00:00:00OLIVER: Sir, I have about five questions here. To start off with, I was
wondering if you might give a quick definition of the military-industrial
complex as you perceive it.
DEAN RUSK: The Defense Department is the major customer for major industries in
this country, whether it's steel, or weapons, or vehicles, or ammunition, or
00:01:00whatever it might be. Now the arena in which one feels the pressure of the so-
called military-industrial complex is to be found in two areas: one, in the
Congress. Senators and congressmen are very anxious to get contracts for
companies in their states and districts which provide jobs, and a tax base, and
their own personal popularity if they can help get those contracts. So, you'll
find elements of the industrial world working very hard in Congress. This is
true on such a thing as a military construction appropriation. Just yesterday I
heard the proceedings of the House of Representatives in passing a several
00:02:00billion dollar military construction bill. And it was clear that congressmen
have the liveliest interest in getting funds for their own district for such
military bases, or housing projects, or whatever it might be that might be in
their own district. So they put together almost a patchwork of appropriations
for different districts around the country. Now this is almost independent of
the general attitude of a congressman toward the overall military establishment.
Even the so-called pacifist-minded congressmen are concerned about their own
districts. And when the Pentagon moves, as they do from time to time, to
eliminate bases or effect a savings here or there, you'll find every congressman
00:03:00is very sensitive to what is happening in his district. So that is the first
arena in which the battle is fought. And then the next stage has to do with the
actual awarding of contracts by the Defense Department to particular industries.
Some companies like General Dynamics will find that 80 or 90 percent of their
total activity is concerned with Defense contracts. And there are many of the
large companies, whether it's General Motors, Ford, or whatever, see and often
get very valuable Defense contracts. And then there's a heavy pressure on
00:04:00contracts for research and development to explore new ideas. The President's
space Strategic Defense Initiative, or so-called Star Wars initiative, is
involving research contracts with many companies and a good many universities.
And, of course, where there is money, there are going to be people who want to
get some of it. And so there's very keen competition within the walls of the
Pentagon to have these contracts awarded to individual companies and states and
districts. Now when those contracts are pending in the Defense Department,
senators and congressmen take a very active part in promoting those contracts
and they become a kind of lobbying force in the Pentagon in behalf of one
contractor rather than another. One sees this from time to time in rather
00:05:00dramatic fashion. When aircraft manufacturing companies lock horns, whether it's
Lockheed against Boeing or whatever it might be. So this is a very lively part
of the political process. Now one of the results of all this is that it gives
the Defense Department very considerable political power in dealing with the
Congress because each senator and congressman knows that if he makes too much
trouble for the Defense Department in the Congress that this could bounce back
and hurt his state or his district when the time comes for awarding contracts,
or maintaining bases, or whatever it might be. So this whole process is an
important part of politics. Back in the early '30s a group of political
00:06:00scientists at the University of Chicago described the democratic process as a
struggle over who gets what, when, where, and how. In other words a political
process has to do with the dividing up of the resources of the nation. And
there's no question in my mind that this process and the use of Defense
Department funds is a major part of our political system. Now I must say that my
experience has been in the State Department. The State Department almost never
gets involved in this process. We don't have the appropriations. The State
Department doesn't have the contracts to give. And so this is something that
happens, more or less, outside of my own direct and personal experience as
Secretary of State.
OLIVER: Would you agree that this process is a serious threat to frugal policymaking?
00:07:00
DEAN RUSK: To some extent it is difficult to have lean Defense Department
budgets in the midst of all this process. But there are times when abuses of the
process become so obvious and apparent that the military-industrial complex
loses some of its clout. For example, in recent months we have heard a good deal
about outrageous costs presented by Defense contractors to the government for
payment--thousand dollar wrenches, two thousand dollar toilet seats, and things
00:08:00like that. Well when that occurs, people do begin to get indignant. And that
indignation serves as a counterbalance to the otherwise greedy demands of the
Defense Department. There's another factor too; and that is that any one of us
who has dealt with large budgets will know that in any large budget there will
be elements of waste, overlap, redundancy where you can save money. Now I find
that even in the relatively small budget of the Department of State. And I am
sure that there's a lot of that kind of thing in the many times larger budget
for the Department of Defense. I personally believe that what is called
zero-budgeting is a good idea. That is that each year one looks very carefully
00:09:00at every dollar in the budget--and I mean literally every dollar. I used to hold
hearings within the State Department on budgets before I would go down to if the
Congress and ask for the appropriations for the Department of State. And if you
follow every dollar, you can come across these elements of waste and foolishness
that can then be corrected. For example--and I'm sure this is multiplied many
times over in the Defense Department--but I found that there was a great
struggle in the Department of State for these metal vacuum water bottles to have
on one's desk. It became a sign of prestige to have one of those on your desk.
Well I found that the General Services Administration was paying about $80 a
piece for these water bottles. And when I inquired I found that if you go down
00:10:00to Sears and Roebuck and buy one for $16. Well that's the kind of thing that
comes to light if you follow every dollar, every nickel, every dime. And I'm
sure that there are substantial elements of waste in so large a budget as the
Defense Department. I would like to see economy become a responsibility of the
chain of command in our military, starting with the four-star generals and
admirals and running right on down to the one-stripe enlisted men. So that
outside of active theatres of operation economy becomes a responsibility of
command to try to do our best to see that the taxpayer gets a dollar's worth of
defense for the dollar. And if that were done and were announced publicly, I
think it would help the citizen to understand better what these Defense costs are.
