When the Pentagon Was for Sale: Inside America's Biggest Defense Scandal

This book does a nice job of summarizing one of the most costly scandals of our times. It completely validates Eisenhower's fear that one day there would be a president who was either unable or unwilling to check the latent greed and corruption of the military industrial complex. That president was Ronald Reagan and, as tax payers, we are still paying for the debts that were piled up in this fiasco. However, what's most striking about this book is that virtually no one you talk to has even the slightest clue about what went on. Years after it's publication, I'm writing the SECOND review of a book about a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that led to the conviction of several high-level public officials. Ask a group of people to raise their hands if they've heard of Monica Lewinsky and every hand in the room goes up. Ask them to raise their hand if they've heard of Melvyn Paisley, the Under-Secretary of the Navy who admitted to taking hundreds of thousands of dollar in bribes, and NO ONE knows who you're talking about?! What's wrong with that picture? The real kicker here is that when you read the book you learn that the corporations who were bribing our officials to secure huge defense contracts often turned around and included the cost of those bribes in the budget for those projects. In other words; we were paying corporations to bribe our own officials to get control of often useless projects that we were over-billed for. How's that for messed up? The crux of this whole debacle is best summed up in the re-telling of the David Stockman story of his showdown with Caspar Weinberger in the Oval Office. Stockman, Reagan's economic guru, was there to convince Reagan that, in the name of fiscal sanity, the build up of the military must be scaled back. He came armed with several charts and graphs to make his case. Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, showed up to make the case for more military spending armed with a poster that depicted two soldiers. One soldier was strong, robust and confident. The other was skinny and bespectacled. Weinberger kicked off the meeting by explaining to Reagan that if we continue to spend huge amounts of money on the military we would get the strong, robust soldier. If not, we would get the skinny soldier. As Reagan stared at the poster, nodding thoughtfully, Stockman looked down at the charts and graphs in his lap and realized that his chances of trumping Weinberger's ploy were slim and none. Sure enough, Weinberger and his poster carried the day and the spending continued unabated. So what can you expect with that kind of leadership? And what can we expect from voters who are overly concerned with Oval Office hanky-panky and lionize a clueless president who's ineptitude helped greedy dirtbags rob them blind. As you sow...