david eisenhower, the grandson of president eisenhower, discuss the president's farewell address in which he warned about the growth of a military industrial complex in the united states. mr. hartung's latest book, "prophets of war," chronicles the lives of lockheed martin. their conversation takes place at barnes & noble booksellers in new york city. it's just over 45 minutes. >> well, thank everybody for coming out. i am going to do my best impersonation of dwight d. eisenhower which really doesn't make sense given that i'm the only one up here who's not an eisenhower, but i thought it would just be good to give the section of our speech that's relevant to our discussion,

because sometimes we only hear a sentence of it. this is a few minutes of it. um, it comes about midway. until the latest of our world conflicts, the united states had no armaments industry. american makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. but now we can no longer risk improvisation of national defense. we have been compelled to create a permanent industry of vast proportions. added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. we annually spend on security more than the net income of all united states corporations. this conjunction of a large arms industry is new in the american experience. the total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. we recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we

must not fail to comprehend its great implications. our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved. so is the very structure of our society. in the counsels of government, we must guard against the act i by decision of -- acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex. the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. we should take nothing for granted. can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together. so that's what we're talking about and what we're working from. david's going to give some context, and then i'll talk a little bit about some contemporary applications of the concept. >> great. well, thanks a lot, bill. and, lou, thanks for that

introduction. it's a real pleasure to be here at barnes & noble on broadway, this is a real thrill to be here in new york city on this night. >> [inaudible] >> excuse me? >> thanks for coming. [applause] >> oh, thank you. i want to congratulate bill on the completion of "prophets of war," which is his book. this is a history of the rise of the military industrial complex from the 1930s forward and the development of the phenomenon that dwight eisenhower drew attention to in this speech in which he warns against the unwarranted acquisition of influence by a military industrial complex. i'm going to provide a little bit of background and context about this speech and how my book, "going home to glory," picks up from hit. this was -- from it. this was given 50 years ago. it describes, as the excerpts that bill read, it describes a permanent condition which had

developed within his lifetime in national affairs. he draws attention to it. he acknowledges that the problem of standing mobilization is something that has compelled, that we are compelled to face. this is not something we do as a matter of choice, we are compelled to face. he does not offer specific prescriptions. there is no five-point plan here for restraining a military industrial complex. in fact, what he does, he comes up with an interesting in a sort of broader, draws a broader moral from it, a broader prescription. he calls for an alert citizenry. that is, he's calling on the political branches of government as well as all of us in the our daily lives to follow these events and be aware of it. -- and to understand that a military industrial complex will acquire a certain momentum in national affairs but they must

justify themselves as we justify other things as well. and i believe that your book highlights some stories that i am aware of, the fitzgerald story in the pentagon, william who's a senator from wisconsin i remember well and so forth, other clashes between the military industrial complex and the political branches of government. to give you a little pit of background -- bit of background on the speech, my own book picks up about 65 hours after it was given, and i would stress a somewhat different aspect of it by way of background, and this has to do with alert citizenry. going home to glory opens shortly after the speech is given and the eisenhowers are driving back 50 years ago on the day that john kennedy was inaugurate inside the unite. these are remarkable times. martin medhur rst of texas a tem

polled teachers in the united states on the outstanding speeches delivered by americans in the 20th century, what were they. and on that list dwight eisenhower's farewell address stands 18 out of thousands i and thousands and thousands of speeches given, so one of the top 20. the john kennedy inaugural stands three. these are two speeches delivered within 65 hours of one another, and the confluence of the greatest inaugural of the 20th century and perhaps the greatest farewell address ever given by an american president draws attention to the significance of this transition. and what the transition wuss, of course, the wartime leadership is yielding the reins of power to the junior officers of world war ii. there is a generational shift that happens in 1961. the other thing that is significant about it is that it occurs in the wake of, perhaps,

the closest election of the 20th century. and it is an election that produced a 50/50 split, and i think the dignity of these two statements, the kennedy inaugural and the eisenhower farewell, the the quality of the expression in these two speeches are worthy of a democratic transition. we were able to overcome a great divide in that period and find the way forward during that transition, and that was a very successful transition. it is also a nostalgic speech because of the preeminence of the united states that the eisenhower farewell address presumes the preeminence of the united states that the kennedy inaugural presumes as well. this is a preeminence that may never be repeated in international history. there is a connection, by the way, between the eisenhower farewell and the kennedy inaugural, a classic statement.

