VIEWING THE PENTAGON FROM SEVERAL SIDES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707060023-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: August 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000707060023-8
ARTICLE AP EARS
ON PAGE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
2 August 1985
Viewing the Pentagon
from several sides
BACK IN the
bad old days
of the Nixon
administration,
Attorney General
John Mitchell told
reporters to
"watch what we do,
not what we say."
Well, those days
are back at the
Pentagon. Lately,
what has been said
over there has
been having less
and less to do with
F w*
Jackman
what is being done.
First, there's the current mini-flap
over the Salvadoran Army's "retalia-
tion" action against the guerrillas
thought to be responsible for the
machine-gun slaying of four U.S.
Marines at a sidewalk cafe in San Salva-
dor on June 19. At the time of the
killings, President Reagan vowed the
Marines would be avenged. "We and the
Salvadoran leaders will move any
mountain and ford any river to find the
jackals and bring them and their col-
leagues in terror to justice," he said.
Asked about that pledge during a
radio interview this week, Caspar
Weinberger said: "We have done a num-
ber of things that are, I think, very
discouraging to future terrorist
acts ... in one situation, where the guer-
rillas in El Salvador who came in and
murdered the Marines ... the Salvador-
an government, with our assistance, has
taken care of-in one way or another,
taken prisoner or killed as a matter of
raids-a number of the people who
participated in that killing in the guer-
rilla-held sections of El Salvador."
The syntax was a little garbled, but
Weinberger's meaning seemed clear: At
least some of those responsible for the
murder of the four Marines have been
killed or captured, right? Think again.
In San Salvador, President Jose Napo-
leon Duarte said he didn't know any-
thing about it and a spokesman for the
military high command said that "there
must have been a misinterpretation."
'there was. Yeste ,
Weinberger told the A? that, hey, he
e a n e4vtured or killed.
v or two from intelligence, a
Maoist-type 1 grout) of which
we ieve the killers are members. on.
Then there's the continuing story of
whistleblower A. Ernest Fitzgerald, the
AF civilian systems analyst who won a
13-year battle for reinstatement after he
was fired in 1900 for being a little too
blunt about Pentagon waste. Last week,
he got his first job performance rating
in three years and, guess what, he was
sub-par in just about every category
except "communication."
"I am convinced," wrote his eva-
luator, Richard E. Carver, assistant sec-
retary of the Air Force for financial
management (and the Republican for-
mer mayor of Peoria, Ill.), "that Mr.
Fitzgerald is a competent and skilled
employe who has lacked overall direc-
tion in his effort to manage and reduce
costs, which has substantially inhibited
our ability to address these very impor-
tant problems." Carver insists his
evaluation is not an attempt to "impair
Mr. Fitzgerald's career in any way. It is
not an attempt to fire him" But others,
notably Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.),
chairman of a House investigating sub-
committee looking into Pentagon waste,
thought differently. His office said he
will hold hearings to see if the Air
Force was trying to harass a witness.
F NALLY, comes the Army's fabu-
lously expensive ($4.2 billion) and
controversial "Sergeant York" air
defense system. Weinberger reported
that a recent test was "the most realistic
operational testing that we ever put a
weapon system through." Said John E.
Krings, head of the Pentagon's test
office: "Rest assured it has been a
tough test." But Rep. Denny Smith
(R-Ore.), former combat pilot in Viet-
nam and now co-chairman of the con-
gressional Military Reform Caucus,
says otherwise. He notes the Army's
claim that six of seven flying targets
were downed but asks how come all
except one were brought down by self-
destruct devices triggered from the
ground? Good question.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000707060023-8