Table of Contents ALSO BY WILLIAM D. HARTUNG Title Page Dedication Chapter 1 - THE RISE AND FALL OF THE RAPTOR Chapter 2 - FROM LOUGHEAD TO LOCKHEED Chapter 3 - FROM WAR TO COLD WAR Chapter 4 - THE C-5A SCANDAL Chapter 5 - BAILOUT Too Big to Fail? Chapter 6 - BRIBERY Chapter 7 - REAGAN TO THE RESCUE Chapter 8 - SAINT AUGUSTINE’S LAWS Chapter 9 - THE ADVOCATE Chapter 10 - GLOBAL DOMINATION Acknowledgements Notes Index Copyright Page ALSO BY WILLIAM D. HARTUNG Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (co-edited with Miriam Pemberton) How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the George W. Bush Administration And Weapons for All To Ruth F. Hartung (1920-1997) Chapter 1 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE RAPTOR It is a striking ad. An intimidating combat aircraft soars in the background, with the slogan up front in all capital letters: 300 MILLION PROTECTED, 95,000 EMPLOYED. The ad—for Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor fighter plane—was part of the company’s last-gasp effort to save one of its most profitable weapons from being “terminated,” as they say in standard budget parlance. The pro-F-22 ad ran scores of times, in print, on political websites, and even in Washington’s Metro. One writer at the Washington Post joked that at a time when many companies had been cutting back on their advertising budgets, Lockheed Martin’s barrage of full-page ads in February and March 2009 was the main thing keeping the paper afloat. When an arms company starts bragging about how many jobs its pet project creates, hold on to your wallet. It often means that the company wants billions of dollars’ worth of your tax money for a weapon that costs too much, does too little, and may not have been needed in the first place. So it is with the Raptor, which at $350 million per plane is the most expensive combat aircraft ever built.1 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has suggested that the F-22 needs to be cut because even with wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has never been used in combat. In fact, in its first “mission”—flying to Japan for deployment at a U.S. air base there—the plane had technical difficulties and had to land in Hawaii, far short of its final destination. But Lockheed Martin insists that the Raptor’s unique capabilities more than justify its huge price tag. For example, did you know that it is the “first and only 24/7/365 All-Weather Stealth Fighter”? That it has a radar signature “approximately the size of a bumblebee”? Or that it provides “first-look, first- shot, first-kill air dominance capability”? Lockheed Martin has a lot to say, and it is serious about selling you its most profitable plane. How else to explain the statement from the F-22 Raptor web page that, “when we meet the enemy, we want to win 100-0, not 51-49”?2 It is hard to take this claim seriously. The Raptor has never seen combat—and it may never do so given that it was designed to counter a Soviet plane that was never built—so at best the score is zero to zero. But the statement has a grain of truth—it describes Lockheed Martin’s lobbying efforts a whole lot more accurately than its fighter plane’s mission success rate. The company never reached its goal of 100-0 support in the Senate, but not for lack of trying. As soon as there was even a whisper of a possibility that the F- 22 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. By early 2009, months in advance of President Barack Obama’s first detailed budget submission to Congress—which would decide the fate of the F-22—Lockheed Martin and its partners in the F-22 project (Pratt & Whitney and Boeing) had lined up forty- four senators and two hundred members of the House of Representatives to sign on to a “save the Raptor” letter. A similar letter was sent by twelve governors— including prominent Democrats like David Paterson of New York and Ted Strickland of Ohio. R. Thomas Buffenbarger, the president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), also weighed in.3 The governors’ letter reads as if it was drafted by Lockheed Martin, which it probably was. “We urge you,” it begins, “to sustain 95,000 jobs by certifying continued production of the F-22 Raptor—a defense program that is critical to our defense industrial base.” After describing it as “the world’s only operational 5th Generation fighter” (a popular Lockheed Martin description of the Raptor), the letter returns to the jobs argument, asking the President to “consider carefully the economic impact of your decision.”4 At the heart of the lobbying campaign was the mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs”— jobs in forty-four states, or so the company claimed. Lockheed Martin’s PR barely bothered to mention that the F-22 is 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, with a series showing people at work on components of the plane with legends like 2,205 F-22 JOBS IN CONNECTICUT; 125 SKILLED MACHINISTS IN HELENA, MONTANA; 50 TITANIUM MANUFACTURING JOBS IN NILES, OHIO; and 30 HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS SPECIALISTS IN MISSISSIPPI. All that was missing were ads for 132 LOBBYISTS, WASHINGTON, D.C. There was only one problem with this impressive flurry of job claims: They were