i thought, here is a person who was in enslaved person in his household. a young girl. i thought it was important to mention that even as a possibility out of deference to her and out of concern that you paint a picture of the lives of enslaved girls of that time period because he could have been. we don't know that he was but i don't think when a you are talking about a person who is a slaveowner you have to talk about all the aspects of that and not just buying and selling people. so we don't get a sense of again -- this is in comparison to jefferson where you have lots of letters back and forth between fathers and daughters and grandchildren and all those kinds of things and people commented on him. one thing that people did say is that he liked children quite a bit. he was good with children and they liked him. one of the people who was the son of a person who was enslaved, one of his slaves, said that he even with ounce black children on his knee.

he liked children, which is sort of interesting when you think about the rest of his life. he was able to be apparently childlike with children but you don't get a sense of him as a warm and funny person otherwise. ..

>> sure. yes. and i think he could have he wouldn't have had to -- a different kind of johnson would not have had to go along with everything the republicans wanted to do. one of the things he did do but i didn't try to convey a talk about in the book is that his recalcitrant gave aid and comfort to the southerners, and people said you know, we would have accepted anything in the immediate aftermath of the war we would have accepted anything, any terms, but he gave us hope of the white man's government and so we need to hold out. and so, i think will he played i think is the symbolic role of the president as leader that was important. if he hadn't so strenuously opposed voting rights, if he hadn't said it caused efforts to

bring about land reform it's not to say that the south would have ruled over and would have -- but when you have the enemy down, you know, when you've got them down when, that's when you impose the terms and move forward and numerous people said he had actions embolden them that could be recalcitrant, could sort of top-down any move so it wouldn't have been the land of milk and honey. the south wouldn't have rolled over and accepted blacks as equals citizens but it wouldn't have been as bad as it was. and that lessening of the problem, any lesson of the oppression fighting would have made a big difference. so, yes, i have fought about it, and i do think that -- i think

his particular brand of leadership was toxic, and it's important for us now to think about where we are to go back. that's the importance of history, to rewind, to go back and see how this got started and where we began to go wrong, and what kind of remedies we need to take. i think it could have been different. history is all about contingencies, and we ended up with a person who was strong enough to stand for the union and understood the importance of the union but because of its own personal character, the character issue was unable to see through the transformation of the south because to him it was against anything he believed. >> please join me in thanking him annette gordon-reed. >> annette gordon-reed is a history and law professor and is

the author of the hemingses of monticello awarded the national book award and pulitzer prize in history. her book on andrew johnson is a part of the times books and the american presence series. to find out more, visit americanpresidentsseries.com. up next on booktv, a program that originally aired live on book tv. three former high-level pentagon insiders take a critical look at how the defense department operates. thomas christie, franklin spinney and pierre sprey are contributors to the book the pentagon labyrinth. >> good evening. thanks for being with us tonight. i am the executive vice president for the world security

institute. the institute is the nonprofit organization that is home to the center for defense information and our military reform project whose latest work the capacity the cut pentagon labyrinth is recently gathered here tonight. the goal of the straus military reform project is to transform u.s. national-security to meet the threats of today. and believes it is essentials that we consider both the fiscal and the strategic implications of the defense programs. and it promotes informed oversight in the pentagon activities. the pentagon labyrinth is edited by the project director winslow wheeler are who is one of an extraordinary group of experts, pentagon insiders and retired military officers who collaborated on this work. the book is intended for both newcomers and also for seasoned observers to learn how to

grapple with the significant problems of our national defense. for those who would like physical copies and who are not with us today, they are available on sale on amazon dhaka, and also barnes and noble bn.com. however, the complete essays of the work are of really valuable set of related reports and source materials are available and can be downloaded on-line at www.cdi.org. if you go to that site and find the image of the book and click it is a lifeline to and will get you right to all of the essays and related materials. we are extraordinarily grateful to those who supported the work especially to mr. strauss, jr., and his family. and also to the stewart mott foundation that is the our gracious host tonight. we are also delighted to be

