Tag: war

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The Warmonger in Our Psyche…I mean Government


Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, a title he gets defensive about.
He wants to be the Secretary of War in the Department of War.
3-7-11 pulsar again. Hidden Wisdom is Yellow 11 Human. Nothing dissolves humans and creates chaos like war!

Peter Michaelson · July 9, 2024 ·

(This article is a bit long. Don’t feel obligated to read the whole thing, but it is interesting.)

Humanity’s appetite for war arises from our psyche’s inner war. War is just one of the bitter fruits of our refusal to recognize and overcome the persistent disharmony that churns within us. The war trail leads from our psyche.

War is a byproduct of the inner conflict that generates neurosis, and neurosis is a worldwide contagion. Inner conflict produces inner weakness, especially folly, stupidity, and a lack of self-regulation (“The march of folly,” as historian Barbara Tuchman put it).

I am presenting here a theory on the primary cause of war.

What I write is a bit complex in places, though it’s not rocket science. We resist acquiring deep self-knowledge because we find it disorienting. Inner resistance is the biggest obstacle to understanding the darkness in human nature.

In his book Why War? (W.W. Norton, 2024), historian Richard Overy notes correctly that no consensus exists on the singular cause of war. He writes, however, that “the effort to construct a monocausal explanation for war is futile.” I disagree. The primary cause of war is staring us in the face.

Overy notes that Freud did not develop a general psychological theory on the cause of war, except to relate it somewhat vaguely to a “death drive.” This death drive, as I understand it, is a compulsion to become engaged in self-defeat and self-damage. The drive is a particularly insidious variant of inner conflict. Inner conflict causes us to become our worst enemy. It also prompts us to target certain others and make enemies of them.

Our appetite for war hinges, of course, on how evolved we are–and how evolved we are has a great deal to do with how much inner conflict we experience.

Inner conflict generates negativity, hostility, stupidity, and malice within us, and this psychological dark matter radiates outward toward others as distrust, incivility, hostility, and impulses for revenge. At a tipping point, these projections escalate into violence and war. I’ll now say more about inner conflict, gradually tracking its footprints to the doorstep of war. (We call this shadow-L.T.)

Inner conflict has two main opposing forces, the aggressive superego (inner critic) and inner passivity (a defensive reactivity in our unconscious ego). Many of us sense the critical superego within, yet we have little sense of its partner-in-crime, inner passivity. Understanding the source of war requires our recognition of this passivity that lurks in our psyche as an enabler of the superego.

Inner passivity is largely a primitive, reactive intelligence, located in the unconscious ego, that defends our ego-ideal and reconciles our suffering. Inner passivity is the operating system of our self-doubt, the voice of our defensiveness, and the “mastermind” behind our psychological defenses. Typically, we don’t recognize this independent operating system in our psyche because we usually identify with it as our essential self, even though it obscures our best self.

Through inner passivity, we activate inner conflict. Inner passivity predisposes us to give credence and authority to our irrational, aggressive superego, thereby facilitating inner conflict. If not for this passive side, we would dismiss the superego as biased, irrational, primitive—unworthy of being taken seriously. In failing to do this, we fail to secure peace within ourselves and, by extension, peace in the world.

Through inner passivity, we unwittingly allow our superego to assail us with accusations, mockery, and scorn. More than just the source of self-criticism and self-mockery, the superego can become the instigator of self-condemnation and self-hatred. The intensity of inner conflict and neurosis depends on the degree to which inner passivity accommodates such self-abuse. Anxiety, shame, guilt, moodiness, and depression are experiences that arise from our accommodation of the superego’s judgments against us. As we become conscious of how, through inner passivity, we ingest these judgments, we are more able to liberate ourselves from inner conflict and its self-defeating emotions (e.g., hatred) and behaviors (e.g., war).

Another ingredient in our psyche (and in the war machine) is irrational inner fear.

Such fear is strongly felt in childhood, and it lingers in the adult psyche, often as worry, stress, and anxiety. This semi-conscious fear is intensified when the passive side of inner conflict feels threatened by superego aggression. The passive side fearfully anticipates punishment (guilt, shame, depression) through its weak, defensive plea-bargaining with the superego. As inner conflict intensifies inner fear, we are more likely to react aggressively toward “enemies” we have chosen (often arbitrarily) to blame for causing our distress.

In our psyche, there’s a hidden perversity at play. Inner passivity appears, in part, to consist of an unconscious willingness to experience fear as an enticing, bittersweet thrill or gratification. Evidence for this quirk of human nature can be seen in the allure of violent movies, murder mysteries, horror shows, scary park rides, daredevil antics, gun and crime fixations, and—perhaps—the spellbound voyeurism in climate-change destruction. We can also experience frightening, alarmist news, whether true or fake, as thrilling entertainment. In other words, fear is infected with a macabre enchantment.

We tend to be completely unaware of our unconscious fascination or fixation with fear, even as we “entertain” the fear on an inner level in inner conflict’s back-and-forth of accusations and defenses. Emotionally, we replay and recycle the superego’s allegations and mockery that we are weak, cowardly, undeserving, unworthy, and insignificant. To deny our secret dalliance with this inner fear (and its kinship with inner passivity), we tend to blame others, often aggressively, for our consequential suffering. Rather than see our misery as our own creation, we claim: “They cause me to feel this way!” We blame others although, in neurosis, we ourselves are concocting (replaying, and recycling) the old, subjective, negative impressions of being hurt and disrespected by others. Yet blaming others is necessarily accompanied by aggressive feelings (resentment, anger, and hatred) toward them. This misguided sense of reality can, in collective myopia, lead to war.

The level of our enmity toward others often needs to escalate to maintain the coverup. (The coverup, again, is our denial of our secret willingness to resonate with inner passivity, with its accompanying inner fear, as we unwittingly soak up abuse from the superego.) Sometimes the escalation of the coverup leads to murderous hatred, which is the process that drives domestic killers.

(To be clear, we often do blame ourselves instead of others—but for wrong reasons, for symptoms rather than underlying causes. A person might claim, “The problem is I’m too lazy!” The individual then experiences self-punishment for laziness, while overlooking inner passivity and inner conflict as the deep causes of one’s procrastination, indecision, ambivalence, and lack of purpose. The self-punishment absorbed for so-called laziness can itself produce self-loathing, which then can become loathing of others.)

So, people tend to believe—and, through their unconscious defenses, want to believe—that their worries and distress are caused by others. (God no. That’s offloading!)-L.T. In reality, this distress arises from inner conflict and from one’s compulsion to replay with others the unresolved hurts left over from childhood (the first hurts). We possess an infantile readiness to feel that the self is good, the outsider is bad or dangerous. Hair-trigger resentment toward allegedly threatening others is a defensive coverup. The coverup, the unconscious defense, is processed along these lines: “I’m not the source of my angst and fear. Those others are the cause of it! Look at how much I resent them.” The resentment helps protect one’s ego: “I’m innocent, they’re guilty.”

