TRANSCRIPT

Defense Writers Group

A Project of the Center for Media & Security New York and Washington, D.C.

Senator Jim Webb (D-VA)

Chairman, Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee

October 27, 2010

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. USERS ARE ADVISED TO CONSULT THEIR OWN TAPES OR NOTES OF THE SESSION IF ABSOLUTE VERIFICATION OF WORDING IS NEEDED.

Q: Is there a logical rationale for keeping US Joint Forces open?

A: [Inaudible] … to arrive at a conclusion. Having spent five years in the Pentagon, but also having been a committee counsel for four years before I was in the Pentagon, I am a strong believer in obtaining the facts and then analyzing the facts. One of the real breakdowns that I‟ve seen in the way that the Department of Defense communicates to those on the outside, whether it is the media or the people over in the Congress, is that they are not sharing a lot of the facts. Not only in this instance. I will explain a little bit more of my logic on what we‟re doing with JFCOM in a minute. But in a wide variety of issues.

Let me give you a reference point. When I was committee counsel in the Congress—1977 to 1981—we worked with the Pentagon on a broad variety of issues. One of them was what was called the Carter Discharge Review Program, where President Carter had come in and he was going to upgrade 280,000 bad discharges from Vietnam. Blanket upgrades. DOD, we worked on legislation to focus this in a way that met with historical standards. We worked with DOD every day. DOD basically invented the Internet despite what some other people might allege. I could ask DOD a question and get data in one day. 1977.

One day I said to them, we were having a debate on casualty statistics during the Vietnam War. Minority casualty statistics, et cetera, et cetera. I asked them one day, I‟d like a breakdown of the casualties in Vietnam by year, by service, by ethnicity. And the next day I had the printout.

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When I came into the Senate this time, we had a whole series of issues with DOD where we were attempting to get data so that we could understand the logic of their position and how we might have our own position. The GI Bill is a good example of that. I have asked them — It took me a year to get the data in terms of first term attrition in enlistments. The Pentagon will give you the number on retention, first term retention. That‟s the number of people who finish an enlistment and then decide to reenlist. It took me a year to get that data. We had to go back to them over and over again before they understood that we knew what we were talking about, and it was a very important piece of data when you're trying to push forward the GI Bill because the data ended up showing that in spite of the fact they come over to the Armed Services Committee and they constantly are focusing on the career force—and we want to maintain a good career force— but the people who were not having the right attention paid to them were the citizen soldiers. And by the end of the year when we saw the data, at the time they gave us the data, it showed that 75 percent of those who enlist in the Army leave on or before the end of their first enlistment, 70 percent of the Marine Corps, and about half of the Navy and the Air Force. This was before the economic meltdown, but those are good generic numbers, and they‟re good for the country. But it took us a year.

So we have a situation that I‟m trying to address with respect to how — This never would have happened when I was in the Pentagon. It never would have happened when I was Assistant Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Navy. In fact I met every day for four years with [Defense Secretary Caspar W.] Cap Weinberger. He never would have let it happen. He would have been too concerned about what the ramifications would have been. And we had an aggressive media that wouldn‟t let it happen.

So when this issue came up with respect to JFCOM we had no advance warning. I agree, I still strongly agree with [Defense] Secretary [Robert M.] Gates that we need to start turning numbers around and look at them seriously. But to me, the starting point is: Let‟s examine the process. The process writ large. Not just the process on JFCOM. I told [Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm.] Mike Mullen this the day after the hearing when I had words with the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Logically my thought is if you‟re looking at reduction in the staff levels of your commands and in the Pentagon as well, you should start with some historic timelines. I‟m a writer by trade. I believe that the best way to address issues is to assemble facts.

So we asked them in the middle of August, I would like to see a timeline on the staff levels at OSD and the military services, start with 1950 because when the National Security Act was created and the Office of Secretary of Defense was created, I think there were three Assistant Secretaries of Defense. No “Unders” [undersecretaries] in [Defense Secretary James V.] Forrestal‟s office when they first started.