partnering once again with the project on government oversight and to have its executive director with us tonight to be our discussion moderator. so thanks again for coming and without further ado, i hand over the proceedings to daniel. >> it's a pleasure and honor to play the role of moderator for this event. i have been mentored by the gentleman to my right before i realized about 30 years now. i don't know what it says of all of us, but immediately to my right is spinney, the truth teller, philosopher, historian, who i think it is funny hiding behind the innocuous staff analyst all this time is the office of secretary defense of the pentagon repeatedly testified for the congress extraordinary prolific gentlemen who leaned on the cover of "time" magazine in 1983 for his truth about the defense budget.

he still is engaged in a relevant as all of the panelists are as he was at the time even though he is traveling with his four old life failings and enjoying life. pierre sprey amana immediately to chuck's right, and to the pentagon as one of the whiz kids and was part of the legendary finer mafia with colonel john boyd and colonel everest riccio knee and was responsible for forcing the pentagon to accept and not screw up too much. his vision of both the f-16 and the 810 which are those who are following the weapons to of the most extraordinary successful weapons programs in american history. he was an active part of military reform movement that created the military reform caucus that had success during the height of the ronald reagan buildup for example as having a budget freeze. it was a bipartisan effort that led in large part by senator grassley as well as the creation of the operational test and

evaluation office at the pentagon. speaking of that office to pierre sprey's wright is one of the heads, one of the early heads of that office, tom christie who came to that position after a 50 year career in and outside the pentagon and i have to say that when i came to washington, tom christie's name was like the wizard of oz you dare not say his name because he was so powerful in his capacity to be the who the seams and so many successful efforts in navigating the pentagon bureaucracy. [laughter] >> what we have here are extraordinary minds and experiences that were going to help us learn what they experienced as well as their colleagues in the fabulous book the pentagon labyrinth. we have much to learn from all of you. so chuck, i'm going to turn over to you. >> before we start, does this

work? >> it does for the purpose of television but not for the purpose of the people in the room. >> okay. all right. well, this is about the book, so i guess we start with the first chapter, which is mine, which is why the book was necessary. winslow wheeler irca the editor, had me write it much against my better judgment i might add, because, you know, he was putting it together and i was off on my boat and i just didn't want to do it, but i did it. and i started -- i didn't initially know what i was going to do and i started asking the question why are we in such a mess today that we are? i mean, does anybody in the audience know how big the defense budget is? take a guess. anyone? >> [inaudible] spec welcome you are right. it's somewhere between the high sixes and maybe 1.2 trillion,

considering what to include. today we have a budget that is larger than any budget in the history of the country since the end of world war ii. it's larger than the budget of any war that we fought with the exception of world war ii. yet we are supporting the force that is roughly one-tenth the size of what it was in world war ii, but as recently as vietnam the air force fighter forces is less than half the size or not have the size of world war ii. the navy is about one-third of the size it was, the army is probably 40% to 40% of what it was in vietnam. i'm sorry i was comparing it to vietnam. in vietnam, we were flying on the order of thousands a day or so at the height. in iraq and afghanistan, the highest we've gotten is maybe to between 140 a month. yet we are fighting the war in iraq and afghanistan. our forces are getting older.

the up-tempo are minuscule compared to vietnam and korea and we've broken the bank. the military is literally stretched thin and you have people in washington talking about starting another war in libya right now. we don't have the resources and you can see the pentagon is dragging its feet big time, they don't want to go in and there's a reason. there isn't enough to go down and the question is how did we get into this mess. the problem is i think that over the 40 years the cold war we evil to the political economy based on the politics of fear on which was this of economy in a large political culture, political and economic culture that became interwoven in the defense industry, congress, the pentagon, and a whole bunch of hanger-on's think tanks and newspapers and things like that that spread out from that and

