18 January 1999. Thanks to Anonymous.

We'd appreciate the e-mail address of Franklin Spinney. Send to: <jy@jya.com>.

    ++ Within the Pentagon, a Rare Dissenting Opinion on Budget Increases

    ++ More Realistic Defense Budgeting

    ++ Experts Say U.S. Needs 'Bad Guy'

    ++ U.S. Officials Claim Reports Show Weakened Saddam

    ++ Pentagon Backs Off on Arms Inspector's Book

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    http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/military-spending.html

    The New York Times, 18 January 1999

    Within the Pentagon, a Rare Dissenting Opinion on Budget Increases

    By Steven Lee Myers

    WASHINGTON -- Not much has changed in the small office in the Pentagon where
    Franklin C. Spinney has worked ever since he gained a bit of notoriety in
    the 1980s with this jolting argument: All the money President Ronald Reagan
    was pouring into defense would not make the military any stronger.

    Congress held hearings. His bosses made him a celebrity by trying to quash
    his views. Time magazine called him a "Pentagon Maverick" on a cover in
    1983. Still, Reagan's military spending spree went on.

    Now, nearly two decades later, President Clinton has proposed the first
    increase in the Pentagon's budget since 1991 and the largest since those
    heady days: $12 billion in new spending in 2000, and $110 billion over the
    next six years. Spinney, still a mid-grade analyst in the Pentagon's Office
    of Program Analysis and Evaluation, is once again raising an alarm.

    "This is a horrible thing that's going on," Spinney said in an interview in
    his cramped, cluttered office deep inside the Pentagon. "All it's going to
    do is reward the pathological behavior that's creating the problem."

    In the weeks since Clinton announced his plan to raise the Pentagon's
    budget, criticisms like Spinney's have been rare -- within the government
    exceedingly so.

    At a recent hearing before the Senate's Committee on Armed Services, no
    senator spoke out against the increase. In fact, the loudest criticism of
    Clinton's proposal on Capitol Hill has come from Republicans who have argued
    that the President needs to pledge more to defense.

    Before the administration and Congress open the defense spending spigot,
    though, Spinney and a diverse group of advocates and analysts have begun to
    make a case against an increase.

    Some of them argue that boosting defense is unnecessary since no new threat
    like the Soviet Union has emerged. Others say new spending will ease
    pressure to cut the Pentagon's inefficiencies and waste. Still others say
    that in a time of relative peace, the nation should devote its resources to
    education or other social causes.

    A group called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities began broadcasting a
    30-second television commercial calling for just that. The first
    advertisements appeared on Friday and more are scheduled to run on Monday
    and Tuesday, coinciding with Clinton's State of the Union message to be
    delivered Tuesday evening.

    Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., a longtime critic of large defense
    budgets and one of the leaders of the group, said the White House, the
    Pentagon and the Congress were spending money as if the Cold War had never
    ended.

    "The United States is now, literally, in an arms race with itself," Cohen
    said.

    Clinton's proposal, which will be outlined in detail when he submits a
    budget proposal to Congress early next month, would increase the Department
    of Defense's budget to about $268 billion in 2000.

    That is only $4 billion more than the currently projected level of $264
    billion, but Clinton also has agreed to let the department keep another $8
    billion in savings freed up as a result of lower-than-expected inflation and
    fuel savings.

    Clinton, a Democrat who has had an uneasy relationship with the military,
    agreed to an increase after Defense Secretary William Cohen and the nation's
    military commanders warned that dwindling resources since the collapse of
    the Soviet Union had strained the military's "readiness."

    Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and
    Budgetary Assessments, a research organization in Washington, said the
    Pentagon's budget reflects a military preparing for major regional conflicts
    with the most advanced jets, tanks and ships.

    Future enemies, he argues, will confront American forces with cheaper
    weapons, like missiles or mines, that are harder to counter.

    "To me, the greatest challenge isn't a budgetary one," Krepinevich said.
    "It's a strategic one."

    What makes Spinney's criticism unusual is that it comes from inside the
    Pentagon, where politics, bureaucracy and military obedience discourage most
    public dissent.

    Spinney's argument is that the Pentagon plans to spend billions of dollars
    to build new weapons that have become so complicated and costly that it
    cannot buy enough of them to replace today's arsenal. That means tomorrow's
    military will have to get by with fewer new weapons, while relying on older
    weapons to last longer. Meanwhile, the cost of operating the advanced new
    weapons keeps rising.