00:11:00
OLIVER: Have there been any successful attempts to control this complex since
and during your time as Secretary of State?
DEAN RUSK: Well, during my period--I don't have the details in mind--Secretary
of Defense Robert [Strange] McNamara put on an efficiency drive in the Pentagon.
And this had to do with competitive contract bidding. It had to do with
centralized checks on inventories to be sure that we weren't buying a lot of
things over in one area when there was a surplus of those very same things in
another area. He did a good many things to tighten up the Defense budget when he
was Secretary of Defense. But it's something that has to be done all the time,
00:12:00every day without letup. And it has to be stimulated by the leadership of the
Department. Fifteen or twenty leaders at the top of the Department can make a
big difference in such things if they really put the heat on and require that
waste be eliminated and that things be done as efficiently as possible.
OLIVER: Do you feel that under the present administration the
military-industrial complex has gained momentum?
DEAN RUSK: Oh, I think there's no doubt that the Defense Department has
developed a substantial momentum in getting funds from the public treasury. And
Mr. [Ronald Wilson] Reagan has set the tone for that in his insistence that
there be no cuts in the Defense budget. You see, one thing that occurs--now I
00:13:00don't want to sound too partisan here. Back in the'60s when our defense budget
was running, say, 70 billion dollars or something like that, the asking figures
of the three services at the beginning of the budget cycle would run to, say,
115 or 120 billion dollars. Then it was up to the Secretary of Defense, the
Bureau of the Budget, and the President to bring their asking figures down to
what was considered to be tolerable, such as 70 billion dollars. Well, it's my
impression now that the leadership of the Pentagon works on the asking figures
and tries to put them into effect rather than to take a hard look at them and
bring them down to what might be called bearable limits. I'm quite sure that
00:14:00today there are majors and lieutenant commanders sitting around the Pentagon
scraping out the bottom drawers of their desks looking for ways in which to
spend all this money. Because they've never heard of so much money before. And
in that process you can have a great deal of waste. A senator from Georgia,
Senator Sam Nunn, is very much concerned about this. And he has publicly
expressed reservations about the redundancy in our weapons systems, for example.
Do we have too great a variety of weapons systems? Another thing that bears upon
this military-industrial complex has to do with the rivalry among the three
major services: the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy, for what they consider to
be their share of the Defense pie. And they struggle with each other over who is
going to be in control of which weapons systems. And it takes a very strong
00:15:00Secretary of Defense to cut through those inter-service rivalries and come up
with a total budget that really is lean and makes sense. So that's another
element in fueling the impact of this military-industrial complex.
OLIVER: You mentioned zero-budgeting. Could you give any practical solutions
that would lead to the dissolvement of this threat in this complex?
DEAN RUSK: Oh, I don't know that you can dissolve it. I think you have to
control it. But after all, there are many, many pressures on the federal budget
from all directions: whether it's for social services, or education, or whatever
it might be including defense. And in our system there's bound to be competition
among those who are demanding shares of the federal budget: the states, the
00:16:00local governments, the whole business. And this is simply, to me, a normal and
inevitable part of the political process. I see no way to get rid of it. But
what ought to be done by a President and a Secretary of Defense, and a Bureau of
the Management and Budget is to bring all of these processes under severe
control. And just as we ought to try to eliminate fraud from, say, our Social
Security payments, we ought to try to eliminate waste and fraud in our Defense
Budget. And it takes a lot of work to do that.
OLIVER: Are there any solutions you could give to regulating this process?
DEAN RUSK: To me there's only one way to get at it and that is for those who
are in charge to take it seriously. In the case of the Defense Budget, the
00:17:00President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Defense's own principal
civilian assistants, and somehow to make it clear that the public is entitled to
a dollar's worth of defense for a dollar taken from the taxpayer. I also agree
with Senator Sam Nunn that the increases in the Defense Budget have been too
large and too fast--that we ought to stretch these costs out over a longer
period of years if indeed we do need more defense. Budgetary considerations
ought to be a very central part of our approach to the space defense
initiative--the so-called Star Wars program--because the actual development and
deployment of these space defense weapons will cost hundreds of billions of
dollars. And then if we or the Soviet Union begin to make any progress toward
00:18:00effective space defense weapons, then we'll be asked for additional hundreds of
billions of dollars to get offensive weapons which can penetrate or evade such
defenses. So we're looking at the possibility of an additional trillion dollars
in connection with the movement of the arms race into outer space. Now that's a
journey that we ought not to take if we can possibly avoid it. And so it's no
accident that six former Secretaries of Defense, both Republican and Democratic,
joined in a statement a few days ago urging that we continue to comply with the
Antiballistic Missile Treaty which would go a long way toward preventing the
arms race from moving into outer space. Here we are talking about the prospect
of a trillion dollars at a time when we are already running a 200 billion dollar
deficit in our federal budget. So we ought to be thinking about ways to prevent
00:19:00having to make that journey if we can possibly do it. Yet there are many who,
including the President, seem to be caught up with slogans on this subject and
so the budgetary prospects of the future to me are rather gloomy.
OLIVER: Thank you for your time.
DEAN RUSK: Okay. Good to see you.
END OF SIDE 1
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