MR. BAKER: Senator, there's been great concern recently about the foreign campaign contributions and their impact on the American electoral process, but relatively little about the influence of domestic interests such as the arms industry. Should Americans be concerned about the degree of influence the arms industry holds over the policy process?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, they certainly ought to be concerned, but to say that there's something new about it is probably incorrect. It's always been this way. Eisenhower, as you know, in his famous military industrial complex speech nailed it precisely. But I think -- I think the practice is long term, but I think it's much worse now and it's become much more sophisticated. I mean, there are elements at work -- organizations at work here in Washington constantly that people like you and I would never think about unless we -- you know, unless we were making a study of it. For example, you know, there are breakfasts being held in this town constantly. There are organizations that get an awful lot of their funding from the defense industry and they're constantly at work lobbying, building support for a particular weapons system or a particular thing.

For example, the industrial complex is obviously very interested in the expansion of NATO because with the expansion of NATO means a whole new regimen of weapons sales. So those countries who are joining, they're required to maintain a certain military level and that means they're going to have to buy weapons and that also means they're gonna buy them from us. So you'll find -- you'll find people who are strongly championing expansion of NATO, not because of the defensive nature of the organization, but because it means they're gonna be able to sell a lot of weapons to the new members.

MR. BAKER: And are these organizations in some ways underwritten by the defense contractors that stand to benefit?

SEN. BUMPERS: Nothing -- nothing -- not discreet about it. It's open, blatant, publicized, everybody knows it, and you'd be amazed how many organizations in this town are funded almost exclusively by the industrial -- by the military industrial complex -- I should say by the defense industry.

MR. BAKER: In this era of overall budget belt tightening, why is the Pentagon pushing for procurement of three new tactical air fighter programs that some estimate will call $350 billion, possibly more?

SEN. BUMPERS: You know, since I've been in the Senate, I was a vigorous opponent of the Star Wars concept which ultimately was killed and is about to be resurrected. I was an ardent opponent of the B-1 Bomber because I knew we had the B-2 Bomber coming on. Course we lost all those battles. I was an ardent opponent of bringing the battleships out of commission and now you are about to witness an expenditure for tactical aircraft that makes all that look like child's play. We are about to build three airplanes, tactical fighters that -- and one would be more than adequate, but two would be, you know, somebody could make a case for building the F-18 and maybe the Joint Strike Fighter. But you cannot make a case for all three. The F-22 fighter about -- and we put a cap on this year's authorization bill -- we put a cap of $61.6 billion total cost for $339 F-22s. That comes out to a cool $182 million each. That is over twice as much as we've ever paid for a fighter plane. And yet every time you pick up a publication here such as Roll Call, one of the newspapers here on Capitol Hill, or the Hill Magazine, or the Washington Post, it's all in the Washington area for the benefit of the members of Congress, you will see pictures of the F-22 fighter, how wonderful it is, some of the most egregious industrial advertising I've ever seen in my life on behalf of the F-22.

But just to put this in perspective for you, we're gonna start building the F-20 -- we're gonna -- we're in the process of building an advanced F-18 fighter right now. Those are going to cost about $90 million dollars each, and we're planning -- we will need to build 1,000, but the Marine Corps said they didn't want their 300, so we're probably going to only build 700 of them. The intelligence community and everybody that knows anything about defense says that nobody will be able to equal either the F-15 which we're discontinuing or the F-18 for the next 15 to 20 years -- nobody even close. And so we've got that plane under construction right now. Now, we're gonna start in about the year 2000 building the F-22 fighter at a cost of $61.6 billion and we're gonna build 439 of those. And then in about the year 2005, we're gonna start building what's called a Joint Strike Fighter. That's a new concept of a fighter plane that will serve all three branches of the service. It'll serve the Army, I mean, the Air Force and the Navy and the Marine Corps. All three would use this fighter plane. It is a great concept. I strongly support the concept of one fighter plane being used for all three branches of the service. But we're planning on spending close to $200 billion on 3,000 of those and I'm not all that opposed to that because I think the concept of the joint strike fighter is a good idea. But what we're doing is sandwiching in between this F-22 fighter which just doesn't fit.