and that connection is citizenship. the eisenhower speech is, in the final analysis, about citizenship. his prescription, an alert citizenry, assumes something about citizenship. his word choice, the way he addresses the american people and so forth makes assumptions about citizens which are also made in the kennedy speech which serves a different purpose. eisenhower is reflecting on citizenship in the changing context of his lifetime. he's born in 1890s, he's raised in rural kansas where everybody's a self-sufficient farmer. in a self-sufficient, rural area, citizenship works in a certain sort of way. by the time he's bequeathing office or leaving office in 1960, we have entered the computer age, the space age, the atomic age, world population has tripled, america is an international power, and so forth. the world has gotten very

complicated. and in this complicated circumstance, the question is, how does citizenship work? and he identifies barriers to it. in a military industrial complex, that is a vested interest that drives decisions and potentially corrupts our processes is a barrier to effective citizenship. john kennedy's inaugural is about the changing patterns of citizenship, and he is offering himself and his new administration as a model of citizenship. in other words, how does a new frontiersman confront the challenges of the world? a word about the time he isness of this speech -- timelessness of this speech. a great farewell seeks timelessness as does an inaugural. they are both certain kinds of speeches, they are both end damage tick speeches, that is ceremonial, and it reaches for timelessness. the eisenhower address arrives at that in an interesting way, and i'll summarize this, bill, quickly. i think that the early drafts of it, it was a speech that was in

progress for a long time. i think the planning for it began in may of 1959, so it was planned for 18 months. i have seen versions of this speech, drafts on final in kansas. there are now news stories that another set of drafts have appeared in the finals of malcolm loose, so that fills out a picture. the picture that i saw and speak of from memory here tonight is the early drafts of the eisenhower farewell are very forward-looking. and i think they reflect the sense that he is losing ground, that his administration is losing ground. and then after the democrats win the 1960 election, they reflect a disappointment with the outcome of the '60 election. sour grapes, so to speak. he's warning the country, in effect, against successors who may not have judgment. somebody gets to the president in the drafting, or it occurs to him that this is not the task of

a farewell. a farewell is to ease the transition, to make it easier. so you have another set of drafts where these warnings are sort of modified and taken back. and then finally this crystallizes into the great farewell address that it is. when he ceases worrying about specific prescriptions for the months and the years to come and allows his gaze to look back over his career and to extract lessons from his 50 years in public service. and to formulate from that a set of insights and prescriptions that will stand as timeless, something that we may even be talking about 50 years later as we are tonight. interestingly, the kennedy speech develops the same way. all the pressure on kennedy during the transition was to acknowledge the closeness of the election, to issue an appeal for unity, to bring as many republican as possible into his government. i think that they took those suggests very seriously -- suggestions very seriously early in the drafting of that speech.

finally, because of the logic of his position and his responsibility, what takes over in the final drafts is a decision to look forward. eisenhower is surrendering power, kennedy is assuming power. kennedy's obligation is to lead. and when he looks forward and eisenhower looks back and they stand back to back, that's when these two speeches, delivered within 65 hours of each other, become timeless. they both aim at our culture. to conservatives, eisenhower's saying are you going to allow yourselves passively to be dominated by a vested interest, by a military industrial complex, are you going to allow that to stand in the way of effective citizenship? kennedy to reformers is saying are you going to allow laws to acquit all of us in our daily lives for responsibility for what we are and can be as citizens? it's sort of in this spirit that the torch passes between two generations who had a great deal

in common, but also passes from one party to the next in which leaders did disagree. one -- it passes in a memorable, colorful month 50 years ago, january of 1961, in very different moods. the kennedy inaugural's exultant, the eisenhower farewell is a cautious speech. it's almost as though you have visions of the roman triumph where the conqueror exalts in the splendor of a triumph. but there are voices of caution. remembering, reminding even the headiest of all leaders that all glory can be fleeting. this is how these speeches sort of interact in january of 1961. they contain a timeless message about the future. kennedy asks in 1961 would any generation trade places or times with the generation that's taking power in 1961?