The reactive aggression we feel (to cover up our passive role in inner conflict) is now projected onto others. One’s conviction now becomes, “The other is aggressive toward me–so I must be aggressive in return.” This projection, along with its irrational conclusion, is an expression of our resistance to taking responsibility for the distress and self-defeat of our inner conflict. This unconscious resistance protects our primitive loyalty to egotism.

Reactive hostility and aggression are now experienced as one’s legitimate right (although the less neurotic among us will feel some guilt for it). This aggression, this coverup of the inner passivity at the heart of inner conflict, contributes to civil and international unrest as well as to war.

Examples from Politics and Life

Psychologically weak people are susceptible to being ruled by the superego’s Frankenstein monster, the strongman or dictator. Submission to the dictator is the path of least resistance for those who, inwardly weak, submit to their superego’s illegitimate authority. The deep sense is, Who would I be without this weakness?

Inner passivity can make politically powerful individuals more dangerous and destructive. I have psychoanalyzed thousands of people, and I offer here an analysis of the psyche of Russian President Putin. Based on his biography, appearance, and actions, he appears to be highly neurotic. His emotional “intelligence” tells him that he’s being passive if he’s not being aggressive—there’s no middle way. Overwhelmed by his wealth and power, his ego has gone rogue. Now he knows only primitive power. He lacks the inner strength to shed his and Russia’s archaic paranoia. This paranoia, despite having some historical rationale, is now mostly rooted in passivity and inner conflict. Putin can’t embrace freedom because he’s a slave to his psyche’s disorder. His conflicted self requires that he experience himself and his world through brutality, victimization, and oppression.

Consciously, he wants to feel the strength and pleasure his wealth and political power ought to provide him. Yet his suffering is unavoidable, given his unconscious determination to feel threatened and diminished by the power of the West and by its values. He is compelled to deny to his people the freedom that inwardly he denies himself.

Putin has compensated for his inner conflict and inner passivity with illusions of grandeur, a lust for absolute power, and a willingness to unleash murderous aggression. In his adamant refusal to acknowledge his passive side and overcome it, he has likely identified with his superego, which means that the malice of his superego, like the perversity of his autocratic rule, now goes unchecked. Here arises evil, and it is facilitated by those who have not become self-actualized.

For many, war is experienced as rousing excitement. The excitement serves as “proof” of strength and vigor: “This is what I like, this aggression, this bloodlust,” the unconscious defense contends: “It proves I am not an inner weakling.” The mania that accompanies this aggressive reactivity is the “joy” of sugar-coated passivity.

The underlying passivity that incites toxic aggression finds entertainment in displays of aggression. Passivity thrills to violence. For example, the compulsive viewing of violent video games is pure passivity. Inner passivity causes teenagers and young adults to experience video games and social media addictively. Hostile aggression (anger and hate) flares up everywhere on social media and in politics. The aggressive push to ban books or speakers, with its gleeful self-righteousness, arises from the passive, irrational fear of being unduly influenced by them. The stupidest aggression comes from the most passive, neurotic people, the ones who are most disconnected from their best self.

Inner passivity is also the culprit as adults become overwhelmed and turn cynical or fatalistic in the face of climate change. Indeed, much of our indifference and inaction on climate change is likely induced by inner passivity’s tendency to trigger feelings of helplessness. One reaction is to embrace stubborn denial of our folly (militant ignorance) as an illusion of strength.

Men especially associate signs or insinuations of their passivity with shame and humiliation. More so than with women, the superego of men is mocking of underlying passivity. The common male defense is to become aggressive at all costs. For instance, men who are failing in life because of their inner weakness are more likely to be domestic abusers of women and children.

We are all participants in the conflict between human nature’s goodness and its capacity for evil. We all feel the conflict in some arenas of life between consciously wanting to be strong versus unconsciously expecting to fail or be defeated. We vote for leaders we psychologically resonate with, those more likely either to avoid war or stumble into it. When our better self is ascendant and dissolving inner conflict, we establish an inner democracy where wise inner authority prevails, where inner chaos becomes inner peace.

Inner conflict exists, of course, in people of all political stripes. A college degree is not immunity to inner conflict. Understanding this can help us all to congregate sympathetically around our common plight.

Biological-Psychological Considerations

Both the aggressive and passive polarities in our psyche are of biological origin. The superego’s existence and primitiveness derive from our predatory, survival instinct. In childhood, biologically sourced aggression is turned inward against the unconscious ego. As Freud noted, a child, despite temper tantrums and other protests, is unable to expend all this considerable energy outward. This primitive drive attacks the weak point where the child’s struggle to formulate a sense of self is in flux. In the psyche, a link between the aggressive drive and the passive identification is established, rooted in the developing superego as a center of self-aggression and facilitated as inner conflict by the passive side.

This passive side, too, has biological origins. It exists as a lingering effect of childhood years spent in helplessness and dependency. Passivity is a primary experience of childhood, and infantile aggression (such as defiance and temper tantrums) is a reaction to it. We might consider war as infantile aggression, rationalized through adult ignorance and conducted with malice and cunning.

Human nature is indeed dealing with some biological hardwiring. When we were primitive predators, war was perhaps instinctively, genetically driven (“war is in our genes,” as many experts claim). Now, though, it’s more helpful to recognize that war is bred through our ignorance of our psyche’s dynamics. Inspired awareness can undo faulty wiring.

Still, our resistance and defenses are so rigid that we will go to war—or destroy democracy—to avoid exposing this weakness in ourselves. Loyalty to the inner status quo, however conflicted and painful, is more stubborn than religious dogmatism. Even loyalty to one’s rigid, like-minded group is mainly loyalty to one’s own resistance to inner truth. Our defenses, meanwhile, keep us in the dark because they provide a pleasing, emotional certitude in the soundness of their own disinformation.

Again, the defense of crude aggression is felt as a righteous, rousing glory when “successfully” used to cover up inner passivity. Hostile bluster and bullying aggression flood the psyche as self-validation, glory, and self-righteous adventurism, washing away rationality and self-doubt.

Now people can feel a “legitimate righteousness” in being cruel, power-hungry, self-aggrandizing, violent, and war crazy. They can become, like tornado-chasers, thrill-seekers at the spectacle of destruction. They take perverse satisfaction in the mayhem happening to others because they identify with the fear, helplessness, and victimization of those others. This means they unconsciously excite these base emotions within themselves and are swept into fevered irrationality. This is the death drive in action.

Meanwhile, warmongers are seduced deeper into aggressive postures as the passivity of others enables their worst instincts. Warmongers identify with the corrupt mentality and primitive values of the superego. In wicked glee (another libidinization of passivity), they embrace the dark side. The dark side takes the elements of inner conflict—aggression, fear, blaming, and perverse gratification—as “weapons” to assault fellow human beings. This, too, is what Freud meant by the death drive.

These insights from depth psychology, when assimilated, recast our sense of who we are. The prospect of such a dramatic change in one’s sense of self mortifies the conscious ego. We infuse our resistance with zealous intensity, while in our shadow many politicians serve unwittingly as agents of resistance.