basically it's like all the military industrial complex, and when the cold war ended without warning to most people with the exception of the authors of the book who sort of predicted six or seven years earlier, the military industrial congressional complex was flat, it was facing a total disaster because if you reduce the budget to a normal and we return to being a normal country that wasn't mobilized for the war it would have collapsed. and so, what has happened is the mutations taking place because the wave of the political connection was so strong it went down initially but didn't go down as much as people fought, and we planted the seeds for an explosion in the budget in the late nineties and planted the seeds in the early 90's for an explosion in the budget in the late nineties which came out on a as predicted and there were several laws that predicted it wasn't too hard to see, and

basically it was because the military industrial complex had to struggle for survival, and what has happened now is we have involved the political economy that is basically dependent on the small war, continuous small war and fred of small wars and of course 9/11 turned out to be a godsend. we were fighting small wars before 9/11. we had kosovo, we were doing the bosnia, iraq, the no-fly zone in iraq, but of course 9/11, you know, from the marketing standpoint would have been seen as manner from heaven. i'm not belittling it or anything when i say that but it created an emotional thing that unleashed this and so we have had a huge explosion since then which is largely been driven by cold war weapons having nothing to do with the war in iraq and afghanistan. and now we are at the point where the government, the government is basically near lock down. the defense budget is untouchable to the military's

run out. we have got for and six personal problems being rotated in and out of afghanistan and iraq. a lot of post-traumatic stress syndrome and these are going to be big problems for the remainder of our lives. the question is how did we get here and how do we sort our way out? what i try to in chapter 1 is laid out what i have a described very well here and then i sort of passed on to the affairs explain why that was the case and i think that's about it. >> picking up on exactly that fema, of course at the heart of the shrinking forces and hugely growing budget that chuck is talking about are the questions of weapons ever more expensive weapons, and it turns out

despite the huge amount of money being spent, we basically created a heap of mediocre weapons and quite a number of useless ones. and it's of course of the essence to tell the difference between the two if you want to unravel the cycle chuck is talking about because if you don't challenge that prevailing notion that is so convenient to the military-industrial complex it would be ten times what its predecessor does you are doing to just keep on exactly the cycle chuck described so that's why it's important to talk about separating the good weapons from the bad ones and sorting them out. of course it's a major consequence to the people who have to use them as you would expect. but it should be something that

lots of the rest of us get involved in. devotee that is interested in the defense should be directly involved in technically inclined or not and getting to the bottom of the difference between the good and bad ones in order to break this cycle but both destroying the economy and our ability to defend ourselves if we ever have to any serious format. to set the stage for these little seven guidelines or rules that i laid out in my essay, maybe rule zero is the idea that the more expensive a weapon is, the larger the mountain of bs that surrounds it. [laughter] you have to keep that in mind. and the more difficult to sort out the good and bad. so, i will just very briefly run through these little seven

guidelines just in the hopes of stirring up a hornet's nest and getting a lot of questions later. i will just basically throw them out and not justify them. the first one which is a very important from the point of view of the perspectives is weapons aren't the most important thing in winning the war were defending the country. but far more important our people first and foremost ideas but is tactics, strategy, new ways of doing things, and distant third is weapons. you have to keep that in mind right from the start. put another way, if we send soldiers and sailors and airmen in to the war, badly trained and that led, far more of them will get killed because of that and if we send them to the war with a tank that is a little worse than the enemy or fighter that's a little worse or submarine that is a little worse.

the second -- the second guideline is not all weapons are equally important in the war. and their importance has absolutely nothing to do with cost. what rifle we take, what $200, 300-dollar rifle we take is a vastly more importance to how our soldiers would survive and fair and how well we will do in the next real war we fight and which 5 million-dollar high air missile week. that's like so far down in the noise of what counts that it's not funny. the same thing in fighters and pretty much any other weapon system you pick. 15 million-dollar close air support airplane. it's vastly more important than the outcome of the next war than

