The Chesapeake Bay Goose Hunt, the Beautiful Secretary, and Other Ways the Defense Lobby Got the B-1
Kotz, Nick
The Chesapeake Bay Goose Hunt, the Beautiful Secretary, and Other Ways the Defense Lobby Got the B-1 by Nick Kotz After a 30-year struggle that overcame the opposition of several presidents, the...
...Air Force officers would appear at a meeting of a local Chamber of Commerce or Air Force Association chapter to explain the B-1's importance to national security—and to the local economy...
...This information threw the Air Force into a dilemma...
...General Jones carefully stressed the need for the B-1 to modernize the U.S...
...AIL, which would make the systems that detect and jam enemy radar, lobbied the New York congressional delegation...
...The Air Force itself chose Seattle's Boeing Company to develop the hi-tech electronic systems that guide the plane and its weapons...
...Those who made the liberal case for conven...
...Building a broad base of support entailed made in Rockwell's own factories...
...They were...
...Although those were wide margins of defeat for the opponents, the Air Force-Rockwell coalition perceived them as ominous challenges to the safe establishment that had conducted defense business in Congress up until then...
...LTV concentrated on the Texans...
...Many congressmen accepted invitations to these idyllic spots...
...Rockwell's carefully biased analysis sought to demonstrate that a $15 billion investment in the B-1 would add $41.4 billion to the gross national product and produce 69,300 aerospace jobs and 122,700 jobs in supporting services...
...A hefty subspreading the subcontracts around the country contract would sway the large 'Texas congressional to make sure that enough constituencies had a delegation, whose members included John Tower, direct stake in a given weapons system...
...about the Operation Common Sense grass-roots lobbying blitz...
...The ultimate success of the B-1 network derived in part from the professional knowledge of its lobbyists, and from their friendships with members of Congress...
...Costs, skills, and production schedules entered into these decisions...
...After being grilled by Proxmire and subjected to embarrassing newspaper headlines, Anderson testily asked Doc Watson, "Are you still proud of your duck blinds [on Wye Island...
...Company lobbyists in Washington held breakfast meetings at the Army-Navy Club on Farragut Square with representatives of such major B-1 subcontractors as Boeing, General Electric, Avco, Eaton, AIL, Sunstrand, LTV, Westinghouse, Goodyear Aerospace, and IBM, along with lobbyists from the United Auto Workers and the Machinists...
...Both Rockwell and the Air Force sought to Rockwell executives foresaw this decentraliza- broaden B-I support through subcontracts...
...You can't expect us to con...
...The Air Force and Rockwell tried to turn a principal B-1 liability—its stupendous cost—into a national economic asset...
...Members of the club helped each other when they could, as others do in many fields of special-interest politics...
...Department of Labor to find out which labor unions worked on the various B-1 contracts and how many union jobs were at stake...
...Although politics guided some subcontracting decisions, it didn't guide them all...
...A later audit showed $653,000 in disallowed lobbying expenses, including $115,895 for Operation Common Sense and a "Keep the B-I Sold" public-relations campaign, plus $83,645 in "military relations costs" for sending speakers around the country...
...The people making the B-1 bomber A hunting trip or a campaign contribution was not a chip to be exchanged automatically for a contract or a favorable vote...
...In the end, the 1975 effort to kill the B-1 in the Senate, led by Senator McGovern and Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, failed by a vote of 57 to 32...
...Silvio Conte, ranking Republican member on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, for example, were friends with strong common bonds...
...Or was a standoff plane firing long-range cruise missiles the answer...
...With an easygoing, folksy manner, he befriended not only the B-1's congressional advocates but its leading opponents as well...
...those aerospace giants were major employers in Georgia...
...Weekend duck hunting Rockwell supplemented its Washington lobbying with a secret grass-roots campaign codenamed Operation Common Sense...
...Defeat meant bankruptcy...
...The Harris Corporation, which made the electrical wiring system, contacted Florida congressmen...
