A Matter of Trust

"Gentlemen, the credibility gap between you and Congress is as wide as the Grand Canyon."
-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

cCain spoke those words in October 1996. He was addressing then-Secretary of Defense William Perry and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili. Perry and Shalikashvili had just testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the Pentagon's plan to send additional troops to Bosnia. A year earlier, the two had told Congress unequivocally that U.S. military involvement in Bosnia would last no more than one year.

McCain was angry. Many in Congress and the military had doubted that troops would be out of Bosnia in such a short time frame, but until late September, senior military leaders had insisted publicly the withdrawal would happen on schedule in December. The senators were particularly irate because they had learned the day before that Adm. Leighton Smith, former commander of NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, had months earlier received orders instructing him to plan for a longer involvement in the region. Shalikashvili denied knowledge of any such orders. "Someone is not leveling," said then-Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine.

Fast forward two years to Sept. 29, 1998. "This is an almost Orwellian experience," McCain told the military's top uniformed leaders at another Armed Services Committee hearing. Again, he was furious. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry Shelton and the service chiefs had just painted a bleak picture of the military's fighting capacity, citing serious problems that could cost as much as $25 billion a year over the next several years to fix. With the exception of the testimony of Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak, who has long maintained the Corps needs more money, their remarks contrasted sharply with what they had told the committee just seven months earlier. Then, they had insisted there were no serious problems with military readiness, and said the services had no immediate need for more money above the Pentagon's $270 billion annual budget.

This time around, Shelton, Krulak, Army chief Gen. Dennis Reimer, Air Force chief Gen. Michael Ryan, and Navy chief Adm. Jay Johnson described the difficulty of keeping troops primed for combat, the costly challenge of maintaining aging weapons and the services' inability to recruit and retain the most qualified personnel, especially pilots. None of it was news to the Senators, some of whom had been sounding the alarm for well over a year. What was news was that the four-star service leaders were finally saying publicly what many believed they had long known privately. With U.S. troops still deployed in Bosnia, and with no withdrawal in sight, lower-ranking officers and lawmakers have been concerned about the peacekeeping missions' long-term effect on readiness. Thus far, the Bosnia operation has consumed nearly $10 billion in military funding.

"There were many of us and many, many, many outside experts that predicted what was going to happen with accuracy, as a result of talking with the men and women in the military, in the field--talking," McCain said. "This exodus of pilots didn't begin seven months ago. You know that. We didn't come up 18,000 enlisted people short just in the last seven months.

"The fact is that you, with the exception of the Marine Corps, were not candid to this member--I can't speak for the entire committee--about the problems and challenges that we faced," McCain said.

Sen. Robert Smith, R-N.H., was equally blunt: "Again and again, we hear from people under your chain telling us things about problems, and they get glossed over in the statements [coming out of the Pentagon]. We're not getting direct answers until today."

A Rock and a Hard Place

The hearing was a stunning departure from business as usual at the Armed Services Committee, where custom dictates congenial displays of patriotism and mutual respect. It was the most contentious session in memory, says Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Should the chiefs have come forward sooner? That's hard to say without knowing what went on in internal discussions beforehand," he says.

Senior military leaders are in a tough spot, says Lawrence Korb, who was assistant secretary of Defense for manpower, reserve affairs and logistics during the Reagan administration. "They have to be loyal to the commander in chief. We can't have generals and admirals running around questioning their commander in chief. At the same time, when a member of Congress asks a question, they have to provide the best professional advice they can provide."

"When [Gen. Shalikashvili] told Congress we would be out of Bosnia in a year I couldn't believe that. I don't know a single person who thought we could get in and out of the Balkans in a year. It's the same thing with readiness," he says.

Korb makes a distinction between the military's appointed civilian officials and its uniformed leaders. Civilian leaders are there to implement the administration's policies. If they can't support those policies, then they should resign, he says.

"A military officer, on the other hand, works for the country. They are expected-obligated--to provide their professional opinions," whether or not those opinions are in consonance with the administration's policies, Korb says.

"The [service chiefs] are caught between a rock and a hard place," one Senate aide acknowledges. "The administration's position was, 'there's no more money for defense.' It's very difficult for them to then stand up and say they need more money. They feel they have to salute and move forward with what they get."

