Television for serious readers. On cspan they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subjects. Book tv weekends, they bring you author after author and its like the work of fascinating people. I love book tv and im a cspan fan. This is book tv on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. Starting shortly, former Washington Post reporter provides a history of the military industrial complex. Sarah discusses the cost of Higher Education on book tv after words at nine pm eastern. At 10, he takes a critical look at the official crash of twa 81996. We wrap up six. We wrap up our sunday primetime lineup at 1115 with the recent appearance on cspan washington journal. Talking about his book on the supreme court, supremely partisan. That that all happens next on cspan to book tv. First up, heres marlene mccartney. Okay, will begin our program now. Can you hear me okay . Okay. Good afternoon and early good afternoon and thank you to everyone who came to our program today and a special welcome to our speaker, molly mccartney. My name is david im an english professor and i will be introducing todays program which is part of the 18th annual literary festival. In my mind, fall for the book is the best cocurricular and extracurricular extracurricular event we have here at george mason. In fact it is not a close second. If you havent done so, please silence your cell phone. Also, at the end of the program, help improve the festival by filling out the survey that that is there at your chair. This information is this the book staff as they plan future programs so thank you in advance for doing this. Following todays lecture there were be a book signing at the book sales table right outside the door of this room. Thats a Service Provided by our campus bookstore. In addition to the book, the event is cosponsored by the fairfax democrats, it would not be possible without such sponsors. The book featured today is the product of two distinguished career journalists. James mccartney, now deceased and his wife molly mccartney. For nearly four decades, as a reporter for the Chicago Daily news and later, he covered the principal institutions of our federal government with the special emphasis on war and conflict which he covered him more than 30 countries. Molly has worked as a reporter for more than 30 years including 14 years at the Washington Post. After her husbands death in 2011, molly continued the research and writing of the book that he was working on in his retirement. The coauthored product, americas war machine, vested interest, endless conflict is a carefully researched and masterfully written description and analysis of the present day complex and greatly enlarged version of what president eisenhower named the cautionary remarks as the militaryindustrial complex. Americas war machine is the most important and timely book and we are very fortunate today to be able to learn from its coauthor. Please give a warm welcome to molly mccartney. Thank you very much for that introduction and thank you for coming. Im going to use a slide to illustrate some of the points that i want to make, but i want to begin with a description of what im going to talk about and then well go into the details. As he said, this book is based on Jim Mccartneys experience which included his service in world war ii on the frontline and in germany. Of course his reporting over more than 30 years, starting in the early 1960s and continuing until his death in 2011. Because this book represents his thinking, i want to first tell you about him and his background, how he came to go into the newspaper business, his style of reporting and what he learned from his front row seat to history. I will also talk briefly about how i came to finish the book, find an agent and a firstclass publisher. Then we will talk about the point of the book which talks about some of the things that were mentioned in the introduction. Jim wanted this book to be an introduction to the ongoing washington debate about war and peace. He wanted people to know what he had learned. He wanted people to care about this issue as much as he did. He wanted people to understand what he had come to understand. He wanted them to know why its important, how it affects your pocketbook and why everyone should care about this issue. Im going to begin with this quotation. Naturally, the common Common People dont want war. Thats understood. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Thats easy. All you have to do is tell them theyre being attacked. Denounce patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. The person who said they knew something about taking a country to war, he understood militarism and how to whip people into a patriotic frenzy that can lead to war. Does anybody know who said this . If not i will tell you it was the the cheney. It was herman goring, the nazi war criminal who was convicted in 1946. What he described as what dwight eisenhower, in his 1961 speech calls the militaryindustrial complex. Its what Jim Mccartney and i watched expand in the year since then into a war machine that has led this country into endless conflict. Most recently and ongoing, think of the push for the u. S. To go deeper into syria. In fact, think of the in less conflict, the never ending war and covert action in which the u. S. Has been involved in since the end of world war ii. How does this happen . How in the world can anyone suggest that the u. S. Military is undersized, unready and underfunded when together we spend more than the rest of the world combined on our military and national defense. Lets start by looking at the vested interest that results in actually leads to u. S. Wars and interventions. President eisenhower named two of the elements that are part of this machine. What he said, you can see again, this was a great quote in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence, whether or unsought by the military. The potential for the disastrous