Boyd believed Burton could defeat the U.S. Army.
Burton knew he was being used as a test bed for Boyd’s ideas, but he did not mind. In fact, he looked forward to it.
Boyd and Burton talked daily. Boyd wanted to know exactly what was said in every meeting with Army generals. He wanted to
know who brought out which reports or studies. “Don’t filter it with opinions or interpretations,” he said. “Just tell me
what happened and then we will talk of the implications.” He listened and thought and told Burton where the Army was maneuvering
to set him up and what he should be prepared for the next day. He and Burton spoke often of Churchill’s comment in World War
II that the truth was too precious a commodity to travel alone—that it had to be protected by a “bodyguard of lies.” Boyd
said Burton must break through the bodyguard of lies to find the truth. He told Burton to always keep the initiative. “And
you must never panic. When they surprise you, even if the surprise seems fatal, there is always a countermove.”
Boyd gave Burton three guiding principles. The first was the most difficult and most familiar to anyone who had worked with
Boyd. “Jim, you can never be wrong. You have to do your homework. If you make a technical statement, you better be right.
If you are not, they will hose you. And if they hose you, you’ve had it. Because once you lose credibility and you are no
longer a threat, no one will pay attention to what you say. They won’t respect you and they won’t pay attention to you.”
The second thing Boyd told Burton was not to criticize the Bradley itself. “If you do, you are lumped in with all the other
Bradley critics. It is the testing process you are concerned with.”
While Boyd and Burton might make such a distinction, the Army could not. To them, criticizing the testing process was the
same as
criticizing the Bradley. But the difference in the two approaches is not at all subtle. By staying focused on the testing
methodology, Burton was protecting the lives of American soldiers; he held the mental and moral high ground.
Finally, Boyd counseled Burton not to talk to the media or to Congress, to stay inside the system. If you go outside the system,
he said, you will be viewed as just another whistle blower. And whistle blowers get no respect; they get others to help them
do something that they can’t do themselves.
All of this advice and counsel should not be taken to mean that Burton was in any way Boyd’s instrument. Quite the contrary:
Burton was the man who had to walk into a room filled with Army generals and challenge them. He was the man on the mission.
And he sometimes ignored both Boyd and Sprey.
In June 1984, Burton wrote what he called his “Rubicon Memo” to Secretary of Defense Weinberger. He said the Army was not
performing realistic tests on the Bradley and was putting the lives of up to seventy thousand soldiers at risk. He asked that
the Army be ordered to perform “full-up tests”—that is, tests in which the Bradley was loaded with fuel and ammunition, just
as it would be in combat, and fired upon with real Soviet weapons rather than simulations.
On September 28, the Army agreed to conduct tests with a minimum of ten shots against a fully loaded Bradley. But two weeks
later the Army realized how vulnerable the Bradley was and the under secretary of the Army cancelled the live-fire tests.
Burton made an appointment to see the under secretary, and was persuasive. The under secretary again reversed himself; now
the Army would conduct the tests as earlier agreed.
The Army did not want Burton around for those tests, however, so Army generals talked to Air Force generals, who sent down
word that Burton was being transferred to Alaska. He was given a seven-day notice to accept the transfer or resign. It was
just as Boyd predicted: a brutal, head-on assault. And it appeared effective. After all, if there is a bothersome employee,
what better way to get rid of him than to transfer him? Burton thought the battle was over. But Boyd laughed. “Goddamn, Jim,
this is the dumbest decision the Air Force can make. Whoever made this decision is general officer material.” He told Burton
to collect every memo and every letter and every
study in his files that dealt with the Bradley controversy, to make copies, and to flood the Building with little brothers
and sisters.
Burton protested. “I thought you wanted me to work within the system.”
“Jim, part of working within the system means that everyone who has a right to know what’s going on has a copy of all the
paperwork.” He paused. And when he spoke again Burton heard the laughter in his voice. “If something needs to leak outside
the Building, God will take care of it.”
