NARRATOR: This neighborhood group is celebrating unity in the fight against violence and crime, and the Washington, D.C. National Guard is on their side.

General JOHN CONAWAY: We're getting heavier and heavier each day in America and around the world into what we call non-traditional roles.

NARRATOR: There's a big movement afoot to assign non-combat missions to the military. Is this a good thing?

Senator SAM NUNN (D-GA), Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee (Speech on Senate Floor, 23 June '92):

"There will be a much greater opportunity than in the past to use military assets and training to assist civilian efforts in critical domestic needs."

Colonel HARRY SUMMERS (USA, Ret.): The military needs to stick to its knitting. And the American people ought to insist that it stick to its knitting because the dangers of it not doing so can be profound.

SERVICEMAN: "I am a symbol of what?"

NARRATOR: Watch "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" and see what the "New Civilian Tasks for the Military" is all about.

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

The military is the most highly respected institution in the United States today and, historically, Americans have been willing to spend whatever's necessary to defend this country. But today, as the military searches for new roles and missions, the question arises: Should the military become involved in educa- tion, rebuilding our infrastructure and waging war on drugs?

Our program is about that today and I think you'll find it very interesting.

President BILL CLINTON (20 January '93): "I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear..."

NARRATOR: Bill Clinton is now president. He's promised to usher in an era of change.

President CLINTON (17 February '93, State of the Union Message):

"It is true that we can responsibly reduce our defense budget."

NARRATOR: He said he would reduce military spending.

Yet, over the next five years, the Pentagon plans to spend $1.3 trillion on the military. What will the Pentagon do with all that money?

Col. SUMMERS: With the end of the cold war, people are looking around and sort of asking the question: What's the mili-tary for?

NARRATOR: Colonel Harry Summers is a respected military analyst.

Col. SUMMERS: Now, for the first time in 60 years, we don't have a known enemy, a known threat, so that there is this danger to seek these kind of missions, these kinds of non-military missions in order to compensate for that.

SERVICEMAN: "Now you know we are the National Guard, as the lady said."

NARRATOR: Non-military missions?

SERVICEMAN: "Now like this. Okay?"

NARRATOR: Non-traditional missions?

Over the past five to ten years, without much notice or fanfare, the Pentagon has taken on a broad range of activities which stray from its traditional role of preparing to fight wars and defend America.

America's founding fathers, wary of the military gaining too much power, designed our system of government so that civilian leaders would exercise strict control over the military. SERVICEMAN: "...where you draw your linen and your sheets, go over there. You'll get one line. We do everything by lines."

NARRATOR: Could the military's greater role in American society lead to less civilian oversight? We'll come back to this question later in the program.

The war on drugs, humanitarian and disaster relief, medical assistance to poor communities, hosting and supporting weekend and summer camps for kids and teaching in schools. These are some of the new tasks the military has been doing. And this departure from traditional military missions is about to increase in a big way.

Senator SAM NUNN (D-GA), Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee (23 June '92, Speech on Senate floor):

"While the Soviet threat is gone, we're still battling at home drugs, poverty, urban decay, lack of self esteem, unemployment and racism."

NARRATOR: Senator Sam Nunn is the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator NUNN (same speech): "The military certainly cannot solve all of these problems and I don't stand here today propos- ing any solution, any magic solution to the numerous problems we have at home. But I am totally convinced that there is a proper and important role that armed forces can play in addressing many of these pressing issues."

NARRATOR: Senator Nunn's Civil-Military Cooperation Act, which became law in 1993 promotes a broad spectrum of new, non-traditional, non-combat missions for the military.

Senator NUNN (same speech): "I believe we can reinvigorate the military spectrum of capabilities to address such needs as deteriorating infrastructure, the lack of role models for tens of thousands, indeed, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young people, limited training and education opportunities for the disadvantaged, and serious health and nutrition problems facing many of our citizens, particularly our children."

NARRATOR: Some military officials hope that by acquiring new non-combat missions, military spending and force levels will continue to remain high, although Senator Nunn says his program shouldn't require additional spending or personnel.

