the spinning reports which criticize us defense spending and the pursuit of complex weapons with a u. s. military strategist of 20 years, y'all gives his ground breaking eighty's report along with subsequent reports. he's written over the years or more relevant today than ever this while the united states, the country with the highest military budget in the world, arguably spins out of control when it comes to defense. pouring weapons into ukraine is part of the nature of proxy. what with russia, he joins me for today's episode from arlington in virginia. chuck, thank so much for coming on, you know, just last week's going on the ground. we had larry larry wilkerson, the former, cheapest job to the secretary of state, and he said, people are building extensions to their homes in virginia and maryland. you're going to have to rim claim does a, just a very briefly about your revelations and the i understand that was taken on board at the time you went to, you know, put in jail for revealing an edge corruption or incompetence when it came to

pentagon procurement but this, in the life of the fact of 2020 two's budget is $877000000000.00 from the us public money and defense. you can couldn't account for overall if it's 3 point one trillion an assets last year at 4400000000 and tract and venture in the us navy, 5200000000. and the royal in the us air force variance compared to the ledger. and remind us of what you were talking about when it came to waste and it was corruption. as regards the u. s. military industrial complex as well, i was part of a group. there were just trying to fix things. and depending on and i think the main focus of my work was i was working on our applications of technology and the excessive complexity which led to rising cost costs always go up faster than the budget. so as a result, weapons get boston get, get bonded never decreasing quantities and modernization rates. the decrease the

average age of weapons in the inventories increases, which which uh, creates a demand for even higher budgets because things are becoming older and older all the time. and they end up uh, in order to, to fund the rising costs of modernization. they uh, decision maker is independent on, inevitably uh, start robbing the readiness accounts, which basically consists of, uh, trading budgets, uh, budgets for spare parts budget for wor, reserve nutrition, stockpiles and things like that. and, and, you know, and even maintenance a real property like, got just, you know, repair and buildings and things like that. you know, i guess your trusted southern a cost in crisis even though the budgets are going through the roof. and what's happening today with the budget you just cited is,

is identical. and what's been happening for the last, while at least since the 196 these and probably early are the problem with figuring out what was going on earlier. is that the data is the pentagon. collect data is impossible to design for other than some very primitive measures like rock libraries of airplanes or are tags, things like that. but less computers came in early sixty's. uh, the records got a little better and you could, you could start tracking this stuff. of course, the bookkeeping system, as you indicated is totally correct. ok. and in fact uh, what was the results of, of my work indirectly, not directly wise. the weather became increasing calls for these annual audits uh, under the chief financial officers active of 1990 and, and basically these auditors are not like business on the concern because honest as they they're, they're basically check what i call checks and balances on it. they're basically

seeing it's a pentagon is conforming or any other government agency for that matter. they are covered, everything is conforming to the dictates of the constitution which says you have to submit a report of your financial status from time to time. and you have to account for the money your expenditures of funds by relating them to appropriations by congress. so it's not like a financial audit that a company does. it is basically a political on it uh, the checks the uh, the conformity of the executive department in my case, depending on what is the constitutional requirements and when, when you don't pass it on it, it basically says you're not, you're not conforming to the dictates of the constitution, which is, which is a verb, um it's, it's against the law because the constitution is a lot of land as well. that's the price of freedom. you know, you know,

up the road in congress and the way the votes have gone as regards the appropriations committee funding that, that's the price. uh it, it takes, but all the other hand, chuck grassley, president of the us and the longest a is having us have 0. i believe, you know, he's in the news this week actually over the president biden son hunter. after releasing the f b, i papers connecting him to that ukraine. do you think he's happy with the all this money going to ukraine? i mean, on this end, it is as a much more uh, happy with it. i don't know what, what senator grassley is position is on ukraine. i know he's not happy with pen expensive the way depending on spending money. yeah. i know senator grassley on and off since 1983 and he's a serious about trying to get the parent gone to clean up is boxes. he's one of the few congressman or senator is that is actually tried to get this financial

chief financial officers that complied was and he deserves a lot of credit for that. he's read your report, right? so you must be talking about it and the card was a power all the time saying look, have you not heard about trucks? i mean these report back then in the eighty's, we should be following that as a template for the future. the reason the reason i testified in 1983 the lead to the big story, the cover of time magazine. correct. uh he uh uh, grassley was the one who basically sprung me. i made the bag. i did want me to go over there. visually they, they were threatened, the congress was threatening subpoenas. and, and so i had explicit authorization to testify from the secretary defense caspar weinberger. and so i was dragged over there as, as we said, depending on kicking and screaming. course grassley grass. they tried to meet with