    He calls this the "defense death spiral."

    Spinney does not dispute reports that the armed services face readiness
    problems caused by backlogged repairs, shortages of parts and growing wear
    and tear.

    "Spending more money the same way isn't going to fix anything," Spinney
    said.

    Spinney, 53, has broken with orthodoxy almost from the day in 1977 that he
    arrived at the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, an
    office first conceived by Robert S. McNamara in 1961 to provide (relatively)
    independent assessments.

    His own career began in the military, making him an unlikely firebrand. He
    spent eight years in the Air Force after graduating from Lehigh University
    in 1967 with a degree in engineering.

    He fell in with a band of like-minded reformers, who became well-known on
    Capitol Hill and in the media for challenging conventional wisdom at what
    Spinney calls "Versailles on the Potomac."

    At the peak of Reagan's buildup, he argued that the Pentagon underestimated
    the future costs of weapons, thus saddling the nation with ever-growing
    defense budgets. After appearing before the House and Senate, he lost his
    parking permit and, for a time, access to budget figures, but his notoriety
    and civil-service rules protected his job.

    The end of the Cold War allowed the Pentagon to reduce the size of the
    military and its budgets. Spinney, like others, believes the Pentagon did
    not take full advantage of the opportunity to reconsider plans to modernize
    its arsenal with weapons originally conceived to fight a superpower like the
    Soviet Union.

    The Air Force, he says by way of example, now plans to spend $35 billion to
    build 339 F-22 fighter jets, even though there is no real challenger to
    America's best jets today. By comparison, the force spent only $45 billion
    to build 1,094 F-15 fighters, which are considered to be among the best jets
    in the air. Likewise, he argues that the Navy has retired aging, though
    still usable attack submarines to make room for fewer, more expensive
    versions.

    Within the Pentagon, Spinney has little official influence.

    "They basically ignore me," Spinney said.

    Still, he gets his views out -- by e-mail. Christopher Helman, senior
    analyst at the Center for Defense Information, another research group that
    has opposed the spending increase, said Spinney's critiques have a purpose
    nonetheless.

    "He serves to generate some critical dialogue that would not otherwise
    occur," Helman said.

    Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

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    http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/18mon2.html

    The New York Times, January 18, 1999

    Editorial

    More Realistic Defense Budgeting

    President Clinton wants to increase military spending by $110
    billion over the next six years, the first significant increase in
    the defense budget since Ronald Reagan's cold-war buildup of the
    mid-1980's. Congressional Republicans want to spend even  more.
    But soaring spending is unnecessary to assure that America's armed
    forces remain strong, decently paid and appropriately equipped for
    the battlefields of the 21st century. Most of what the Pentagon
    legitimately needs can be paid for by trimming pork from
    acquisition programs, closing unneeded bases and reducing
    America's nuclear arsenal from excessive cold-war levels.

    For next year, Mr. Clinton will request $269 billion. That is $4
    billion more than he originally planned to seek. But he will also
    let the Pentagon retain and spend an additional $8 billion in
    savings from lower than expected inflation. Although a detailed
    breakdown is not yet available, the White House has already
    indicated that $2.5 billion will go for well-deserved pay and
    pension increases, an additional $2 billion will support
    peacekeeping in Bosnia and most of the remainder will be used for
    spare parts and recruiting. In the five following years, most of
    the new spending will be for new weapons programs, including $7
    billion to be set aside for possible later construction of a
    limited missile defense system.

    In the future smart weapons will shape the battlefield and defense
    priorities will include shielding vulnerable computer and
    telecommunications networks and protecting civilians from
    biological and chemical attack. Unfortunately, much of the new
    money Mr. Clinton seeks will go to advanced fighter aircraft and
    nuclear attack submarines, areas where the United States is already
    far ahead of any prospective foe.

    Under the 1997 balanced-budget agreement, any increase in
    defense spending must be paid for by tax increases or reductions
    in domestic programs. The  White House hopes to get some
    defense money from a new cigarette tax. But if the Republicans
    approve such a tax, the money should be used for health
    programs. Meanwhile, the Administration has failed to identify
    any domestic programs it would cut. Some compensating savings
    will have to be  found, and the first place to look should be
    elsewhere in the defense budget. New weapons spending should
    be cut back. America does not need three separate advanced fighter
    plane programs. Two would be more than enough. The production of
    additional attack submarines, which serve no current military
    need, could be slowed.