...While Congress debated the 1975 defense budget, a tight-knit group of Air Force officers and Rockwell International officials secretly plotted the battle tactics of defense politics...
...Watson felt that her beauty enhanced luncheon and dinner meetings with congressmen...
...This article is adapted from his book, Wild Blue Yonder: Money, Politics, and the B-I Bomber, to be published in March by Pantheon Books 1988 by Nick Kotz...
...A World War II fighter-pilot ace who joined Rockwell after retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, Watson was a Capitol Hill fixture...
...What emerged from the strategy meetings was an intricate— and highly questionable—lobbying network...
...The solution instead was to spend those dollars to create jobs that produced goods the society could really use...
...Some officers privately agreed with Glenn, but the leadership, dominated by the Strategic Air Command, scorned the notion that their $100 million superbomber would be part of the conventional fighting force—that would be like hitching a thoroughbred to a milk wagon...
...To influence Glenn, the Air Force and Rockwell first called on all the obvious assets...
...GE was the largest employer in Ohio, and the UAW was among Glenn's major supporters...
...The national interest was served no bet- the work was a politically crucial part of planter in this mad scramble for military assets than ning a vast project like the B-1...
...But if the senator wanted us to say we'd do that, we were ready to oblige him ." Georgia Senator Nunn presented a more puzzling problem...
...Aspin's staff finally traced the letter-writing campaign to an Admiral television plant in Harvard, Illinois, just across the border from his congressional district...
...example, Rockwell contracted with the LTV CorThey realized that broad congressional support poration of Fort Worth to build parts of the would be needed to sustain huge defense pro- fuselage, even though they could easily have been grams...
...Congressional opposition grew more vocal and...
...The lobbying coalition tried to influence Nunn through Dr...
...On the eve of the Senate vote, Air Force aides handcarried a letter to Glenn from Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger promising that the B-Is eventually would be outfitted for conventional non-nuclear bombing...
...Yet one Air Force general later said, "There was no damn way we were going to risk losing a $100 million strategic asset in some conventional shootout...
...But critics have long contended that other weapons—such as planes firing long-range cruise missiles—make the B-1 unnecessary...
...If he needed more clout, he could ask Rockwell president, Robert Anderson, or chairman of the board, Willard Rockwell Jr., to call members of Congress, the president, or the secretary of defense...
...Well," replied Watson, ever the Washington pragmatist, "we got the B-1 and the space-shuttle contracts, and we've made a lot of friends...
...Rockwell's promotional, entertainment, and campaign contribution schemes were still gaining steam in 1975, when some of the strategies began to backfire...
...Like hundreds of other corporations, Rockwell took advantage of a 1974 campaign financing law intended to promote reform...
...General Boswell admonished his associates that the B-1 had to be sold primarily on its defense merits...
...Military officers are forbidden by law from lobbying Congress, not to mention doing so in coordination with the defense industry...
...A succession of Air Force leaders persisted in fighting for the prestigious B-1, even at the cost of sacrificing other vital air needs, such as planes to provide transportation and close support to troops on the battlefield...
...Sometimes the speaker also pointed out when the local congressman or senator had not been supportive...
...In the trade, they called it "who's on who...
...Deciding how and where to subcontract highways...
...Rockwell lobbyists trotted out these figures for each state and congressional district...
...it had been when one autocrat called the shots...
...But little B-1 work was being done in the state...
...Despite these overtures, however, Glenn would not commit himself...
...But members of the club helped each other when they could...
...Proxmire disclosed that the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency had disallowed $183,435 in Rockwell lobbying expenses and another $143,947 in entertainment expenses for the years 1974 and 1975...
...Most of those contracts involved only one or two hundred jobs, but for many local economies those jobs were very important...
...We made money on the subcontracts too...
...In the Senate, George McGovern won 31 votes for an amendment thal would have cut the B-1's development appropriation by 50 percent...