the $2.2 billion b to or 160 or 70 million-dollar effort 35 like a minor consequence to the people who have to fight that war. the close air support airplane is a major consequence even though it is cheaper than any of the others. the third rule, and this is very important, and this is where women need to get involved is you can't tell a good weapon from a bad weapon unless you can define the tasks, the characteristics it needs to do in combat. and you have to define the characteristics in terms of combat evidence, not technical dreams or technical imagination, not simulations, not models. it is of the utmost importance, and if you missed by what a weapon has to do, you will suffer the consequences of

weapons that don't work and weapons that are too expensive. a very simple example that i think probably people will understand if you follow the dream of the marksman to designing a rifle, the dream of the marksman force is to be able to hit every time with a single bullet of a standing soldier 500 meters and you will produce a rifle that's probably twice as expensive as it needs to be, twice as heavy as it needs to become and it will be totally useless to 19-year-old who is about to be ambushed by a bunch of people behind all, you know, brandishing 30 or 40-year-old ak-47s. simply -- the marksman dream has nothing to do with combat. the same thing is true if you look at the air combat. the dream of the technologist is to get a bullet in the cockpit

on the radar screen to push a button and 15 or 20 seconds later watched him disappear. when you build an airplane to that, it will be vastly too expensive and it will fail in combat. before the idea is that it isn't that hard to get these characteristics if you are serious about combat and you are willing to spend time digging into it. there's an almost every area of combat you look at there is a wealth of combat history written at the level of combat that will clarify all of the b.s. that's when be inundated with about these weapons. and if you simply immerse yourself, say in infantry

combat, the infantry combat lead great stuff that's written from the point of view like the marshall stuff for instance you will know vastly more than if you had read a truck load of documents from the army materiel command detailing all kinds of tests that are irrelevant to the rifles. the same is true in airplanes. if you read the accounts from the cockpit, you know, even from a fairly remote war like for instance if you read the great japanese wrote a book called zero you will learn more from that book about the combat and how much people accounting at from the last ten years of the publications from lockheed martin from the air force and the assistance command. the fifth rule is when you

bought a distillations the account and sorting good weapons from bad ones or an area of combat is absolutely essential and you never leave it out. the first one is the characteristics of the weapon you're talking about and their impact of the skill and the fearlessness of the guy who has to use them. that includes what the impact is on how trainable he is or how easily trained with those weapons and exactly how will they will protect the combat and add it to the fearlessness. that is an e central character you cannot discuss any weapon without carefully examining that effect. because people come first as i said at the beginning. the other characteristic you can't leave out is what is the effect of the weapon on the force you bring to bear.

another words how many of them can you get out there and how many can you present in the face of the inevitable loss of combat and the need for if possible superior forces and that automatically brings these mundane things and the high-tech people hate to talk about like the price that has a huge effect on how much you can bring to bear. or the question of how usable, how many can you get out of an airplane, how many miles a day can you get out of a tank, what percentage of them are going to be back broken-down? all of these mundane things become overwhelming consequence wants to bring the question of the act will force to bring to bear on the battlefield so you can never leave out in the characteristics of the weapons. the sixth rule is pretty simple, pretty straightforward, never

trust hour and the test results come ever. [laughter] at the state we are at, the weapons development in the u.s. you can almost guarantee any test that is run by the developer is either asking the wrong questions, answering them falsely and falsifying the data, and promoting the agenda of the developer and the company that is behind the development. the test results are like an irrelevance of the fact people will raise them and need to understand, you know, how and why they are false. sadly, the category of tests on which we really should rely, the ones, was involved in committee of regional tests for what used to be called in better terminology field tests, these are run by the user.