Let me tell you the genesis of the F-22 fighter. There isn't any question, it's probably a great airplane -- very stealthy and it's got a lot of qualities about it. But for $182 million, it certainly ought to have a lot of qualities. But I'll tell you the concept of it was back in the mid 1980s, when the Russians said, we have on the drawing board a 5th generation fighter plane that's gonna be superior to anything in the world. Well, you know, the Pentagon loves to hear that sort of thing because that's -- they immediately go to work on countering that. So, about the year 1987, we began to put the F-22 on the drawing board to counter the Soviet Union -- then Soviet Union 5th generation fighter. Well, we never let up. The Soviet Union disappeared. The 5th generation fighter is still on the drawing board where it will always remain because they can't feed their people let along build a fighter plane of that quality. But we never let up. So the F-22 is a cold war relic. It is left over from the paranoia that we experienced for so many years about the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union isn't going to build a 5th generation fighter, but we are going to build the F-22 fighter, and it's gonna cost an arm and a leg.

MR. BAKER: Now, from the promotional literature both from the contractors and the Air Force that I read about the F-22 such as that one right there, American lives which -- American troops will be at greater risk in future wars if we don't procure this aircraft. True?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, you know, I think the worst -- the worst thing I've ever seen -- and most people across America don't realize this -- but the military industrial complex had learned they don't to have to put full page ads in Time magazine all across the country. They only put in full page ads right here in the Washington area because it doesn't really mean much. It has maximum impact here because they have 535 members of Congress who see these things. They're in Roll Call magazine. They're in Hill, the Washington Post. And they can put inserts into Time, Newsweek, and so on that are only distributed in this area for the benefit of members of Congress.

And so as I was about to say, the worst case of this I have ever seen was a post card inserted and I guess it was in Newsweek magazine. It was a double glossy page and you open it up and here's a simulated post card inside it. And it's a -- it -- it -- it's dated 2007 and a women is writing home -- she's apparently in Desert Storm or something similar to that -- you can tell it's a desert scene. She's on top of a tank or something. She's writing to her husband and she's telling him that she's okay, that things are bad there but she's making okay. And then it closes out by saying, we don't have to worry the skies because we have those wonderful F-22s above protecting us. Now, that -- it -- it -- there was just something about that that really that was terribly disturbing to me. And of course, you know, on the front page of that same ad was here. This is put out by the Air Force. But on the front page of that ad that had that post card inside it, was nothing except, just the F-22 fighter plane on the front.

Incidentally, this glossy publication right here -- it's -- it's, you know, these things are very expensive. And this one, proclaiming the merits of the F-22 -- now the taxpayers are paying for this one. This is a glossy put out by the Pentagon. And as I say, you know, these make some of these magazines you get in the mail every day, you know, from mail order houses -- this thing makes those things look sick. The Pentagon puts out a lot of these, incidentally, and they're all magnificently done, very good graphics and so on. But what they've done on the F-22, I think, supercedes -- I think it excels anything I've ever seen in the way of advertising and trying to convince people that these weapons systems are absolutely necessary.

MR. BAKER: Adverting add television [or maybe] [inaudible] is a time-honored aspect of our free market society. Do you think that it's -- most Americans who aren't personally in the market for a fighter plane. Do you think it's appropriate for defense contractors to advertise just as car or soft drink makers would?

SEN. BUMPERS: You can't keep them from doing that, but the point is this, you know, who are they appealing to? Or whom are they appealing to when they run full page ads in the Washington Post? There is not -- it's not the 2 or 3 million people that live in the Washington Metropolitan area because it's -- as you point out that very few people around here are buying F-22 fighter planes. It is calculated to influence Congress.

And the only time you see any advertising other than that, it is in a particular area of production. For example, you will get a lot of mail from Long Beach, California, for example, if an airplane's going to be built in Long Beach. On the space programs you'll get mail from Florida and Alabama and Texas because they want the space program continued. But other than that, 95 to 99 percent of the people in this country, couldn't care less about these things. They don't know about them.

And so these advertising that are done by the military industrial complex, they're very well targeted. They know what they're doing. And they pay people to craft these things and to insert them in areas where they'll have maximum effect. I might also point out of course that the best money the military industrial complex spends is on campaign contributions. We had a bill up -- I guess it was last year -- or no -- it was probably a couple years ago where we would finance military sales to a whole host of countries -- some highly questionable as far as credit worthiness was concerned. And, you know, if there's anything we're doing that's really stupid, it's selling our weapons to questionable countries. Oftentimes -- for example, we left Vietnam the third most powerful nation in the world because we left all that sophisticated equipment behind. And we sell sophisticated equipment to questionable countries. Iran is still flying F-14s that we sold them before the Shah was deposed. And I've said on the floor 1,000 times, we always forget that our weapons last longer than our friendships, and quite often our own weapons wind up being turned against us. So, I was trying to kill this bill that would allow the tax payers of this country to finance the $10-15 billion worth of sales of weapons in the year because some of them -- obviously the taxpayers going to be picking up the tab for it. And I lost that 41 to 58. But one study group studies who voted against that amendment and who voted for it and they found that the people who voted against my amendment to kill that program had received twice as much in political donations from defense contractor as had the people who voted for me. That -- you know, you don't have to be a rocket scientists to understand that's the way the system works.