So we asked for historical data—which is easily obtained—to give us a timeline inside the Pentagon—1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. So take a look at an overall road here on the

staffing levels and what has happened so we can have in our mind the post 9/11 period, what was the impact on bloating staffs writ large. When I was at this hearing and then talking to Mike Mullen I said I would think the logical way to go about looking at all these 10 commands is do the same thing. Look at pre-9/11 and today and see what the staff levels were on all of these commands in 2000 and 2010. You can do that and then have an analytical model. Notionally— I‟m not in the Pentagon right now—but notionally you could say: All right, I want 5,000 positions out of these 10 commands in the first year as we examine all the commands, the validity of all the commands, and then we can get into these sorts of situations.

So I would actually say that in my view the flip side of what you said is true. That is I think what happened with JFCOM, it was notional on their part. All right, okay, one analyst or one person with a case to make made that case and they said okay, we‟ll do JFCOM and then we‟ll kind of stumble our way through the rest of it. I don‟t think that‟s the way we ought to run the Department of Defense.

Q: I want to ask you about some things under the jurisdiction of your subcommittee, and particularly I want to focus on the effort in the Pentagon to convince you that we‟re spending too much on people. The people costs are too high, particularly in terms of benefits, particularly in terms of health care. And whether you first buy the notion that we‟ve been overly generous to the troops; and secondly, as the Chairman, what is it that you‟re prepared to do? Are you prepared to be the guy that helps orchestrate a reduction in benefits or a reduction in health care costs either directly or indirectly by charging people more? Are you willing to do that?

A: I think we have a very well compensated force. As you know, I grew up in the military. The numbers are not directly comparable, but when my father was a colonel with 26 years he made I think $14,000 base pay. We‟ve got a really good package. There‟s probably not a better compensation package for a young person coming out of high school or a year or two of college, particularly if they‟re married, than the package that we have.

Our people work hard. I think that the package that we have is commensurate with what we‟re asking our people to do.

I think one of the things we‟ve been looking at on the subcommittee in terms of cost of living above the recommended level in the Pentagon is to—or the increase in the cost of living above what the Pentagon has proposed—is to target it. I‟ve been working on a formula, talking to the Pentagon, to get a targeted bonus for those who have been doing the most difficult work in places like Afghanistan. We are in a definitional phase right now in terms of how you would define those units, but I think that‟s a good approach to take in terms of growing above the cost of living right now.

With respect to medical care, we owe our people medical care and we owe our retirees medical care. That‟s one of the things my dad used to say again and again when he would talk about what his pay and allowances were. The formula—the moral contract—was that you would have medical care for the rest of your life. So I‟m not going to be the one to walk that back.

But there are areas here where we‟ve been doing, or the Pentagon has been doing some things that I think can be fairly examined. They‟re not huge cost items, but they do add up. Things, for instance, like these fellowship programs with think tanks. I started asking about that a couple of years ago. On the one hand we say we have a small force, and on the other we can take military officers and not only put them on loan to think tanks that use paid political positions, whether they say they do or not. So the taxpayer is not only paying this person‟s pay and allowances while they‟re over there, but they also pay tuition to keep these think tanks afloat. Seventeen thousand dollars a semester—quote/unquote—above and beyond their pay and allowances from the American taxpayer to a think tank. I don‟t think that‟s what our military people should be doing.

I have a question about military fellows in the Congress. I was on Cap Weinberger‟s staff the first time they sent a military fellow to the Congress, and I raised a constitutional issue on that. I said I think that‟s violative of the separation of powers. We take defense fellows on our staff, but we do not take uniformed military people as fellows on our staff. I don‟t think it‟s constitutionally correct.

I think the piece that USA Today did on the mentor program is eye opening. If you really start thinking about what that means. We have people at the very top who make, on retirement, make above $200,000 a year straight retirement, then they are brought in and paid a lot of money, you have the figures on those, essentially to give advice. That‟s in addition to other compensations they might receive in the defense industry, et cetera.

I think there are ways to examine those sorts of programs and not upset the apple cart for the people who are coming in and doing the hard work.

Q: Senator Webb, there‟s been some discussion recently about the way, the direction the Marine Corps is taking and has been taking since Iraq and Afghanistan. A sort of crisis of identity. Should they go back to their identity as an expeditionary “from the sea” force. And as a former Marine, I‟m curious to know what you think about that. Have they just become merely a second land army? Should they go back to their roots, so to speak?