    Congress has blocked two more rounds of base closings proposed
    by the Pentagon that could save  as much as $2 billion a year.
    Legislators also shamelessly fatten defense budgets to benefit
    home districts, last year adding $5 billion for weapons, research
    and military construction the Pentagon had not requested. Further
    savings can be achieved by reducing America's nuclear arsenal to
    the target level of 2,500 warheads Washington seeks in the next
    arms reduction agreement with Russia. Even without a treaty,
    financial pressures will lead Russia to match America's cuts.
    Together, these savings could finance more than half of the
    increased spending President Clinton is proposing. The post-cold-war
    world has not turned out to be as peaceful as Americans originally
    hoped and the United States needs to maintain a strong and ready
    military. But it should do so by reallocating existing defense
    spending, not by raiding already threadbare domestic spending
    programs.

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    http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990116/V000146-011699-idx.html

    Associated Press, 16 January 1999, 11:11 EST

    Experts Say U.S. Needs 'Bad Guy
    By Laura Myers
    Associated Press Writer

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States needs Iraq's Saddam Hussein -- or a
    "bad guy" nemesis like him -- to rally support for U.S. foreign policy and
    defense spending, world affairs experts say.

    Think of the recent past. The U.S. enemies list has included Manuel Noriega
    and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Today, in addition to Saddam, there are
    Moammar Gadhafi, Slobodan Milosevic and Fidel Castro, although the aging
    Cuban leader has lost a good deal of his evil persona of late.

    Iraqi President Saddam emerged as a top U.S. threat when he invaded Kuwait
    in August 1990. The move angered his Persian Gulf neighbors and more
    importantly endangered the smooth functioning of the world's oil supplies.
    The strike prompted President Bush to compare Saddam to Hitler and organize
    an international force to expel Saddam's forces from the neighboring
    emirate.

    When President Clinton ordered airstrikes against Iraqi targets over four
    days in December, he, like Bush, had overwhelming public support.

    Robert Gates, former CIA director and deputy national security adviser
    during the Gulf War, said Americans have been "conditioned" to see Saddam as
    a threat.

    "The heart of it, I think, is against America's favorite bad guy," Gates
    said, speaking of the Dec. 16-19 U.S.-British assault on Saddam's forces.

    A tangible enemy helps unite the nation and justify a massive military --
    1.4 million strong and costing about $280 billion a year -- equipped and
    trained to fight two regional wars at once if necessary, analysts say. The
    end of the Cold War officially put Moscow in the U.S. friend column,
    shifting the focus to new foes.

    "When the Soviet Union was the 'Evil Empire,' other leaders around the world
    could have attracted our attention but mostly didn't because we were so
    focused on the Soviet threat," said Robert Ebel, a national security expert
    at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    "Now these other people have popped up in their place -- the rogue of the
    week -- whomever we are confronting now," he added.

    The administration targeted Iraq last month after Saddam refused to
    cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors, required as part of the Gulf War
    cease-fire to ensure he didn't rebuild his chemical and biological weapons
    to threaten his neighbors again.

    Since late December, Iraq has challenged U.S. and British aircraft enforcing
    flight-interdiction rules over northern and southern swaths of Iraq. Iraqi
    pilots are flying into the off-limits airspace as Iraqi air defense sites
    launch missiles at the enforcers. No Western planes have been hit.

    Retired Army Col. Harry Summers said the United States has a long history of
    demonizing enemies, sometimes an entire population like the Japanese during
    World War II, but more often individual leaders.

    "It helps explain things to the American people," Summers said. "It always
    makes it easier to fight a war if you demonize people so that you're not
    killing human beings, you're killing the devil."

    In the case of Iraq, the Clinton administration is focusing its ire on
    Saddam partly because U.S. officials believe the Iraqi president's policies
    are harming his own poverty-stricken people, said Ebel of the Center for
    Strategic and International Studies.

    "It's very easy for us to personalize the matter in Iraq. We have nothing
    against the people, just Saddam Hussein," Ebel said.