Not even the most militant of Burton’s opponents could fault him for providing information to those connected with the Bradley
program, so Burton emptied the contents of a filing cabinet and made copies of every document. He delivered copies to a number
of people. A cover memo explained that he had been relieved of his job and that these documents should bring them up to speed
on the status of the program. When he handed the stack of documents to a senior Army general, the general blanched. He knew
copies would leak. Burton was giving notice that he was not only still in the game but was raising the stakes.
Word came down to Burton that he was not being transferred. In an effort to resolve his conflict with the Army, his job description
was being changed. The Army would conduct its own tests on the Bradley. But the tests would be exactly as Burton wanted. He
could even observe.
Boyd told Burton he had won this battle and he had done it by working within the system. If the story breaks in the press,
don’t talk to reporters.
Several little brothers and sisters found their way to members of the Congressional Reform Caucus, who in turn told the press.
Dozens of reporters showed up at the Pentagon wanting to know why Burton was being sent to Alaska. “Colonel Burton is not
going to Alaska. There have been no such orders issued,” said a Pentagon spokesman.
The reporters went back to their sources in the Senate and House who gave them copies of the seven-day notice. When the reporters
realized the Pentagon spokesman had lied to them, they were in a state of high dudgeon. Burton’s phone rang for several days.
But he talked to none of the reporters.
Nevertheless, several days later the largest newspapers in America ran stories that Burton had accused the Army of rigging
the Bradley tests and the Pentagon had retaliated by abolishing his job and then recanting. Burton still refused to talk to
reporters, but the stories were written anyway.
The
Early Bird,
the Pentagon’s internal newspaper, published a collection of stories from around the country. All told of the Bradley testing
problems and how the Pentagon responded by abolishing Burton’s job. The
Washington Post
and the
New York Times,
the two newspapers most feared by the Pentagon, sided with Burton and attacked the Pentagon for its heavy-handed ways. The
Congressional Reform Caucus, headed by Nancy Kassebaum, joined the fray.
Not even the Pentagon could stand up against such forces. A Pentagon spokesman said Burton could supervise the Bradley program
until all tests were completed.
By now Burton was a national figure. As with Spinney, this was to be his protection. But Spinney, despite the impact of his
two major studies, had not changed the Pentagon. He had stopped the Reagan defense-budget increase, but that would have stopped
on its own within another year or so. The Reformers had made the American public aware of just how reckless, even irresponsible,
the Pentagon was with its money. But they had done nothing of lasting significance. Burton was the last chance. If he could
not force permanent change on the Pentagon, the past few years would have been for naught.
The first round was a clear victory for Burton. The generals must have been bitter. Not only had a colonel defied them and
won but he had done it in such a way that they could not punish him. Next time the military would not fail.
A brother officer, a colonel in Burton’s office, began spying on Burton. He made notes when he heard Burton talking on the
telephone. He kept a record of Burton’s meetings. Every memo Burton wrote was copied and hand delivered to top Army generals.
The memos were then copied and filtered down from four-stars to three-stars to two-stars and one-stars, even to colonels.
Burton knew the military was building a file, the sole purpose of which was to justify firing him.
Boyd was elated. He saw this as a chance for Burton to wield great influence with the Army leaders behind the plan. He told
Burton to keep in mind that when he wrote a memo, it was not for the person to
whom it was addressed, but rather to the generals. Boyd called this a “reverse pump.” Burton was feeding information to the
people spying on him. This meant that accuracy in everything Burton said and wrote was even more critical. Again and again
Boyd came back to one of his earliest admonitions to Burton. “Do your homework. If they hose you one time, they will never
again respect you.”
Burton did his homework so well he became known at the Army test site as a man who asked endless questions. He was up against
Army experts who devoted their careers to covering up for the Army in such arcane areas as armor, terminal ballistics, medical
effects of explosions on troops in confined spaces, effects of halon gases, and “vaporifics,” the study of toxic gases that
are byproducts of explosions. But the difference between Burton and the experts was that the Army relied on computer modeling
to cover up the Bradley’s dangers and Burton searched out the test data that confirmed these dangers.