...Senators Alan Cranston and John Timney of California took the lead in advocating production of the B-1, which would provide thousands of jobs in their state...
...Working together from a Pentagon headquarters, they coordinated a sophisticated lobbying campaign designed to win continued approval of the B-1 bomber from an increasingly reluctant Nick Kotz won a National Magazine Award in 1985 for his reporting on the military...
...If the Democratic majority in the Senate was to be convinced that the bomber deserved support on its merits, more credible leadership was needed...
...Antiwar sentiment and antimilitary bias swelled into powerful currents in the country during the middle 1970s...
...Success offered hundreds of millions in profits...
...Whenever a critical congressional vote was on the agenda, Bastian (Buz) Hello flew in from California to attend the Pentagon strategy sessions and direct Rockwell's lobbying activities Hello, Rockwell's B-1 program manager, impressed the members with his low-key manner and total command of the details of the B-1...
...The result was a wide geographic distribution of jobs, a broad basis for skillful lobbying...
...James Daniell, a marketing vice-president in Rockwell's Pittsburgh office, directed the comprehensive promotional scheme...
...The AiResearch division of Garrett Corporation, which made the central air-data computer, focused on Arizona con . - gressmen...
...The Air Force made lobbying assignments for government officials, generals, members of the Air Force Association, and cooperative members of Congress...
...For example, Rep...
...The contact might be made by the chief Rockwell lobbyist in Washington, Ralph J. (Doc) Watson, by an Air Force officer such as Colonel Grant Miller, who worked full-time on the B-1's safe passage through Congress, by the president of the United Automobile Workers—or even by the president of the United States...
...For the Air Force, a new strategic bomber represented the heart of that service's military doctrine—that wars could be won by devastating enemies with long-range strategic airpower...
...Doc Watson and John Rane also kept busy in Washington...
...General Russell E. Dougherty, the SAC commander in 1975, sent his deputy, General Kelly Burke, to assure Glenn of SAC's "strong interest" in conventional bombing...
...And for communities throughout the country, the bomber project represented the promise of prosperity—and the fear of economic stagnation...
...A onetime football star at Ohio State and World War II hero, Daniell was a dynamic booster who saw little difference between marketing a bomber and promoting a consumer product...
...After the Vietnam war and the disgrace of Watergate, Congress more strongly asserted its will on defense issues against the presidency and the Pentagon...
...By the an influential Republican on the Senate Armed 1960s, Rockwell had established a division for ad- Services Committee and then Democratic House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Fort Worth...
...Was an expensive, new, penetrating bomber needed as part of the nuclear deterrent...
...so did top Pentagon officials such as Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Malcolm Currie, who as the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering held authority over B-1 development...
...In short order, Rockwell was contributing more than $100,000 in an election year to candidates who could best help the corporation's defense business...
...Glenn wanted more than interest...
...This permanent B-1 constituency persisted even through periods of political adversity...
...By the time initial subcontracts were awarded most of the nation's 435 congressional districts had them...
...One of Colonel Miller's first actions in 1975 was to do some research at the U.S...
...But there came a time when Conte told Watson that constituent pressure would no longer permit him to vote for the B-1...
...Daniell came to Washington to chair the monthly meetings of Operation Common Sense in the conference room of Rockwell's Washington offices on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Rockwell had charged all these expenses to the taxpayer as part of the costs incurred in building the B-1...
...He asked for a written commitment that the B-1 would be equipped to carry conventional bombs...
...As lobbying assignments were made at the Pentagon meetings, the participants made careful notations on tally sheets spread out on the conference table...
...Conte helped Rockwell and often enjoyed the company's hospitality, including one Wye Island excursion in which he shot a prize buck deer...
...Vote any way you want ." Rockwell's hard-nosed congressional lobbying, based almost exclusively on jobs, seemed heavyhanded— even to the Air Force...
...Daniell's efforts went beyond Operation Common Sense...