i guess the question for us today is, would we do so today? i think the answer then is, no. the answer today is, no. the future, as demonstrated by the past, is ours to make. depends on us, depends upon, ultimately, our willingness and determination to accept responsibility for our lives and to face the future. that is the moral of eisenhower's farewell, that is the summons in the kennedy inaugural, and these two extraordinary speeches that happened exactly 50 years ago tonight. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, david. i think that gives us a good context. i'm going to talk about the present, the military industrial complex in action today. i'm going to look at a recent battle on capitol hill. the battle over the f-22 combat aircraft, the most expensive fighter plane ever built, built

to fight a soviet fighter plane that was never built as the soviet union fell apart. and something that the obama administration very much wanted to end the program. and members of congress and lockheed martin had quite other idea. ideas. and, ultimately, lockheed martin lost the battle, but i think it's a glimpse into the industrial complex at work. and i have a surprise ending which i will saver. save. so i'm going to do this by way of some excerpts from my book. this is the very beginning. it is a striking add, an intimidating combat aircraft soars in the background the slogan up front. 300 million protected, 95,000 employed. the ad for lockheed martin's f-22 fighter plane was part of the last-gasp effort to save one of its most profitable weapons from the being terminated as

they say in standard budget parlance. it had run scores of times in print, on political web sites and even washington's metro. one writer joked that lockheed martin's barrage of full-page ads was the main thing keeping the paper abloat. afloat. and then jumping ahead a little bit. as soon as there was even a whisper of the possibility that the f-32 program would be stopped at only 187 planes -- about what the pentagon wanted but only half of what the air force and lockheed martin were striving for -- the company started racking up big numbers on its side. a month in advance of president obama's first detailed budget submission, lockheed martin and it partners had lined up 44 senators and 200 members of the house of representatives to sign on to a save the raptor letter. at the heart of the lobbying campaign, was the mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs. jobs in 44 states or so the company claimed. lockheed martin's public

relations barely bothered to mention whether the f-22 was needed to defend the country. that argument was there in the background, but it wasn't the driving force. lockheed's ads for the plane got more and more specific as time went on showing people at work on components of the plane with legends like 2,205 jobs in connecticut, 125 skilled machinists in helena, montana, 50 titanium manufacturing jobs in ohio, and 30 hydraulic specialists in mississippi. all that was missing were ads for 132 lobbyists, washington d.c. [laughter] although they probably would have gotten around to it if they needed to. um, so the importance of this battle was laid out by senator john mccain on the senate floor. there was an amendment to stop the increase in f-22 spending that he and senator carl levin, democrat of michigan, brought together. and this is what he said about

the amendment. this amendment is probably the most impactful amendment i have seen in this body on almost any issue, much less the issue of defense. it boils down to whether we are going to continue the business as usual of once a weapons system gets into full production, it never dies, or whether we are going to take the necessary steps to reform the acquisition process in this country. mccain ended with a flourish quoting two paragraphs from president dwight d. eisenhower's famous military industrial complex speech about the unwarranted influence of the arms lobby and the need for a knowledgeable citizenry to keep it in its rightful place. mccain suggested the only decision would be to replace military industrial complex with military industrial congressional complex in recognition of the role of congress in funding unnecessary systems like the f-22. so that was sort of the flavor of the debate. and i guess the question is, you know, if they have all this power, why did they lose? and i think there's a couple