Senator NUNN (same speech): "The program cannot become a basis for justifying additional overall military expenditures or for retaining excess military personnel."

NARRATOR: But giving the military new, non-combat missions might inflate military expenditures and personnel levels.

Lt. Col. CHARLES DUNLAP: I think that there is a feeling among many people in the military that this is something that needs to be done. And they want to do it. I think that there are other people in the military that see this as a way of preserving force structure.

NARRATOR: Lt. Colonel Charles Dunlap is the author of "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," for which he received an award from General Colin Powell.

In this paper, Lt. Colonel Dunlap portrayed an America run by a military dictatorship in that year. While emphatically not a prediction, he wanted to dramatize his concern over the military assuming missions that are normally assigned to the civilian sector.

Lt. Colonel Dunlap's views expressed on this program are his own, and do not necessarily represent the policies of the Pentagon. He thinks that giving the military non-traditional missions is likely to keep military spending higher than necessary.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: I think people ought to understand that, that this is going to cost money.

NARRATOR: How much money? General John Conaway is the outspoken chief of the National Guard Bureau.

Gen. CONAWAY: I have probably about $50- to $60 million total dollars for all of our youth programs, our drug demand reduction programs and our medical readiness. We call it "Med Ready USA" programs, internal to the United States.

NARRATOR: The military also requested $874 million dollars to wage the war on drugs in 1995. This comes on top of almost five and a half billion dollars spent since 1989, when the Pentagon became a major player in the drug war. [pause 2] All in all, according to the General Accounting Office, the military spent over ten and a half billion dollars between 1990 and 1993, preparing for and conducting non-combat missions.

SERVICEMAN: (Singing. ) Everywhere we go --

GROUP OF CHILDREN: (Singing.) Everywhere we go --

SERVICEMAN: (Singing.) People want to know --

GROUP OF CHILDREN: (Singing.) People want to know --

NARRATOR: But is it cost effective to use well-intentioned military personnel to host weekend camps for our nation's youth? Clean up the environment? Fight the war on drugs or provide disaster relief?

Gen. CONAWAY: Much of what we do is a byproduct of our training or is taken out of part of our training time, whether it's engineering projects or helping with youth. We have some funding, but we're using the expertise and the highly trained skills and the education of our people.

NARRATOR: But doing these non-traditional missions often requires extraordinary efforts.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: The Navy is now reconfiguring ships and aircraft to do that specific counter-drug mission. And so, now we're seeing that we're not just taking resources that we would use for a combat function' we're now customizing them for a non-combat function in response to these new taskings.

NARRATOR: These non-combat missions also take money away from necessary military training. According to one news report, the Somalia humanitarian operation was paid for with funds originally allocated for training. Commanders were afraid their soldiers would be unable to hold military training exercises when they returned to their bases in the United States due to lack of funds.

Do civilian missions improve military skills? For example, the crews of AWACs, airplanes which were designed to detect and track high performance enemy combat fighter planes, significantly improve their skills by hours of searching for drug smuggling, slow moving, light airplanes?

Colonel Trevor Dupuy, the eminent military historian, sees a benefit.

Colonel TREVOR DUPUY: When the armed forces or an entity of the armed forces is given a mission commensurate with a rather specialized professional kind of activity that is not purely fighting, such as medicine, engineering, communications, certainly this has a training benefit. No question about it.

NARRATOR: But it's the practice of integrating support forces with the combat forces that makes for an effective mili- tary, according to Lt. Colonel Dunlap.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: It's very important that training be conducted in realistic scenarios, together with the combat forces that the combat support people are supposed to support. Because the tough part is not the discrete task, the making the road, or whatever it may be, it's the combination with the combat forces in the combat environment carrying out that task. And that's what we need the training of.

NARRATOR: There have been some problems maintaining the military's fighting edge in the past. General Conaway points to the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, established in 1933.