ride exists and will persist. Weve got to element with eisenhower. The military and the industry, the beltway bandit and the contractors as they are known. Jim mccartney covered that speech. In his story, at the the time, he was working for the Chicago Daily news but he was based in washington. It explained in detail what eisenhower was talking about. For example, our 25 billiondollar tugofwar, thats the kind of money that was involved then, today it would be much bigger numbers. There were five parts to the series he wrote. Again you can see the pressure is on as the contractors work for the approval of the weapons they want to build. It went on to talk about how lawmakers, the military rivalries that are involved and how these defense pressures really come down to a oneway road. So, what we know from eisenhower s there are two elements to this. Those stories by the way that ive just shown you led to jim winning a scholarship to study at Harvard University for a year and dig deeper into this issue. It also led him to ultimately decide that america has an addiction to war. His passion to the tell the story grew out of his own story. Is anybody in here 18 years old. Okay. In 1943, we were in the middle of world war ii. The world was on fire. The first thing thats happened is you are drafted immediately into the u. S. Military. Now, think about that. Maybe women too. The innocence of that. It is hard to capture because one of the things that always struck me about it is hes 18 years old and he just graduated from high school p he was drafted and he doesnt know how to drive a car. Im a texan. I started driving when i was 14, but this was the 1950s. In the 1940s, gasoline was rationed. Rubber was ration, cars were not as common as they are today. If your family had a car you certainly didnt turn it over to your teenage son to go driving. He didnt know how to drive. His parents drove him to the railroads and dacian. His older son had already been drafted. After basic training, he gets on a ship with 5000 other troops and cross the atlantic and they end up. [inaudible] this was for five months after dday. He was not part of the normandy invasion were so many people died. He was part of the third wave. They get to Southern France and that their day to and they get into trucks where they are brought north 400 miles. This is november and they havent been able to give him winter clothes. They get out of the truck that they can hear the guns going on. He sees a mountain trail with some men caring stretchers. As they get closer its clear what has happened. The stretchers have a g. I. Who has stepped on a shoe bomb which was the iud of the day. with this kind of strategy. Now, he never stepped on a shoe bomb but he was in combat under fire every day trying to stay alive as they are pushing the germans back into germany. They all thought they were going to die, and many did. He thought he was going to die. But in late march of 1945, this was only a few months before the war actually ended he was hit by shrapnel in germany they were walking down the road and if you dont know where the german 88 days, i found a picture you can see the picture on the left is the time he entered the military and then after two years in france. He was about 6 feet tall and at that point he probably weighed 120 pounds because you dont get a lot to eat when you are on the frontline. So the way they work is they shoot the shells over the enemy on the other side. They have great distance and when it got close it would explode because it hits something or ihit somethingor il everywhere. So if you heard them coming you took cover. And on this particular day they were walking down a road there was no cover and they all threw themselves into a ditch tha butt hit them anyway so he was hit and airlifted to a hospital but recovered with no permanent injuries. He goes back and enrolls in Michigan State on the g. I. Bill, gets involved in the college newspaper, falls in love with journalism and then after graduating from Michigan State enrolls in a Masters Program at northwestern. He ran out of money after it was used up and again this is Middle America in the late 40s and early 50s. Not a lot of student loans. His father offered to loan him, not to give him a loan him the money to finish which he took the money and pai paid the debtk 5 a week or Something Like that. So he ends up as a reporter for the news and in 1960, he gets sent to washington to be part of the bureau and thats how he came to cover eisenhowers 1961 speech. He liked to tell people how he heard the speech. He heard eisenhower told the speech. When you were covering that speech no one was in the office of president eisenhower. You either have advanced text or youve followed along and work your story. In listening to this, he also talked about the economy and about the militaryindustrial complex. His reaction was what is this guy talking about, what is the militaryindustrial complex, how does that work, why is it dangerous and why should i care . So those were the questions in his mind that as a reporter in washington he wasnt in the position to ask questions and get answers and thats what led to the series of stories i showed you earlier. 