NARRATOR: The Pentagon and defense industry wants you to pay for three new fighter programs. Total cost? An estimated $300 billion.

Sen. DALE BUMPERS: The only way you're going to get the Pentagon under control is take the money away.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: "Someone's father, someone's daughter, someone's son -- Who will bring them home? McDonnell Douglas will." 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.

F-22 FIGHTER AD: "Air to air and air to ground dominance shortens wars and saves lives. One lesson driven home again and again is the absolute imperative of air domination."

JOE TRENTO: The American taxpayer has fallen for this scam again and again, and I see no reason to expect that they won't fall this time.

ADM. JACK SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information.

The Center has long advocated effective air power as an element in our military force structure. A great majority of the American people recognize the importance of maintaining air superiority while supporting military operations in defense of US vital interests. Why then is it necessary for US defense contractors to habitually try to scare the hell of our taxpaying public when advertising their products? I hope today's program illustrates my point.

NARRATOR: There has been great concern recently about the influence of campaign contributions from foreign sources on the American political process. But the impact of domestic contributions from one of the most powerful special interest groups -- the weapons industry -- goes unnoticed. Arms-makers contribute millions of dollars to members of Congress, who then vote on how much to spend on major weapons systems. They then lobby Congress to pass laws that will create lucrative overseas markets for these same weapons.

In collaboration with the Pentagon, their PR departments stage spectacular media events celebrating new weapons. And just to make sure, they flood the Washington, D.C. media market with Madison Avenue-style advertising.

BOEING AD: "They are only metal and cloth, and wire, and rubber..."

MR. TRENTO: I can't think of a worse conflict of interest than the one that goes on between defense contractors and the military.

NARRATOR: Joe Trento runs the National Security News Service, a nonprofit news organization that investigates military issues.

MR. TRENTO: And having the Congress doing the oversight is like a fox guard the chicken house. It's absurd, but that's the way it works.

NARRATOR: A rapid series of mergers and acquisitions -- supported and facilitated by the Pentagon -- has left only two giant military aircraft manufacturers today. Northrop merged with Grumman and Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed.

Lockheed Martin is now acquiring Northrop Grumman, creating a single company with $37 billion in annual revenues. Meanwhile, aviation colossus Boeing is acquiring McDonnell Douglas, resulting in a corporation with estimated annual revenues of $48 billion. If Boeing were a country, it would have an economy larger than two-thirds of the 166 nations on earth.

MR. MILLER: You can't allow power to become too concentrated anywhere in a democracy.

NARRATOR: Mark Crispin Miller teachers media studies at Johns Hopkins University and has written extensively on the dangers of monopoly.

MR. MILLER: 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.

NARRATOR: Today, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are trying to sell Congress on the need to buy three new fighter programs -- the F/A 18 E/F Super Hornet for the Navy, the F-22 Raptor for the Air Force, and the Joint Strike Fighter for the Air Force, Navy and Marines.

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. Of course, we lost all those battles.

NARRATOR: Senator Dale Bumpers has been an informed critic of excessive military spending in his 24 years on the Hill.

Sen. BUMPERS: Now you are about to witness an expenditure for tactical aircraft that makes all that look like child's play.

NARRATOR: If Congress goes forward with all three fighter programs, the total cost is an estimated $300 billion. And if past experience is any guide, that figure is sure to rise. At $180 million per plane, the F-22 costs more than three times as much as the F-15 it is designed to replace, a plane that today is unmatched in capability.

LOU RODRIGUES, General Accounting Office analyst (5 March '97 Congressional Hearing):

When you look at what we're planning to do with the F-22, we are planning to replace every one of our F-15s, our frontline -- today, the best air superiority aircraft in the world -- replace them one for one.

NARRATOR: The F-22 had its origins over a decade ago when the Soviet Union still existed.

Sen. BUMPERS: About the year 1987, we began to put the F-22 on the drawing board to counter the then-Soviet Union fifth generation fighter. Well, we never let up. The Soviet Union disappeared, the fifth generation fighter is still on the drawing board where it will always remain because they can't feed their people, let alone build a fighter plane of that quality. But we never let up. So, the F-22 is a Cold War relic.

NARRATOR: One of the most enduring legacies of the Cold War is the mentality that says we need to be continually buying newer, more expensive, higher tech weapons. For decades the reason given was to counter "the Soviet threat."

FRANK CARLUCCI, Secretary of Defense (1988):

"We must have a clear understanding of the threat posed by the military capabilities and doctrine of the Soviet Union."

NARRATOR: Each year the Pentagon produced a report and video hyping the Soviet military machine as justification for spending more on new weapons. When "the Soviet threat" collapsed under its own weight in 1991, the Pentagon and defense contractors were faced with a dilemma: "How do we justify spending billions on new weapons now?"