Gen. CONAWAY: There have been some problems in past history of this happening. During the Great Depression some of this happened, where the military was used so heavily to help with the problems of America in those days and to run some of the CCC camps and to help training in that area, that basically all other training was kind of pushed in the background. And, when World War II started, our military wasn't ready, like it is today. So, I think we have to keep our eye on the target.

NARRATOR: Perhaps Pentagon spending should be transferred to existing agencies that were created to do exactly what the Pentagon is starting to do: solve America's domestic problems.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: I think that we ought to give the money to the agencies with the skill, expertise and mission to accomplish those functions. And if the increment that DoD is getting to do, for example, a counter-drug mission should go to that agency which has that responsibility if DoD is no longer obliged to do that mission.

NARRATOR: If the military successfully competes for funds with civilian agencies, federal, state and local governments will continue to be underfunded and will not be able to adequately cope with the country's domestic problems.

What other factors should Americans consider before assigning new non-military missions to the military? Should they be allowed to continue with the ones they already perform?

Col. SUMMERS: The military needs to stick to its knitting. And the American people ought to insist that it stick to its knitting because the dangers of its not doing so can be profound.

NARRATOR: What kind of dangers?

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: The biggest consequence is that society might end up with a military that can't do its basic function of national defense. But I also think that there's a danger that the military will become politicized. And by that I mean, if the military is asked, for example, to fix the schools, then sooner or later I think it's inevitable that the military is going to want to determine how the schools are located, what's taught, who teaches, all that sort of thing.

Where if we're talking about rebuilding the infrastruc-ture, the military is going to want inevitably to get involved in the policy decisions which determine how that's done.

NARRATOR: The use of the military in law enforcement is particularly worrisome for Colonel Summers.

Col. SUMMERS: More disturbing is the more the military is involved in civilian-type missions, the more we weaken what is this country's great strength, is the subordination of the military to civilian control. And I see a very dangerous thing, for example, in the drug war now, the involvement of the military in civil law enforcement to a degree not true since the Civil War. And that's a very dangerous trend in my view.

NARRATOR: For over 100 years the Posse Comitatus Act strictly prohibited military personnel from engaging in law enforcement. However, in 1981, the Reagan administration spon- sored legislation that seriously eroded this restriction. Today, the military is very involved in law enforcement.

Gen. CONAWAY: On any given day, we have almost 5,000 men and women of the National Guard involved assisting local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in counter-drug activities, primarily in surveillance, but also in interdiction and eradica- tion.

NARRATOR: Is this a good thing?

Senator NUNN (23 June '92, Speech on Senate Floor): "The military involvement in counter-narcotics activities is a good example of a mission that enhances military skills, helps to address an important domestic problem and improves the morale of the people involved."

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: Well, I think there's a lot wrong with using the military for law enforcement. Number one, they're not trained to do it, and it's a fundamentally different task. Because law enforcement people are not -- as General Powell put it when he was talking about the Iraqi army -- military forces cut off the enemy and then they kill it. That's not, I hope, the way police forces approach their task. Police forces need a steady restraint which is not appropriate in the combat environ- ment. It's very different.

NARRATOR: Military forces engage in a wide variety of law enforcement and anti-drug activities, from helping drug enforce- ment agents destroy marijuana crops at home and abroad to patrol-ling along the US-Mexican border, to lighting drug infested neighborhoods with powerful flood lights to discourage drug dealers.

"AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" spent an evening with National Guardsmen assisting local police in an anti-drug operation in Washington, D.C.

Female ORANGE CAP: The National Guard is shining a light on the problem.

NARRATOR: We found that they had a lot of local support.

Male ORANGE CAP: I think that it's good for the National Guard to be ought here and we need more of the National Guard out here. We need the National Guard on the street 24 hours a day.

Female ORANGE CAP: I think it's a great job. They've been very supportive of us.

NARRATOR: Although these dedicated National Guardsmen are paid to come out on the streets, most of them told us they do it because they want to help improve society. Colonel Summers would rather see tax dollars spent on hiring more policemen than on the National Guard.