me in my office, one by me dro of prior to the here and he got into his car and drove over to the bank on him and tried to meet you in my office. i didn't know he was doing this at the time, but i was told to just sit tight in my office and i was going to have a surprise. and, and, and they, uh, they basically told him, i wasn't available. okay, but if anyone's watching this program now watching the pen to get another scientist like yourself, maybe may be an accountant. who knows? so works in that 5 sided building in the, in the east coast of america. i'm, feels look, i've just bought in something. this is like overcharging. i know they're being cases a little bit charging for parts that are presumably down and ukraine. right now the us taxpayer got done for maybe 4000 percent. who knows? what are they supposed to do because they treated you pretty well. i know we're just ahead of the anniversary of, of chelsea mannings. a you know, torture of, of being get found guilty, but yeah, they listen to you didn't, they, they,

they gave you a good hearing. you were still working at the pentagon for years later. so what does someone do now if they, cuz no one is saying anything, like what you said right now, they're saying this a good deal in most and the vast majority of the people don't really understand. even the people inside, depending on don't understand how the system is really working. it's basically uh, the product of the culture on the lucian, since since at least world war 2 and, and i did, they caught all the incompetence job shortly. i'm some of the mother and i, i, irena, i work hard working but there are people that are embedded in the system or making the system is actually controlling their behavior and they've adapted to it. and, and most of the people can see the forest or the trees and my, my experience, my experience working with people in the backgrounds, vast majority of lieutenant colonels, the majors and in, you know,

most of the girls are very decent people and they're very hard work and these people are working, you know, 6070 hours a week sometimes. but they, they are working on a little a little compound of a huge system. and, and basically, these guys, their job is to protect back up on it and get funding. okay, that's why we you different then back then because there's only one of you. why were you different i was brought in to do the kind of work i did. i was brought in explicitly for that. i if you go back to in my early days in the pentagon ice, i 1st arrived at the paragon as a, as a 28 year old kept in the air force. and when i came to the bag i was working for, it is free and cardinal real, real maverick is kind of was, was a brand was a brand bureaucratic in fighter as well. they use a conceptual designer and he was famous fine or white. and he

basically put another captain to work on this, trying to figure out how the air force budget was screwed up. and then i came in and i was assigned to work with that captain. so the 2 captains basically started working on this thing and, and we made a lot of progress, although we didn't really change anything. our understanding certainly increased, but i, i, uh, i, i got praise that up and i retired and i resigned in 1975. yeah, so you were there for a while. it is, i mean i'm just say this week. oh, i wonder what i'm getting at is, is i, i was working in this civil sector after i left a pound on and i got a phone call one day from, from a very senior 9 kind of guy. and he said, uh invited me down there any basically offered me a job and it was oriented toward continuing to work. i've been doing in the air

force. that's how i got involved. and so i was doing when i was brought to the band on the do, they just didn't like i get and, and initially during the carter administration they were supporting the work. uh, you know, carter was getting blame for all the readiness problems in the military. but, but he was just inheriting a system that had gone a mock. we saw this in the early seventy's during the nixon administration, and that's why we were doing it. that's why we were assigned to do what we were doing back then. but so as of, as of now, lloyd austin spent again his independence, the presidential power as well. it's always been story designed as a residential bower. i think roosevelt was the last president to really control the pentagon, maybe eisenhower to a sort of an expand but uh uh, basically of our work which made an enormous progress in the seventy's in the early eighty's, which is a lot more than, but it was, it covered a lot more than budgetary, were basically when radian was throwing money at the band on, you know,

the incentive to reform ourselves sort of went away. and you basically bought off and, and, and people, people started leaving people that were doing the work started leaving or were diary and by the ninety's, the whole reform movement inside the pentagon was dead. the just thing the thing was i was, i was a, i was a player in a group of people who many of whom were uniform or even a few generals, preferably involved. i was nicely, uh, uh, feel great officers, majors, lou tanker rolled in criminals. you a few generals and civilians and uh, and congressmen like grassley um, in anywhere others. uh, in fact, you know, even dick cheney was on the military reform block as. so a lot of people knew it was a problem. and it just, uh,

by throwing money at the pentagon, all the incentive to change, you know, just sort of evaporated checks. me, i'll just stop you that more from the legendary retired u. s. military strategist, you want to the so called spinning a report. often this break the the, the, the, the

the who is the issue. right? move the distance of the sort of the series for you and you have them by see it the split this at the top. you believe the way needs. yeah. you're saying you missed us and you to see that few those them but the scale man. so village doesn't notice. we are gambling with the future of all mankind and we're we're risking it for not the the welcome back to going underground. i'm still here

