the Senate in March 1941 to investigate the state of national defense. became an energetic senator, future president of the United States Harry Truman. This was preceded by the following events.
In May, 1940 of the year, when the inevitability of America’s entry into the war was becoming more and more obvious, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested emergency allocations for military needs in the amount of 1,2 billion dollars, and a month later, 5 billion more. In the general account for 1 December 1940 of the year, about 10 billion dollars were allocated for defense (180 billion in 2006 prices of the year). Senator Truman, not least looking for a reason to “become famous”, volunteered to check the spending of such huge funds.
He chose defense enterprises and companies located near the capital on the East Coast of the United States as the initial targets of his inspections. Truman usually arrived at his chosen object on his “old Dodge” without any accompaniment, but, using the status of the legislator, sought access to all materials and samples of interest to him. He categorically rejected pompousness when meeting with heads of enterprises and bases and, moreover, did not accept any “offerings” in the form of “souvenirs”, memorable gifts, etc. If we say that he was shocked by what he saw, writes a well-known American expert in military reforms Wilis Wheeler, to say nothing. According to Truman, the lack of competition in the "struggle for contracts", the uncontrolled expenditure of funds and the inaction of officials reached a clearly unacceptable scale. Summing up the results of several inspections, he, in a private conversation with President Roosevelt, reported on the essence of the problems. However, he reacted to the report "without interest and with the doomed inevitability of such an order of things." Truman, realizing what trumps were in his hands, informed the press about his visits to the facilities and made a report with an unprecedented severity of assessments in the lower house of Congress, asking him to support his initiative to form the said committee, which eventually received the broadest powers : the study of contracts in the defense sphere and the rules for obtaining them, the geographical distribution, the benefits for the Armed Forces of their implementation and all other aspects of military capacity building that the committee considers necessary to investigate.
The committee members and its chairman vigorously set to work. The committee conducted public 432 and 300 hearings “behind closed doors”, prepared more than one hundred memoranda and an 51 report. Truman and the members of his committee, thanks to their activities, gained the reputation of “independent and incorruptible officials”. Truman skillfully maneuvered between politically “sensitive” problems and tried not to interfere in areas in which he felt his incompetence, such as strategy and tactics of military operations. In addition to moral dividends, Truman and his committee received the approval of the American public as having saved the order of 15 billion dollars (270 billion in 2006 prices of the year). One of the most significant results of the Truman Committee’s work was a bill on the distribution and supply of military products by reorganizing the many agencies involved in this issue into a single Council on military production, which played a significant positive role in World War II.
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL "THREAT"
After the fundamental “Law on National Security” was adopted in 1947 and the Korean war soon followed, resulting in a sharp increase in the military budget to more than 50 billion dollars, the Hoover Commission, named after its chairman, was formed by both branches of power. President - Herbert Hoover. The members of this authoritative body in a relatively short time had done tremendous work on analyzing the results of the cardinal reorganization of the US military, revealed serious shortcomings in the new leadership system of the US military and suggested ways to further centralize their management with the addition of greater powers to the Secretary of Defense. In addition, after analyzing cases in the system of distribution and execution of contracts by the industry in the interests of the Armed Forces, the “expensive duplication” of IWT orders from the Armed Forces types were issued with significant recommendations that soon took the form of laws and by-laws.
In 1953, a regular control body was formed - the Rockefeller Committee, again with the broadest powers. The war that ended in Korea demonstrated a number of shortcomings in controlling the US military machine and ensuring that the Armed Forces meet the requirements of modern weapons and military equipment. Therefore, the Committee again recommended that the head of the defense department provide more authority in managing the country's military organization, but at the same time proposed to narrow down somewhat the functions of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CLS) by increasing the level of independence of the Armed Forces, allegedly limited by previous legislative acts and various regulations.