Col. SUMMERS: If we need more police, let's get more police and let's not use the National Guard and the military to do essentially police functions.

Sgt. AYCOCK: I am a symbol of what?

STUDENTS: (Several simultaneously. ) The Army. The Army. The Air Force.

Sgt. AYCOCK: I am?

NARRATOR: Besides law enforcement and the war on drugs, the military has become involved in education. All across America many National Guard units have formed relationships with schools. Master Sergeant TERRANCE AYCOCK: Normally I try to come out here maybe -- you know, two or three times a week.

NARRATOR: Master Sergeant Terrance Aycock is a concerned active duty National Guardsman in charge of maintaining the air- planes of the 201st Airlift Squadron.

Sgt. AYCOCK: I give up my lunch hour and the commander allows us two or three hours a week to take and come out here. So, I'm normally out here maybe about six hours.

NARRATOR: At the Roger B. Taney Middle School in Maryland, for example, these dedicated National Guards spend a few hours each week helping out where they can.

Master Sergeant FAYE JONES: The commander has afforded me the opportunity to come out. Although I'm a one-person shop, I still try to get out here as much as I can.

NARRATOR: These Guards, like many other military units throughout the country take, students on field trips to military bases.

REGINA HUMAINE: We take a homeroom twice a month to the base and they go on tours. They talk about career development. They talk about excellence in math and sciences. And they build a connectedness between what the real world is about and what the school world is about.

NARRATOR: The kids told us they really appreciate the National Guard coming to their schools.

Female STUDENT: They're really helpful.

Female STUDENT: Yes, they encourage us to stay in school. And they come by our classrooms and they talk to us and every- thing and help us with our work.

Female STUDENT: They go beyond the call of duty because they go in, they not only ask how we're doing, but they help us with our work.

KEITH GEIGER: I think the National Guard or the military, in general, is in existence to defend this country, not to teach our classrooms, not to build our roads, not to build our bridges.

NARRATOR: Keith Geiger is the effective leader of the National Education Association. He supports outside help to schools as long as it does not result in taking money away from them. But with federal funds limited, every dollar spent by the military is one less dollar that could be spent on education.

Dr. GEIGER: If we have money to spend, what are we going to spend it on? I believe that money that is allocated for the defense budget or for the military budget ought to be spent on defense or on the military. If I have to take $10 million and allocate it to the defense budget, so that they can take children on a field trip, or $10 million to allocate to schools for educational purposes, we want that money to go into the schools.

NARRATOR: How are these well-intentioned soldiers able to take time away from their jobs during the middle of the day? Their commander told us he makes the time available because he believes it's an investment in America's future. Lieutenant Colonel Dunlap sees it differently.

Lt Col. DUNLAP: If you're suggesting that DoD active duty assets -- in other words, as part of someone's official duties --are obliged to do these sorts of things, then in my mind it says that either (A) you have too many resources or, (B) we are losing our focus. Those people are not focusing on what their job is supposed to do.

NARRATOR: Some Americans support the notion that so long as there are soldiers nearby, they should be put to use. Senator Nunn wants to use them to help rebuild the infrastructure in Georgia, as well as throughout America.

Senator NUNN (same speech): "Active duty and reserve units, particularly those with engineering capabilities, could partici- pate in restoring part of our infrastructure in this country. Military construction units may need to be beefed up..."

NARRATOR: But how would this effect the millions of unemployed civilians who are looking for jobs?

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: This country was built on private enterprise, and I don't think it serves the national security interests of the United States to have the government doing tasks, such as construction tasks, that will have the effect of undermining private industry's capabilities to do the same thing. I don't think that's in our interest.

NARRATOR: In addition, since it costs on average $82,000-a-year to employ a soldier -- that's taking into account housing, training and medical costs, as well as regular and retirement pay -- it would appear that America could hire more construction workers for the same amount of money.

Sgt. AYCOCK: Yes, young lady.

Female STUDENT: So, you come here in your spare time, right? Or, during work. But when you come here, you've got to go back.