with the legendary originally had u. s. military strategist, chuck spinning truck. we were talking about the loss of inputs, se in any idea of reform at the pentagon, just this week the naval systems come on is released to something called sole source delivery order. i don't know where that is to lockheed martin for integrating long range and to ship them yourselves. only have 35 presumably for war against china or i'm not sure if 35 program, much in for something that is being criticized over the years. does that mean a in the us taxpayer let alone us simple additions are all for the f 35. 0 i i, uh, that's a very interesting question. we bought about 500 f 35 so far. i think maybe 300 have been delivered on their totally they, they're talking about buying over 2000 and,

and it's beginning to show if it hasn't passed as operational tests, yet, even though we bought, we bought all these uh, uh, planes and it doesn't have the full suite of electronics in it. so we're gonna have to rebuild the ones that have been built already when we get the sol suite and of course the full suite they've been having trouble developing their and who knows that that will work. it is essentially a reincarnation on a much grander scale than the f 111 debacle in the 19 seventy's. and it comes from a decision process that is basically oriented toward getting programs prematurely in the production. so they can't be stopped. especially essentially it's called uh, the conqueror and engineering and manufacturing development. and basically what that, that's the approval point. it they call it milestone to in the data. gone is the approval point where the contractor,

in this case lockie basically starts doing big time work on the, on the design of the plane. at the same time, they're building their manufacturing capability and they're setting up their sub contract or network in all the congressional districts, or as many as possible. and i'm, i'm sure they're over 40 states involved in the 35. i haven't seen the latest lay down a congressional district but, but uh, basically the idea is you get the money, go into all the congressmen and all the districts and all these companies. and then they create lobbies that you basically can't turn that thing off. it's a very sophisticated game, and it's developed and evolved and it didn't start off. it wasn't pre meditated that sort of evolved to try on there. so starting in the 19 fifties and, and, and that's one reason why we can't control the pentagon's budget. now do you have $35.00 is fine to talk about, but that's the tip of the iceberg and it's

a small terabyte. i personally believe it's advantage gone is getting cold, cold feet on the 35, and i wouldn't be surprised that you saw people trying to cancel it before too long . sure. sorry, they're being sort of, oh, i say running out of ammunition, right. i mean, that's why the comfortable homes are being sent to your grand. yeah, so the important thing to understand is depending on budget, you're talking about what $477.00 b and this year is. what they have done is they have shoveled all of this money into the modernization accounts and they built what's called a barrel wave of future weapons. and they've all been, they've all been rushed past milestone to now they're not spending a huge amount of money on some of these systems. some of the systems are, are pretty expensive, but so far. but what they've done is they've planted the seed money and they're spreading the money around the country for these individual systems. we've got a new icbm and development. we have a new bomber in development. we have

a fighter replacement for the s 22. and so, you know, it's a fighter and development. we have a, a summary wash, and that's uh, a summary, a ballistic missile launch. in summary, it's, that's in development destroyers. new new, uh, new fee, a weapons. and you have a huge amount of money going into space without any oversight to speak of. so basically what we've done is we've created a huge bill for the future and no one knows how much this is it's. it's going to be over a tree and dollars for sure, and we're going to be paying for this for the next 80 years. how does it, how do they keep all this from the american public? because, you know, we know 40000000 rely on food stamps over there and they were, you know, the media was come uh, talking about the villainy as nato summit is a great success of unity. how. how is it that the, the awful,

terrible tale to you? describe of what amounts to all they got a corruption and i think you said ones that dies and how i meant to say military industrial, congressional complex, how do they keep it from the american people that as well. you know, it does uh, in the seventy's we have newspapers who, who have reported is who are actually trying to understand what was going on. and a lot of it came out uh it, it started momentum for change. and and um, basically, uh, that momentum petered out. i, i personally believe it was because of all the money, right. and through the payment on it just bought everybody off. today the newspapers are, are part of the problem. they are, they're just talking about the super weapons. in fact, if you now the ukraine situation is a classic case of what are this takes us. basically, when, if you go back and read some of the press reports right after the war started,

you'll see that there were these gleeful reports about how the united states was going to be the arsenal of democracy, producing game, changing weapons. you remember that term game changing weapons and, and now look at the situation. we've run out of 3rd of a $155.00 millimeter howitzer shells. so we're taken, we're, we're, we're given the premiums costs are bonds, which like, which are old costs are bonds at high doug rates and the older they are, the higher the down rate. sorry, the buy ministration says the doug rate is a fantastic entity blinking appeared to the american public saying these are completely different. yeah, yeah. right. that's, that's, that's nonsense. you know, you're basically, you guys, it's amateur, our, a washington on this stuff. and that is, the point is the point is here we have this $477000000000.00 budget or whatever it is. i have 87742022. 70000000000. and we