were they run well they would be of extraordinary importance and unfortunately again because the huge overwhelming influence of money and politics in our procurement system there's hardly an operational test contrast today. if they are still done, they require as was mentioned the laws to require an office to run them but they have been so suborned by the process and the money that they're almost as unreliable as the r&d test results. in the and what can you trust? the only thing you can trust, the only thing that has anything to say whether a weapon is good or bad is real combat results and of course that's hard work

to get to the combat results that are not sorted, not shaded by somebody who's trying to promote a weapon is very hard. it's a lot easier for the war a long time ago. even then it's hard. but it's totally worth doing because it is the only -- it's the only source we have now that has any promise of telling us whether the weapon was good or bad and if you have access to, you know, to military people, and falls or just coming back from combat you can get the bottom of what is working or not. you can talk to people coming back from afghanistan and understand the army has further room and the m-16 rifle in its latest incarnation of the m four and it's working worse than ever before. and it doesn't take a lot. you just need to talk to the guys that have been an infantry fire fights and you will learn about it.

and the last will, again, very simple and straightforward is if you want to know about it within its characteristics and its usefulness, its lack of usefulness, if you want to get some reasonably broad. obviously you have to rely on people and a very simple rule. ..

>> there's something. they trot them out as a real combat user. you talk to the guy. he has the experience. he knows what's going on. if the guy had been presented to you like that, forget it. that guy had been trained like a marrianet. what you need to do is talk to the people that are skeptics. doesn't mean that you have to believe them. to get a complete picture, you must go dig them up, they were everywhere. any area that you are interested in they will be something that's committed to you and the company that's making the products in the area and so on. i'll give you one example of a

really brave guy in a tough situation who had enormous impact. his name is ted postal. and he was a professor at m.i.t., m.i.t. is a terrible place to be from if you are going to tell the truth about defense. they get more defense money than any other university in the world. when they started talking about the 150 patriots that were launched at spuds in the gulf war. that was the first. the next was 96%. they finally got down to after ted postal's work, beautiful work with videos of all of the firings. we finally got done to where it looks like maybe two to four of 158 hit. there's a good chance it was zero.

you cannot believe the abuse this guy took, the pressure that he took, and he stood up in the face of it. people like that are invaluable. and we need to honor them. some way very simply, it's very understandable what people avoid the issue and most people were not technical experts in the area. they send to avoid the issue of whether weapons are good or bad? it's the utmost importance that lots of ordinary citizens who are not technical experts, people who care about the defense, staffers and young officers don't get directly involved even without expertise. because it's perfectly doable. the experts have made a total mess of the area and anybody who's serious and committed to doing this kind of study of any combat area can come up with

some very useful judgments. and until ordinary people do this, this cycle of unending increase in the defense budgets that are due to cuts and continuing decay of the armed forces and continuing evaporation of any defense capabilities. that will never be stopped unless people can get involved and tackle what are good or bad weapons? >> all right. pierre, now that i'm done to 5 minutes, i'll -- i also had -- >> i gave you some extra. >> i know that. he took it all. [laughter] >> we were talking about the acquisition process for 50 years. here we are 50 years down the

pike with reform effort after reform effort and we are still taking 20-30 years to get complex weapons systems in the field if we ever get them there. twice and three times at cost than ten to 20 years. i've seen all of the reform efforted that instituted in the pentagon from the hill as a matter of fact come to north. we are just not doing it. we don't have any discipline in the process. i have seen leader after leader, perhaps even i was involved in some of this. he just stood back and let it happen. and let the services have what they wanted and not do any of the -- go through any of the

steps that pierre, in fact, was pointing out. for example, and i brought some quotes here that i wanted to read, i thought there was so much hope with this administration, and we were here two years ago talking about that. and i have a couple of quotes from the secretary in april of 2009. gates first, stop programs that exceed the budget. or would spend -- or would spend limited taxpayer dollars to buy more capability than the nation needs. second, it's your requirements are responsible and technology adequately mature to successfully execute the program. back to pierre saying the front end of the process is so important to get the so-called requirements right. we have the god awful bureaucrat

ic mumbo jumbo. it's no wonder what we get coming out of the process is something that's unexecutable. we have another one coming down the pipe. we are going to build a new bombers. okay. we got the f-35. we are trying to get over that hump. which we probably won't. and so we only have a couple of programs in each service and you better believe every laboratory, every technology outfit, you are going to try to hang your greatest thing -- [laughter] >> -- on the system in front of you. third from a good friend bob gates, realistic program cost estimates on real time, and

constantly guard against the requirements, validate the maturity of mild -- we have a process that we have directives, we have instructions that call for all of this. and none of it is done. the decision makers that sit up at the top, sit back, and have presented to them data that says there's no way they have 35. there's no way this is going to happen. on the schedule. much less the cost or whatever. they go ahead and proceed. another factor -- i might seem a little defensive of the process. i think a lot of the ingredients are there if we just paid attention. there are some things that are there that we need to stop. one of which i think is really pervasive and causing a lot of the problems today.