Sgt. AYCOCK: I come here at the pleasure of my boss. If he feels that I'm doing a good job and the work permits, he allows me to come.

NARRATOR: Most military people we spoke to were committed to doing what's best for America.

Gen. CONAWAY: It is exciting. It's amazing how excited our Guardsmen are in wanting to add value to America and get us ready for the 21st century in this basic, non-traditional role.

NARRATOR: However, the best contribution the military can make is to stick to its role of guarding against military dangers to the United States, according to Lt. Colonel Dunlap.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: If you have people constantly doing these non-traditional missions, they're going to start to think that that is their mission. In other words, they're relief workers, they're South Carolina construction engineers, they're drug enforcement people. They're all these other things except war- fighters and warriors, which is what they need to be.

And I think that once you lose that. once you lose that martial spirit or warrior spirit, it's going to be very difficult to get that back on the very short notice that conflicts in the modern era call upon.

NARRATOR: Colonel Summers thinks the military ought to concentrate on guarding against external dangers to the United States.

Col. SUMMERS: Well, I think the military ought to be justified in terms of protecting the national security of the United States, protecting the American homeland, and safeguarding American interests in the world. It ought to justify itself in terms of war-fighting, and that ought to be its bottom line. And if we don't need them to protect our interests in the world, well, let's demobilize them.

Adm. LAROQUE: Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it, that our military is very capable of performing a great variety of missions and everything they undertake they do well. Now, since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, questions are being asked in the Pentagon and the Congress and throughout the country as to just what the role of the United States military establishment should be in the future.

Some people have suggested that our military men and women should be used to teach students in school. Some say we ought to be building roads and bridges and that the military ought to be used in the drug war and a whole variety of other missions. Obviously, if the military are assigned those tasks, they'll do them well. But there are certain drawbacks.

First of all, when you start using the military per- sonnel in civilian enterprises, they take the jobs then of those persons -- the teachers, the laborers, and the others who would normally be performing those functions -- and consequently, those people would no longer have the work to do.

There's another perhaps even more significant drawback. That when the military begin performing functions that are really not military in the normal sense of the word, they degrade their military capability. They become less combat-ready. And the primary purpose of the military ought never to be forgotten; and, that is, the military is to wage war and win wars and defend the United States. And we never want to take that skill away from the military or in any way diminish that capability.

Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.

[Over credits]

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: If you're suggesting that DoD active duty assets -- in other words, as part of someone's official duties are obliged to do these sorts of things, then in my mind it says that either (A) we have too many resources or, (B) we are losing our focus. Those people are not focussing on what their job is supposed to do.

Col. SUMMERS: It's just dangerous now to go out and seek out these outside missions and pull away from the primary mission of why the military was created, which essentially is to kill people and destroy things in the name of the United States. I mean, that's the real bottom line. Nobody really wants to talk about that, but that's really what it is. And it's the ability to do that that gives it its utility to the United States.

Gen. CONAWAY: I don't know that it should seek -- that we are seeking to justify our budget based strictly on the internal mission or the non-traditional roles. We can't lose sight of the first mission that the American people have a Department of Defense for. And that is, per the Constitution, the responsibi-lity of the president and government is to protect the citizens of the United States.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: As we do drawdown and become a smaller military, I think it's even more vital that we focus on that one responsibility that is our basic, and that's the combat capabi-lity, the ability to fight wars should the occasion arise. So, the distractions become even more dangerous, I think, in compro-mising that fundamental responsibility.

Gen. CONAWAY: We're looking at more and more within this building is the internal mission, as well, and how we work that both with the military and with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and with other local, state and federal agencies that we work closely with. So, that is one of the great debates in the Pentagon right now, is do we balance the force structure.

Lt. Col. DUNLAP: We need to be very, very careful that we don't make some sort of Faustian bargain here and sell the soul of the military with the idea that they will still be able to have that same kind of dedication, focus and martial spirit that's necessary to win on the modern battlefield.

[End of broadcast.]