Forward Observer: A Whistleblower's Lament

"I've been defeated," said the Pentagon's whistleblower in looking back at his 40 years of trying to make procurement of Air Force weapons more efficient and less costly. "I've lost. I'm 80 years old. I'm not going to win this year or next."

So lamented Ernie Fitzgerald right after a Senate retirement ceremony earlier this month where Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, hailed his efforts to curb wasteful spending from a management post inside the hostile Air Force. Procurement is less efficient today than ever, Fitzgerald told me.

"The incentive now is to spend as much as you can," not get taxpayers more bang for their buck. And almost no one in Congress gives a damn, he said.

"The overdogs in Congress should say the magic word 'no'" as the military asks them to throw good money toward bad weapons that do not perform to specifications and cost far more than agreed upon when contracts were let. "If they can't say no," said Fitzgerald of today's lawmakers, "the overdogs should at least say, 'Wait a minute.' Instead they say, 'Don't you boys need some more money?'"

In the late 1960s, Fitzgerald dared to think he was getting somewhere. He revealed to Congress' Joint Economic Committee the huge cost overruns on the Air Force C-5A transport plane. The revelations helped launch Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., then the panel's chairman, on a campaign against government waste.

But President Nixon found Fitzgerald's speaking of truth to power unacceptable. "Fire the SOB," Nixon ordered in 1969. So Defense Secretary Melvin Laird did.

But Fitzgerald refused to sheath his sword. He fought to get his job back. He needed, but could not afford, the help of a good Washington lawyer since he was off the Pentagon payroll. He had heard about a do-good lawyer in town, John Bodner; Fitzgerald met with him and persuaded him to take his case against the government.

"He knew right from wrong," said Bodner, recalling his initial meeting with Fitzgerald. "He had a great sense of duty. He wouldn't bend. I told him that in taking on the government he was going to be battered from left and right. Ernie told me, 'John, don't worry. I will stay the course.'"

And he did.

Fitzgerald went for three years without government pay after being fired in 1969. He wrote books to spotlight the practices of those he called "the high priests of waste."

Bodner and his law associates kept fighting the government on Fitzgerald's behalf.

Finally, after prolonged combat, they won a big victory. A federal judge ordered the government to give Fitzgerald his old job back and pay him for the years he was out.

But the Air Force hierarchy refused to listen to its in-house heretic. Fitzgerald found himself shouting down a well inside the Pentagon but spoke his mind to lawmakers or anybody else who would listen about the sad state of defense contracting.

Fitzgerald told me that truth tellers -- he believes anyone in government who is labeled a whistleblower is doomed -- cannot hope to get justice unless they have legal help, which costs far more than most public servants can afford. He figures he received at least $2 million in pro bono legal help during his 37-year war with the government.

Fitzgerald and Bodner believe truth tellers should have access to pro bono legal help beyond what is available to them. Congress, a private foundation, a federation of law firms, law schools -- somebody, somewhere -- should step in to help truth tellers get justice as Fitzgerald and Bodner see it.

Whatever the vehicle, the attorney siding with David against Goliath must have a sense of mission, the two veterans agreed. Bodner had a sense of mission about righting wrongs long before he met Fitzgerald. The lawyer gave pro bono help to blacks in the Deep South in the early years of the civil rights movement, sometimes at great personal risk.

He successfully defended a 15-year-old black girl from a little town outside of Pascagoula, Miss., who had been arrested for using washing machines reserved for whites in a commercial establishment open to the public. "She told me, 'I have a right to use the good machines,'" Bodner said. After the local judge ruled in her favor, a burly state trooper came up to Bodner and warned him to get out of town before sundown, throwing a big elbow into his ribs to underscore the warning.

Although defending Fitzgerald did not include physical violence, Bodner said he was mentally shocked at the looseness of Air Force contracts. "Today's bidding process is not real," Bodner said after examining it closely. "The costs of all your major Air Force programs have gone out of sight."

This is what Fitzgerald has been saying for decades, to no avail. His family gathered around him recently and said he had been swimming against the tide long enough. Time to quit before the work and frustration kill you, they told him.

So what does this would-be dragon killer do now that he has left the battlefield? "I'm going to get my body repaired," said Fitzgerald, who has suffered two strokes. Nell, his wife of 50 years, thinks she knows better. "You're dreaming," she told me, "if you think he's going to stay around the house. He's going to be stirring up a ruckus now and then."