we can't stop programs and it's the political engineering. if you have the system, one the measures of merits will be the congressional districts, how many states you have the program spread around. i remember being in the room when they briefed in 1982. and he had a chart that showed all of the states in which he had spread the business, so to speak. wineberger became irate. you don't ever want to see that again. i don't want that done. that is not what we are up to. today that's a required chart. it's probably in the directors that you will, in fact, direct

or develop such a chart. and you spread the business around. it's not just the fact that you have congressman or senators are going to be be holden to the program. take a look at what this is costing you. i mean to have this pieces built here and there and brought together. it's a disaster. i think it's a process that need to be forbidden in how you do it when the very congressman that are feeding at the trough of the very services that are getting the programs through and they wouldn't otherwise. i don't know. it's past 7:00. pierre stole a lot of my thunder here. i mean if we could implement

this. many of the things that pierre calls for are also in the directives. alternatives, having alternatives available, competition, competitive prototyping. that's in the directives. how often it done? when you do bill prototypes, they are really not prototypes. why don't they describe more? we were not in those days trying to advance the state of the art, per se. so we didn't have some system, or parking control system envision. so the meet of the prototype competition and the pilots. whereas you come to the f-22

against the f-23 allegeedly. what's the big part of the program. the censors. none of that was there. not even the stealth was there. and the prototype was a nonprototype. >> they have the same thing with the f-35. we flew boeing aircraft, versus the lockheed aircraft. chose the lockheed aircraft. so you have -- none the avianics. we haven't begun to test the avianics really in the actual platforms. you watch the space. you think we have problems. you ain't seen nothing yet. mark my word. >> f-22 is a classic example of how the process breaks down. tom and pierre said it was not a prototype.

it was a demonstrator and didn't even do much of that. but what they did is they described it was a prototype. they declared the winner, then they went for the milestone. that's the crucial decision point in a weapon system. it's called full scale engineering and development, or engineering and manufacturing development, they changed the acronyms which is why chapter 3 i think it is comparing the pentagon to the tribe is important. that's a very important chapter. but what they wanted to do, they wanted to ram that thing through the full scale engineering development and milestone through the decision. the reason is very simple, first of all, you got to go back to the time, this is in 1991, the cold war ended, the barn is about ready to close, got to get the cows out before it shuts. they ram it through there, even if the soviet threat designed for evaporated. they put it through milestone two.

why were they anxious? milestone two enables the contractors to start spreading the goodies around the country. he's not only building, he's building the production facility. nobody would spend their money doing this. this is crazy. if you have a problem, you have over invested and you got to do everything. of course, we spend over people's money. so it doesn't matter. basically what it does is it starts the political engineering operation where you just spread the money around there and you are building a social safety net. then when you try to cancel it, you can't do it. you can see there's pressure trying to resurrect. one thing i would add to tom's comment, it's true that he said it in a staff meeting, but a couple of months later he was over in ohio, given the briefing, and he had the map.

he had the map. he spoke out of both sides of his mouth. >> that's the heart of what tom was talking about when he said the system needs discipline. you have to read people first. the people who don't have the discipline, the people who rammed, the they that chuck was talking about that rammed the milestone two and through. the political appointees connected. >> they have been getting a lot of grand standing on the same thing. academics aren't so innocent anymore. unless you pay attention, if you are going to appoint as assistant secretary, some guy who is holding lockheed and a couple of avianics, you deserve what you get. >> there's one other point i'd like to add. the f-22 decision was made in 91. the navy made the equivalent in