    It's a similar situation in Cuba, where Castro has ruled with a communist
    iron hand for four decades.

    Clinton eased a U.S. embargo against Cuba this month to allow Americans to
    send more money to needy Cubans while increasing people-to-people exchanges
    between the countries, direct mail service and the sale of food and
    agricultural goods to nongovernment entities.

    "The steps are designed to help the Cuban people without strengthening the
    Cuban government," Clinton said in a statement.

    Most foreign policy analysts say the U.S. administration should have eased
    or lifted the embargo against Cuba long ago but is reluctant to do so
    because Castro has been demonized by every president since John Kennedy and
    because of strong opposition by Cuban exiles in this country.

    "I think this is really a bankrupt policy in Cuba and has been for decades,"
    said Robert Beisner, professor emeritus at American University, who is
    writing a book about U.S. foreign policy. "Demonizing Fidel for so many
    years makes it harder to reverse course now."

    Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

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    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/iraq2.htm

    The Washington Post, 18 January 1999, Page A6

    U.S. Officials Claim Reports Show Weakened Saddam

    By Vernon Loeb
    Washington Post Staff Writer

    In their campaign to portray Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as weakened in
    the aftermath of American-led airstrikes, senior U.S. officials have relied
    on opposition accounts of executions within the Iraqi military that U.S.
    intelligence officials say they have been unable to confirm.

    As recounted by officials at the Pentagon and State Department, the
    opposition accounts suggest that Operation Desert Fox triggered uprisings
    within Iraqi military units in Basra and Baghdad.

    Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, assessing the overall effectiveness of the four-day
    bombing campaign, told reporters that former Iraqi defense minister Ali
    Hassan Majid ordered executions in the 3rd Corps in southern Iraq after a
    division commander and other officers refused an order to move against the
    local Shiite population.

    Expanding on Zinni's remarks, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin
    briefed reporters last Monday on the executions in the south and three other
    incidents between Dec. 13 and 19 in which 25 Iraqi officers were reportedly
    executed, including two generals at the Al-Rashid military base in Baghdad
    on Dec. 18.

    While Zinni did not specify the source of his information, the incident he
    described was first reported Dec. 21 in almost identical detail by an
    Iranian-backed opposition group, the Supreme Council of the Islamic
    Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In his account, Rubin cited "opposition
    sources." Each of the four incidents he alluded to had first been reported
    by either SCIRI or another opposition group not normally cited by U.S.
    policymakers, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP).

    Rubin later explained in an interview that State Department officials
    consider the reports credible "because they fit a pattern of similar past
    practices by the regime" of heinous human rights crimes and military
    executions to maintain order in times of crisis.

    But senior U.S. officials said they had no independent intelligence to
    confirm the opposition accounts. "We do not have independent confirmation of
    the Iraqi military executions," one senior U.S. official said.

    A source with access to classified U.S. intelligence called the opposition
    reports outlined by Zinni and Rubin "good ol' Shakespearean sound and fury
    signifying nothing."

    "I have seen no available intelligence to support the scope of these
    things," he said. "The intelligence community would laugh them out of a room
    trying to cite this as evidence of anything. All you have is fragmentary and
    suspect sources."

    To some extent, officials said, the paucity of hard U.S. intelligence coming
    out of Iraq is understandable. Saddam Hussein relies on clan members for
    security, and his regime is efficient at executing suspected or presumed
    spies.

    "There are only a few people who count, 10, 20, 25, no more than that," the
    intelligence source said. "These are the people who know what's going on.
    Frankly, breaking into that is very difficult. You can have a corps
    commander on your payroll – and he wouldn't know what's going on in
    Baghdad."

    Given the virtually impenetrable inner circle, Iraq experts inside and
    outside the U.S. government say that, even if the opposition reports are
    true, it would be next to impossible to understand why Saddam Hussein was
    executing officers during the recent bombing campaign.

    "We don't know if there was a coup attempt in the 3rd Corps," said Kenneth
    M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the National Defense University. "We don't
    know at all what happened down there. Saddam is so good at internal
    security. If there was a coup, he knew about it, and he rolled it up."

    Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert at Haifa University in Israel and author of a
    recent book on Saddam Hussein, said the executions could have been a
    preemptive move to keep suspected opponents off-balance. "It does mean that
    he has a problem," Baram said. "It doesn't mean Saddam is losing control."

