MR. MILLER: The Pentagon and defense contractors keep the American public convinced that we need these weapons by first of all keeping alive a certain kind of cold war mentality that is recycling various global culprits as worthy of our continued attention: narco-terrorists or Islamic Fundamentalists, any figure that could take the place of the old red devils of a few decades ago. And then they simultaneously -- let me, let me -- is that okay?

MR. BAKER: Sure. Uh huh.

MR. MILLER: They also systematically glamorize their weaponry by suppressing the failures of that weaponry and by making the machinery, the hardware look not only indispensable toward defense, but dazzling, and indeed, personally empowering for the people watching the advertising.

MR. BAKER: Let's talk about the performance of some of that weaponry. The GAO recently came out with this report that suggested that -- or documented how the success rates of many of the high tech weapons in the Gulf War were systematically overstated. How is this related to the overall push for, say, three very high tech new fighter weapons.

MR. MILLER: The Gulf War functioned as a massive advertisement for the defense contractors. It was a six-week commercial, a six-week blast of propaganda, leaving us with the impression that we had finally transcended warfare, that we had generated a series of weapons that were so accurate and so lethal, they had such a dream-like precision to them, that it would nevermore be necessary to go through real war with all of its horrible bloodshed and suffering.

Well, it turns out that that was indeed propaganda and all these weapons systems performed more poorly, in some cases far more poorly than we were told at the time. Even though news reports will come out after the fact saying, oh, listen, this system or that system really didn't work as well as you thought, it doesn't really make any difference. We're still coasting on that really exhilarating first impression of unprecedented success and I think that the defense contractors, therefore, are right their own way, according to their own way of looking at the world, they're right to refer back to the Gulf War, to keep bringing it up as proof that the systems worked as advertised. They did not.

MR. BAKER: Let's talk about that reporting. I'd like your assessment on -- in the mainstream media on the defense industry, weapons contractors, not just during the Gulf War but now, during a time of peace, too. What is your overall take on that reporting?

MR. MILLER: Well, the question of how -- uh, let me phrase this -- we have to -- we have to pay close attention to reporting, mainstream reporting on the defense contractors. It's hard to do that because there really isn't any. I mean, there's not much reporting on the defense industry to speak of, mainly the big networks and some of the major newspapers rely on what their sources in the defense business tell them. They rely on what their sources in the Pentagon tell them. Well, naturally, these sources will put a particular upbeat spin on the news that they're circulating because this is a billions of dollars at stake. So, particularly at a time when it's very, very hard to find the independent sources of journalism other than the big networks, other than the major newspapers, you're going to have a hard time finding news that accurate. The coverage of the stealth fighters is one example. Responsible journalists continue to promote the fiction that the stealth did a stellar job in Desert Storm. It did not. And none of the major Pentagon correspondents seem to be willing to point that out. So, the public will understandably acquiesce as Congress votes tens of billions of dollars more for a program that really was not that impressive.

MR. BAKER: We see ads for companies such as Lockheed-Martin and Boeing supporting TV shows like -- even on PBS such as "The News Hour" with Jim Learer and all over the Sunday morning political talk shows. At the same time, we have this generally uncritical view of the weapons contractors and the military budget from the mainstream media. Do you see a connection?

MR. MILLER: There is definitely connection. A very large and -- there's definitely a connection between the great behemoth of the media on the one hand and the great behemoth of the defense industry on the other. You've got companies that are merging in both cases. In both cases, you've got -- is that -- should I -- [have] to start all over again -- should I just back up and start over?

MR. BAKER: Back up and start over. Maybe I'm merging a couple -- my next question, [inaudible] tell you a whole bunch of stuff I'm asking because you're like addressing three things at once for me. My next question is, one, is why is mainstream journalism generally soft on these contractors and on the whole weapons procurement system. The other question is the similarities in the consolidation side. We're [inaudible] --

MR. MILLER: Okay [inaudible]. Yeah okay.