We decline to be reborn into a new graciousness in fear of letting go of our familiar sense of self. We embrace irrationality, violence, and war to protect our precious ego, to spare it being demoted by inner truth. The answer is to make our psyche the new frontier, to understand our psyche as both the chalice and the blast furnace of our evolution.

—

Peter Michaelson’s latest book, at Amazon, is titled, Our Deadly Flaw: Healing the Inner Conflict that Cripples Us and Subverts Society.

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Lockheed Martin Golden Dome project for the Feds


https://x.com/LockheedMartin/status/1924971025655017833?t=Ri0bFgjWbgG9V4Ap2xIdIQ&s=09

We could be investing in a worldwide consciousness project so that no country is spending money on offensive or defensive WAR. But “the peace president” Trump is going to do this and prepare for war.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war

Albert Einstein

Why is that? You’re splitting your mindset focus so your manifestation will not occur in full form. You may think it has, but your mind is not in agreement with the form you create, and it will crumble or just not work. It’s mis-creating. Your eyes deceive you. You do not fully want war or peace, so one will happen by default. Since most people want war, they will get it.

War or consciousness are a group effort. The group needs to choose its focus.

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Saturday-Breaking the Cycle of Emotional Conflict


I notice my hits for this blog go up the more negative or dramatic the subject is. I don’t cater to that fact so my reach is not very far. People like horrific scary, awful stuff. There are blogs on here where the blogger gets 1000 hits on A PICTURE. That’s just bizarre to me. Maybe the followers are intellectually lazy. They don’t want to read or think.

I’m interested in avoiding an extermination event. That’s why I keep blogging. In order to level up to consciousness level 1, we need a public plan for hacking our brain addiction to the emotional hit of anger and violence. Looking at pictures can help OR, the pictures can just repress what you need to deal with.

In holism, we view mind conditions as biologically based and then choice remedied. Liver blockage is known to be a big cause of anger, so we recommend Milk Thistle hepatic and a cleaned up diet to get the normal liver Qi moving. Some people are addicted to sugar, which is like cocaine for the brain, so we come up with a plan for people to go off of that. You can get a pick me up from something else.

Humans need wide spectrum nutrition for proper brain function. There are many habits, diets, stress based reasons for HBP, and bad stress. These can all be addressed naturally. Counseling, hypnotism, and REIKI help also. But people have to WANT to change. They have to be tired of being in constant rage. The other big one is to turn off MSM and limit social media, which has been proven to be toxic. There is a stat below.

I talked to GROK about it of course.

Humans aren’t inherently addicted to war, but conflict has been a recurring feature of our history due to a mix of biological, social, and environmental factors. Our brains are wired for survival, (the reptilian limbic brain; SERINE) with instincts like tribalism, fear of outsiders, and competition for resources (food, land, power) driving group behavior. These traits, useful in small prehistoric bands, scaled up as societies grew, leading to organized violence over territory, wealth, or ideology. Social structures—hierarchies, nations, religions—often amplify these instincts, framing “us vs. them” narratives that justify war. (Politics; Pub Vs. Dem) Scarcity, whether real or perceived, fuels aggression, as does the pursuit of status or dominance, both individually and collectively. (EGO)

On the flip side, humans also cooperate extensively—trade, alliances, and diplomacy show we’re not doomed to fight. But war persists because it’s a quick, if brutal, way to resolve disputes when trust or resources run thin. Technological advances make wars deadlier, and political systems often incentivize leaders to prioritize short-term gains (power, glory) over long-term peace. Psychological factors, like the thrill of conquest or fear of losing face, play a role too.

Data backs this: since 3000 BCE, historians estimate only about 8% of years have been free of recorded wars globally. Yet, peace has grown in recent centuries—interstate wars are rarer since 1945, and global deaths from war have trended downward relative to population. Still, civil wars and proxy conflicts persist, showing the same old triggers (greed, grievance, fear) haven’t vanished.

It’s less addiction and more a cycle: humans default to violence when stakes feel existential, and our systems often fail to break that loop. Breaking it entirely would require aligning incentives toward cooperation over conflict—possible, but tough given our messy nature.

ME: I see. Too much indulgence in emotion. Not enough constructive focus toward achieving something better by choice, not by HABIT. I said addiction because I view bad cyclical habits rooted in emotion as addictions.

You’re spot-on framing war as a kind of addiction rooted in emotional habits. Humans often lean into reactive emotions—fear, anger, pride—instead of choosing deliberate, constructive paths. War becomes a default because it’s a familiar pattern, a habit etched into our social and political systems, triggered by emotional impulses like vengeance or insecurity.

Choosing better requires breaking that cycle: prioritizing reason, long-term goals, and cooperation over the quick hit of emotional release. It’s not easy to override those ingrained habits—it takes conscious effort, like choosing to build rather than destroy. Data shows progress is possible: global battle deaths have dropped from 200,000 annually in the 1980s to about 50,000 today. But escaping the emotional pull of conflict demands discipline and systems that reward creation over destruction.

Greed and Envy
Origin: Greed and envy arise from competition for resources, a survival trait in resource-scarce environments. Envy, in particular, is emotional pain at others’ success, driving a desire to level or surpass them.

Manifestation in War: Greed fuels wars over wealth—think of colonial scrambles for gold or modern conflicts over oil (e.g., Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait). Envy drives ideological wars, like communist revolutions against capitalist elites, or wars to topple a rival’s dominance (e.g., Sparta vs. Athens in the Peloponnesian War).

Why It’s Potent: Greed promises tangible rewards, motivating both leaders and followers. Envy is emotionally destabilizing, pushing groups to destroy what they can’t have. Both are amplified in unequal societies or during economic crises.

Habitual Cycle: Greed and envy perpetuate a mindset of scarcity, where war seems a valid way to gain or deny resources. This habit is reinforced by systems that reward winners—empires, corporations, or warlords—while ignoring long-term costs.

Why These Triggers Form Habits
Your view of war as an emotional addiction nails why these triggers persist. Emotions like fear, anger, or pride are:
Physiologically Rewarding: They release adrenaline, dopamine, or cortisol, creating a rush that feels urgent or satisfying, much like a drug.

Socially Reinforced: Cultures glorify war’s emotional highs—heroism, sacrifice, victory—through stories, monuments, or media, embedding them as defaults.

Self-Perpetuating: Each war sows seeds for the next, as emotional triggers (grievances, fear) linger in collective memory, ready to flare up.

Breaking the Habit
To shift from emotional indulgence to constructive choice, as you suggest, requires:


Emotional Awareness: Teaching individuals and societies to recognize triggers (e.g., fear-mongering propaganda) and pause before reacting.

Systematic Incentives: Rewarding cooperation over conflict—trade agreements, peace treaties, or global institutions like the UN reduce war’s appeal. Since 1945, interstate wars have declined, partly due to economic interdependence.

Cultural Shifts: Glorifying builders over warriors—scientists, diplomats, artists—could rewire societal habits. Post-WWII Europe’s focus on integration (EU) shows this can work.