...Thomas Downey, a Long Island Democrat elected in the anti-Vietnam, anti Watergate class of 1974, resented the lobbying by a dozen Long Island firms with a piece of the B-1 action: "They figured if they built the windshield blades in your district, you were for it ." Downey supported most of the large defense contracts helping his constituents, but not the B-1...
...Neither had committed himself to support the B-1...
...Rockwell's "grass-roots" letterwriting campaign, for example, turned out to be a little too well organized and orchestrated...
...These scorecards also showed how each of the 100 senators and 435 representatives had voted on the B-1 in the past and how he or she was expected to vote in 1975...
...At Miller's suggestion, Air Force Chief of Staff Jones met with the unions' presidents, Leonard Woodcock of the Autoworkers and Floyd (Red) Smith of the Machinists...
...But there was a price to pay...
...Fulfilling his own campaign promises, Ronald Reagan revived the B-1 in 1981, despite Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's preference to bypass it for an even more sophisticated bomber called the Stealth...
...A project of the magnitude and complexity of the B-1 demanded a diversity of highly specialized skills not available at a single company...
...To prove their case, congressmen like Seiberling and their economic advisers took Rockwell's data and stood them on their head...
...Both Stealth and SDI are beset with problems— soaring costs, huge technological and military uncertainties, and a national budget deficit that is requiring cutbacks in the defense budget...
...Doc Watson headed the Rockwell group...
...The cause was helped by rewarding supportive congressmen with campaign contributions...
...Miller would ask...
...think they're working for the good of the community, and people have pride in it...
...Selling Akron The floor debates on the B-1 in 1975 focused on military and strategic considerations...
...The key to convincing Glenn came from a legislative aide, who told Air Force and Rockwell lobbyists that Glenn did not think the B-1 bomber was necessary as part of the strategic nuclear deterrent—but that he did believe strongly in the need for a new bomber to fight in a conventional war...
...A hunting trip or a campaign contribution was not a chip to be exchanged automatically for a contract or a favorable vote...
...High stakes When Rockwell's Doc Watson and other members of the B-1 lobbying coalition retired, their places were quickly filled by other capable industry and military representatives who carried on the fight for the bomber...
...The Air Force won its independence from the Army in 1946 on the basis of its unique ability to accomplish this mission...
...The Public Interest Research Group at the University of Michigan challenged the benefits to the economy of defense spending...
...Special attention was focused on "swing votes" —uncommitted members whose votes might be swayed by the right argument or person...
...Avco officials were lobbying the entire Tennessee congressional delegation, whose members understood the importance the B-1 held for their state's economy...
...When House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (soon to be president) needed rush transportation for a speech in Michigan and back to Washington the same night, Doc Watson commandeered a Rockwell plane for him...
...On previous occasions the Air Force had been able to appeal to Nunn's parochial interest for weapons built by Lockheed or Martin Marietta...
...The Air Force-Rockwell coalition developed into a formal apparatus in direct reaction—and direct proportion—to the growing congressional threat during the early 1970s...
...Reformers in the Democratic party had punctured the seniority system and managed to oust several committee chairmen, including Democratic Rep...
...Union support was vital, especially in influencing the liberal congressional Democrats most likely to oppose the bomber...
...The Pentagon lobbying meetings were sometimes attended by John Gray, a staff representative of the Air Force Association, a powerful nationwide organization of active and retired Air Force personnel and other defense supporters...
...Admiral had no part at all in the B-1, it just happened to be a subsidiary of Rockwell...
...The $28 billion spent on the B-1 and billions more spent earlier on research and development provided contracts to 5,200 companies in 48 states...
...Sunstrand Corporation of Rockford, which made the rudder control systems, concentrated on Illinois congressmen...
...The history of this costly and perhaps unneeded weapon illustrates the political, military, and economic forces that extend throughout our system of national defense...
...better organized in 1974...