The mainstream media is so scandalously soft on the defense contractors because the weapons business on the one hand and the media business on the other are very, very closely involved with one another. First of all, you've got huge weapons businesses -- Lockheed, Martin-Marietta and so on merging all the time in a way that allows them to wield tremendous clout through their advertising. Then you've got companies like General Electric which is one of the world's leading defense contractors which owns a major news division itself. It owns NBC and NBC News, and Brokau and all the rest of them. So, it's not very likely that you're gonna find a reporter suicidal enough to try and do a story that's going to win him the disfavor of the higher ups at the network in the advertising department or in the offices of the parent company which may well be the parent company of the defense contractor. These media are not independent any more than the media in the old Soviet Union were independent. It's just that the influence is subtler and more indirect.

MR. BAKER: You have looked at the risks of consolidation in the information/entertainment industries and ownership there. Do you see any parallels in the mergers and consolidations in the defense industry? Today, you can't pick up a newspaper without seeing Boeing swallowing up McDonnell Douglas or Lockheed Martin, a merger itself, swallowing Northrop Grumman. Are there parallels and parallel risks?

MR. MILLER: Both the media industries on the one hand and the defense companies on the other hand are going through an enormous process of merging. The danger here is a profound danger to democracy. You can's allow power to become too concentrated anywhere in a democracy. This country's based on that assumption. Well, the danger of over-concentration in the news business is, of course, that you won't get any news. You'll have a handful of enormous corporations with various interests, repeating one another's stories, giving us the most trivial kinds of stories, not really competing with one another and not permitting any smaller entities to compete with them.

Well, similarly, when you've got an over-concentrated defense business, you have companies that aren't competing with one another. You have companies that aren't permitting any smaller competitors to arise and you have companies also that can afford to keep us immersed in upbeat, slick, seductive propaganda about how exhilarating and delicious their weapons systems are. It's very hard to get an independent voice heard. I think the dangers are similar and I think that the two businesses work together.

MR. BAKER: Uh.

MR. MILLER: Is that all right?

MR. BAKER: That was great. I'm going to jump around in my order but it's more logical -- you were talking about the advertising and the seductive nature of it. How -- I want to talk in a minute and get specifically about the ads that I showed you before, but how do weapons ads -- how are they presented. Let me start again. How is the way these weapons ads are presented similar to the way Madison Avenue goes about promoting cars or sneakers or cologne or cigarettes and what is the difference in the products they're selling and the buyers to whom they're marketing?

MR. MILLER: Okay. The advertising of advanced weapons systems works almost identically to the way that advertising for cigarette brands ad certain cars also works. In every case, the ad places you, the viewer, in the position of the empowered user of the product. If you smoke Newports, you're incredibly potent. That's what the images say. Or if you drink this malt liquor or chew that gum you're very, very powerful. If you drive this car, you're titanically powerful. Well, it's really no different with the FA 18, various tanks, the apache helicopter, you name it. Whatever the advertisers celebrate, whatever weapons system they celebrate, they do so by lending you a kind of fantasy of vicarious empowerment by putting you in the cockpit, by making you feel as if you have this technological might at your fingertips. That's very hard to resist.

MR. BAKER: Many people feel that with the end of the Cold War, the need for new weapons systems is not there. Many question why the need was there as often as we created it during the Cold War, but is there something -- Madison Avenue also advertising also revolves about an ocean of perceived need and creating a need. Do you see a parallel with what they're doing with weapons advertising?

MR. MILLER: Well, this is going to get us off the subject a little bit. It doesn't really create needs. It takes needs that we all have and deflects them onto the things they're selling. You see what I mean?

MR. BAKER: Okay.

MR. MILLER: I'm being pedantic. But --

MR. BAKER: Why don't you get onto that subject and we'll find a way to angle it in.

MR. MILLER: Okay. So to actually make that point.

MR. BAKER: Yeah.