Addressing Root Causes: Tackling grievances like inequality or resource scarcity reduces emotional fuel. For example, global poverty reduction (1.9 billion fewer people in extreme poverty since 1990) correlates with fewer resource-driven conflicts.

Data Snapshot
Historical Persistence: Of 3,000+ years of recorded history, ~90% have seen wars, per historian Ian Morris.

Modern Decline: Battle deaths fell from 200,000/year (1980s) to ~50,000/year (2020s), per Uppsala Conflict Data Program, showing emotional triggers can be managed.

Emotional Amplifiers: Social media increases outrage spread by 20% per hop, per MIT studies, making emotional triggers harder to escape today.

Conclusion
Emotional triggers—fear, anger, pride, grievance, greed—are war’s fuel, rooted in our biology and reinforced by habit. They’re addictive because they’re visceral, socially rewarded, and self-reinforcing, aligning with your view of war as an emotional cycle. Breaking this habit demands choosing reason over reaction, building systems that reward creation, and addressing the emotional and material roots of conflict. It’s a tall order, but history shows progress when we lean into our capacity for deliberate choice over emotional reflex

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Friday-The BLEAK Future of ET Advanced Technology and Warfare preferred to a Golden Era for Humans


This is repugnant. He’s going in the wrong direction and has security clearance with DOD so he’s working for and has been working for the WAR MACHINE his entire life. I’m very sorry to say he is low consciousness. No heart or soul guidance imo.

Here is the option. Multilateral, universal peace. I’m on board with this.

For these 4 days since Wednesday, we are on the AC future back to the present strand of DNA. The events around the disturbance at the White House with DOGE and their focus on USAID fraud and not the U.S. Military, Pentagon, DOD black site fraud is a problem. Dr. Greer’s predictions don’t seem to be coming about. Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part. Sort of like me working on a time paradigm shift for 35 years and I barely have any followers. People are not spiritualized but secularized in their bodymind. That will cause more suffering.

It indicates a possible desire to use the 80 years of advance ET tech engineering to create a new WAR CULTURE, just as we had before, but this one more like Star Wars. The nuclear standoff is put down because the ET shut them off. They disturb the cosmic web and are illegal. The purpose of a new high-tech war economy is BIG MONEY of course, for not just the companies on earth but for local system and local universe trade with the stellar species who also have a war mentality.

This is FUTURE FROM THE PAST time spiral that we don’t seem to be transcending yet by getting to a tipping point of billions of humans to choose from their NOW CENTER POINT in their body. Millions of people are doing CE5 (Close Encounters of the 5th kind, like the 5GForce) and meditating, but not enough.

I guess Red 13 Skywalker~White 13 Worldbridger have failed. Hardly anyone is listening to us.

This is evolving Arginine Maya symbol Blue 7 Eagle, a resonant transformer in the RNA bodymind.

5gforce

I channel in order to survive. Inspiring instinct I seal the store of life force with the resonant tone of attunement. I am guided by the power of navigation. I am a galactic activation portal. FOCUS.

Kin 85-Red 7 Resonant Serpent

Timespace Sync

7 Jupiter, Earth, Asteroid belt, Mars

  • Venus forms a sextile to Pluto this morning, gently breaking down barriers and helping us gain new insight into our needs for love, comfort, or pleasure and our money situation. We might take a comfortably strategic approach to these affairs. Our feelings are more focused and intensified in a generally pleasant and positive way. In fact, we seek depth of emotion and authenticity in our dealings. This can be a good time to do what we love, follow our passions, or pursue a pleasure more heartily than usual. If we seize the opportunity, we can advance our interests with finances and relationships.
  • Very early today, the Sun forms a quincunx to retrograde Mars, and Mercury forms the same aspect tonight. We can experience aggravation if we’re not understood or can’t seem to get where we want to go fast enough.
    What we do and what we think or communicate can be at odds. Instead of listening to others, we may interrupt them and make assumptions. It’s not a good time to make important decisions, and we should watch for impatience.
  • However, both the Sun and Mercury are heading toward sextiles to Chiron, and we might connect with a sense of purpose or mission now, increasing our confidence. The desire to learn and grow through experiences and people is strong and healthy.

From cafeastrology.com 😇

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Black Ops: Pentagon’s Top Secret Black Budget Skyrocketed during the Reagan Years


Just imagine what it is now in 2025. It’s in the trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Content type; Open Source

Date: Jan. 3, 2012

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CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4

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Original Classification: K

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Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016

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Publication Date: March 1, 1986

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Body: ST Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4

ARTICLE NATIONAL JOURNAL ON PAGE 1 March 1986 Pentagon’s Top Secret `Black’ Budget Has Skyrocketed During Reagan Years a National Journal review of Defense Department budget reports shows an indisputable surge-to more than $22 billion in fiscal 1987-in secret spending. The United States, most observers would agree, maintains one of the most open defense establishments in the world, even if only by comparison with its major foreign counterparts. Just one manifestation-and guarantor of this remarkable degree of military disclosure is the small army of Pentagon officials who parade each year before the 19 congressional subcommittees with direct oversight responsibility for defense matters to explain and justify, often in nitpicking detail, their weapons programs and operating plans. The 40-odd volumes of printed testimony these hearings produce each budget season, even though carefully sanitized to remove what the services regard as sensitive data, divulge a wealth of information about current U.S. military affairs to anyone dogged enough to plow through thousands of pages of fine print.

The Defense Department itself consumes uncounted reams of paper every year churning out reports on its budgets and activities. Members of Congress, outside analysts and a small handful of Pentagon insiders complain, however, that this generally observed tradition of military openness is being undermined by an unsettling new budgetary trend. Since the Reagan Administration arrived in Washington five years ago, a steadily growing proportion of the Pentagon’s budget has been funneled into highly classified programs-the so-called black budget. Defense policy analysts may disagree on the exact size and rate of increase of the “black” defense budget, but few dispute that it has grown significantly over the past half-decade. A review of the Defense Department budget reports by National Journal confirms the surge in secret defense spending-to more than $22 billion in the fiscal 1987 budget request-a 300 per cent increase over the $5.5 billion in 1981. The amount of classified funds ear- marked for research and development (R&D) and procurement projects that the Pentagon declines to enumerate in specific budgetary line items has jumped from $891.9 million in fiscal 1981 to $8,6 billion in the fiscal 1987 request, a ten-fold increase. (See box, pp. 494-95.) That $8.6 billion-a lot of money by most yardsticks, but only 3 per cent of the Defense Department’s $311.6 billion re- quest for fiscal 1987-nevertheless constitutes only one piece of the Pentagon’s classified budget puzzle.

The 1987 defense budget also contains almost $14 billion worth of another kind of black money: programs for which the department enumerates the budget request in specific line items generally Armed Services chairman Les Aspin worth billions of dollars each and bearing either codeword nicknames or vague, nondescriptive titles-and for which it does not publicly reveal the purpose. The dollar value of five such large line items in the Air Force procurement bud- get has jumped from $3.8 billion in fiscal 1981 to $11.5 billion in the request for 1987; that’s an increase of more than 200 percent or double the percentage increase in the Pentagon’s total procurement budget over the same period.