don't have spare parts. we don't have munitions. does that sound familiar is just like what they were budgeted about with carter who inherited the problem from next . it kinda got lost. it lost his presidency because of that argument. you remember the hollow military, you may not, but the whole military was reagans was reagans of us stocky drawers and and so so, so basically we've got the same situation ever higher budgets. one of my closest friends i used to have a point of term for it is called unilateral design remitted over higher cost. so it, so it's actually a piece movement the band to get into effect though. so it's an a. so is of the usa per pad, i mean, for a war with china and the current situation, given what you've seen, a very attempt to fight rushing through grain. i see,

you know, i hesitate to talk about, i hesitate to talk about china. i don't like what's going on with the way they're inflating the china threat. they uh, you know, where if we're having this problem and the grain we're going to have in china. i mean that's, that's an absolute certainty. i mean, so how would you be in saying, we're always, you know, making people want to, uh, uh, we don't advise in people to put money in the shares in lockheed martin boeing, general general dynamics north recruitment. i just think that's what you want them to do. given what you're saying, but then when you talk of nuclear weapons use, is that actually helping the pentagon budget, the p. r industry in k street in washington, new lobby. the politicians saying we need this weapon. and this complex weapon is a whole dynamic of debate about militarism hey, 80 years. of course is this whole thing. first of all, we've developed an idea of why ideology

a miracle happens. that it weapons or the game changers, rather than train soldiers, smart tacticians, and strategists and things like that. uh, uh, the basic model of the reformers had, was people, people use their minds, uh, uh, in the hardware it goes along with it. you know, people, 1st ideas, 2nd hardware search and depending on slip that priority on top of, on i'm saying basically military strength is about the term. and if you look at what's going on, they buy things that they don't test properly. they things are overly complex. they don't properly buy the support material to, to sustain them. as a readiness goes down, there are so complex the, the, the soldiers, an airman, and sailors are reacting to their equipment rather than their adversary. your equipment. you know, if you want a web for a weapon to be effective,

you want it to be transparent, you can use it instinctively of the, the are weapons. you have to focus on the weapons. and that comes between you and your adversary is a complex issue. the other thing is, is that, uh uh, the military and military industrial, congressional complex has really hurt our productive capacities because these, these companies become welfare queens, they, they can make commercial products and survive. and in fact, one of the main pushers for this in my belief. i'm one person, but he mind police one of the main pushers of the china pivot so to speak is the fact that, you know, we, we need to create as an enormous kind of threat to shovel money to the contractors . and so i don't think you're the only person just briefly. and finally on what would you want to make a point that you know you got silicon valley now is caching in on the corner co

because their competitiveness has gone down. yeah, i mean the ssl just finally. i mean, what would you advise the young congressman no longer is woman then, given we know on the record of entity blink, and was west exec weapons contract, a consultant avril haines, of the and i was at west exec through jake sullivan. i work for patrick and contract in microsoft. lloyd austin was that same as we had review on the jake sullivan, the advisor to add my 6 caught out defense the element michelle flurry. uh, west exec, i mean, they know, like, you know, are they gonna get lots of money when this war and ukraine is over? no, i don't understand the people in the pentagon who are the most angry and about how the place is operating. are the people who have been at the top and i saw that for a long time, a in, in the reason is there overwhelmed by information, because as the people below them have their own agendas,

and they just start pumping their, their agendas awkward, and the overwhelmed people with information isn't australia, game is this. i mean, i don't understand this, you get, you have to get into a really long conversation, which we're not prepared to do but, but uh, that's the reality of the situation. so you got a person like for an roy who's it, who was a joke when she was in, depending on, you know, they heard your name was the lady because she served to you means you didn't contribute anything. you know, actually, i mean these people go from industry to the band and on to the hill the. ready street back to the amazon and they work their way up the ladder and they end up being at the top of the pyramid. checks, manage, and you're gonna have to talk to many. we're gonna have to come back. good to speak to you about who made all the money out of this terrible war. that obviously is killing tens of thousands of people in europe. we're out of time. thank you so much . i that's after the show will be back on monday with the founder and director of

the oakland institute underwriter midtown, to talk about land ownership, and the impact of the financial cancelled black sea green initiative. but until then, you can keep in touch by a whole lot social media. if it's not a sense that in your country and then to a channel going underground tv on rumbled, i've come to watch new and old episodes of going underground. see you monday, the release of russian states never as one of the most sense community invest, not getting hold of all sense and up the speed . the one else calls question about this, even though we will then in the european union,

the kremlin media machine, the state on process coding and supports the r t spoke neck. even our video agency, roughly all the band on youtube, the tv service was for the question, did you say even closer to the kind of the agenda received? the west? no. is not the reason based, but it's a kind of ways i really just create an outside to crowd of all sorts of realistic practical objections to validation off creating a kind of city on the hill on the

the russell special military operation in ukraine. maybe the biggest military complex since the end of world war 2. globally, that conflict is referred to as a hybrid wall between russia and the west. the us european and natively, to say, russia's actions endanger the existence of the west and will order the .