Blowing the Whistle Again

"Bad management has shot down more airplanes, sunk more ships and immobilized more soldiers than all our enemies in history put together," the witness told the crowded Senate hearing room last week. Pentagon Whistle Blower A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a management systems deputy for the Air Force, had been called to testify before Iowa Senator Charles Grassley's Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. Fitzgerald, fired in 1970 after he disclosed huge cost overruns on the Lockheed C-5A military transport, was restored to his original Pentagon job in 1982 under court order. He complained to the Senate panel that he has been denied access to data needed to perform his duties, a charge that the Air Force denied.

Fitzgerald also testified that on a 1982 tour of a Hughes Aircraft plant in Tucson, he discovered that the company was taking 17.2 hours to do what its own engineers said should take one hour to accomplish in the production of the $892,000 infrared imaging Maverick missile. A Hughes spokesman said Fitzgerald's assertion was untrue. Overall, Fitzgerald estimated, there is about 30% waste in most military contracts. His calculation of the cost to taxpayers: as much as $30 billion a year.