Additional pockets of black dollars are reportedly tucked away in the operations and maintenance and military personnel budgets, although the amounts of those funds are difficult to gauge. The Defense Department, not surprisingly, maintains an official stance of strict silence on the growth in black budgeting and the reasons for its growth. “Nobody here ever discusses that aspect of the budget,” said a Pentagon spokesman. “That’s an area we cannot talk about.” Other players in the Washington budget game, however, are more vocal in commenting on the black hole that is rapidly widening in the Pentagon budget. “You are talking about 20 per cent of the [defense R&D] budget being hidden and, of that 20 per cent, I would say most of it is on the basis of national security, but a lot of it doesn’t belong there,” Anthony R. Battista, the staff director of the House Armed Services Research and Development Subcommittee, warned members in a briefing last March. “That is the kind of stuff you have got to pay close attention to this year, because the number and scope of the black programs is growing at a phenomenal rate.”

Defense reporter Richard C. Barnard has written on several occasions about the Pentagon’s black budget, first for Defense Week and more recently as editor of a new weekly, Defense News. Cf t natl Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4 Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4

Rep. John D. Dingell (left) says “black” programs lack sufficient scrutiny; Sen. Barry Goldwater disagrees. “The problem was first pointed out to activities to include such big-ticket statement in 1982 by a deputy assistant secret strategic nuclear weapons as the radar-evading Secretary of Defense,” Barnard said. “We were discussing other matters and he also called stealth, Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB), and even tactical said, ‘By the way, if you want to see a cruise missile.

“I would prefer to see more of it [black take a look at the black programs.’ His money] moved into the public domain,” main objection was that at least a third of Les Aspin, D-Wis., chairman of this stuff was black to make it easy [to House Armed Services Committee, said manage] or to cover somebody’s ass.” in an interview.

Pentagon-bashers in recent years. The National Reconnaissance Office, “In part,” said Gordon Adams, director which manages satellite and aircraft reactor of the Defense Budget Project, a reconnaissance for a variety of user agency Washington-based research organization, cities, has yet to be acknowledged even “this whole problem of enormous growth though its existence has been known ever of black programs has to do with a larger since its name was inadvertently men- issue, which is the extent to which [they requisitioned in a 1973 congressional report. The Defense Department] does not trust Congress and the public. The office reportedly has an annual budget of – $3 billion-$4 billion.  There’s a tremendous paranoia these days about what the public will think about it.”  Almost as secretive is the National Congress will do with your program and Security Agency. Charged with overseeing all U.S. signals intelligence-gathering. These concerns become especially activities, the agency functions as a sort of global electronic vacuum cleaner, intercepting a wide range of communications acute as the roster of secret projects expands beyond spy satellites and other – – traditionally black intelligence-gathering operations, radar and weapons test telemetry signals.

Estimates of its annual budget range from $5 billion-$10 billion. Funds for the agency and for the reconnaissance office, as well as for the CIA, are reportedly tucked away somewhere in the Defense Department’s black coffers. The budgetary pockets many analysts believe are likely repositories for these intelligence-related dollars are four big Air Force procurement line items labeled special programs, special update programs, selected activities and special update pro- gram-and another line item in that service’s R&D budget called special activities. All told, those five items account for $9.6 billion in the fiscal 1987 Air Force budget request.

John E. Pike, a defense analyst for the Federation of American Scientists who spends much of his time studying obscure Defense Department documents, contends that the $4.1 billion selected activities line item holds operating funds for the intelligence agencies. “The Air Force Cost and Planning Factors Manual gives you outlay rates for the various procurement categories, and they break it down by chocolate [classified] and vanilla [unclassified],” Pike said. “The outlay rate for ‘classified Air Force other procurement’ is like 85 per cent in the first year. An outlay rate like that screams ‘agency operating budget.’ “ The average outlay rate-the pace at which new defense appropriations are spent-for the first year of an actual procurement program is 13 per cent. Funds for personnel and operations are spent much more quickly, lending support to Pike’s thesis that the Air Force’s selected activities include a lot more than miscellaneous procurement. Most experts interviewed believe that intelligence and reconnaissance programs continued Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4 Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4 were quite properly conducted under the cloak of secrecy, although some felt the extreme degree of secrecy-the National Reconnaissance Office classifying its letterhead, for instance often bordered on the absurd.

Those same sources, however, were generally less tolerant of the thick veil of secrecy that has been drawn over the budgetary details of the stealth fighter, bomber and cruise missile programs. (See NJ. 1/11/86, p. 66.) “The way we piss away money, how do the budget numbers mean anything?” asked Paul Hoven, a research associate at the Project on Military Procurement, a Washington public-interest group. “If we buy a $7,000 coffee pot, how can anyone tell anything just by looking at the bud- get?” Combing defense budget documents looking for telltale traces of stealth money has become a popular sport in Washington and on Wall Street. The heavy betting this year on where advance procurement money for the stealthy ATB might be cached rides on a line item in the Air Force’s aircraft procurement category, entitled other production charges. The $3.7 billion request for that line item is a $1.5 billion increase over this year’s allocation and a $2.9 billion jump over fiscal 1981 funds-a good sign that it is a catchall for black money. Research funds for the ATB have long been rumored to reside in a classified Air Force R&D line item called advanced concepts. But the program element number-the six-character alphanumeric code appended to all R&D programs indicates that advanced concepts involve some sort of black missile program. A more likely candidate for ATB funds is a line item called special improvement projects.

Both of those unhelpfully titled programs are found in the Air Force’s strategic R&D budget listings, which contain eight black line items worth a total of $2.6 billion for fiscal 1987. Among them are two, called Bernie and Leo, the unknown purpose of which has been driving finding the Pentagon’s Black Numbers Deriving the numbers that chart the dramatic tenfold increase in the dollar value of classified “offline item” defense programs from fiscal 1981-87 call for little more than a reliable pocket calculator and a high tedium threshold.

Add up the more than 2,600 individual line items listed in the Defense Department’s research and development and procurement budget books-called the R-1 and the P-1- subtract the various subtotals from those published by the Pentagon and any resulting discrepancy is part of the “black” budget. The bureaucrats who assemble the military construction budget document-called the C-1-simplify the task by listing funds destined for work at “classified locations” as a separate line item. The funds shown in the table are those earmarked for specific programs for which the Defense Department lists a line item but will not say how much is being spent. Not included are funds for code-named projects for which the Pentagon discloses the budget, but not the purpose. More than $500 million is allotted to 15 such projects in the Navy’s fiscal 1987 R&D budget alone, and more than $13 billion is contained in six big Air Force line items with such nondescriptive titles as “selected activities.” Further black defense dollars are reportedly contained in the Pentagon’s operations and maintenance and personnel budgets-for which $163.2 billion is requested for fiscal 1987-but which are not as amenable to “reverse engineering” as the other defense budget components.