...The Air Force side of the lobbying coalition was directed by Lt...
...As Gerry Whipple, the UAW's tough-talking western regional vice-• president, put it, "California has been built on food, defense, and oil...
...The new law made it legal for corporations to run political action committees (PACs) with money volunteered by employees...
...and about the Chesapeake Bay hunting weekends enjoyed by the Pentagon sportsmen, when Rockwell not only provided accommodations but took care of cleaning and dressing the geese...
...But the Air Force did not consider them effective advocates, fearing that their self-interest and their reputations as doctrinaire antidefense liberals would weaken their credibility...
...One Admiral letter-writer handed the B-1 opponents a golden postscript: "I've been asked to do this," the Admiral worker wrote to Aspin...
...duced 65,000 jobs per $1 billion...
...Boeing had lost the prime B-1 contract to Rockwell, and the Air Force wanted to mollify the two influential senators from Washington state—also known as "the senators from Boeing": Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a power on the Armed Services Committee, and Warren Magnuson, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee...
...Doc and Johnny show Preparing for the 1975 congressional fight, Rockwell and Air Force lobbyists armed themselves with meticulous lists of every B-1 subcontract location, cross-referenced by state, town, and congressional district...
...It was a kind of matchmaking, pairing each member of Congress with the individuals or groups most likely to persuade that legislator to vote for continued funding of the bomber...
...Rockwell and its subcontractors bombarded Capitol Hill with statistics showing that the B-1 provided an economic bonanza for the entire nation—not just the districts where the plane was being built...
...If they Lobbying coalitions have long been an integral part of the Washington political system...
...The "who's on who" assignments were recorded in code, lest the tally sheets fall into unfriendly hands...
...Daniell and lobbyist Doc Watson coordinated the hospitality at four company retreats: a fishing complex at North Bimini Island in the Bahamas for winter weekends...
...Congress...
...Conversations at the Pentagon meetings followed a predictable pattern: "Who's on Baker...
...turned against the project, others were likely to follow...
...John Seiberling from Akron, Ohio, one of the most knowledgeable and articulate B-1 opponents in the House, Rockwell's John Rane sent a brochure to Akron business and civic groups...
...Furthermore, technological flaws in the B-1 have cast doubts on the plane's ability to perform its mission...
...vert into industries for garbage disposal or cheap houses...
...Powerful, autocratic committee chairmen (mostly southern conservatives who had been generous to the military) could no longer automatically impose their will on a military contract...
...Reagan approved the Air Force's request to build both bombers...
...Too often, military decisions are based not on objective considerations of our national security needs but for other reasons— contracts for campaign contributions, jobs for constituents, or the parochial self-interests of one of the competing armed services...
...Building the B-1 would create $60 million worth of new business in Ohio's 14th congressional district, the brochure stated: this new business would generate $133 million in disposable income after taxes...
...Callahan practiced medicine in Warner Robins, Georgia, home of Robins Air Force Base...
...In other words," the Rockwell pitch concluded, "you don't have to 'cut metal' on the B-1 in order to benefit from it ." That the health of the American economy somehow depended in part on large defense expenditures had been taken for granted by many politicians ever since World War H. But in the mid-1970s some congressmen began to contest that doctrine...
...On August 3, 1973, the Senate Armed Services Committee cut $100 million from the B-1 funds requested by the Air Force, expressly to indicate "the committee's dissatisfaction and serious concern regarding the management of this program...
...In 1977, President Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign pledge to cancel production of the B-1, saying it was unneeded and a waste of money...
...They did...
...What was unusual about the B-1 strategy meetings at the Pentagon was not only their sophistication but the participants themselves...
...F. Edward Hebert, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee...
...Jack Kelly, a retired Air Force colonel, was the Washington lobbyist for Avco Corporation, which had a subcontract potentially worth $1 billion to build the B-1's wings at its Nashville plant...
