Inside the Pentagon: Franklin "Chuck" Spinney

[dpbrown]

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/spinney.html

Inside the Pentagon: Franklin "Chuck" Spinney

It seemed almost a given that Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, son of an Air Force colonel, would devote his life to the U.S. military. What is more surprising is that this man who would later be called "the conscience of the Pentagon" by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa would also be criticized by many of his colleagues and superiors for his lifetime of work.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 1967 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Spinney started his first post working in the flight dynamics lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the very base where he was born. His job was to study the effects of bullets on fighter planes shot down in Vietnam. From the start, he was known as a "brash young officer" and a "smart-ass lieutenant" but at the same time, hard working and responsible.

In 1977, Chuck Spinney joined the Pentagon's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (a division set up in 1961 to make independent evaluations of Pentagon policy) to work with John Boyd who, with his open contempt for authority, had become somewhat of a mentor to Spinney.

Not long thereafter, Spinney began work on what became his "Defense Facts of Life," commonly known as the "Spinney Report," said to be one of the most important documents ever to come out of the Pentagon. In it, Spinney wrote that the pursuit of complex and expensive weapon systems was wrecking the budget.

Word of Spinney's bold report and his updates over the next few years quickly spread within the Air Force. In response to his 1982 report, according to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, at least one top Pentagon official contended that the report "contain data that flawed and dated and that figures under revision." But all of Spinney's information was based on Pentagon documents and was confirmed by the Pentagon to be accurate.

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http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/spinney.html

[searchingforlight]

1. Saw his interview on NOW. Bill Moyers seemed incredulous.

The man appears to have honesty and earnestness at the very core of his fiber. I believe him.

[dpbrown]

2. It shocked me that Pentagon hasn't ever passed audit

And the audit isn't like a full accounting. It's just a basic comparison to show that the Pentagon actually spent the dollars they were awarded by Congress on the stuff Congress authorized.

They've never passed. Ever.

And in the last year there was something like $1,000,000,000,000 they couldn't even figure out where it went. A TRILLION DOLLARS gone, poof, and no one knows where it went.

I'm shocked and appalled, frankly, that all of the Presidential contenders aren't screaming to high heaves about how an inefficient and wasteful Pentagon is actually making us more vulnerable to attack.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[searchingforlight]

3. I found that shocking too.

By the way, saw your guy on C-span yesterday and really liked what he had to say. He is where I am at. My only question is can we get the rest of the Dems and Inds there at vote time?

[dpbrown]

4. He does sound good

I think he's more attrative to mainstream Dems than people (especially the "online-savvy" crowd) give him credit for. He's got a position that really reverberates with Unions. Independents admire his integrity and honesty (that's where a lot of Wellstone's indy vote came from). He's clear about where the money's coming from and where it's going. And he carries a district that apparently has a lot of "Reagan Republicans" so I guess he's got something they like as well.

http://www.kucinich.us/electable.htm