MR. BAKER: One of the other arguments arms makers use for their weapons is jobs. How do they go about making the jobs question a local issue for almost every member?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, that is a -- that is something that the Pentagon is a past master at and that is making sure that virtually every state gets a piece of the action. On the F-22 fighter plane for example, there's four small contracts in the state of Arkansas totaling $321,000. But I promise you we'll hear from every one of them. And every member of Congress, -- virtually every member of Congress will hear. What will happen is Lockheed Martin will send letters to every contractor in the United States saying be sure and have your employees -- you and your employees should write your Congressman and your two Senators and tell them to keep the F-22 on track. I use that as an illustration because that's what happens. I mean, if it's Newport News, it's the aircraft carrier. Be sure and write all your members of Congress and tell them to do everything and keep this new aircraft carrier on track. It's not uncommon at all. I get mail from my state like that all the time.

MR. BAKER: Do you think it's appropriate for weapons procurement to be seen as a federal jobs program?

SEN. BUMPERS: You know, that is the very worst -- that's the very worst rationale I can think of for keeping a weapons system -- particularly a weapons system we don't need that doesn't fit on track and being built. And, you know, to save jobs. And I understand -- I understand the jobs thing. I'm not totally above that myself. I've had situations in my state. I've always tried to at least salve my own conscience by believing that a particular weapons system that I championed was not just because it was built in my state. I have not championed a couple of weapons systems that were built in my state because I didn't think they did fit. And -- but I can tell you that if there's ten jobs in the state, somebody -- some member of Congress is going to hear about this weapons system and how wonderful it is and how we'll -- you know -- [enough] to build that weapons system will spell the demise of the United States democracy as we know it.

MR. BAKER: One of those -- getting away from [TACAIR] -- but is that -- going just -- seeing the first Sea Wolf, uh, attack submarine come out and now they're already springing contracts for a follow on, a new -- new attack submarine including some in the state of Arkansas I understand. Now, it seems they're using two arguments, the jobs argument and this thing about industrial -- preserving our industrial base. Do you believe that's a valid reason to buy such as system?

SEN. BUMPERS: I want to say that preserving our industrial base in a very limited number of cases is appropriate and will work. On the jobs thing alone, that is not a sufficient justification to building weapons we don't need. But let me give you the reason and it's very clear. Study after study shows that to keep a defense contract going for jobs creates -- it costs about three times as much as it would to keep a civilian job going. Defense jobs are very expensive. And to keep a defense job going, building a weapon that -- especially one we don't need -- even when you do need it, they cost more -- three times more than jobs in the civilian sector. But if you don't need it, that just compounds the silliness of it.

MR. BAKER: We see today overseas sales as mentioned as representing huge market for American arms contractors and you mentioned the special support they get in the form of arms export loan program. Now, the administration is considering lifting the ban on the sale of an advanced fighter aircraft of Latin America that's been in place since President Carter. How do American defense contractors stand to gain if that ban is lifted and what kinds of efforts are they making to get it lifted?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, they're making a massive effort to get it lifted. I have written to the President strongly urging him that he not -- you know, that the United States not lift that ban for two reasons. Number one, the hostilities between neighboring countries and Latin America is not all that bad. There's very little -- there are very little strong frictions that are likely to erupt in a war in Latin America. I object to it, simply because it amounts to another proliferation of weapons in the world. You never quite know where those weapons are going to wind up. They may start off in Chile or Ecuador or some place else, but you may be facing those weapons 5,000 miles away because they have a way despite your best intentions and despite the contracts they sign that they will not ever sell those weapons. Quite often those weapons do wind up in the hands of people that you never -- never dreamed would see them.

The other reason is Latin America is a relatively poor place. And for those people, like new NATO members, those new NATO members are poor countries and to burden those people with the -- with the cost of weapons when they can't feed their people is absolutely barbaric.