    The most detailed opposition account cited by Rubin in his State Department
    briefing came from the ICP, which issued a report Jan. 7 that 81
    individuals, including 18 military officers, had been executed at Abu Ghraib
    prison in Baghdad on Dec. 13, three days before the start of Desert Fox.

    The party, which operates out of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and
    London, included in its report a list of names, home towns, birth dates and
    offenses of each of the 81 people reportedly killed.

    Joe Stork, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch in Washington, said he
    found it "fairly unusual" for Rubin to be citing reports from the Iraqi
    opposition to highlight human rights abuses in Iraq. But while it is
    impossible to verify such opposition reports, Stork said, "we have to take
    them all seriously."

    "This is a regime that has proven itself quite capable of these atrocities,"
    he said.

    Rashid Kawa, a spokesman for the ICP's Center for Human Rights in London,
    said in an interview that the list of 81 names had been obtained from
    sources inside the Iraqi government and translated into English.

    Kawa said the first four names on the list -- a major, a captain and two
    lieutenants from Iraq's elite special forces -- were executed for violating
    Article 223, a provision requiring the death penalty for anyone conspiring
    to assassinate the president.

    Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

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    http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/ritter-book.html

    The New York Times, 18 January 1999

    Pentagon Backs Off on Arms Inspector's Book
    By Philip Shenon

    WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department announced Sunday that it was dropping
    its demand that Scott Ritter, a former United Nations arms inspector in
    Iraq, provide the Pentagon with advance copies of a book in which he is
    expected to step up his criticism of the Clinton administration.

    The Department said that a Pentagon letter to Ritter last month demanding
    that his book be submitted for a prepublication security review had been
    sent in error and that there had been no attempt to intimidate him.

    David J. Rigby, a spokesman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the
    Pentagon unit that prepared the letter, said it was written by a middle
    manager in the agency's contracting office and "does not accurately reflect
    the agency's position."

    "I can assure you that there was no senior-level involvement in this from
    within the Department of Defense," he said of the preparation of the Dec. 23
    letter. "There was no intention of trying to intimidate Ritter."

    A lawyer for Ritter, Matthew Lifflander, said he welcomed the Pentagon's
    announcement Sunday but was still concerned that Ritter was the target of
    efforts by the Clinton administration to intimidate him into silence.

    "I'm very happy that the Defense Department has come to its senses," he
    said. "I think they were very embarrassed at being caught at this. But I
    think some very powerful forces out there are still very upset with Scott."

    Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer, resigned last summer from the
    U.N. Special Commission, the agency that oversaw the search for chemical,
    biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. He has since accused the United
    States of having undermined the inspections because of a vacillating policy
    on Iraq.

    Last month, Simon & Schuster announced that it would publish a book by
    Ritter, tentatively titled "Endgame," in which he would detail some of his
    work for the United Nations and offer proposals to the United States and
    other nations about how to contain Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

    Ritter had been under contract to the Defense Department while working on
    loan from the U.S. government to the United Nations.

    In its letter last month, the department demanded that Ritter provide it
    with copies of the book at least 60 days before publication and reminded him
    of his "contractual obligations" not to divulge any information, classified
    or unclassified, that he obtained while working at the United Nations.

    Although their constitutionality is questioned by lawyers, Pentagon
    contracts routinely require contractors to submit to a prepublication
    security review of books and other materials that touch on their work for
    the government.

    Rigby, the spokesman for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said he did
    not know why the agency had decided not to demand that Ritter comply with
    the requirement.

    But he said that the agency was "concerned by the tone" of the letter and
    that "it may not reflect our current position on the issue of security
    reviews." The agency would still welcome an advance copy of Ritter's book
    "to assist him in insuring that no classified information is disclosed," he
    said. "But that is not a demand."

    Rigby said the agency decided to reverse itself on the demand after
    inquiries last week from The New York Times, which had been provided with a
    copy of the Dec. 23 letter by Ritter's lawyer.

    Lifflander, the lawyer, said Sunday that he was "confident that there's no
    classified information in the book" and that Ritter would now consider
    submitting the book for a security review "so long as it doesn't delay the
    publication date." Simon & Schuster has said it expects to release the book
    in late March.

    Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

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