MR. MILLER: Advertising doesn't really create needs. What it does is address needs that we all have already -- normal human needs; and deflects those needs onto the product which is a product that can never meet those needs. Well, everybody naturally wants to feel fulfilled and gratified, wants to feel that their own labor, that their own daily life is effective, that you do the job well. It seems to me that the ads for these weapons definitely address that need by making it seem as you watch that you might be fulfilled beyond your wildest dreams by being able to steer this jet, fly it over enemy territory. It's a kind of video game fantasy that they're selling, that you, the viewer, are empowered by this piece of hardware. There's no suggestion here that the purpose of this weaponry is destructive. There's certainly no suggestion here that this weaponry is prone to failure. So it's a very seductive fantasy and one that's design to suppress as much about the product as it is to represent honestly.

MR. BAKER: I wanted to talk specifically about some of those ads and the images -- if -- you had the ad for the Apache helicopter?

MR. MILLER: Yeah.

MR. BAKER: That wasn't originally one of the ones I was looking at but I had it available and it struck a cord. I don't know if I need to set up any more for you.

MR. MILLER: I'll talk about that a little bit.

MR. BAKER: What was your take on the Apache ad?

MR. MILLER: You probably show clips and have my voice-over kind of things.

MR. BAKER: Something like that.

MR. MILLER: Um, okay, how can I do -- that's a very interesting ad. Um, are they talking too loud?

CAMERAMAN: [inaudible]

MR. MILLER: Do you want to go tell them to keep their voices down?

MR. BAKER: Just kind of dug that off of [inaudible]. We've had it for a while and I [inaudible] look at it and I was like -- what?

CAMERAMAN: Okay.

MR. MILLER: Thank you. Okay. Rolling?

CAMERAMAN: Yeah.

MR. MILLER: It's not enough just to tell us that a piece of military hardware is really powerful. You have to make the viewer feel that it's powerful by granting it certain human qualities. Especially since the Vietnam War we've all been smitten by the image of the indestructible -- I'm sorry. The footsteps distracted me. See, there's so many elements to this. I'm going to try to put them all succinctly.

MR. BAKER: Okay.

MR. MILLER: You know one is that, I mean, they're humanizing the Apache by --

MR. BAKER: Right.

MR. MILLER: -- identifying it with this guy, but that's a Rambo image. You know, the -- the -- absolutely accomplished guerilla fighter. You know what I'm saying?

MR. BAKER: Okay.

MR. MILLER: Uh, okay.

MR. BAKER: You can do them discretely if you want to make these points separately if I'm like showing the video, I can probably edit them in.

MR. MILLER: Okay.

MR. BAKER: It doesn't have to be a mega-statement.

MR. MILLER: Okay. Okay. They want us to believe that these weapons have all the warrior skills of the most accomplished -- I don't know. Okay.

They want us to believe that these weapons systems have basically replaced the human warrior and in many cases in the world as it is today, they -- they have replaced the human warrior. But we still are understandably drawn to the image of the stripped down, absolutely efficient individual human killer, the guerrilla warrior, the special forces soldier. It's not surprising, therefore, that the Rambo fantasy and of Silvester Stallone's famous contribution to mass culture, should have to do with an American soldier who is in fact, a kind of Indian, a kind of Viet Cong, stripped to the waist, long hair, headband around his forehead, you know.

Well, the Apache campaign seems to owe a great deal to that cinematic fantasy because you've got this extremely expensive and really cumbersome piece of military hardware being named after a legendary Indian warrior, the Apache. And visually identified with that individual human fighter who is fleet of foot, who has the --

MR. BAKER: You can just keep going. When stuff like that happens we can live with it. That's all right.

MR. MILLER: Do I have to back all the way up?

MR. BAKER: Aaaa, just start with uh --

CAMERAMAN: The apache --

MR. BAKER: -- the apache, the -- like the tribe or whatever the analogy they're trying to make there, the racist overtones or whatever.