A: The second most controversial article that I ever wrote was—if you go to my personal web page—JamesWebb.com—and click on “articles”—I wrote it for the Marine Corps Gazette in March of 1972 as a 25-year-old captain sitting in the Pentagon. Looking around the Pentagon I didn‟t see any Marines over there, very few Marines over there. So I started thinking about

service roles and missions that had come out of the National Security Act, and then the Key West Agreements in 1948, and how the Key West Agreements had implemented the National Security Act and the impact that it had on the Marine Corps.

The article was titled, “Roles and Missions—Time for a Change”. It set the Commandant of the Marine Corps‟ hair on fire. It was the first long article I‟d ever written, but it had a lot of repercussions down in the Tank at the time. My thesis in that article was that the Marine Corps has never been simply an amphibious force. The Marine Corps developed amphibious doctrine in between World War I and World War II because it had always survived by innovating and it had seen the threat that was coming out of an expansionist Japan and it had seen the disaster at Gallipoli in World War I, the first modern amphibious operation, and they studied it and they developed a doctrine and that became their doctrine in World War II.

But World War II was the only war the Marine Corps had ever fought exclusively as an amphibious force. We‟re lucky that they had the doctrine developed and the great masterpiece— the great maneuver warfare masterpiece in American history—in my opinion, is the Inchon Landing in the Korean War. But after the Inchon Landing, the Marine Corps basically went out and did the same thing. World War I, Korea, Vietnam. We took 103,000 killed or wounded in Vietnam, more total casualties than World War II in the Marine Corps. Three times as many dead as in Korea. Five times as many dead as in World War I. That was all ground campaigns.

So the Marine Corps needs to keep its amphibious capability, but it doesn‟t need to define itself simply by its amphibious capability. The trap that they fell into after World War II was that there was a big move to do away with the Marine Corps in the late 1940s, so in the context of the times it was a victory to have in the legislation that they would have that mission and that they would have three active duty divisions. That‟s on paper. So that kind of saved the Marine Corps from pretty much extinction, put them back on board ship as very small detachments—which was the big debate at the time.

What we‟re seeing right now is resource driven. I think people see that there are two fights going on with respect to the roles and missions of the Marine Corps. We eventually should and will, I think, reduce the size of the Army and the Marine Corps as we wind down in Iraq and Afghanistan. My view, and I‟ve said it many times over the past several years, is that we go through these cycles when we have long term land commitments where we ignore our strategic forces and our larger national strategy. We‟ve done that right now. So we‟ve had this expansion of the Army and have basically kept the Marine Corps up at 200,000 which is a large number historically when you look at what‟s happened in other services, that sort of thing.

So on the one hand you‟re going to have a fight among the ground forces to see what the size is going to be. The Army believed that it got cut back way too far after the end of the Cold War. When I was in the Pentagon in the 1980s, the Army had 206,000 soldiers in Germany alone.

And when that started winding back the divisional structure and everything got smaller. So the Army‟s trying to keep its numbers up.

The second fight is resources between the budget planners in the Navy and the Marine Corps for the department budget. That goes into amphibious shipping and those issues.

I think the Marine Corps has always proved itself by being ready to go. It is the only service that has a complete tactical package including close air support, fixed wing close air support, being ready to go on short notice and being a great innovator in terms of tactics, and quite frankly, I think they‟re the strongest service in terms of the paradigm that was put on individual leadership, those sorts of things. So that‟s really the fight, not whether they should recede back simply into the amphibious mission.

Q: On personnel costs I just wanted to develop Rick‟s question. You talked about things like fellowships and targeted bonuses, but that seems to be kind of essentially nibbling around the edges of cost reduction. Where do you stand on things like, there have been historical fights on the Hill, in the Pentagon, about things like Tricare co-pay increases and what not regarding proposals that could save essentially billions a year.

A: Well, health care writ large in the country is the big budget consumer. And we have been working on ways to try to make it more rational, but I don‟t think that the approach is to take after these programs. I‟m happy to listen to what Secretary Gates and his people are proposing. I know Secretary Gates has said that health care is the area that‟s in danger of eating up the rest of the budget. But I don‟t think that‟s the place to start in the Pentagon budget. I think we have to validate programs writ large, hardware programs writ large, try to get efficiencies into our procurement policies. It‟s always a problem. I was in the Pentagon when they created the Under Secretary for Acquisition, and it‟s never gotten off the ground in the right way.