reasons. first, secretary of defense gates, a republican holdover from the bush administration, made an excellent case against it. he said, you know, first of all, there's no mission. here we are, we're fighting two wars, we're not using it in either of those wars. if we look ahead to china, even if we don't build a single more f-22, we're going to have 20 to 25 times as many sophisticated fighter planes as china has even 15 or 20 years down the road. so whether it was the current mission, the future mission, he made a good case of why we didn't need it. he also pointed to the price. he said it was obscenely expensive which i think is true, $350 million a copy. i think the second thing that caused them to lose was bipartisanship. john mccain and barack obama finally agreed on one thing, that we can't need this plane. we didn't need this plane. maybe the last thing they'll agree on for all i know. and then obama himself made a threat to veto any defense bill

that included the f-22, and can this was unprecedented not only in his presidency, but ever, as far as we can tell. there had never been a veto targeted on one specific system like this. and then the administration fanned out across the country twisting arms of democrats who were leaning to vote for the plane to get them to vote against. and so this is the surprise. although they lost, they didn't lose any money on the deal because even as they reduced the f-32 by $4 billion, they increased the f-35, another lockheed martin plane, by $4 billion. and secretary of defense gates made a statement that, well, you know -- >> [inaudible] >> call 215, please. the, the f-35 not only was increased by $4 billion, but it had jobs and companies in many of the same states and districts. so, essentially, they were replacing f-35 spending for f-22

spending. so, in a sense, it was the exception that proves the rule. they couldn't get it done without throwing a bone at the military industrial complex, a $4 billion bone at that. so that's just one example of the resilience of a company like lockheed martin which comes from its size. it gets $36 billion a year of our tax money which amounts to about $260 per tax-paying household. so i've been empowered to collect those checks this evening. [laughter] and i will pass them on to lockheed martin. so if you come up to get your book signed, have your checkbook ready. it's also a company in addition to size that's involved in many aspects of our lives that you might not expect. not only does it make weapons -- be it cluster bombs, be it designing nuclear weapons, combat ships, fighter planes -- but it also works for the cia, the national security agency,

the fbi, the department of homeland security, the irs, the census bureau, pretty much any agency of government that we interact with, probably lockheed martin is involved either in doing surveillance or information processing or another essential aspect of that agency's operations. i wrote a piece recently on the web that tribed this as -- described this as lockheed martin's shadow government. and, you know, i think it remains to be seen whether they are going to serve that role, but i think there's certainly that danger given their involvement in the so many aspects of government and our lives. so that's what i really have to say to get the conversation started. and, you know, i think, david, do you have any other thoughts that you want to share? >> well, i thought -- in fact, i was struck by that passage early in your book where you describe how senator mccain wanted to

insert a congressional mill military complex. that was in one of the drafts of the eisenhower military industrial complex speech. they were going to include congressional complex, and it was struck from the draft i think because of the logic of it. the speech is really directed at congress. how effectively do you and i pose as alert citizens to bring lockheed martin to heel or to bend them to our purposes? when we read books, of course, but in the final analysis what we're depending on is the vigor of congressional oversight and the strength of our political branches. so the eisenhower warning is directed to congress. it's a call on congress to exercise oversight and to represent us and not fall into the trap of representing them.

and for that reason this very what mccain is giving demonstration of is that congress really is the key variable here. and so the mccain speech fell out of the eisenhower speech, both men were conscious of it. >> and on the question of oversight, i would say senator william approximate meyer probably set the gold standard, and he was closely involved this lockheed martin story. in the '60s they built a transport aircraft called the c5a which was supposed to be able to take large numbers of troops and materials anywhere in the world on short notice. lockheed martin described it as a flying military base, and there was some discussion of whether this was really a good idea. if we could get anywhere quickly, we would intervene more quickly in more places. but it never came to that because the plane was $2 billion over estimated costs. it couldn't do the mission that it was set up to do.