MR. BAKER: And what kinds of efforts are the defense contractors doing either in direct lobbying or subsidizing studies or campaign contributions, whatever, to get both these markets opened up?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well all of the above. Of course the defense industry is constantly, constantly on the alert for new markets for weapons. And the United States -- I don't know what it is now -- in the past we have been selling 50 to 75 -- 50 to 65 percent of all the weapons that are sold in the international commerce. We are the biggest violator of the dispersal of weapons around the world. We have a big -- we have a big issue now that's really now quite on target with this conversation, but we sold old M-1 rifles all over the world, millions of them. And now those people are wanting to sell those back to the Uni -- to people in the United States -- gun dealers in the United States at a very handsome profit, sometimes weapons that we sold for $100 apiece, are going to be sold back into this country for $1,000 apiece because they're World War II relics and they have -- they have an additional value. Senator [Lotberg] of New Jersey is leading the fight to keep that from happening and I'm certainly going to do everything I can to -- to help him. But what happens in the weapons business as I say, Vietnam sold an awful lot of weapons. As a matter of fact, we were, you know, we were trying to put the war in Nicaragua down and we found that most of the weapons that what we considered the good guys in Nicaragua, most of the weapons that the government was faced -- that the contras faced in Nicaragua were weapons that had come from Vietnam -- not most of them but a lot of them have. Vietnam needed the money and we'd left them that big cache of weapons and they started selling them which was a very smart thing for them to do.

MR. BAKER: I think there's been a similar dispersal from the support to the Afghan [mujade] during the Soviet -- uh --

SEN. BUMPERS: I resisted -- during the Afghan/Soviet Union War I resisted until, as we say in Arkansas, the last dog died selling stinger missiles to the Afghans. And I finally -- I finally in the last final analysis voted to go ahead and sell them stingers and it's a mixed bag. It had an effect because they were very effective against the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union shortly thereafter began to -- of course, there were political implications -- Gorbachev came to power -- he didn't believe in the war and he started getting -- he started extricating the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. But we now know that Iran wound up with the about 30 of those stingers and Iraq had some of them. They were parcelled out to some of the terrorist countries of the world. And of course one stinger missile can hold any airport in the world hostage. And that was the reason I was reluctant to do it and as I say, it turned out pretty much the way I thought it would. A lot of those missile wound up in very, very antagonistic hands.

MR. BAKER: Getting back to the F-22, it's promoted with the argument that it will provide U.S. air -- not just superiority -- but dominance, this new concept of air dominance over potential foreign adversaries. Now we see an effort to sell the plane overseas as a way of bringing down costs. Do you see a contradiction there?

SEN. BUMPERS: You see, this Air Force, when they got -- when they [inaudible] -- when they -- well, when the Air Force realized they a very costly plan that was going to be controversial, that's when they began to talk about a limited sale of this airplane abroad. And, you know, if this airplane is everything they say it is -- I mean, I can envision selling that plane to England or France or somebody that's been a very close ally throughout our history -- or virtually throughout our history. But, you know, they'll never be satisfied with that. If you look at the chart right now, of who owns F-14s, who owns F-16s, who owns F-15s and you name it, you find those things dispersed all over the world. And the mig-25s through the -29s -- you'll find those in the countries you sort of expect them to be in and they're renegade nations and they're in the Far East, but these planes, just like all weapons, they all have a tendency to fall into the wrong hands. To put $61 billion and so far as I'm concerned, that's just the opening around -- I mean, that plane will wind up costing $80 billion or more. I know how this goes. To put that much money into a plane and then start talking about exporting it, is the height of something or other to me. I just deplore that whole idea.

MR. BAKER: You mentioned the chart that was circulated at one point, showing all the overseas -- the foreign countries that have advanced fighter aircraft. [Still] look at the chart and most of them are F-16s or came from here.

SEN. BUMPERS: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. BAKER: How do overseas sales contribute to creating the justification for the next generation of aircraft?

SEN. BUMPERS: Well, that's an [interesting thing, you know]. It's one of those things where we start competing with ourselves. You know, the Air Force will say, golly moses, you know, this plane is getting obsolete. Well, what's it getting obsolete to? The F-15? It's getting obsolete to the F-15s we've sold abroad. And when you look at the list of about ten planes, ten fighter planes that are in production right now, and that are still owned -- that are owned by other countries, you'll find the planes that the Air Force considers the most threatening are our planes that we've sold to our friends. It's true, they're out there and happily most of them are in the hands of our friends. But they use those as a threat to the United States. So we wind up building new planes because we've sold our best planes and they use that as a justification. They say, well, look at all these planes out there. Well, look at them, they're ours. We sold them abroad. And that's another reason we ought not to be selling these planes abroad because it just gives the Air Force a justification for trying to build follow-on fighters.