grossly exaggerated. Utilizing standard techniques that estimate the numbers of jobs generated by different kinds of economic activities, the $4 billion or so per year that the federal government was spending on the F-22 would create less than half as many jobs as Lockheed was claiming. The estimating method—known as input-output analysis—covers all the bases. It measures every job involved, from directly working on the plane, to working in plants supplying components, to working in the restaurant across the street from the plant where workers spend their wages, and so on.5 As for those assertions about where the F-22 jobs were located, when pressed the company refused to back them up. When a USA Today reporter asked for details on the locations of F-22 supplier plants, the company claimed that such information was proprietary and refused to provide it.6 Never mind that Lockheed Martin gets almost all of its revenues and profits from the federal government—when it’s time to come clean about how it is using our tax money, it’s none of our business.7 But whatever the exact number is, a job is a job is a job. And unlike many government programs whose impact is more dispersed, a military contract generates jobs in large, identifiable locations that can be directly linked to decisions made by the President and the Congress. Add to that the money and lobbying muscle of a company like Lockheed Martin and it’s a tough combination to beat. Members of Congress don’t want to have someone say that they voted against jobs in their state or district—or didn’t do enough to keep jobs there. And when a factory scales back or empties out, it’s hard to miss. The irony is that almost any other form of spending, from education to health care to mass transit to weatherizing buildings—even a tax cut—creates more jobs than military spending.8 For example, if the F-22 gets funding and spending on other public investments goes down accordingly, there will be a net loss of jobs nationwide. But most of these other jobs are less visible and more widely dispersed, and most importantly, their advocates lack the well-oiled lobbying machine that a firm like Lockheed Martin can bring to bear. This wasn’t the first time the future of the F-22 had been threatened. Back in 1999, the odd couple of the late Representative John “Jack” Murtha (D-PA) and Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA) teamed up to withhold production funding from the F-22 in protest over the program’s huge cost overruns. There was no immediate question of ending the program, just a pause to get the company’s— and the Air Force’s—attention.9 But to make sure that the pause didn’t become more than a pause, Lockheed Martin pulled out all the stops, deploying Republican ex-Senator Matt Mattingly of Georgia and former House members like Democrats “Buddy” Darden of Georgia and G. V. “Sonny” Montgomery of Mississippi as paid lobbyists. From a luxury box at a Baltimore Orioles game to the steam room of the House gymnasium—fair game to ex-members like Montgomery and Darden—the urgent message went out that allowing funding to slip for even a few months might strike a devastating blow to our security and our economy. Representative James Moran (D-VA) was taken aback when Sonny Montgomery confronted him in the House steam room: “We sat on the sauna naked together and talked about the F-22. ... That’s the advantage former members have.”10 Lockheed Martin even went so far as to send its then-CEO, Vance Coffman, to visit Lewis and Murtha face to face. Coffman complained bitterly to Lewis that “you went around our back, you didn’t give us a heads-up.” Coffman also showed up at Murtha’s office. Murtha—an ex-Marine who embodied the word “gruff ”—had heard about Coffman’s meeting with Lewis. He was furious, telling Coffman, “Don’t ever [mess] with my chairman again.” Murtha then said, “I think you better leave,” only to relent and grudgingly let Coffman make his case.11 Despite the chilly reception from Lewis and Murtha, Lockheed wasn’t about to give up. Former Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AR) described its efforts as “one of the most massive lobbying efforts I’ve ever witnessed.”12 The Lockheed Martin campaign included a push by the 570,000-member IAM to lobby key senators. The IAM’s Washington lobbyist held out hope for this approach because jobs “are the one thing they [members of Congress] understand.”13 Meanwhile, the Air Force wasn’t exactly sitting on its hands. Although technically prohibited from lobbying Congress, the Air Force formed a “Raptor Recovery Team,” which, according to General Claude Bolton, put on “a full court press to tell our senior leadership in Congress ... that we believe the Air Force and the country need this.” The Air Force called its pressure tactics an “informational” activity and therefore got away with them despite the restrictions on lobbying members of Congress.14 In the meantime, Lockheed’s arguments on the military need for the plane prompted sharp responses even among those who thought the plane was a “technological marvel,” as one company spokesperson put it. Williamson Murray of the Army War College was one such critic: “The F-22 is the best fighter in the world, no doubt about it. But there ain’t any opposition out there.