Meanwhile, by the end of 50, the process of the formation of the American military-industrial complex (MIC) reached unprecedented proportions. Under the pretext of responding to the "Soviet threat", the authorities increased military spending to a record 80 billion dollars a year. Almost half of the military budget was directed to the financing of general military contracts, which directly contributed to the formation and strengthening of the military-industrial complex. More than three-quarters of the congressional districts had one or more military enterprises on their territory. Almost 5300 of large and small settlements lived at the expense of at least one military factory operating on the Pentagon. The military department maintained around 5,5 thousands of bases and facilities in the country, as well as 9 arsenals employing tens of thousands of workers. Thus, the legislators of both chambers elected in their districts voluntarily or unwittingly became dominated by the business that was constantly strengthening its position and was associated with military circles.
Attempts by the Eisenhower administration to keep the military and contractors in check during this period were generally unsuccessful. The Pentagon appealed to Congress and the public, arguing that reducing defense spending is tantamount to betrayal. Of course, business circles shared the views of the generals. To ensure a favorable course of their affairs, large and medium-sized firms relied on “good personal relationships,” donated large sums to various public organizations associated with the US military, and widely practiced recruiting retired officers to serve. For example, in the state of military contractors in 1959, more than 1400 reserve officers with the rank of major and above worked. Despite the fact that retired officers were not allowed to act as an intermediary of firms in their Armed Forces, the facts indicated that 90% of retirees did not comply with this prohibition. All this inevitably led to major abuses and almost undisguised corruption.
INITIATIVE - AT ADMINISTRATION
The arrival at the White House at the beginning of the 60s of a democratic administration led by John Kennedy was marked by another serious attempt by the authorities to restore order in the defense sphere. However, the situation was complicated by dangerous military-political crises, and then the beginning of full-scale and many years of American military intervention in Vietnam. All this required billions of dollars of injections to the US Armed Forces, the correctness and fairness of the distribution of which was extremely difficult to control. And yet some very positive measures have been taken. Moreover, the initiative to combat defense abuses during this period belonged to the presidential administration and personally to the extraordinary thinking head of the military department Robert McNamara.
During his tenure in this post, in addition to numerous initiatives in the field of reforming the military administration, he was able to largely reflect the pressure of the military-industrial lobby. When McNamaru was eventually forced into the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1968, he proudly emphasized: “In 98% of battles with military circles, victory remained on my side!” In fact, McNamara was the first defense minister in the history of the country who managed to establish real civilian control over the expanding Pentagon empire. He controlled the military and contractors, who were striving to grab a bigger sum from the state treasury, very tightly and to a certain extent controlled their appetites. But the business went on various tricks to achieve the desired goal against the background of constantly increasing allocations for military needs. Especially a lot of trouble to the minister and his office was delivered by the so-called lobbying activity. The lobbyists were active through the Pentagon bureau “in relations with legislative bodies”, the budget of which reached almost $ 4 million per year. On the sidelines of the Congress, it was said that the Pentagon lobbyists attacked the legislators as “marines”.
TIMING OF THE TIME
The unfortunate outcome of the Vietnam War for the United States caused real ferment in American society. Political and military figures, analysts and journalists have been vigorously discussing the reasons for such a disgraceful failure of the national military machine. In principle, everyone agreed that the US Armed Forces need urgent and radical reform, which would affect both the governing bodies of the Armed Forces, the recruitment system, and the total replacement of those who did not justify themselves in an IWT battle. Republicans, led by experienced politician and administrator Richard Nixon, who came to the White House in the late 60-s in the wake of criticism of their predecessors-democrats, promised to restore order in the Armed Forces and in the entire system to ensure them, starting with the streamlining of military purchases.
In 1971, President Nixon created a new temporary monitoring body - the Fitzo Commission (or the Blue Ribbon Commission, that is, appointed by the President), headed by Gilbert W. Fitzo, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Its members were tasked with auditing the implementation of decisions of all previous commissions and committees in the defense sphere, as well as revealing the reasons why they were not implemented.