While Boyd counseled Burton on tactics in dealing with the Army, Sprey provided the technical expertise. Sprey knew there
was an entire range of literature on armored vehicles and combat results from wars in the Middle East. At his suggestion,
Burton went to the Defense Technical Information Center and dug out every report ever written on the vulnerability of armored
vehicles in war. He studied, took notes, and challenged everything. Time after time—either deliberately or from ignorance—Army
experts made erroneous statements, thinking Burton did not know the truth. He let them proceed, let them justify their actions,
then sprang the trap. “That’s not what the data says.” And then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out studies the Army
experts had never heard of or preferred to bury.
Burton’s research showed that fire and explosions inside a tank were the biggest source of casualties among tankers in World
War II and among Israeli tankers in Middle Eastern wars. When he demanded more realistic testing procedures, he turned to
an Army expert and said, “I want you to know there is nothing personal in what I am about to do.” He took a deep breath and
said, “Show me where your computer models deal with fire, explosions, toxic gasses, and blast lung.”
Army experts said these were not a consideration.
Burton reached into his briefcase, threw a report on the table, and said, “Then how do you explain the data from World War
II, England, and Israel that show these are the main reason for casualties?”
The Army said, “Well, they do exist. But we can’t model them on the computer so we ignore them.”
In September 1985, Weinberger sent Burton a handwritten note asking that henceforth Burton keep him personally informed of
all test results on the Bradley. General Colin Powell was then Weinberger’s military assistant, performing the same duties
for Weinberger that Burton had performed for three assistant secretaries of the Air Force. But Powell and Burton were cut
from different bolts of cloth. Burton knew that when he sent a note to Weinberger, the Army’s senior generals had copies before
the SecDef did. The reverse pump was still working.
By now Burton knew as much about ballistics and vaporifics and blast lung and all the other arcane disciplines as did the
Army. He was inside their minds and knew how they thought and how they reacted. He could walk into a room of civilian and
Army officials and know when the game was afoot. He knew intuitively when and how the adversary would move. Burton had the
Fingerspitzengefuhl
to move rapidly through the OODA Loop and stay ahead of his adversary, and he found the experience exhilarating. It gave
him something like a “runner’s high” and he began to enjoy the confrontations. Each one began with his saying, “I want you
to know there is nothing personal in what I am about to do.” And then total devastation. He wrote memos to his superiors that
someone always leaked to congressmen, senators, and the media, causing the Army another round of ever-increasing embarrassment.
He was planting a demon seed, and the Army would reap the harvest.
It was not long before word got out that Sprey was the technical brains behind Burton’s expertise. The Army hated Sprey for
his criticism of the Abrams Tank as much as the Air Force hated him for his advocacy of the A-10 and complained to Weinberger,
who lent a sympathetic ear. He changed the Building access rules so that people who did not have official badges could no
longer come and go unescorted through the Pentagon’s unclassified areas as they had in the past. It was a good and needed
rule. But it was done almost entirely because of Pierre Sprey.
Hereafter, when Sprey had studies or reports he wanted to pass to Burton, they met in the Pentagon’s south parking lot.
By now the entire Congress, not only the Reform Caucus, was interested in the Bradley. Congress was so concerned the Army
might try to wiggle out of its agreement to let Burton oversee the testing that it passed a law saying all actions covered
in Burton’s agreement with the Army must take place.
Congressional affirmation was just one more sign that, by the summer of 1985, people in the Army testing program knew Burton
was determined to make the Bradley safe for those who would ride it into battle. Only a highly principled man would have fought
the Army for so long and at such a high personal price. Civilian personnel, many of whom were former Army enlisted troops,
realized that Burton, unlike many officers involved in the testing program, had no self-interest at stake. He was not there
to get a medal and a promotion for pushing the Bradley into production; he wanted only to clean up the system for the benefit
of troops in the field.