so there was no possibility of using it to intervene anywhere because it just wasn't working. but this was buried in the bureaucracy of the air force. they were not going to reveal this to congress until a whistleblower named ernest fitzgerald stepped forward. he put his career at risk, actually lost his job, but it was the senator who spoke to the public. he had fitzgerald testify about it, hi he -- he gave him a job in the committee when he lost his job. he really went to the mat to make sure the public understood this was an abuse of our tax dollars that we could not stand. and he clawed back money, the company did have to pay some hundreds of millions out of the $2 billion overrun that it ran. and then he stepped from there to opposing a $250 million loan guarantee to bailout the company as a result of the problems with the c5 and it airliner business. and that vote the senator lost

by one vote in the senate, and it was the jobs issue that made the difference. senator alan cranston buttonholed with one vote to go and said do you want to be the guy responsible for losing all these jobs? the jobs argument keeps recurring. they weren't going to let it get in the way of doing the oversight that he felt was necessary. >> if dwight eisenhower were to live today and see the military industrial complex, and i assume the industrial complex means the connection to the corporations and to banks, what do you think

he would say about the picture today? >> well, i think it would have been hard to imagine what we have today. we spend twice as much on the military as we spent when eisenhower left office. a company like lockheed martin is made up of 18 different companies that came together to form this one large company. if you have lockheed martin, northrup grumman and boeing, you have, you know, the bulk of the defense spending goes to these large contractors. so in terms of sheer size, he would not have imagined it. and in terms of what i talked about before, companies being able to do pretty much everything the government does whether it's outsourcing intelligence or whether it's, you know, counting up tax revenue. so in that sense i think it's quite different now. i think, of course, in eisenhower's day many of the same techniques were occurring. things like advertising, weapons, that bothered him very

much. things hike the revolving door where people went from the military into the defense industry and lobbied their own colleagues. that existed. so many of the same tools, i think, exist now for influence, but i think the amount of money being spent, the size of the companies, the amount of money at stake, i think, is significantly different than it was under eisenhower. >> i was going to say, you could look at other things as well. he would look at the military industrial complex, and i think he would see it. bill, i think, has put his fenger on this. -- finger on this. as best i can take from the book and other articles i've read on this, the pattern, the way the military industrial complex works today is somewhat different. but he would also look at other things. he would look at campaign finance, how are campaigns financed in our country, how -- what percentage of citizens turn out on elections. how vigorous is the democratic

process? you know, when i say he looked back on his career and his life and times and when this is seen as a classical farewell, it is a farewell which in the final analysis is about the great riddle of his lifetime. the riddle that faced the wartime leadership and the people who came afterwards. and that is how is it in the early mid 20th century we could have such progress on one side and such horrors on the other? world war i, the the great depression, world war ii, the cold war and all of the threats that sort of hung like swords over western civilization as he is passing power to kennedy in 961. his -- 1961. his answer to that as somebody who had been a supreme commander in europe and who had made a study of his adversary as well as everybody he went through that war with, the reason that a country like germany became totalitarian, the reason europe

lost its morale and so forth was people ceased to be citizens. they withdrew from public affairs. and they allowed people to make decisions for them. they yielded to the loudest voices in the most irresistible looking movements. they just simply stepped out. i think this is a phenomenon that is common throughout europe. and i think, again, building from his experience i think this is the real moral that i take away from it. that is, it's the vigor of the democratic process and oversight. defense industries are going to organize themselves as best they can. they are going to retain military people. military people know their business. there is going to be an interlocking directorate. we are, quote, compelled to have one. the question is how vigorously are we overseeing it.