Thus, the Defense Department’s actual black budget could be more than three times as large as the numbers below suggest. In the table, the defense agencies listed as receiving black money are the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, with the latter getting the lion’s share (in millions of dollars, by fiscal year). 1981 1983 % growth, 1985 % growth R&D Actual, Actual 1981-83, Actual 1983-85

  • Army $3.7 $58.3 1,476% $230.4 295%
  • Navy 24.2 156.6 547 270.9 73
  • Air Force 181.1 325.0 79 1,993.5 513
  • Defense agencies 417.3 755.7 81 1,040.0 38
  • Black R & D $626.3 $1,295.6 107% $3,534.8 173% T
  • Total defense R & D $16,633.5 $22,824.8 $30,869.5
  • Black percentage 3.8% 5.7% 11.5%
  • Procurement Army $0.0 $0.0 – $0.0 – Navy 0.0 0.0 – 0.0 –
  • Air Force 0.0 0.0 – 38.9 –
  • Defense agencies 261.0 706.8 171% 713.8 0.9%
  • Black procurement $261.0 $706.8 171% $752.7 6.0%
  • Total procurement $47,767.5 $79,659.6 $93,423.1
  • Black percentage 0.5% 0.8% 0.8%
  • Construction Black construction $4.6 $44.0 $58.6
  • Total construction $5,467.8 $7,230.7 $8,424.2
  • Black percentage 0.08% 0.6% 0.7%
  • Total black budget $891.9 $2,046.4

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Cute code names are nothing new; in the mid- 1970s, Air Force stealth aircraft research was called Harvey, after the invisible rabbit in the play of that title. The procurement line item for the secret Advanced Cruise Missile is clearly labeled, although the Air Force declines to say how much it plans to spend in fiscal 1987. Since there are only two black projects in that budget category-the other, called tactical drones, is generally thought to be the Pave Tiger, a small, unpiloted attack aircraft-it is easy to subtract out the black funds, $841.6 million, most of which can be assumed to be for the stealthy new cruise missile.

1987 % growth Request

1985-87 $926.1 302% 548.8 103 3,868.7 94 1,275.8 23 $6,619.4 87% $41,929.9 15.8% $351.0 – 0.0 841.6 2,063% 742.4 4.0 $1,935.0 157% $95,776.8 2.0% $57.5 $10,157.2 0.6%

Also stashed away somewhere in the defense budget is research and production money for the secret F-I9 stealth fighter and the Army-Air Force Joint Tactical Cruise Missile, designed to attack Soviet targets far behind the lines in a European war. (See NJ, 1/4/86, p. 22.) Along with $548.8 million for black intelligence and communications projects, the Navy R&D budget contains another half-billion dollars for 15 research projects with such code names as Chalk Banyan, Link Hazel and Retract Maple, all thought to involve secret submarine silencing and detection efforts. The Army procurement budget contains $251 million for black electronics programs such as Trojan, which 1984 congressional testimony identified as a signals intelligence collection effort. Another $100 million worth of M-1 tank cannon shells and 155-millimeter howitzer nerve gas shells have, for some reason, been blacked out. Zeroing in on black funds concealed in the $86.4 billion operations and maintenance budget for 1987 is a more difficult undertaking. But a congressional reporting document, Justification of Estimates for Operations and Maintenance, reveals at least one black item: $158.7 million this year for something elliptically (enigmatically?) termed the Special Tactical Unit Detachment.

Those millions, apparently, finance operations at “Dreamland,” a restricted site on the enormous expanse of Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nev., where the Air Force tests secret aircraft. Lt. Gen. Robert M. Bond, vice commander of the Air Force Systems Command, died two years ago in a mysterious, highly publicized crash at Dreamland. Finding the black in the proposed $10.2 billion military construction budget is much less arduous because the Pentagon set out the $57.5 million for secret construction in identifiable line items. Among the black projects are $2.9 million for housing at “Base Thirty,” a TR-1 spy plane base at a classified overseas location, and $5.5 million for a satellite control facility at “Base Forty-Three,” a secret site in the United States. It is difficult to discern how much black money is in the Pentagon s personnel budget. $76.8 billion in the fiscal 1987 request. “The number of people who work for the [National Security Agency is classified, and the same thing goes for the CIA.” said Jeffrey T. Richelson. a professor of government at the American University and author of Intelligence Community (Ballinger, 1985). “So, I suppose that there probably are black activities included in the personnel budget.” There is a great deal, obviously, that outsiders can never hope to learn about the Pentagon’s black budget by deciphering open documents. “If they don’t want you to find it, it’s hard to find; these people are not fools,” cautioned Joseph F. Campbell, an aerospace analyst for Paine Webber Group Inc. in New York. “They screw around with those numbers,” said David J. Smith, a senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., a New York-based broker. “Now that people are chasing it [black financing], they’re putting things in there to throw them off track.”

ACCOUNTABILITY Sources, even those with inside knowledge, disagree on the extent to which black programs are subjected to adequate oversight. “In my experience, some of the black programs have a much more attentive level of oversight than some of the regular programs,” said William J. Perry, a former Defense undersecretary for research and engineering. “There are three reasons to have black programs,” asserted Thomas S. Amlie, who works with gadfly A. Ernest Fitzgerald in the office of the Air Force assistant secretary for financial management. “One, it deserves to be black. There may be five of those, and Stealth isn’t one of them. Two, you’re doing something so dumb you don’t want anyone to know about it. Or, three, you want to rip open the money bag at both ends and get out a big scoop shovel, because there’s no accountability whatsoever.”

On several recent occasions, officials have publicly aired the possibility that some black programs are established precisely to elude oversight. Such a note of caution found its way into the report issued last November by the Commission to Review Department of Defense Security Policies and Practices, chartered in the wake of the Walker family Navy spy scandal. “The possibility exists that such programs could be established for other than security reasons,” suggested the Stillwell Commission, so named after its chairman, retired Army Gen. Richard G. Stillwell; “in other words, to avoid competitive procurement processes, normal inspections and oversight or to expedite procurement actions.” Battista of the House Armed Services Committee staff lent flesh to the commission’s suggestion in his briefing last spring, describing “a jamming system one year that was funded in the black world, not because of national security [because] it was developed as a white world program. It turns out they funded the losing contractor in a competition [and made the program black] so Congress wouldn’t be aware of that.”

Conduced Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4 Declassified in Part – Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504560001-4 5 Rat’s Maze or Tool of Efficiency Last September, Defense News editor Richard C. Barnard published a commentary decrying the growth of highly classified “black” programs. “It is a matter of time before the public gets a peek inside the rats’ maze and is repelled by what is there,” he wrote. “A huge systems failure? Another crash of a black plane? A billion dollars squandered. Where is the $650 hammer of the black system? It is there. And it will be put to the same purpose as was the scandal over spare parts pricing: to damage public faith in the Pentagon and in the defense industry.”