...At a Senate hearing, he crossexamined Rockwell President Anderson about the company's secret campaign contributions to Richard Nixon in 1972...
...Institutional change also had overtaken some old congressional procedures...
...Doc Watson and Massachusetts Rep...
...Daniel Callahan, a Georgia friend...
...Colonel Grant Miller, an attorney who spoke with an Oklahoma twang, led the Air Force's B-1 drive on Capitol Hill...
...Spreading the work around always complicated the logistics of building a weapon, and sometimes it compromised the quality...
...His sentiments were widely shared...
...Kelly's got Baker," Watson would reply...
...It paid not to be greedy," explained a Rockwell executive...
...As a fishing and hunting companion of Chairman of the Board Rockwell, Daniell persuaded him to expand the lavish hospitality the company routinely provided for its favored commercial customers to include members of Congress, high-ranking military officers, and administration officials...
...A 150-member Pentagon staff answered queries for members of Congress, kept a file on their voting records and statements, supplied them with transportation for "official trips," kept them informed of projects in their districts—and of course worked assiduously to gain their votes for Air Force programs...
...Rockwell further enticed him by assigning B-1 work to a longidle plant in Columbus...
...As a nonprofit educational group, the association is technically prohibited from lobbying...
...He directed a speakers' bureau, which booked B-1 proponents to speak in states or districts represented by congressmen hostile to the B-I...
...As power in Congress fragmented, vanced systems planning...
...It had no plans even to install racks for conventional bombs in the B-1...
...about free winter vacations taken by Pentagon officials on Bimini in 1974...
...General Electric, with its huge engine plant in Ohio, focused on that state's delegation...
...For Rockwell International, the bomber held the fate of its North American Aviation division for nearly three decades...
...Despite strong disapproval from his superiors in Pittsburgh, Watson kept Conte on the Rockwell hospitality roster...
...The Air Force has touted the sophisticated bomber, designed to fly at near supersonic speed at treetop level and penetrate deep into Soviet territory, as an essential part of the US...
...In addition, Rockwell brought to Washington the managers of its 167 local plants to lobby their elected representatives...
...These 192,000 jobs would produce $28.6 billion in personal income after taxes, and the $13 billion in taxes on that income would reduce the fanciful bottom line from $15 billion to a mere $2 billion "investment for national security...
...strategic nuclear deterrent...
...An infusion of defense dollars in Akron was not the answer, he maintained...
...This information allowed the lobbyists to show members of Congress down to the last dollar how their constituents benefited from the B-1...
...The Chesapeake Bay Goose Hunt, the Beautiful Secretary, and Other Ways the Defense Lobby Got the B-1 by Nick Kotz After a 30-year struggle that overcame the opposition of several presidents, the Air Force is finally getting a new strategic bomber...
...Rockwell organized the other contractors who worked on the B-1...
...The data became even more potent as subcontractors, mayors, and union leaders were enlisted to lobby their members of Congress...
...Title 18 is often ignored by members of the executive branch, which is worrisome in itself...
...James Allen, to work full-time promoting the B-1...
...But politics did too...
...A similar effort in the House failed too, although a motion by Rep...
...But the B-1 effort was different...
...a hunting plantation called Pinebloom near Albany, Georgia...
...The discussion was all very reasonable and responsible and serious...
...And local leaders let their congressmen know it...
...Seiberling did his own economic study, which concluded that while his Ohio constituents paid $84 million in taxes for the B-1, they received only $70 million of benefits in return...
...Getting Nunn As the B-1 appropriations approached a vote in June 1975, Rockwell and the Air Force worried about a rebellion among Senate Democrats...
...Without a new bomber, the proud Air Force's strategic role would be reduced to that of pushing buttons in the bot - tom of missile silos...
...At these sessions the participants decided which company would contact which congressmen...
...Les Aspin, a Wisconsin Democrat, was besieged with 300 pro-B-1 letters from workers...