This promotional video for the F-22 fighter, sent to members of Congress by Lockheed Martin, gives an idea.

LOCKHEED MARTIN VIDEO: "The fact is civilized society is under siege. The world is populated by renegade nations and extremist factions willing to use any method available to spread their beliefs. These potential enemies continue to modernize and upgrade their military capabilities..."

NARRATOR: McDonnell Douglas' promotional material sent to Congress uses a map to identify countries with advanced fighter aircraft. But it's American aircraft, such as the F-15 and the F-16, that dominate the map.

Sen. BUMPERS: It's one of those things where we start competing with ourselves. 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 here." Well, look at them. They're ours. We sold them abroad.

NARRATOR: To help defray the plane's enormous cost, the Pentagon is already looking to sell the F-22 abroad.

Sen. BUMPERS: 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.

NARRATOR: The arms industry sees foreign sales as a major source of revenue. Events such as the Paris Air Show give foreign buyers a chance to inspect the merchandise as demonstrated by US service personnel.

MR. TRENTO: The funniest thing about the Paris Air Show is that there are all kinds of military people looking for jobs. And one of the reasons our military men and women like to go there and fly the airplanes and demonstrate the equipment is they get to rub elbows with the defense contractors, they get to know them. And if they do the job, if they're good salesmen for the products, they might have a shot at getting a job when they leave the military.

NARRATOR: The weapons contractors put a great deal of pressure on the president and Congress to open up new markets abroad. Bowing to industry demands, President Clinton recently lifted a long-standing ban on the sale of advanced weaponry to Latin America, a ban put in place by Jimmy Carter in 1977 and upheld by both Presidents Reagan and Bush.

In an interview last year, we asked President Carter what would be the effect of ending that restraint.

President JIMMY CARTER: Chile doesn't need F-16s. But if Chile spent a large portion of its free budget funds on F-16s, it's almost inevitable that Argentina would have to buy F-16s just for some future contingency when they didn't get along with Chile. This would then spread to Brazil. And the first thing you know, South America will be covered with F-16s and other advanced weaponry, electronics, defense techniques to defend yourself against F-16s.

So, here you have a new massive drain of precious and very scarce funds just to go into the pockets of American military equipment manufacturers. And that's where the initiative for this change in policy originates.

NARRATOR: Similarly, recent plans to expand the NATO military alliance to include former Eastern bloc countries have the arms manufacturers seeing dollar signs.

Sen. BUMPERS: The industrial complex is obviously very interested in the expansion of NATO because the expansion of NATO means a whole new regimen of weapons sales to 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 it also means they're going to buy them from us.

NARRATOR: Lobbying groups, such as the US Committee to Expand NATO, have begun to spring up around Washington. The committee's president, Bruce Jackson, also happens to be the director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin.

To promote its cause, the committee recently hosted a formal dinner at the exclusive Metropolitan Club, two blocks from the White House, where a dozen senators heard Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explain the benefits of adding Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to the NATO alliance.

Sen. BUMPERS: It's open, blatant, publicized, everybody knows it, and you'd be amazed how many organizations in this town are fronted almost exclusively by the defense industry.

NARRATOR: Hoping to be admitted in the next round of NATO expansion, Romania is now helping to set up a lobbying group in Washington to promote its cause. Financial backers? Lockheed Martin and Bell Helicopter Textron, which has already signed a $1 billion contract to produce attack helicopters in Romania.

But just to make sure they're message gets across, the top weapons exporting companies gave $11 million to presidential and congressional candidates in the 1996 election. Lockheed Martin alone poured $2.3 million into political coffers.

MR. TRENTO: They sell the Congress by paying them off. I mean, they make contributions to the various congressmen, they entertain the chairmen of the committees and the higher ranking members.

NARRATOR: These "soft money" contributions have produced favorable results for the weapons contractors.

Sen. BUMPERS: The best money the military-industrial complex spends is on campaign contributions.

NARRATOR: In 1995, at the defense industry's urging, Congress voted to establish an arms export loan program, which meant that US taxpayers would be responsible for picking up the tab -- up to $15 billion -- if foreign arms buyers, such as Indonesia or Romania, defaulted on their loans. Senator Bumpers led the fight against the bill.

Sen. BUMPERS: The people who voted against my amendment to kill that program have received twice as much in political donations from defense contractors as the people who voted for me. Now that -- You know, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that's the way the system works.

NARRATOR: The threat of lost jobs is another tactic the defense companies use to ensure congressional support for new weapons and overseas arms sales.