Days before the service chiefs testified before the Senate, they met privately with President Clinton at Fort McNair in Washington. It was after that meeting the administration changed its position on the issue of Defense spending.

"When are they supposed to play as team players with the administration and when are they supposed to sound the alarm? It's a good question. Maybe that's what they were doing at Fort McNair," says the Senate aide. Still, it is troubling that Shelton and the service chiefs said readiness problems weren't showing up until very recently, when in fact, they seem to have been a long time in the making, the aide says: "Either they're measuring the wrong things, which means they have poor management systems, or the truth is not getting up the chain of command to them, or they were fronting for the administration. However you look at it, it's not a good situation." Shelton's office failed to return repeated calls seeking the general's comments for this story.

The question of whether senior military leaders are as straightforward as they should be goes beyond the issue of readiness and the Bosnia mission. In November 1997, Rep. Curtis Weldon, R-Pa., stunned many when he publicly told Air Force Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, "I can't trust you." Weldon's angry outburst took place at a hearing of the House National Security Committee's research and development panel on missile defense. Weldon, using data provided earlier by the Pentagon, had proposed increasing the missile defense budget, but at the hearing, Lyles backed away from the data his staff had provided and insisted the organization didn't need more money. Aides say Lyles was under pressure to support the administration's spending plan. Military officers were shocked by Weldon's comments, which many felt crossed the line of propriety.

'A Disconnect'

Lawmakers and their aides aren't the only ones who wonder whether senior leaders are telling the whole truth. When Korb, who is now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, visits the military war colleges and talks to uniformed people around the country, he finds officers are frustrated and convinced senior leaders are not always being honest. "When the people at the top are saying things the people at the bottom know not to be true, it has a bad effect. No doubt about it. The people in the field certainly know whether or not they have spare parts," he says.

Says one Army major who last year completed a tour in Bosnia with a combat support unit, "There's a disconnect between the guys on the ground and the guys at the top. There are some pretty hard realities on the ground." The officer described a serious shortage of spare parts, equipment that was poorly maintained, and soldiers who had lost their combat edge. "I was shocked and dismayed by what I found. And no one would tell the emperor he had no clothes. Soldiers were burned out, equipment was in terrible shape, and when I got down range, basic stuff most of us had taken for granted in the '80s was not being done. Most of it was little stuff, like vehicle load plans not being used, [preventative maintenance] not being done to standard." But other issues were more serious, he says, like soldiers not being adequately trained: "Lots of dead guys waiting to happen."

Not all officers share this dire view. Lt. Col. Tom Wilhelm, a former combat unit leader in Bosnia, says the support he received from senior leaders was superb. "Everyone from the generals on down gave us brilliant support. If things got hot, we were sure that our leadership would respond, and let us respond, with assured force. And that, instead of concerns with an exit strategy and the rhetorical determinants of military vs. political victory, is what counted with us."

"Are troops losing faith in leadership? No," says Wilhelm. "Do they still trust their leaders? Absolutely yes. Is there a sense of disillusionment in the ranks? Not with the uniformed leadership. It may be quite unfair, even wrong, but I believe it is the civilian leadership which is the . . . inconsistent element in the minds of soldiers."

"At worst, we think the uniformed leadership are playing their hands, sometimes unsuccessfully, in an environment naturally hostile to the military," Wilhelm says. "Which makes them the underdogs, and, God knows, American fighting men love the underdogs."

Red Flags

It's difficult to determine the extent to which service members feel disaffected with their leadership, civilian or uniformed, but there is enough anecdotal evidence to raise concerns in some officers' minds. For instance, dozens of troops have refused the Pentagon's recent order to be vaccinated against Anthrax because they don't trust service leaders' assertions that the vaccinations are safe. While the numbers so far represent a tiny proportion of troops required to receive the vaccination, some officers privately say they worry it might become a trend, and one that doesn't bode well for an organization founded on unquestioned authority.

Last year, a survey of young Navy officers found only one in 10 aspire to command. One reason is that many young officers lack confidence in senior leaders, according to the survey's authors, retired Rear Adm. John Natter and retired Navy Lts. Alan Lopez and Doyle K. Hodges, who published the results in the October issue of Proceedings, a publication of the private U.S. Naval Institute.

