Volume 36, Number 16 · October 26, 1989
Whistling in the Pentagon
By Nicholas Lemann
The Pentagonists: An Insider's View of Waste, Mismanagement, and Fraud in Defense Spending
by A. Ernest Fitzgerald
Houghton Mifflin, 344 pp., $19.95
New Weapons, Old Politics: America's Military Procurement Muddle
by Thomas L. McNaugher
Brookings Institution, 244 pp., $14.95 (paper)
A. Ernest Fitzgerald is surely not the only American author who thinks that there is a conspiracy dedicated to destroying him, but he is unusual in his willingness to discuss it cheerfully and unself-consciously. In Fitzgerald's case, the conspirators are not only military officers and defense contractors (who understandably want him out of his job as a troublemaking cost analyst for the Air Force), but also members of Congress, Cabinet officers, public interest lobbyists, White House staff members, and several presidents. The thought that he might not be worth all these people's trouble seems not to have occurred to him. At one point in his book he approvingly quotes a friend who heard that a pledge not to leak information was being presented for signature to Pentagon employees: 'My God! Reagan's carpet-bombing the Constitution just to simplify going after a few leakers. Mostly you.'
Review, 3811 words
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