"With the perception of conflict diminished, tens of thousands of high-technology aerospace jobs are threatened, as are employers from coast to coast, spelling even more trouble for a fragile economy."

NARRATOR: Subcontracts for new weapons systems are deliberately sprinkled in nearly every state and congressional district. The F-22 has subcontracts in 46 states.

MR. TRENTO: They let the districts know that if jobs are going to be lost in the various congressional districts, your man or woman is responsible. So, it's a kind of form of blackmail and carrot and stick payoffs.

NARRATOR: The new attack submarine has yet to be built. But the Navy has already circulated maps to members of Congress showing subcontracts in their states and districts -- even those for as little as $1000.

Sen. BUMPERS: I can tell you that if there's ten jobs in a state, some member of Congress is going to hear about this weapons system and how wonderful it is and how we'll, you know -- not to build that weapons system will spell the demise of the United States democracy as we know it.

NARRATOR: Overseas sales are pushed as vital to American employment. But just as Hondas are built in Ohio now, many American weapons are assembled abroad.

MR. TRENTO: Let me give you an example: F-16s. We're building them in Turkey. We don't built them in Fort Worth, Texas. So, who gets the jobs? The Turks. It's an international economy now and the idea that these jobs come to America is nonsense.

NARRATOR: While the United States may be the world's leading advocate for peace, it is also the world's largest arms merchant, a combination that can lead to contradictions in policy.

MR. TRENTO: We build F-16s in Turkey. Then the Turks use them to shoot at the Kurds, which we are supposedly trying to help. I mean, our foreign policy and the Pentagon seem not to have met. It's like, 'Hello, do you know each other? Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, have you met each other?' Because they are two opposing forces doing exactly the opposite thing for the result that the policy's supposed to have. And Congress sits around sucking its thumb, thinking it's all okay, just checking their campaign contributions.

NARRATOR: While the Pentagon identifies foreign dangers, the greatest threat these three new aircraft face may be from each other as they compete for funding. This Boeing ad for the still-conceptual Joint Strike Fighter stresses a financial theme.

MR. MILLER: 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 payoff is also possible, that this is a return on your investment. So, it will make money and it will save lives at the same time. It's a delightful fantasy.

NARRATOR: Weapons contractor advertising is targeted at Congress and other policymakers in the Washington area. On television, it appears during the Sunday morning political talk shows such as "Face the Nation" and "Meet the Press," often timed to coincide with military spending deliberations in Congress. However, there is rarely any reporting on television critical of the weapons industry.

MR. TRENTO: Two of the major television networks are owned by defense contractors: NBC and CBS. Need we say more?

MR. MILLER: It's not very likely that you're going to find a reporter suicidal enough to try to 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 a defense contractor.

NARRATOR: Print ads appear in prominent newspapers and magazines considered must reading on Capitol Hill.

Sen. BUMPERS: 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 members of Congress. You'll 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.

NARRATOR: This ad for the F-22 appeared in the form of a postcard inserted into magazines complete with cancelled stamps and clever captions scrawled on the picture.

Sen. BUMPERS: It's dated 2007. And a woman is writing home -- She is apparently in Desert Storm or something similar to that. You can tell this is a desert scene. She's on top of a tank or something. She's writing to her husband.

POSTCARD AD: "Dear Rick (and the Jakester), Well, we're here and I'm okay. I think about you and Jake constantly. I can't say much about what's going on except that you guys shouldn't worry. I'm surrounded by great people. We've got great equipment and we know what we're doing. We also have those F-22s upstairs, totally ruling the sky, covering us like Jake's big fuzzy blue blanket."

MR. MILLER: I have to laugh. It's amazing, but it's -- for all its 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 better pay up. Basically, you're going to be in big trouble if you don't support us.'

NARRATOR: This ad for the F-22 presents it as the "anti-war plane."

MR. MILLER: Calling the F-22 the "anti-war plane", it's a startling kind of a misrepresentation. It's not built to drop flowers on people, right? Naturally, to call the F-22 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.

NARRATOR: This McDonnell Douglas ad for the F/A-18 Super Hornet is part of a broad campaign that has also appeared on television.

MR. MILLER: "Someone's father, someone's daughter, someone's son -- who will bring them home? McDonnell Douglas will." Interesting. The message is again the kidnapper's message: 'If you don't support us and our enterprise, we will kill your children, we'll kill your loved ones.' The survival of our fathers, sons and daughters, and so on now depends on the same forces that have an interest in promoting war around the world.

NARRATOR: The military services themselves produce slick promotional materials aimed at Congress. The Navy published "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare," promoting the Super Hornet, to which the Air Force responded with "F-22 Raptor...The Keystone of Air Dominance for the 21st Century."