I‟m happy to listen if they think they‟ve got an answer but I don‟t favor that right now.

Q: So you see then the acquisition arena to be better grounds for cost savings than personnel.

A: And force structure. You take a look at what it costs to put, this was one of the questions that I raised when we were increasing the size of the Army and the Marine Corps because of Afghanistan. You take a look at what it costs to put — we want to compensate all of our people well, but the end strength numbers drive costs. Do we really need this size of our ground forces if we are going to properly reshape our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan? I think you can cut back.

And there‟s another piece in this that I should have mentioned earlier, but the costs of the private security, private contractors who do quasi-military function, and particularly in theater. There‟s

in Iraq and Afghanistan still so many of them. Those are areas that if you're really starting to reshape this, those are the areas to look at.

Q: Sir, there is a bipartisan solution out there with the budget cuts. The wave seems to be that defense is going to have to give up a chunk over the next several years to make up this deficit debt question. So I‟m wondering if you think there is a time — This could happen the hard way or it could happen in an easier way. I‟m wondering if you think there‟s a time at which the Defense Department and the defense committees need to start taking a look at the roles and missions that the military actually perform. You talked a little bit about force structure, but I‟m wondering if there are also missions that the military is being asked to perform these days that in fact perhaps it shouldn‟t be doing any more, should consider rolling back a little bit. I was wondering if you‟d thought much about that.

A: We need to get out of Iraq. We need to reshape in as timely a way as possible what we‟re doing in Afghanistan. I‟m going to make a, I‟m planning on making a comprehensive speech on our entire national security approach probably early December. I‟m thinking that through right now.

With respect to budget and deficit reductions, I don‟t think the Pentagon should be sacrosanct. When I was in the Pentagon before we had the Gramm/Rudman provisions which mandated a five percent reduction in the overall federal budget, and when you adjusted for the programs that, the entitlement programs that were not going to be touched that was a ten percent cut in the budget of DOD. There are a lot of things that are going on in DOD that I think need more scrutiny.

Some of you remember what I did when I first came in with this Blackwater facility in San Diego. It was an eye opener. I can‟t do this alone here. This is the value of having been, I spent a good bit of my life as a writer and this is a value of being able to ask questions and stay on them and demand data, which is the whole thing involved in your JFCOM question. But I saw in the Wall Street Journal one day that, this goes to your question on where to dig, that San Diego County was protesting the construction of a Blackwater facility where Blackwater was going to train active duty sailors how to combat terrorists on board ship, how to fight compartment by compartment on a ship. And several lights went off in my brain.

First of all, I wanted to know was this program specifically funded by the Congress? I hadn‟t heard of it. I started calling around. How did this thing happen? If it wasn‟t authorized, how was it appropriated? And even if it was authorized and appropriated, who in their right mind would say that a civilian contractor should be training an active duty sailor? It‟s like Blackwater training me how to patrol when I was going through Basics at Quantico as a Marine.

So we asked some questions, we kind of got rolled, just like this JFCOM thing. My questions to Secretary Gates at the time were: Was this ever specifically authorized? How was it appropriated? And how do you justify the mission? I basically got one of these letters that said I‟ll have [inaudible] come and talk to you about it. So I said fine, I‟m putting all civilian nominations on hold until you answer my question. We got the answer to the question. The bottom line was: There‟s so much money moving into the Pentagon that through block appropriations — this money was moved through the Appropriations Committee — O&M money, no specific authorization for it. It gets into the Navy, they look around and they say all right, the needs of the service allow us to make a contract with Blackwater that‟s like $65 million, a $65 million contract, sequenced, but $65 million going into this with nothing from the Congress that — And as it turned out, the only reviewing authority was the SES directly above the program officer who authorized this program.

When we started asking the questions, these programs weren‟t even going to the Secretary of the Navy unless they were $78 million or more. So you can imagine the money that was being thrown around in the Pentagon for these kinds of programs. I followed up with Ray Mabus [Secretary of the Navy, May 2009] when he came in. I raised it with him, asking that they take a look at it. We are now in the process of trying to do that, nail this down a little bit, but Lord knows, there ought to be policies on this. If there are policies on this there are billions that can be squeezed out of the DOD budget without hurting our national defense.