'92. basically bypassed the true prototype and put it into milestone two to build a social safety net. in so doing, the air force and the navy knew full well they were creating the crisis in the monitorrization program in the late '90s because they had no plan to modernize the plan and the f-16 and a lot of the f-18s in the navy four structure. basically what they did, got the front loading program, got the whole system pregnant, then comes the clinton administration. we have the hole. f-35. it was like an extortion had strategy. it was done in the case of the f-22 and the f-18 we have it thoroughly documented. the documents are on the web. it was done with malice

aforethought, period. >> on that note, i would open up to the people on the audience. this is recorded and speak loudly to the people that can hear. i'm not sure if it works or not. but go ahead. go ahead. >> sir, do you know how many more the weapon systems cost? by spreading it around, how many does it increase the cost of weapons? >> i would tell you that i think the building would be low to even explore that. >> they have no idea. >> they don't want that to be known. they have no idea. but i don't think they are interested in finding out. >> no. it would be really hard. >> i mean, yeah, we can't audit the books that we have today. much less -- >> we can't audit the books. we have talked about that. >> we do know the consequences. consequences go beyond cost. cost maybe the least

consequence. not that it's of no importance at all. the real consequence is you get shabby quality. the more that we outsource in the political engineering way to remote, you know, states that don't really do defense work and invent some contractor somewhere to do something that he's never done before, the more trouble that we have when we assemble the airplane. that started back with the c-5. the c-5 had political engineering and unbelievable problems sending in stuff that wouldn't fit and lockheed would cover for him. and you add all of the same things going on twice as badly on the f-22, and now even worse on the f-35. the lack of quality control certainly a huge portion of the scheduled problem on the airplanes is the political engineering. because all of these subcontractors out in the remote areas are falling behind schedule and, of course, the

main contractor wants to accommodate them because he doesn't want to sacrifice the program. so they make excuses for why it's happening. >> there's another thing too. when the parts are made all over the country, then when you bring them together, sometimes they don't fit. then you have to start making adjustments. i saw it happen with c-130s. which is simple. they were building tail sections, sheet metal and springers, and they bolt them, sheet metal and springers in a lockheed that was mostly empty. they could have built the whole thing, but it was being built in west virginia to satisfy bobby byrd. and these practices are starting to affect our commercial sector as well. boeing streamliner is suffering from the same problem. and the c-17 for sure. >> because of long beach. >> yes, because of long beach. they had all sorts of problems. you are right. the dream liner, they have the

cost overrun is double. it's huge. more than double. and the parts don't fit when they are bringing it together. >> do you have a question over here? >> yes, i thought i could give him more concrete example of how that works. using a small weapon system which is therefore easier to evaluate. this affects the machine gun which has been replaced by the m-240 which is more expensive. a machine gun, to build one with a reputable firm would cost $1200, but the government actually pace about $12,000 for one. not only that, in this country, the small arms industry and the people who are capable of make an m-60 machine gun, they are family businesses, small, they have no political clout, most of them have been in business for

over 100 years. the biggest one is smith & wesson, and it has no more than 1,000 employees. no political muscle. they have small. and a large part of the sales is commercial. so they do have to behave responsibly. what does the government do? sometimes they will let these guys build them. a lot of times they will take it out to somebody who's never built a rifle or machine gun before. >> can you talk on that? >> the m-60 was famous for the fact that when the barrel got hot, you had to change it, you also lost the front bipart and the gas system and the front sight which came out with the weapon. >> you see this is where the process becomes really sinister. it's just about waste of fun. this is waste of lives. when you get stuff like that out on the field, people die. you know, this is not an

argument about saving a few bucks. although saving a few bucks these days is extremely important. it's an argument about saving lives and doing the right thing by our soldiers. >> someone raised the topic of gathering. i know d.o.d. had to do it by 2013. what do they need is a realistic timeline that dod would perform the audit if they were truly and entirely committed to do that. >> i think they have no intention of meeting it. >> they don't want to do it. period. you got to give him an incentive to do it. the only incentive is to start taking away the money. >> senator coburn came up with the suggestion. >> yeah, freeze the budget