MR. MILLER: Okay. They identify this highly sophisticated, very costly piece of military hardware with a legendary warrior tribe, the Apache -- fleet of foot, all the senses and cunning of a predatory animal, you see. That fantasy is used to sell this helicopter so that again you get the feeling of tremendous power. It comes directly from Silvester Stallone's screen persona as John Rambo, and serves to make the viewer of the commercial feel that he could be another Rambo if he supports the purchase of this big machine.

MR. BAKER: We also had one -- the 50th anniversary of the Air Force that --

MR. MILLER: Oh god!

MR. BAKER: I have seen --

MR. MILLER: Throwing up on that!

MR. BAKER: -- identified on television as a Boeing commercial. There it was stripped of the corporate logos just because that was on the Air Force News. But it starts out, "Make me an effective instrument of thy peace." I have the whole transcript here if you want to hear it. Stop -- stop -- hold the [roll] for a second.

MR. MILLER: I talk specifically about that commercial?

MR. BAKER: Uh huh.

MR. MILLER: This commercial is an absolute powerhouse of propaganda. It's a piece of manipulation so rich that you don't even know where to begin talking about it. And in fact, anything you say about it will sound feeble and crabby put up against this amazingly, kind of striking emotional manipulation. All those words that we hear are buzz words -- country, peace, men and women. It humanizes the Air Force and the images served to make the commercial seem like a celebration of human diversity, the brotherhood of man, it's children, parents, everything good, things that no one would ever dare criticize. It is -- I promise you this commercial is very heavily tested on focus groups. It has all the earmarks of a really carefully crafted piece of propaganda. It's like the morning in America ad campaign for Ronald Reagan, the same kind of gauzy, super-patriotic, upbeat fantasy -- and serves, of course, to suppress completely that the Air Force is about efficient killing. That doesn't enter into this at all -- and that the profession of Air Force pilot is a lethal profession and fraught with danger for the pilots themselves. The commercial doesn't allow us to think that for a moment. It doesn't want us to think at all.

MR. BAKER: What about the fact that it seems to be addressed as a prayer to a higher being?

MR. MILLER: Yeah, well, it's -- it's very seductive to hear the language of a prayer because we are a pious nation and we therefore respond, I think, with a certain reverence when we hear the language of the prayer invoked. The commercial may in that way be more truthful than you think because we are talking about some higher powers here. We're talking about the Pentagon juggernaut and the defense industry. They're pretty high as powers go. You add that to the networks that present the commercial and I guess you could say that they're the highest powers in the world today without question. So the prayer makes a certain sense.

MR. BAKER: Okay. That's great. What about some of the print ads we looked at -- if you want to pull it out -- what about this advertising campaign for the F22 fighter that was a good collaborative effort between Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Pratt and Whitney, all contractors on this aircraft.

MR. MILLER: Yeah. This is an amazing little item.

MR. BAKER: [Inaudible] sort of got to hold it up a little bit higher. I think our frame's is about --

MR. MILLER: This is an amazing little item. It's a fake postcard even with postage on it, supposedly sent by a trooper at the scene of the battle -- a trooper who is a female trooper, by the way, to her loving husband and little boy, Jake -- she calls him the Jakester. It's sentimental but at the same time it's very cool. It's hip because it's an ad that concentrates on the woman as soldier. It's a little but like the car companies trying to woo women to buy cars by appealing to that market segment. It's warm and fuzzy. At the same time it's quasi-feminist which is a good one considering the real status of women in the military. But what's most pernicious about this -- and I think it's fair to say, nauseating, is the way in which the advertisers suggest that your loved ones are basically held hostage by these enormous corporations. "We know what we're doing," she writes to her husband and little boy. "We also have those F22s upstairs totally ruling the sky and covering us like Jake's big fuzzy blue blanket." [laughter] I have to laugh. It's amazing, but it's, um, for all it's sentimentality, it's a very serious kind of threat. It's a little bit like a kidnapper sending your wife's little finger to you in the mail and saying, you'd better pay up; basically, you're going to be in big trouble if you don't support us. "Thank God for these incredibly expensive and sophisticated weapons. They support our troops. They keep them safe." Well, first of all, it's -- it's a violent kind of message, but second of all, it's not even really accurate because as we know now from reading carefully, the F22, for example, didn't really work as advertised. They do not offer absolute, 100 percent protection to troops in any war because no weapons system can do that.