...The $28 billion project has been fraught with controversy throughout its long history...
...Howard Baker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, though not yet his party's Senate leader, needed lobbying...
...Code, the statute that specifically prohibits officials of the executive branch from lobbying the Congress...
...Despite Carter's opposition and often acting without his knowledge, the B-1's friends in the Defense Department, Air Force, Congress, and industry nevertheless managed to keep the project alive with research money from 1977 through 1980—awaiting the results of the next election...
...His program included a massive letter-writing campaign by workers at Rockwell's 167 plants, solicitation of support from national organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, and production of films and advertisements as well as articles that willing editors could print in newspapers and magazines...
...Woodcock also ordered the UAW to quit a liberal coalition opposing the B-I—with the auto industry in trouble, aerospace jobs became all the more important...
...The meticulous, secretive—and ethically dubious—campaign became a model for future defense lobbying, including efforts to secure support for the C-SB transport plane and the MX missile...
...The studies, prepared both by Rockwell and by the Air Force comptroller's office, showed how many dollars of B-1 money flowed into a congressional district each month...
...John Rane, a Rockwell aeronautical engineer, helped Watson keep members of Congress up to date on the technical status of Rockwell projects...
...Genevieve (Ginger) Allen, a young Mississippian who had joined Watson as a secretary, soon proved a bright and shrewd addition to the lobbying team...
...But when military officers ignore it, the offense is compounded: the military is supposed to obey civilian authority and stay out of politics...
...After reading THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY/FEBRUARY 1988 Schlesinger's letter aloud on the Senate floor, Glenn finally cast his vote for the B-1...
...These reforms made it harder for the defense industry to gain approval for its programs...
...For tion of congressional power back in the 1960s...
...Within a few months, Proxmire had a field day as a muckraker...
...Les Aspin to eliminate preproduction funding for the bomber collected a surprising 164 votes...
...Neither Congress nor the country would in fact divert billions from the B-1 to build mass-transit systems, fund healthcare programs, or improve public schools...
...When Callahan urged Nunn to support the B-1, the senator knew that the doctor spoke for a formidable advocacy group—one concerned not only about the Air Force but about the health of its area's major economic resource, the giant base that provided 20,000 jobs and a $450 million annual payroll...
...General Marion Boswell, the assistant vice chief of staff...
...That way, he kept well informed, and he kept his political lines open...
...written on five different colors of stationery but were nearly identical in content...
...Participants worked on such disparate projects as soliciting the support of the National Council of Jewish Women and countering the promotional efforts of Rockwell's aerospace rivals who opposed penetration bombers like the B-1 in favor of "standoff' bombers that fired cruise missiles from long distances...
...Although a strong military supporter, he remained noncommittal on the B-1...
...and Nemacolin, Willard Rockwell's own hideaway resort, complete with trout fishing, near Farmington, Pennsylvania...
...Supporters of both programs are prepared to wage long, difficult, political fights before these projects finally come to fruition...
...The Air Force even assigned a high-ranking general, Maj...
...Sharing the wealth Lobbying coalitions have long been an integral part of the Washington political system...
...Senator Nunn finally cast his vote for the B-1...
...As president of the mid-Georgia chapter of the Air Force Association, Callahan encouraged his four thousand members with the motto: "Every day in middle Georgia is Air Force Appreciation Day...
...Nevertheless, the Air Force decided to pay lip service to Glenn's ideas...
...sion to a peacetime economy were mocked by the bomber's supporters...
...As congressional skepticism toward the B-1 grew in the mid-1970s, the military and defense contractors grew expert at promoting the project on economic terms, forming a secret lobbying coalition run from the Pentagon...
...In April, Rockwell International will deliver the last of 100 B-1 bombers to the Air Force...
...He soon knew exactly how many members of two major labor unions—the United Automobile Workers and the International Association of Machinists—worked in each B-1 plant...
...The assumption that a few jobs back home could change their minds on an important national defense issue offended some congressmen...