>> do either of you agree with abraham cough sky's theory that the whole cold war was caused by forrestal lying about how the soviet union was getting ready to make war with the u.s., and do you believe that forrestal was murdered to shut him up when he was dying of cancer? >> for me that's pretty easy. my answer is, no. >> well, the question is did forrestal cause the cold war. the cold war was well underway before james forrestal became secretary of defense. my grandfather was acting as informal jcs chairman and, in fact, was detailed by truman to take him under his wing as forrestal sunk into a profound melancholy that led to his

suicide. my grandfather knew forrestal well, and his writings about him are interesting. i think he was someone who was listened to in government, but he was not -- his views on the soviets were considered alarmist within the government. the real causes of cold war much deeper. i think probably the best -- it's not forrestal, it's kennon. the telegram in 1946 lays out a cold war, what's causing it, and what the american and western side of this is going to be with great prescience. this is an analysis of the soviets written by somebody who spent most of his professional life to that point in the soviet union and understood the dynamics of not only that regime, but also western dynamics in opposition to it. and he and other people who, i

think, had sensible views on the cold war which predominated for the most part understood that war could be avoided, that the danger of war was ever-present because of the soviet experience, because of the great losses in europe, the great devastation that that war caused and so forth. a conflict of some kind was going to ensue. >> yes, over there. >> [inaudible] >> oh, wait for the microphone. >> [inaudible] . i was thinking in terms of the claim of kennedy, in terms of the missile gap. and i was wondering if there was some evidence of chagrin on the

part of eisenhower being frustrated and being put in a corner of the republicans put in a corner with this creation of this myth that there was a missile gap? did you find evidence of that in your search? >> very much so. as i say, the question of what did can eisenhower mean, did he mean this warning, the full import of it? his whole second term doesn't make sense except in light of his farewell address. when they began planning this address in 1959, they planned about ten others along with it. this was to be the capstone of these addresses. and what they were reeling from or responding to at the time was this public psychology created by the soviet sputnik success in october 1957 and the cries of missile gap. there was a feeling in the eisenhower administration that the voices of reason were being overwhelmed by pentagon-generated propaganda, by vested interests that wanted to keep a cold war going because

it was good for whatever, and they felt, therefore, that they were going to inject a voice of reason. and this speech definitely extends from that. but what's missing in this speech that might have been present in some of the earlier versions of it if my recollection is correct because i did see many drafts of it years ago is that i think the tone of regret and here and now is drained out of the final. versions of this speech. this speech sort of rises above it and puts it in a wider context. and that's 20th century. this thing is here to stay. when we organize a national government and we acknowledge our interdependence, we don't have independent states anymore, we have a national transportation system, we have a national food distribution system, we have a national medical system, a national communications system, everything is national, and we're all interdependent on one

another. this is something that's been chosen, a way of life that we have chosen in the 20th century which is different from 19th century. citizenship is going to work differently. military industrial complex is just simply part of this. and we just have to understand that the, you know, the essence or the principles of citizenship have not changed, and that is that we all are, in the final analysis, responsible for our own lives and active members of a political society. but think, you know, looking back that i'm emphasizing, dwight eisenhower's town of abilene probably had more in common with the high of middle ages than it had in common with the society that he was president of in the 1950s. and he reflects on it. in the speech he reflects very presciently in a lot of ways because here we are talking about this very thing 50 years

later, and we'll be talking about it for decades to come, i'm sure of that. >> i'd like to talk -- >> yeah, just a second. the other point being eisenhower really held the line until sputnik. he kept military spending relatively level even during the period of anticommunism, and he stood up to the bomber lobby, to some extent the missile lobby. even though sometimes there was subordination in his own ranks. so i think, you know, his struggles were very concrete, you know, with the lobbies, and that's what generated the rhetoric of the speech was that it was from his own experience. >> that's right. definitely. >> when i study and think about the concerned alert citizenry, one cannot help but realize that the amount of corporate lobbyists in washington today mean that a congressperson could spend their entire day just meeting with the lobbyists who