One survey respondent wrote: "Our squadrons can hardly fly: We don't have the parts, the aircraft or the flying hours." Though senior officers see the problems, "We don't see any action," the officer wrote. Such feelings aren't confined to the Navy. A shortage of hundreds of pilots has become a cause for alarm in the Air Force.

In a letter to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that is making its way around the Army via e-mail, the senior noncommissioned officer of one of the Army's most elite units describes why he has decided to retire four years early. While he credits the service chiefs with being "truly great men dealing with very complicated issues during some tough times," he cites a lack of "trust in leadership" as a serious problem. "Many feel we are simply pawns with little value until we are needed. Promises are made and quickly broken based on political climate. Unneeded programs are pushed and money not used to take care of the force."

Those concerns reflect what many believe is a much larger problem the military has not yet fully come to terms with--the end of the Cold War. For the Pentagon, the demise of the Soviet Union has meant the absence of a clear enemy and a well-defined mission. The military's readiness problems are not the result of insufficient funding, says Krepinevich, but of an inadequate structure for operating without a Soviet-like enemy. The military's continued investment in the legacy systems that won the Cold War does not leave it well-suited for the missions of the future, he says. As a result, DoD is unable to balance new requirements against its current structure and modernization goals. This imbalance is keenly felt by the rank and file, especially those in units that have been run ragged as the military responds to the untraditional demands of a new security environment.

"I think there is this deep undercurrent that is approaching the surface. Military people are tired--consciously or subconsciously--of not understanding how we are being used," says Marine Capt. Chris Seiple, a former staff member on the congressionally mandated National Defense Panel, which published in 1997 its recommendations for reforming the military.

"To some degree, many--and not just [those] in the military--still understand and judge this age of transition we live in by the [standards of the] last strategic era--that national security equals the military, which equals war-fighting only," Seiple says. "If leaders can't articulate the military's mission, troops become disaffected."

Zero Defects

The Army's own survey data show a decline in the percentage of officers who feel senior leaders make decisions in the best interests of the service. When asked last year whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement "I believe the Army leadership will make the best decisions to maintain a quality Army," 59 percent of field grade officers and 62 percent of company grade officers, respectively, agreed. That was a drop from when the same question was asked in 1996, when 67 percent of field grade officers and 71 percent of company grade officers agreed with the statement.

One analyst who worked on the survey says there appears to be a growing perception among soldiers that the Army has a "zero defects" climate, where any mistake or embarrassing incident on an officer's watch can be a career killer. At the same time, however, surveys show officers feel more confident they will be promoted, a perception that would seem to contradict the zero defects climate.

The zero defects perception, justified or not, contributes to a fear of taking risks, and creates a test of integrity, says Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, commandant of the Army War College. Showing courage in a bureaucracy sometimes requires different skills from those required on the battlefield, says Scales. "One is physical courage, the other is moral courage, but I think they're related. Soldiers who are brave on the battlefield tend to be ethically centered. Quite often, heroes do fall on their swords, which may make them inclined to take positions that don't always enhance their careers," he says.

To address such leadership issues, this month the Army War College will host a symposium focusing on ethics and values in leadership. The symposium was prompted in part by discussions Scales had with colleagues who are concerned the military needs to give more attention to promoting values-based leadership. Too often the military wrongly considers ethics and morals only in religious terms, he says. The symposium is an attempt to put those values, which are so central to effective leadership, in a secular context, he says.

It is an issue Scales has thought much about. When his two daughters became officers, he gave each of them a copy of Once An Eagle, the 1968 bestseller by Anton Myrer, who served in the Marines during World War II. Scales wanted his daughters to know what they should strive for as officers.

The epic story about war and military life has become a leadership primer in military circles. The hero is Sam Damon, a deeply moral and courageous officer who struggles to make decisions for the good of his troops, even when those decisions will hurt his own career. Damon's antagonist is another officer, Courtney Massengale, who is a brilliant but self-serving careerist.

The novel is widely read and loved among men and women in uniform because it not only embodies the ideals of military leadership in the character of Sam Damon, but it depicts the struggle many officers feel within themselves, says one Navy officer. As the services get smaller and promotion seems more difficult, it becomes harder to make the right decisions when those decisions could hurt your career.

At a recent forum of military personnel in Washington, a member of the audience asked if the current pressure-cooker climate in the Army wasn't producing more Courtney Massengales than Sam Damons. It's a question many officers are beginning to ask themselves.