MR. BAKER: Are there any changes that you would like to see that might reduce the influence of the arms industry on the overall policy process?

SEN. BUMPERS: You know, Ronald Reagan came to town with the concept that the only way you were ever going to balance the budget and stop spending is take the money away from them. But it didn't work out the way he planned and as you know, that's another story, but I -- the only way you're gonna get the Pentagon under control is to take the money away. And the only way you're gonna take the money away is for people to screw up their courage and stiffen their spines to be sensible about defense spending. And so far that has not happened. It came fairly close to happening back during the Carter years, but the minute Ronald Reagan came to town, you know, within five years we'd doubled defense spending, we're gonna have a 500-ship Navy. The Pentagon could have it all. And they almost got it all. Of course we have a $5 trillion debt to prove it. And I don't know how you ever get this under control because what happens is, you know, for years they had the Soviet Union. If you had asked the Pentagon even -- you know, in an open hearing, say, in 1987, how much could we [inaudible] -- how much could we cut defense spending if the Soviet Union suddenly disappeared? My guess is the smallest amount you would have heard would be 50 and probably the maximum would be $100 billion a year we could cut if we didn't have to contend with the Soviet Union. Well, the Soviet Union's been gone since 1990. It's been gone a lot longer than that. It was 1990 when they officially recognized it, and we realized they were no longer the arch enemy. So what's happened since 1990? We've been searching [inaudible] for another enemy. You can't sell anything around here using the Soviet Union as a threat because we know that their military is in total disarray. They're not buying any -- they're building very little in the way of new weapons. And they can't pay their soldiers and so we don't worry too much about the Soviet Union. [And what are we doing?] We're shifting our emphasis on China. Here's China with a billion, 200 million people. They have a -- it's not a sophisticated defense industry but most people in this country think the fact that China has a billion, 200 million people, they must be an enemy. And more and more on the floor of the Senate, you'll hear people talking about China. Why? Because that fuels the flames. That keeps this weapons business, this weapons bazaar, going. China is not a threat to us. As a matter of fact, there is not a threat in sight, and yet, last year we put $9 billion more in the defense budget than the President, which is the Pentagon, had asked for. It is so bazaar, you know, I can hardly talk about it without, you know, getting a little preachy about it, but the whole thing is so foolish. But we need -- you know, we do need a strong defense. But we do not need a bloated defense and we don't need a defense just to keep jobs going, to keep the defense industry satisfied and we certainly oughtn't to be subsidizing the merger of the giant defense industries which we're doing right now.

MR. BAKER: Do you think that there are steps through either campaign finance reform or this -- the code of conduct on overseas arms sales, steps like that that might help curb the influence of the arms industry?

SENATOR BUMPERS: I don't know. I mean, we keep trying to find ways to -- to bring this whole thing under control and we haven't even come close. And quite candidly, the make-up of the Senate now -- it's a lot more hawkish than it's ever been since I've been here. Even during Ronald Reagan's heyday, people didn't just routinely and cavalierly and without thought vote for every weapons system that came through here. And now, the Pentagon gets just about everything they, uh, everything they ask for. Because the make-up of the Senate -- the make-up of the Senate is such that people just sort of vote for those things unquestioningly. And we've been losing the battle. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union's gone which ten years ago would have been unthinkable, people in this country thought we'd be dancing in the streets if we ever got rid of the Soviet Union. We're not dancing in the streets. We're building the F-22 fighter plane. We're gonna build a Sea Wolf. And we're gonna continue spending more and more money.

The so-called balanced budget bill -- the thing that made that very difficult for me was the fact of that all discretionary spending, the defense budget takes about half of all discretionary spending. But over the next five years, defense spending goes up -- discretionary spending -- that's what we spend for education, health care, the environment, the justice system -- everything that really goes to make us a great nation. That spending goes down and defense spending goes up. And that's out of all the discretionary spending which is about 29 percent of the total budget. We only have control over about 29 percent of it and the defense budget gets about 15 percent of that 29. I mean they get 15 percent of the total budget.

MR. BAKER: That's all I have. Is there anything else you'd like to add? SEN. BUMPERS: Okay. Well, I can't think of anything.