To summarize the findings of the commission, it can be stated in brief that the efforts of individuals and authorities involved in national defense over the past two decades have been a complete failure, threatening serious negative consequences in the near future. At the same time, the commission formulated 113 recommendations that were sent to President Nixon. The latter, impressed by the results of the commission’s work, commissioned David Pakard, Deputy Minister of Defense, to personally take charge of translating these recommendations into practice, especially in acquiring various types of weapons and military equipment, where the weaknesses of the arms acquisition contract system were most pronounced.
David Packard - a big businessman in the past - was aware of all the nuances of the mechanism for acquiring weapons that had been functioning for many years. In his opinion, which was also shared by Fitzo, the key to solving the problem was the implementation of the “fly, then buy” principle proposed by Truman. The essence of this simple at first glance principle was that the weapon system, before it was spent billions of dollars from the state budget, should be really tested and tested in business, which excluded the previous practice to fully rely on the promises of manufacturers of lobbyists who promised "high efficiency "New designs, without bearing for it virtually any responsibility.
It is noteworthy that opponents of such an approach opposed testing of new systems in the early stages of development, arguing that “waste of time and money”. But Packard "dismissed" these arguments, reasonably emphasizing that the elimination of deficiencies in the course of subsequent tests will take a lot more money from the budget, and ultimately at best lead to a delay for an indefinite period of adoption of this system. Packard even initiated the creation of a separate structure within the Pentagon - a department to review test results and test new weapons and military equipment. Looking ahead, we say that Packard’s efforts to impose this principle, having met with fierce opposition from the community of designers, manufacturers and buyers of weapons, were only partially implemented. Packard and his colleagues failed to fully implement all the recommendations proposed by the Fitzo Commission, but for the first time in the American practice of executing the instructions of the authorities, methodical and comprehensive work was begun to correct matters in all areas of defense construction.
INTAKE SITUATION
However, the work of the "reformers" by the middle of the 80-s clearly stalled. Under the conditions of the next leap in building up the military potential and inflating the Pentagon with new billions of dollars in allocations promised by the Republicans during the election campaign and brought to life by the Ronald Reagan administration, a window of opportunity opened up before the business and the military to profit from the state treasury. Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s Minister of Defense, was subjected to merciless criticism for inaction and the lack of any control over the expenditure of funds allocated to national defense. In the famous caricature in the Washington Post, he was depicted with a toilet seat on the neck of a large lot ordered for the BBC for 600 dollars apiece.
The position, admittedly, became intolerable. As a result, in 1985, the next commission is formed, the head of which was appointed David Packard himself, tempted in the features of the functioning of the mechanism of production of weapons and military equipment and the conclusion of contracts for their acquisition. Summing up the work of the commission, Packard told the congressmen: "Frankly speaking, gentlemen ... we have to state that there is a real mess ... even on an even larger scale than 15 years ago!"
Congress was forced to zealously get down to business. Together were collected all the proposals and recommendations in the field of correcting the situation in the defense sphere. A series of hearings of officials and independent experts was held. As a result, the Senate Committee on the Armed Forces has prepared an extensive, in 645 pages, the resulting report “Defense Organization: the need for change”, containing a list of almost all the problems facing the US Armed Forces, and clear proposals for solving them. Based on this report, a bill was developed called the Goldwater – Nichols Act on the Reorganization of the Ministry of Defense of 1986 of the Year (named after the chairs of the Senate and House of Representatives Supreme Council Committees, respectively) and went down in history as evidence of the fruitful collaboration of the executive and legislative authorities USA.
The highlight of the law was a set of mandatory measures to improve the functions of governing bodies and individuals and streamline the direct command and control units, which led to further centralization in the leadership of the US armed forces as a whole. The defense minister was given greater authority in the management of his department, including in the selection of implementers of contracts for the production of weapons and military equipment. For this, a special post of an official was introduced, who immediately received the nickname Tsar of Acquisitions. The law also prescribes the immediate consolidation of all rules on the acquisition of weapons and military equipment for the US military in a single document. The status of the chairman of the KNSH increased, which for the first time in the American military hierarchy became significantly higher than the chiefs of staff of the Armed Forces. It would seem that you can safely breathe and proceed to the execution of this act. But life has presented the next "surprises".