come to visit them. i think it's almost impossible not to think 50 years later to change the military industrial complex and call it the military industrial congressional complex. and in relation to lockheed if you could comment, sir, the fact that this company has control of homeland security information systems, our postal information systems, um, the census, there seems to be absolutely no concern among our congressional representatives about the need for checks and balances. >> i think that's right. you know, when i did the book, i was surprised myself at how many different aspects of our lives the company's involved in. and i think, you know, there was a period where privatization was all the rage, and it was felt that private companies could do things more efficiently and effectively. that's hard to see how you're going to get that result from a company that's had huge cost

overruns in their defense business, and it's been a mixed result in terms of performance. in terms of the reach of the companies, i think a lot of times we don't even keep people in government who have the technical exper teas to monitor some of the things these companies are doing. so i think there's got to be some taking back of competence in the government if we're going to be able to ride hurt on these companies. i think at the moment it doesn't exist. if you have, for example, the cia is more than half contract employees now, so you've got people who work for private company running agents, helping write the president's daily brief, doing things that prior were really considered governmental functions. so it's bad enough trying to keep tabs on an intelligence agency with all the secrecy involved, but if you add a corporate layer and corporate confidentiality, it's all that much more difficult. >> we have time for two more questions. >> yes, right here. sir, yes. oh, no. behind you. [laughter]

yes. is this a microphone for -- is there a microphone for -- >> it's true, we're waiting, but the questions are going to be really good, so it's worth it. >> good evening. thank you very much for tonight's -- >> it's not on. >> -- talk. finish um, i wondered if you could shed any light on the connection between the interstate highway system, general motors and the thoughts that the interstate highway system was purportedly developed as a national defense strategy? >> well, it was called the national defense highway act, and there was a notion that, you know, in this a pinch -- in a pinch you could land bomber on it. but i think probably more importantly it was way to justify an important investment in the infrastructure. i mean, if we had a national

defense subway act, we'd probably have better subways. [laughter] although lockheed martin failed in the putting cameras in our subways, so just as a little advertisement for my little axe i have to grind. um -- >> the thing i can add to that is shortly after armistice day in early 1919, i think, then -- i guess he was, i don't know if he's reverted to great or whatever, but dwight eisenhower four years out of west point volunteered for a transcontinental convoy that was commissioned by the opportunity of the army to test the american highway system. they spent about four months or phi months -- five months going from the ellipse in washington all the way out to sacramento, california. it took about four or five months to do that trip. and their mission was to develop an assessment about the american

road system. and this was an historic journey. eisenhower was on it. and when he had the power to accelerate a national, a national highway system as part of -- bill's point is right, i think -- infrastructure in 1954, '55, i think it this was somethg that he was all too happy to do as a president, to see that, help that go through. and i think, also, he was justified in military terms as many programs were in the 1950s. this was cold war era, but i think it was an infrastructure project, and it was something that it was the project of many years of planning. i think it was shelfed by world war ii. the roosevelt administration actually had plans that way, but it was the fulfillment of a vision that planners in washington, the army corps of engineers and others had for making the united states a truly

continental economic system which is what we have. >> we have time for one more question. >> yes. you. >> if you could just speak loudly. >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> speak louder? >> no, we'll wait for the mic. >> oh, okay. >> your question is worth waiting for. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> yes. mccain and obama's, the result of their actions are, at least the result is so cynical that the program that was cut, the money was added back. in working on your book, do you see any real desire given our needs to control the budget that -- is there, is there any sincere effort, anybody who's really trying to cut back on the military industrial complex in

the government today? >> well, i think there's just the beginning of some debate and some hope. representative barney frank has joined with ron paul to come up with a proposal to cut about $100 billion from the military budget, 100 billion per year over the next ten years. wethey have about 50 other membs of congress signed up with them. now, paul is of interest because, you know, he's a favorite of the tea party, and his son, rand paul, also has called for cutting military spending, as has eric cantor, one of the leadership of the republicans. and this is all, of course, tied to the notion of deficit reduction which has it own issues, you know, whether we should be reducing the definite in the middle of a recession. but if there's going to be a deficit reduction plan, there are forces at work saying the military should take at least its fair share, and since it's more than 50% of the discretionary budget, that would