1968 he moved from the chicago news to the bureau, at huge chain and he became the National Security reporter for the papers that included the miami herald, the mercury, every paper that you could imagine out of washington. Nothing in the washington pos post. And he began to cover National Security. He was like the Foreign Service because they had no bureaus at that point. He was in the non and in and out of the soviet union on a regular basis. Saudi arabia, all over the middle east. Now remember there were no cell phones. There were no computers. He had a small portable typewriter he carried along with a bottle of whiskey with the operators to make sure your story got back to washington. Briefly we will get to the bookt in a minute about these are a few of his credentials. One of the last ones would have been between gorbachev but these arwere some of the stories. This is from the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic where president johnson sent troops into you can see already the theme of the stories. Then we have the story where hes reporting and again, reykjavik. This is a column he wrote about does america loves peace as much as we think. The book that reflects all the things that ive described is also based on my own experience as a journalist for the papers including the Washington Post. My specialty for many years was what they call pocket book issues. Very good experience if youre going to write about the spending because this is the biggest pocketbook expense of all. So i was able to combine the militaryindustrial complex with what i knew about dealing with big institutions including big oil and also helped that id studied a lot about the middle east at Georgetown University and also harvard where i was a fellow and ive done a lot of traveling as well. So the result of all of this is the book. And as i said, what the book does is document the expansion of the militaryindustrial complex to include these additional elements. So, we have five altogether. We have the military, the defense contractors we have Congress CommitteeIntelligence Community and the think tank interventionists. These were the five that he saw emerge and wrote about and documented that are a big part of this book. So lets go individually with each of these. Starting with congress which supports billions of dollars in security spending and the campaign contributions. So a good example of what happens with congress as the story of the cargo jet. Theres two parts to the story. In 1990 when dick cheney, 1990 secretary defends. It was the guy over the pentagon and the defense obligations wanted to purchase 120 of these. Once they were built the program was supposed to stop because that was all the military needed. Congress disagreed. They voted to provide more than the pentagon wanted. They voted to fund 151 and later 18180 mbytes of these numbers appear because i know that its hard to follow so that was 1990. 20 years later the defense secretary is robert gates, and in april of 2009, he goes to congress and says okay, 205. Thats enough, we dont want more and congress voted to fund 223 and this was at the cost of 250 million each. [inaudible] its the same plane, sorry for the confusion. The question is why did congress do this. Why are they giving the military more weapons and airplanes and tanks and ships and the military want . Because the program like a lot of these others is a kind of Welfare Program that supports 650 suppliers and more than 30,000 jobs in 44 states. It offers jobs for companies, jobs for workers, Political Support for cooperative lawmakers. If there is a safe vote for any member of congress, it is a vote for defense, armaments and programs. Anyone who fails to vote for the programs and to support the defense establishment will be attacked as weak on defense and is going to hear about it in the next election. It is a bird and a plain, thats what it was. But this is only one example of how the congress perceives the pentagon. Theres a lot of other examples. More ships than the needy ones, more tanks for the army than the army wants. You may remember the story, this is a fairly recent story about the tang. Again the headline tells you a great deal about it. This is the way cnn played the story, thanks but no tanks. As you know, congress voted to continue making the tang. Why did they do that . Because the little town that made the part said th there goes our economy and they went to the representative and said you have to keep making these because it will ruin us and if you are a member of congress you can get others to vote with you to keep them going because youre going to vote for him and his programs when they are subject to question this is a sort of scratch my back and i will scratch yours at work. I would also mention Ronald Reagans idea. That Program Proposed in the mid1980s has never worked the way that it was supposed to and its still being funded by every president that has come along even though it hasnt really worked. Again, get it into the bureaucracy and its really hard to kill it. Now some people would say so you are spending on defense giving us jobs. Whats wrong with that. The problem is the Research Shows you get more jobs with them on defense spendinthenon u get with defense spending. And we know this because the university of massachusetts did a study and they found if you take a billion dollars of federal money you get 11,200 military jobs but if you spend on clean energy jobs, and you get more. If you spend it on healthcare jobs you get more. If you spend it on education jobs you get more. And at the bottom line of that study was spending on the military is a poor source of job creation. Lets talk about the Intelligence Community. This is another major element in the complex forces that can lead to the war and im talking about the flawed and sometimes twisted intelligence threats. Or as it is put here. We know in the runup to the iraq war in 2003 the president of george bush wanted to remove the action and we know the case was the idea Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that was based on intelligence and it was twisted to justify the invasion. One of the reasons we know that happened there are several reasons but one is there is a secret note released by british intelligence. In other words we need to show the public why we are doing this and so we are going to make the intelligence be the basis for our action. Now if you think about it, it shouldnt come as a surprise that the Intelligence Community taylors information. If you work for somebody, you give the boss what he wants or you will not have a job for very long you are exactly right you give the boss what he wants. This is about the beautiful blondes by. Its the sta