Sen. BUMPERS: Well, 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.

NARRATOR: Inside it asserts that the F-22 is part of "Joint Vision 2010 -- Defining America's New Way of War." The publication focuses on casualties from past wars: "From the costly battles of yesterday to the rapid and decisive application of joint power tomorrow."

In the age of instant television coverage, the Pentagon has became obsessed with casualties and their perceived effect on public support.

MR. MILLER: When they say that they want a war that's casualty-free, they don't really mean 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 is that wars result in death. To think otherwise is to be subject to a very, very dangerous delusion. Then we have these propagandists come along to assure us that, 'Well, now, thanks to our product, war is not like that any longer.'

Production Spokesman: "Basically we've concepted two 60-second commercials for the Air Force that are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Air Force."

NARRATOR: The fiftieth anniversary of the Air Force has given both the weapons contractors and the Pentagon a theme around which to spin their mutually reinforcing advertising.

Commentator for Air Force News: "As the band makes it way past the reviewing stand, a B-2 from Whiteman Air Force Base gives an international television audience and thousands of spectators something to remember."

ABC TV ANNOUNCER: "Oh, wonderful."

ABC TV ANNOUNCER: "Oh, look at that. Going right down Colorado Boulevard, exciting this huge crowd. And what a beautiful shot of the aircraft."

MR. TRENTO: Anybody who sees a beautiful aircraft flying can't help but be smitten. 'Ooh, look at that. That will defend me.' Well, what they don't tell you when they show you a B-2 bomber, for example, which is a very exotic-looking weapon -- unfortunately, the weapon can't carry much of a bomb load, it's really not stealthy. It's been downgraded to the point where most radars can see it.

NARRATOR: This Boeing ad, steeped in nostalgia, portrays multi-million dollar aircraft as simple, fragile vessels, dependent upon the heroic efforts of human pilots.

BOEING TV AD: "They are only metal, and cloth, and wire, and rubber. Not until courage and service and dedication are added do they become more than just machines."

COMMERCIAL Production Person: "You think of the military as being, you know, these -- The Army, the 'droids, the Air Force, we're just going, but that's not the case. Everybody has a human side to 'em and that's what we're going for."

NARRATOR: This ad produced by the Air Force takes the form of a prayer.

Older Man: "Make me an effective instrument of thy peace."

Man: "In defense of the skies that canopy free nations."

Man: "Instill within me an abiding awareness of my responsibility toward you, my country and my fellow man."

Woman: "So, guide me daily in each thought, word and deed that I may fulfill your will." MR. MILLER: This commercial is an absolute powerhouse of propaganda. Anything you say about it will sound feeble and crabby put up against this amazingly striking kind of emotional manipulation. The images serve to make the commercial seem like a celebration of human diversity, the brotherhood of man. And it serves, of course, to suppress completely the fact 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.

NARRATOR: Although still unproven in the air, the F-22 does publish a glossy newsletter, Mission Brief, to promote its cause. One issue contains a story on Lockheed Elementary School in Marietta, Georgia, where a wall-sized mural of the F-22 greets arriving students. Another edition of Mission Brief features drawings of the plane by third graders at Jasper Elementary School.

The students were lectured by their teacher on "what the F-22 means to the economy and for the protection of our country." The children were asked what they thought it would be like to fly the plane.

Writes eight-year old Olivia: "I took off and started to get nervous. It started to rise. My stomach felt funny. I wish I could go home. I said, 'This is the first time I've been a test pilot. I see our enemies ahead of you, so strap up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.'"

NARRATOR: The bumpiest ride will be the one American taxpayers take when they find themselves committed to purchasing these astronomically expensive aircraft -- with no enemy in sight.

Sen. BUMPERS: Despite the fact that the Soviet Union is 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.

NARRATOR: Why has there been so little national debate about military spending?

MR. TRENTO: It's more than people don't care. That, 'Hey, the Pentagon builds weapons systems that don't do their job and are too expensive?' That's not news. Only if the public understood that these are chunks of money that we will never see again, only then do we seem to have any understanding of the meaning of what we do.

Sen. BUMPERS: The only way you're going to get the Pentagon under control is take the money away. And the only way you're going to 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.

ADM. SHANAHAN: Aircraft, like anything else, eventually wear out. Today's American tactical aircraft, the F-15s, the F-16s and the F-18s are the best in the world. Rather than committing the country to costly new programs, we should be replacing current planes with new production models of the same aircraft. Equipped with advanced avionics and missile technology, these aircraft will continue to dominate the skies for decades to come, regardless of what the advertisers tell you.

For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I am Jack Shanahan.