MR. BAKER: Let's [inaudible] interrupt. The F22 really hasn't gone into service yet. Uh --

MR. MILLER: What was the stealth fighter that was in the --

MR. BAKER: The F117.

MR. MILLER: The F117.

MR. BAKER: Yeah. This is one that they're promoting now that there just has not been entered into the active inventory yet.

MR. MILLER: Okay.

MR. BAKER: They don't --

MR. MILLER: Should I rephrase that?

MR. BAKER: Yeah. I wouldn't use that part.

MR. MILLER: But it's worth making the point. The point [inaudible].

MR. BAKER: Historically, it's -- it's predecessors or whatever haven't worked as advertised and have not kept people, whatever, something like that, but keeping in mind that this plane is one that they're pushing now, that is in the budget cycle and is -- they just produced the first one and they're hoping to get money for more.

MR. MILLER: Right. Okay. Here we go. So I made the point that it's a violent message, so I'll take --

MR. BAKER: Right -- and the hostage taking and that was great.

MR. MILLER: That was fine. Okay.

MR. BAKER: Yeah.

MR. MILLER: Um, it's not only a violent message but it's really misleading -- it's deceptive advertising. The F22 hasn't been used yet. It hasn't been tested, but its predecessor, the F117 stealth fighter did not work as advertised, the AWAX did not function with perfect precision as advertising. People died because of these malfunctions. No weapons system -- no weapons system can be reliable enough to keep troops wholly protected from danger in a war. That's the nature of war. If you got any of these Pentagon guys in private to talk honestly, they'll tell you that. They learned that from Klauswitz. They learned that from their own experience. War is unpredictable -- above all unpredictable and technology is unpredictable, too.

MR. BAKER: We see, um --

MR. BAKER: Many U.S. military leaders today believe that because of television, future wars must be almost casualty-free at least for our side. Is this a realistic goal and why do you think the Pentagon feels the American public will not tolerate American casualties?

MR. MILLER: The Pentagon was traumatized by the U.S. loss of the war in Vietnam. Traumatized. The whole generation of higher officers who supervised the Gulf War were above all motivated by a desperate desire not in any way to seem to repeat what happened back in Southeast Asia. When they say that they want a war that's casualty-free, they don't really mean that they want a war that doesn't kill anybody. What they really mean is they want a war in which you don't know that anybody's been killed which is a little bit different. The fact it is that we have no idea to this day, how many U.S. casualties there were in the Gulf. We certainly have no idea how many Iraqi casualties there were in the Gulf and we never will know.

But the fact is that wars result in death. To think otherwise is to be subject to a very, very dangerous delusion. In the history of the United States, the people have had to learn painfully time and again that war is lethal and war kills loved ones, that war is a horrible, horrible destructive thing. Then we have these propagandists come along to assure us that, well, now, thanks to our product, war is not like that any longer. It takes a lot of denial of the truth and I think it can make the population worrisomely optimistic about how war can turn out.

MR. BAKER: Let's talk back about some of those specific ads. In fact, one of the ads for the F22 fighter calls it the peace aircraft, I believe -- the antiwar plane meaning that what does it take to prevent a war, the same strength it takes to win one, the [revolution] of 22 gives air dominance, potential adversaries will have a single option -- peace. How have they turned around the nature of the war plane to make it an anti-war plane here?

MR. MILLER: Well, it's not an unusual kind of a message. In fact, uh --

MR. BAKER: I'll shoot this separately, so if you want to make this [inaudible] --

MR. MILLER: It's the F22?