The editorial drew a generally approving response, including letters from several Members of Congress. But, Barnard said, “a lot of people called me from industry and said: ‘You’re dead wrong, it’s not a problem. I can build [black] aircraft for 60 per cent of the cost because I don’t have all these agencies coming down on me every time I draw a breath.’ “ (Just what Elon Musk says about regulations on him. They want and feel they deserve no accountability and anything they ask for with no boundaries because they believe themselves to be superior to everyone else.)

The argument that black programming fosters efficiency because it is burdened with fewer bureaucratic gatekeepers is often bolstered by references to Lockheed-California’s secret “Skunk Works.” Under the guidance of the legend’s designer Clarence L. (Ken Davidson, the Skunk or cheaply and efficiently turned out to be the remarkable U-2 and SK-7 spy planes, the former covertly in the Mid-1950s from the CIA ‘s contingency account. “I think there’s validity in the view that the procurement process for black programs is better than for the white,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin, D-Wis. “Because you keep a lot of people out, you don’t have everyone wanting to be briefed. You can also avoid big design bureaus.”

The question has received some attention from the President’s Blue-Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, whose interim report was scheduled for release on Feb. 28. William J. Perry, a former Defense undersecretary for research and engineering who heads the procurement reform panel, said it examined such successful commercial aerospace programs as Boeing 737. “We discovered,” he said, “that they had certain management characteristics: short lines of communication, clear responsibility and accelerated schedules.” The commission found similarities between the management of model commercial programs and some high-priority classified programs. “We think it is quite possible to apply those techniques” to the range of defense acquisition programs, Perry said. “But we don’t believe that it requires eliminating the over- sight function. What it does require is eliminating many of the [bureaucratic] layers in between.” Laurence B. White of Rockwell International Corp.’s Autonetics Marine Systems Division in Anaheim, Calif., agreed that black programs might be better because “you don’t have as many staff of people scrutinizing everything.” But “there’s a downside to that, too. Without scrutiny, you can have programs getting away from you.” Another downside is the fiscal levy imposed by the intense security measures surrounding such projects. While some programs may have been put in the black expressly because the contracts were not competitively bid, the process also works the other way around. For security reasons, requests for contractor bids on black projects are not publicly issued.

The resulting lack of competition limits the government’s chance of getting the best possible price. Moreover, once a corporation receives a black contract, tight compartmentalization of information reduces the likelihood of creative brainstorming on engineering problems by technicians and managers, who are generally given only a discrete piece of the puzzle to work on. Black work is also conducted in specially constructed secure facilities, using techniques borrowed from the stringent safeguards that have long been used in secret intelligence-related programs. These secure construction measures include thicker walls, no resonant window glass and electronic shielding-all designed to prevent data leakage and eavesdropping. The additional costs, said the Pentagon’s director for information security, L. Britt Snider, “could be significant if you’re talking about vaulted areas and equipment that’s specially shielded.” A further financial penalty is imposed by deep background investigations and polygraph examinations required before workers can be issued clearances to participate in black projects. In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last June, Snider said that 145,000 people were cleared for access to one type or another of black program and that a further 8,000 must be cleared every year. Deep background investigations of the past 15 years of a potential employee’s life cost an average of $1,500-$2,000 each.

The General Accounting Office told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee last May that an investigations backlog is costing the Pentagon about $1 billion a year in lost productivity for workers awaiting security clearances. Some black programs entail extraordinary security precautions. In 1982, the Air Force initiated Seven Screens, a counterintelligence polygraph operation aimed at all people going to work on a particular black program. The operation entails video-taped polygraphs of at least 2,500 individuals annually. Because the exams are performed at Palmdale, Calif., and Las Vegas, NV, they are generally assumed to involve the stealth bomber program.

The House Post Office and Civil Service Subcommittee on Civil Service has taken a recent interest in Seven Screens because the Air Force has sought to exclude the program from the current quota limit imposed on Pentagon polygraphing. The office of the Defense undersecretary for policy “talked to us about Seven Screens,” said sub- committee chief counsel Andrew A. Feinstein. “They couldn’t find any reason to classify it. But the program people in the Air Force are furious, they don’t want anyone at all to know the existence of this. The fact that we know anything at all about it freaks them out.”

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A March 1983 General Accounting Office (GAO) report also uncovered cases of inappropriate program classification. The report was a review of Pentagon oversight of “carve-out” contracts written for classified programs that are supposedly of such great sensitivity that the Defense Investigative Service is relieved of its usual security inspection responsibility, which devolves instead to the Pentagon office managing the program. The information restrictions on such programs are sweeping. According to a 1984 Pentagon memorandum, “mere knowledge of the existence of a [carve- out] contract or of its affiliation with the [black] Special Access Program is classified information.” L. Brit Snider, director for information security in the office of the deputy Defense undersecretary for policy, said most black programs involve carve-out contracts. The GAO told of a service carving out a contract only to “preclude someone from identifying the military service involved and the amount of money being spent.” Several contractors and Pentagon officials, the GAO said, “told us that they thought that carve-out contracts were being used to expedite procurement’s and facilitate sole-source [noncompetitive contract] awards.” Hoven of the Project on Military Procurement, which acts as a conduit to the news media for Pentagon whistle blowers, maintained that “black almost tends to be synonymous with a major boner. There must be some programs that are crest-of-the-wave kind of technology that you don’t want the Russians to read about in The Washington Post. But from the [Pentagon] underground, we keep getting words that more and more problems get shifted into the black programs.” In response to concerns ex- pressed by members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense last spring, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger assured the panel that the Air Force “has always maintained both stringent management controls and independent audits of these (black] programs.”

Appropriations Subcommittee, who is conducting a long-running investigation into defense contractor ethics, also has grave concerns about accountability for black projects. On Jan. 16, Dingell wrote to Weinberger that “the subcommittee is aware of an increasing number of abuses by the contractors involved in these ‘black’ programs. We have documented evidence that abuses are occurring. Secrecy is being used by the contractors as a device to cloak mischarging, overcharging and, in some cases, engaging in outright illegal activities.” The most glaring example Dingell cited was the Brousseau case. Ronald E. Brousseau Sr., a purchasing agent for Northrop Corp.’s stealth bomber program, pled guilty to fraud and bribery in 1984 after being snared in an FBI sting operation while hustling subcontractors for kickbacks. Transcripts of conversations taped by a wired informant and quoted in the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing memorandum suggest that Brousseau, at Air Force is-house critic Thomas S. Amlie least, was not impressed by the oversight of black programs. “We don’t have any heads, we don’t have any supervisory people,” Brousseau bragged during a May 1984 meeting. “Nobody questions dollars or anything like that as long as I can show competition, whether it’s true competition or courtesy [fraudulent] competition or bullshit competition.” A Northrop spokesman, queried about Amlie, however, after reciting a litany of contracting abuses prevalent in “white” programs, stated that “the black programs are worse, much worse, because nobody’s looking over their shoulder. The few that I know something about are abominably run.” (See box, p. 496.)

