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ARTICLE
February 2004
Washington Pulse
by Geoff S. Fein
Lobbying Rules Strict Enough, Says Controller
Despite inspector general investigations and allegations of unethical behavior
in the defense industry, it would be unwise for the Pentagon to change current
conflict-of-interest policies, said Dov Zakheim, controller and undersecretary
of defense.
The Pentagon is “pretty strict about this,” Zakheim said in an
interview with defense reporters. Responding to questions about the Boeing-related
investigations and whether they should lead to tighter scrutiny of the industry,
Zakheim cautioned that people may be overreacting to recent events and neglecting
to see the big picture.
Defense Department employees who are hired by defense contractors are barred
from dealing with the Pentagon for a year, and they cannot do business with
the department for two years in any area they specifically oversaw. Zakheim
believes this policy is stringent enough.
If the policies were made tougher, they would have a chilling effect that may
deter the most competent and ambitious people from serving in the government,
he said. “One of the difficulties that increasing strictness raises is
how you get good people.”
If the Pentagon hired people who have no knowledge of the defense business
and put them in charge, the press would be writing stories about the “ignoramuses
running the Defense Department,” Zakheim said. “You want to be taking
people with expertise.
“Once you take people with expertise, you have to ask, do they have something
to go back to? If they do not, then you are only going to get two kinds of people:
fabulously wealthy people or people about to retire. You will not get people
who are on the way up, because they will say, ‘if I go to the Defense
Department, it will wreck my career.’”
As it is, he said, “we don’t exactly get the equivalent pay or
benefits or lifestyle of people with similar type of responsibility” in
the private sector. “To add restrictions because something went wrong
with one individual, on top of the restrictions that already exist and that
are seen as onerous by many people, is going in the wrong direction.”
Army Stresses ‘Joint Expeditionary Mindset’
The Army is wrapping up its first draft version of a family of joint operational
concepts. The concepts range from homeland security to stability operations
and strategic deterrence, said Brig. Gen. David A. Fastabend, director of capabilities
development and experimentation at the Army Training and Doctrine Command’s
Futures Center.
“We are working very intensely with Joint Forces Command to develop a
family of joint concepts,” Fastabend said in an interview.
Last fall, the Army and JFCOM focused on “major combat operations joint
operating concept,” said Fastabend. “Once that is completed, the
Army can finalize its capstone concept for future force operations.”
These concepts will continue to evolve, at least in the foreseeable future,
he said. “It’s still a work in progress.”
Fastabend oversees one of the 16 task forces set up by the Army chief of staff,
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, to focus on improving the Army. Fastabend’s task
force addresses the need for a “joint expeditionary mindset.”
“The chief has asked us to look at what we need to do to adjust the mindset
of the Army, so that it’s more closely reflects a joint expeditionary
mindset,” he said. “We are looking at how we change the culture
and the thinking, so it more closely resembles the fact that we are members
of a joint team and members of a service second. … And also that we are
more comfortable in an expeditionary environment. It means operating in places
where you did not anticipate to be operating.”
In any institution as big as the Army, he said, “culture is a very complex
set of assumptions and unstated beliefs.”
The Army, he said, “already does things that are expeditionary. So it’s
a matter of refinement.”
Nevertheless, “I think the chief understands that you can’t tell
people to change their culture. What you can do is look for behaviors that over
time change the culture.”
One of the top goals is to adjust the size of the Army so it’s more flexible
and deployable, he said. Another area of emphasis is joint training. “We
are putting joint context into our major combat training centers and training
events,” said Fastabend. “We’ll rewrite doctrine.”
He expects closer than ever collaboration with the Marine Corps. So far, both
services’ one-star and two-star generals are scheduled to meet and discuss
joint efforts. A four-star meeting of the Army chief of staff and the commandant
is planned for May.
Defense Spending Fuels Aerospace Growth
Aerospace industry sales to the Defense Department increased by $1.1 billion
to $59 billion in 2003 and are expected to grow next year to at least $61 billion,
according to John W. Douglass, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries
Association. Missile sales also increased by 1.8 percent to $12.9 billion.
Defense-related research and development spending has grown faster than projected.
AIA had lobbied for approximately $50 billion in federal spending over a five-year
period. The Bush administration nearly doubled that amount in four years, providing
more than $90 billion for research and development with most of that going to
defense, said Douglass.
Additional investments are needed in the U.S. intelligence budget, he said.
“For every bit of money that we invest there, it gives us warning, it
will pay back many times over if we’re able to avoid future terrorist
events.”
One piece of bad news last year was the industrial relationship between U.S.
and allied nations. “Relationships are extremely tense right now because
of the war, because of some of these World Trade Organization actions against
the United States and so on. And we hope that whoever runs for the democratic
side, and we hope the president as well, will commit to fixing these two items
as we move into the next four years,” said Douglass.
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