MR. BAKER: This is the F22 as well, the same one as the post card.

MR. MILLER: Okay. Um, calling the F22 the anti-war plane -- it's a startling kind of a misrepresentation. It's not built to drop flowers on people, right. It's built for destructive purposes. But although it's a kind of a breathtaking misrepresentation, it's not unusual in the history of American warfare. Don't forget that we have an enormous unit of the U.S. government that's called the Department of Defense. Defense is already a euphemism. This kind of euphemistic treatment of warfare is suppression of the fact that there is aggressive, murderous action involved. It really begins with the Cold War when American policy makers claimed and some of them actually believed that we were on the defensive against a far more powerful Soviet Union. This was a paranoid misunderstanding, but the fact is it allowed war now to represented by us, its makers as a defensive measure. And calling the F22 the anti-war plane and using mottos like peace is our profession. These have all been part of the same effort to make us look still like the plucky, scrappy, righteous underdogs faced off against the war makers who are always somewhere else. Did I answer the question?

MR. BAKER: Yeah. That's great. Let's see if there are any more of these, uh --

MR. MILLER: Can I say one other thing about that?

MR. BAKER: Sure.

MR. MILLER: You might find it useful.

MR. BAKER: Okay.

MR. MILLER: Actually, to call the F22 the anti-war plane is to obviate the need for any antiwar activists, you see. I mean, there's really no need, now, for people to be against the war because the war machine itself does that job. It takes care of promoting peace.

MR. BAKER: If we could do the ones that I brought today --

MR. MILLER: These?

MR. BAKER: Oh, yeah. Now, you're going to use my voice-over with this, so I don't have to look into the camera -- or do you want me to look into the camera?

MR. BAKER: Why don't you talk to me because I don't know what parts I'll use.

MR. MILLER: Okay. These ads make pretty clear that the message is, again, the kidnappers message. These ads make pretty clear the message here is that if you don't support us and our enterprise, we will kill your children, we'll kill your loved ones. Someone's father, someone's daughter, someone's son -- who will bring them home? McDonnell-Douglas will. Interesting. You know, I remember during the Vietnam war a frequent cry of protest was "Bring the boys home!" That was supposed to be something accomplished by our duly elected president, the one who had sent them over to Southeast Asia. But here, it's the -- it's -- somehow it's the manufacturer of the fighter planes that's going to bring them home. There's no possibility of injecting actual peace into the equation. And indeed, the survival of our fathers, sons and daughters and so on, no depends on the same forces that have an interest in promoting war around the world. Very perverse. But it's also, again, very hard to resist.

And this ad -- what was this from? Forbes or something?

MR. BAKER: Uh, I think Congressional Quarterly. This is [inaudible].

MR. MILLER: This ad from the Congressional Quarterly for Boeing, shows us on the one hand the investment which is the joint strike fighter, picture of the plane itself which they want Congress to vote appropriations for and then on the opposite side of the page, the return is the happy pilot, smiling at us with his helmet at his side. Uh, here we have combined the promise that your loved one won't be waxed thanks to our joint strike fighter and at the same time, an economic pay-off is also possible that this is the return on your investment. So, it will make money and it will save lives at the same time. It's a delightful fantasy if only it were true.

MR. BAKER: I think I've exhausted most of what I had and kind of gone on --

MR. MILLER: [Inaudible] --

MR. BAKER: -- you'd like to ad.

MR. MILLER: -- you may want to use.

MR. BAKER: Okay.

MR. MILLER: You look at weapon sales to foreign countries by American contractors, you realize that those contractors have been very, very busily and lucratively harming the whole world. It's therefore particularly ludicrous for them to suggest that they are somehow an anti-war enterprise. They have made warfare more possible and more likely all over the world and they've made it more lethal.

MR. BAKER: Great.

MR. MILLER: Okay?

MR. BAKER: Mr. Miller, thank you very much.

MR. MILLER: Okay.