Q: The White House is conducting its Afghan assessment in December. Tell us a little bit about what you‟re hearing about that, both in terms of substance and the process of it, and also what will Congress‟ role be?

A: An interesting front page story in the Post this morning about some level of frustration. The difficulty for people in the Congress, specifically me, even though I‟ve been around the military all my life, is the process is so opaque that, the actual combat process is so opaque. A good bit of that is the way that the reporters are embedded these days. It‟s been a funny cycle for me to watch because in Vietnam you could be writing for the Dallas Shopping Center News and you could get your papers and they didn‟t come out where I was but they were able to bounce around quite a bit. When I was a journalist in Beirut we had 300 journalists covering 1,200 Marines. A fixed position, basically. Maybe they moved around a little bit. But it was terrible.

When I saw the pool concept in the „80s come out about that, I actually thought that was a really good idea to get some discipline in the process so you weren‟t interfering with the mission.

Then I was in Afghanistan, I was an embed in ‟04, and we got around pretty well in ‟04. But I think you all here know this far better than I do, with the level of violence outside the wire potentially for journalists is so high that it‟s just difficult to get — it was difficult for me to get any actual feedback to see what‟s going on.

Again, we‟re at the mercy of the facts as presented to us which makes it very hard to evaluate.

I laid down a couple of markers a year and a half ago when they came in and announced this policy and the two questions that I asked [Gen. David A.] Petraeus, General [Stanley] McChrystal, Admiral Mullen, were how — We‟re putting ourselves in a really difficult situation in that we, the measures of success are conditions that we don‟t control, that we can‟t really bring about on the battlefield. One is, can you get a viable national government in Afghanistan? Can a viable government grow out of this structure that was a victory after ‟01 when they met in Bonn and decided this national government structure? But in terms of the history of Afghanistan, can you actually get a viable government?

The other thing is, can you get a national military and police of the size that they are contemplating in a country that‟s never had that before? I asked General Petraeus what was the largest Afghani national army, actual viable national army we had looked at on our staff and I think the number was about 80,000, in history. And we‟re looking at at least tripling that.

So we‟re sort of at the mercy of events that we don‟t control, and then what happens?

I just said I‟m not going to come forward and make a critical judgment on this until they come forward with the December review, but there comes a time when you have to ask yourself, we all have to ask ourselves what is the benefit to the nation in this approach? That‟s really the question that I have. When you look at the other challenges that we have in terms of security and also in terms of our economy.

Q: Following up on that, what are your expectations of December? We‟ve heard repeatedly that they aren‟t going to plan any major changes to policy. That the timing of this review isn‟t clear, how it‟s going to be divulged. You‟re talking about speaking in the beginning of January, will we know anything in the beginning of January about the December review?

A: I‟ll be speaking probably the beginning of December.

Q: So you‟re going to wait until December to speak, or —

A: I feel comfortable speaking about how we should be reorienting our national security policy. And in terms of the review, before I would give my own attempt at evaluating what‟s going on, I‟ll wait and hear them out.

But we can all say right now there‟s a serious question about the implications for the true national interests of the United States and continuing to do this when we have other issues we have to look at.

Q: On the very first question you said that you saw more transparency during Vietnam. I‟m wondering, do you see this lack of transparency as a result of kind of bureaucratic incompetence, of is this obstructionism?

A: Let me be clear about what I was saying. I saw more openness from the Pentagon in terms of data sharing and these sorts of things. This was 1977. I know there were difficulties during the Vietnam War. Someone who was a journalist in the Vietnam War to say they lied to me in ‟67, you're wrong. But in terms of working with the Congress, asking for data and receiving it when I was committee counsel, it was different.

When I was at the Pentagon in the 1980s it was different. Part of it was the balance between the Congress and the executive branch. The Congress was much stronger than it is now. Post 9/11 has impacted that with on the one hand national security concerns. People were concerned after 9/11. And I think there‟s been a hesitance in the Congress and in some cases in the media as well to really aggressively question the Pentagon because people don‟t want to be accused of being unpatriotic or anti-military.