unless you can pass. period, that's an incentive. that's a serious incentive. >> let me ask you the question. if you freeze the pentagon budget until you have an audit, will you get something meaningful, or are you going to get paper work that, you know? >> yeah, that's the problem. having somebody that will recognize the good audience from the outside. >> we might have to ask questions like that. >> sorry. that's how i am. >> the waste and abuse part is worrisome. what really worries me about the way the whole defense operation is working now is it seems to have totally lost contact with the idea that you define a threat, you project the threat out, and you design your weapon systems to meet those threats. there were doesn't seem to be any connection between where the money is going and where the threats are projected. at least for those in the public

that see what the threats are which are primarily religious fanatics and other fanatics around the world. how do you justify an f-35, f-22, a b-1 in the face of those kinds of threats. if you aren't putting the money where the threat are, how are we going to meet the threat. since nobody seems to taking them seriously. >> that's why we are here. >> another problem. >> absolutely. >> china is the threat. >> well, we've got to have a pure threat. we will forever insent a threat. that justified what we want to build. >> there's got to be the process when you put your thread on the

table. there's got to be another threat where you sort it out and come up with a realistic threat. >> that is what is needed. first and foremost, congress. congress needs to challenge instead of boeing down when the chairman of the joint chief. like john, you could just nod. if they conducted real oversight and we have an essay in in book on what real oversight is. it's tough. it's been cone. congress has done brilliant examples. not many. it can be done. that's one place. but there's other places. other people need to get involved until in the debate abt what is the threat? absolutely. i totally agree with you.

>> are you going to have? >> i'm sure if invented, you will attend. >> the house of freshman republicans. we would delighted to. >> is that an invitation? >> we talked to a few last week. a couple of us did as a matter of fact. and i came away thinking there's a little hope there. you know, my hopes maybe dashed. but we talked to 31 -- not 31 -- 11 republican representatives, posted by ron paul. but there were three tea partyers there, i was impressed with their thoughts on the military and the business of -- primarily involvement in situations that we have no business being involved in. i think if it were up to them to vote, they'd vote to withdraw

from both america and afghanistan tomorrow and certainly not get involved in the situation. >> the people who have been there is part of the complex. these guys are not. >> i'm hoping they will be watching book tv or c-span now and invite the people to talk to them. >> absolutely. this has nothing to do with party affiliation, and cuts across all parties are equally guilty in this affair of the decay of our defense. and so we have no reason not to brief anybody who has a serious interest in defense.

>> no affiliation with party politics, i agree. there's a string that runs through the whole process. it's called term limits. once you get on capital -- capitol hill, and once you are there, you become part of the problem. it doesn't just exist in the department of defense, i'm familiar with department of affairs, and tsa, and you can take projects in those areas where scanners are stored 250 of them. just like the c-130 program that wept -- went on since, you remember, chuck, 1980, and never asked for another airplane. for the last five years, the air force hasn't asked for a c. 17. it's about to mess up the 787. that's caused by the problem where they get in the power to spend more money and so the problem is over here more than it's over there. >> i'd like to just built on the

statement a little bit. when the -- he was talking about the seat 138. when that started getting stuffed down the pentagon's throat, it started off in -- and this is the -- the dollars aren't current dollars, they are constant dollars. but they are about 1999 dollars. i don't know if it'd be higher now. they started off about 14 million a copy. by the time congress was finished adding these planes in there, they were up to almost 55 million a copy for the same plane. nothing had changed. and it was just because lockheed was laying in the overhead, there was no oversight. >> then lockheed went to the states through the national guard and every state. >> that's exactly right. >> if the united states has asked to help with the no-fly over libya, a lot of u.s. hardware, weapons, what are some of the good weapons and bad wns