...But in the lobbying behind the scenes, the issue was jobs...
...But the ultimate power of the B-1 coalition rested upon deeply rooted, permanent interests, in which many people and institutions held high stakes...
...The committee financed a thinly veiled B-1 promotional film, The Threat: What One Can Do, and paid a $39,350 consulting fee to Washington Alert, a newsletter edited by news personality Martha Rountree, who wrote glowingly of the B-1's virtues...
...The Air Force worked with the defense contractors with cavalier disregard for Title 18 of the U.S...
...Once the power of committee chairmen was curbed, defense contractors and the military services needed the support of many more members of Congress...
...The Air Force and industry regarded the congressional slap as the worst kind of "micromanagement ." Without warning, a multibilliondollar weapon program could be thrown off track by policies changed in the annual congressional authorization and appropriation process...
...If the history of the B-1 foretells the future, they will stay the course and prevail...
...Military officers are forbidden by law from lobbying Congress, not to mention doing so in coordination with the defense industry...
...Broad-based Air Force and industry lobbying drives, similar to those behind the B-1, are now underway on behalf of the top-secret Stealth bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative...
...But through its local chapters, it could encourage its 250,000 members to support the B-1 bomber...
...In a study called The Empty Pork Barrel, the Michigan analysis showed that spending for weapons procurement, a capital-intensive enterprise, produced 55,000 jobs for each $1 billion spent...
...At a meeting of the New Hampshire chapter of the Air Force Association, an officer spoke both about the virtues of the B-1 and about Senator Thomas McIntyre's equivocal support for it...
...At the Pentagon, Miller operated out of a special office across the hall from General David Jones, the Air Force chief of staff...
...This division tried to many members scrambled to get a share of predict economic, political, and social trends in defense contracts and bases for their constituents, order to judge if various defense projects were just as they had traditionally sought dams and viable...
...The fellowship of weekend duck hunting was a form of friendship...
...They saw themselves as patriots, in general alliance against politicians they regarded as dangerous or misguided—McGovern, Seiberling, and others whom they thought underestimated the Soviet threat and would disarm the country...
...The lobbying coalition took aim at two influential Democratic senators: John Glenn of Ohio, whose defense pronouncements carried the weight of his experience and celebrity as a Marine pilot and astronaut, and Sam Nunn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with a growing reputation as a military expert...
...But the union chiefs clearly understood the job implications as well— both ordered their unions to join forces with the Air Force-Rockwell lobbying coalition...
...To counter Rep...
...strategic deterrent...
...At about this time General Boswell told Air Force lobbyists to get rid of the records of their well-coordinated campaign of "who's on who" with an emphasis on B-1-created jobs...
...However, public-sector spending on a mix of construction, public works, services, and manufacturing pro...
...a leased hunting lodge with 24 duck blinds on Wye Island in the Chesapeake Bay near Washington, D.C...
...A small, jaunty man with an ear for a good story, he befriended congressmen and kept them ready to hear Rockwell's case for its defense projects...
...In this kind of analysis, each additional $1 billion in defense spending meant a net loss of 10,000 jobs...
...With thousands of jobs at stake in building the bomber or serving as its home bases, dozens of local communities never wavered in their grassroots political support...
...He targeted key votes and directed day-to-day strategy...
...Glenn was lobbied hard by the United Automobile Workers and by executives and union officials from General Electric, which was manufacturing the B-1's engines outside Cincinnati...
...In one three-month period in 1974 they entertained or called on 155 members of Congress...
...Sanders Electronics lobbied New Hampshire members...
...They proudly called their team the "Doc and Johnny show...
...A House amendment to kin the plane outright, though, was defeated 309 to 94...
...In addition to general questions of propriety, Air Force leaders suspected that Senator Proxmire, the scourge of the military, soon would expose the whole lobbying plan...
Vol. 20 • February 1988 • No. 1