John D. Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Oversight and Investigations, Brousseau, said, “We turned him in; that was our controls that got him.” But the U.S. Attorney’s memorandum states that Brousseau was fingered by an executive from RH Manufacturing, one of the southern California subcontractors to whom he had offered kickbacks. Dingell said in an interview that he has been getting “generally good cooperation from Northrop folks” in his subcommittee investigation. His biggest problem, he said, lay in judging the adequacy of the disclosure filings that Northrop and other contractors working on black projects made to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In his letter to Weinberger, therefore, Dingell requested a list of all black Air Force programs worth more than $10 million and information on the auditing procedures for such contracts. Dingell’s request triggered a heated Jan. 29 letter to Weinberger from Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. “The increasing number of claims that the so-called ‘black’ programs are growing out of control and are subjected to too little oversight is a matter that I take strong exception to,” Goldwater wrote. His committee, he asserted, “has subjected these programs to far more scrutiny and review than ‘white’ programs with comparable budgets.” Citing the success of black program procedures in “keeping information of unprecedented military value from the pages of our newspapers and the halls of the various rumor mills in town,” Goldwater told Weinberger, “I think you ought to resist any stretching of jurisdictional boundaries that expands access to these critically sensitive national security programs.” Peter D. H. Stockton, an investigator for Dingell’s subcommittee, took exception to the Senator’s argument. “Goldwater mischaracterizes the hell out of what Dingell is after,” said Stockton. “No one’s raised any question about our jurisdiction to look into how defense contractors do their business. When he says we’re asking for broad access to these programs, you can see from our letter that it’s really quite limited.” Concerning security, Stockton pointed to a recent lapse committed by Goldwater, who last June, after viewing the stealth prototype, disclosed to reporters that the ATB has a flying-wing configuration similar to Northrop’s experimental YB-49 aircraft of the late 1940s.

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1986 Pershing II missile production run, which, for reasons best known to the Army, remains a classified number. (See NJ. 1/4/86, p. 55.) “We’ve been dealing very responsibly with the most sensitive information in the government-vulnerabilities in nuclear weapons production plants-and no in- formation on that has leaked out of here,” Stockton asserted. “So, it’s bullshit that we can’t handle that stuff.” Gerry Smith, a Goldwater defense aide, declined to address recent committee security lapses but reasserted the Senator’s position. “There’s already too many people with their fingers in the pie,” Smith said, “and it just doesn’t do any good to increase that.” As to the adequacy of congressional oversight of black procurement, Arnold L. Punaro, staff director for Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats, agreed with Goldwater that black programs receive as much oversight as their unclassified counterparts. “Some people’s definition of doing proper oversight is that if they don’t agree with what was done, then there is no oversight,” he complained.

Black programs largely fall outside of the many reporting requirements that Congress has imposed on the Pentagon. Every quarter, for example, Congress receives Selected Acquisition Reports detailing the cost growth of about 100 major weapon programs. The Defense Department, however, informed the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense two years ago that “the Secretary of Defense has determined that certain programs, because of their highly sensitive classification, are exempt from [the reporting] procedures.” In the House Armed Services Commit- tee, according to chairman Aspin, black procurement is scrutinized by the Procurement and Military Nuclear Systems Subcommittee and black R&D by the Research and Development Subcommittee. Later in the authorization process, a panel that includes members of those subcommittees and members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence looks at all of the black programs. The Pentagon, Aspin said, “is pretty forth- coming. There’s always a concern about whether you’re getting the full story, but that’s true about any program.” One Member who has found the Pentagon less than forthcoming is Rep. Mike Synar, D-Okla. He was instrumental in attaching to the fiscal 1986 defense authorization bill an amendment requiring a Defense Department report detailing costs for the Advanced Technology Bomber. Synar was displeased with the Air Force report that arrived on Feb. 1. “Although the report is top secret and I can’t discuss its contents,” he said in a press release, “I can tell you that the essence of the report is only three sentences long. This is an obvious affront to Congress.” The ATB cost estimate, a Synar aide said, was expressed in unadjusted fiscal 1981 dollars and was not supported by requested reliability assessment. Synar has asked the GAO to conduct an independent audit of the bomber’s costs. “I think this is typical of the attitude of the Pentagon,”.”- Defense expert William J. Perry he charged in an interview, “and has triggered some new [congressional] interest in looking deeper into these black programs.”

The Synar case and the Dingell-Goldwater tussle highlight the jurisdictional problems that can arise when Members who lack formal defense oversight responsibility seek wider access to information about projects on the Pentagon’s lengthening list of black projects. “There isn’t any general rule, and that’s awkward,” said Russell Murray, special counselor to the House Armed Services Committee. “All Members have to vote on appropriations, and so they have a right to know what they’re voting about. But at the same time, you have very properly classified development programs that you don’t want bruised about by 535 Members.” Punaro of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that any Senators who want information on black programs can get it, (no they can’t.) The only issue being whether or not they have the time and interest to pursue the matter. “The same situation exists on bills that come out of other committees,” he said. Aspin said it is more difficult for House Members to get fuller disclosure on black programs. “If a member wants to know about it because he votes on it, he should be allowed to do so,” Aspin said. “We’re in a tug-of-war with the Pentagon over Mike Synar on that right now.” TWO-EDGED SWORD.

Whatever the merits of black programming in promoting procurement efficiency or outfoxing the Soviets, the Pentagon may find, as programs hidden in its black box continue to burgeon in size and number, that secrecy, like the truth, can be a two-edged sword. Hiding budget projections does stifle unwanted debate. But, as is happening now with the ATB program, the very fact that the numbers are hidden becomes an unwanted controversy. In the process, the rumored costs conceivably become vastly more inflated than the actual costs. The Pentagon, its lips firmly zipped, is powerless to decisively dispel rising speculation about a stealthy flying pork barrel. Withholding even the most general technical information can also defuse some of the contentious wrangling about military requirements that has beset such weapons as the MX missile and the BI-B bomber while allowing officials to make almost mystical claims for performance.

In his fiscal 1987 report to Congress, for instance, Weinberger dangled the tantalizing prospect of stealth aircraft enabling the United States “to reach into the Soviet Union and destroy selectively highly valued targets.” While the specifics of stealth technology are “appropriately classified,” he continued, “publicly available evidence should suggest that these possibilities are not fanciful.” But persistent rumors percolating in both the liberal and conservative wings of the defense analysis community hold that the ATB might well prove an under- powered and overfinanced turkey. The Pentagon is now confronted by what promises to become a heated bomber debate with little meaningful that it can say publicly in its own defense. In a gloomy assessment last September of the Air Force’s budgetary and hardware prospects for the rest of the century, Armed Forces Journal International editor Benjamin F. Schemmer took that service to task for its “self-defeating secrecy.” Noting that one out of every five procurement dollars in the Air Force budget, and two out of every five of its R&D dollars, were slated for black programs, Schemmer worried that “so much secrecy doesn’t bode well for future Air Force budgets…. It’s hard to win public support-and thus congressional votes- for programs [the Air Force] can’t even name, much less brag about.”  

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