NEW PROBLEMS
A year after the adoption of this law, another scandal broke out in the Pentagon related to contracts for the purchase of weapons and military equipment. This time, the Ministry of Justice was directly involved in the investigation, whose investigative activities were given the very eloquent title “Operation adverse turn”. It turned out that not only the new rules for regulating contract activities, but even for many years before, the existing “liberal” practice of concluding contracts was simply ignored by the officials of the Pentagon and the MIC. Sticks were constantly placed in the wheels of the department for reviewing the results of testing and testing of new types of weapons and military equipment. Moreover, William Perry, in the past himself a member of the Packard Commission, a senior manager of the Defense Ministry’s weapons design department and, which is especially significant, later became the second secretary of defense in the administration of Bill Clinton, was involved in this.
Legislators, naturally, could not stay aside from violations in the recent past of the legislative act they adopted, and the Senate appointed a series of debates on the issue of “optimization” of the ways of its implementation. As one of the measures to improve the situation with the quality of acquired weapons and military equipment, a so-called two-party bill was proposed, which was written by Senator David Pryor. In accordance with this draft law, consideration of the question of which contract for the development of a weapon system should be given preference should be preceded by a competition of major defense contracts. At the same time, the proposals of competing concerns and firms must be submitted in advance to an independent commission in "sealed envelopes", which would ostensibly exclude the facts of collusion of industrialists and officials of the US Department of Defense involved in the approval of contracts.
However, the bill unexpectedly met stiff resistance not only from business and Pentagon officials involved in acquiring weapons and military equipment, which, however, was expected, but also in the Senate Committee on Armed Forces, whose members suggested a number of amendments to the bill, some of which Pryor called “ cosmetic, and others simply unacceptable, depleting the essence of the document. Very significant in this regard was the position of Senator Clayborn Pell, who initially was fundamentally for the bill. However, he voted against when voting. On the sidelines, he explained this by saying that the Electric Boat shipyard, which claims to be building submarines for the Navy and located in Connecticut, which mainly employed residents of the senator’s home state, could not have won the contract, as a result of which the senator could lose voter support. Everything is quite simple: the main thing is to hold onto the place at the helm of power, and not the interests of national defense.
The Senate Committee on the Armed Forces tried to prevent the bill from going, stating that Pryor’s initiative was clearly unnecessary, since all the necessary proposals for implementation were already contained in the Goldwater-Nichols Act. In general, senators for the most part believed that there was no need to be niggled, but laws should be monitored and the implementation of already legalized measures of a “strategic level” should be monitored. But the bill nevertheless passed and became law, although only thanks to the incredible joint efforts of influential senators who rallied around Pryor and the massive media connection.
"OLD BOLYACHI"
After the election of a representative of the Democratic Party of Barack Obama in 2008, the priorities in the defense industry underwent, as it seemed, “realistic” changes. At least in both the first and second terms of the presidential office, the Obama administration focused on partially curtailing Washington’s “redundant” global military commitments, including stopping intervention in Iraq and then Afghanistan, and accordingly reducing military expenditures as part of general policy. financial savings.
But while the president, from year to year, tried to push through unpopular reforms, intending to gain a billion or more in the state budget, corporations continued to systematically impose weapons on the Pentagon that he did not have special needs. And the “concern for defense” suddenly “strangely” worried the legislators, and from both parties. They, as it turned out, know better what the national armed forces need. Actually, hindering the closure of the production of surplus and obsolete weapons in their states, senators and congressmen, without hesitating, spoke of the intention to preserve small business and jobs in the constituencies without regard to the fact that they produce personnel in enterprises that continue to operate. Business, of course, was on the side of the legislators, and, apparently, disinterested. In other words, the corruption component of the contracting system and the allocation of budget funds for the acquisition of property for the US military department, which has never been lived up in previous years, turned out to be stronger than the reformers' good intentions.
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