By the way, another piece of that, when I was working in the Congress in the 1970s and even in the 1980s, the majority of the people in the Congress had served in the military. It was probably easier for them to question without being criticized.

Q: So obstructionism isn‟t the right word. You don‟t think there‟s an active intent by the Pentagon to not provide data or make things less transparent.

A: There‟s a lot of slow rolling going on. [Laughter]. And it requires persistence. And it needs to stop. That‟s really what‟s going on with the decisions that I had to make with this JFCOM. It‟s a lack of respect. And to the media. We need to have that kind of balance in our system.

Q: Following up on something you said earlier, that you think it‟s likely and needed that the Army and the Marine Corps will be kind of scaled back, and that we‟ve lost some of our strategic posture. What do you think the Navy and the Air Force‟s role is because they haven‟t seen much growth, or the Army and the Marines?

A: It‟s kind of funny. When people constantly debate whether the Marine Corps should exist. I grew up in the Air Force and I used to have this argument with my dad about why should there be an Air Force — I‟m not saying there shouldn‟t be an Air Force, but when you get into roles and missions, my dad would say the Marine Corp‟s a second Army. Wait a minute. The Army‟s got an air force, the Navy‟s got an air force, the Marine Corps‟ got an air force, why are you guys out here?

But I think the Air Force, first of all, the missile programs. My dad was a pioneer in the missile programs. Our strategic posture around the world. I think in terms of tactical, high level tactical weaponry, we‟re seeing some really good results from unmanned which I think is in some ways worrisome for the Air Force when they look at manpower issues. But there‟s low level tactical, that you need a pilot. There‟s space-cyber.

I‟ve been a proponent of rolling the Navy for many years. When I was commissioned in 1968 we had 930 combatants in the United States Navy, and we also had the British Navy and the French Navy in terms of side by side operations. After Vietnam the Navy went down to 479 ships. We were wearing our people out because we had just inherited the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf in addition to the Pacific. We got up to 568. When I was Secretary of the Navy I resigned rather than see a reduction. The day I resigned I said I don‟t want to become the father of the 350 ship Navy. Actually, 350 ships looks pretty good right now. We‟re down to 286 or something. About 286. Trying to grow to 313.

I spend a lot of time in Asia. I‟ve been writing and talking about China for many years. In fact it‟s rather ironic, you all have been following the Senkaku Islands incident. I‟ve been writing and talking to that for a long time. In fact the last debate that I had with George Allen on October 9, 2006, we were allowed to ask each other one question. I asked him what he thought we should do about the Senkaku Islands, and he didn‟t know where the Senkaku Islands were. And half of the journalists were in the restroom Googling how do you spell that? [Laughter].

The concern that I have had with respect to that part of the world is when the Navy recedes to the point that it has, it‟s very difficult for us to communicate in a viable way the fact that we can stay. Our strategic interests in maintaining the balance in that region. And it‟s taken a couple of incidents over the past year or so to really wake up the second tier countries in that region. They are very awake now. I‟ve been meeting with them a lot.

But our Navy is the great communicator of our national interests, and particularly in that part of the world. We have so many large economies coming together and going through the waterways, a lot of oil passing through it as well as trade, et cetera. You can see what happens when we don‟t have [inaudible]. China is really very vigorous right now. That‟s the way that I would see that.

Q: We‟re currently discussing with some of those countries in Southeast Asia increasing our presence there. It would be primarily naval. Is that something you would be for? It seems like that‟s what you're suggesting.

A: What we have to do in that part of the world, and I used to spend a good bit of time there before I came to the Senate. I‟m chairman of the East Asia Subcommittee on Foreign Relations. I have visited every country in the Southeast Asia mainland, I‟ve met with the national leaders of

every country in the Southeast Asian mainland. I can say I‟m the only person in the United States government that‟s met with every leader because I‟ve met with [Gen.] Than Shwe of Burma. He wouldn‟t meet with anybody else.

But the way to communicate that we‟re going to stay is first of all to be doing it, to be showing up and strengthening our relations, invigorate our commerce. ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] is a big part of this. Six hundred and fifty million people, ten countries. They just signed a free trade agreement with China in January. We need to invigorate our trade. We need to demonstrate to the other countries—obviously Japan, Korea, Japan during this—when the Okinawan base issue got very hot, right before the Chianan incident.

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