Boyd (43 page)

They looked at each other in bewilderment. What the hell did that mean?

Boyd was in the office about a week when he called the first meeting of his department heads. He lit a cigar, took a long
sip of smart juice, and leaned back in his chair. “Everything you people are doing is meaningless,” he said. “Not a goddamn
thing coming out of this office has any importance.” They shifted uncomfortably and waited. “But that’s what the Air Force
wants. So keep on doing nothing. Just don’t bother me with the bullshit.” He dismissed everyone but one officer, a man he
judged particularly ineffective. “If I never hear from you, you will get outstanding ERs,” Boyd said. “Talk to me and your
ER is downgraded. In fact, your ERs are going to be inversely proportionate to how often I hear from you.” The officer stared
at Boyd, not knowing what to say. Boyd leaned across the desk and pointed his finger. “I don’t believe I’m getting through.
In this office the only way for you to fuck up is to let me hear from you.” He then waved his hand and dismissed the officer.

One bit of paperwork caught Boyd’s attention. When he read studies and reports on the new B-1 Bomber, his antennae quivered.
It could have been because he was a fighter pilot and simply did not like bombers. It could have been because the B-1 was
a swing-wing air-
craft and he felt contempt for swing-wing technology. It could have been because the B-1 was gold-plated in the extreme—so
expensive that to build it would take money from the F-15 and the lightweight fighter. It could have been because the B-1
was so complex that Boyd knew it represented endless problems. Or it could have been that Boyd sensed that the project was
fundamentally corrupt. He looked around his office and realized none of the careerists would dive into a project so prized
by the Air Force. It would be up to him.

Boyd’s new job made him a member of the Program Review Committee, a prestigious group of colonels and generals who sorted
through hundreds of ideas to choose what programs the Air Force would adopt, what direction the Air Force would go. Again,
all of this was done with no consideration for budget restraints. Boyd thought the discussions at these meetings were useless
and refused to attend. When a general sent down word that Boyd, or a representative, had to attend the meetings, Boyd looked
around the office and his eyes settled on a secretary. When she put paper in her typewriter and started moving her fingers,
the typewriter sounded like a Gatling gun. She was one of the fastest typists in the Pentagon. But oftentimes her fingers
were not on the home keys and when she ripped the paper from the typewriter and handed it to someone for signature, it was
gibberish. Boyd sent her to the meetings.

In his first days back in the Building, he made numerous phone calls all over the country. He called Sprad out at Nellis and
Tom Christie at Eglin. He called two of his favorite students, Everett Raspberry and Ron Catton. Razz was a lieutenant colonel
serving as operations officer in a test squadron at Eglin. Catton was a full colonel who had been a wing commander and was
about to go to the War College. He was on the fast track to becoming a general, but his wife was diagnosed with cancer and
he told Boyd he was retiring early to take care of her. Boyd also called his old comrade Pierre Sprey and told him to gird
for battle. “The lightweight fighter is in trouble, Tiger. We’re gonna have to go to the barricades.”

Boyd could not sit still for any length of time. Several times each morning he loped down the concourse to the cafeteria or
the bookstore. He bought candy bars and read the
Washington Star
. He had been away for a year and suddenly faced the daily shock of Watergate. And as he returned to his office, he began
to stop fellow officers in the corridors
and open conversations with “You read the latest about that goddamn Nixon?” Usually he was met with shocked silence. Boyd
then put a conspiratorial arm about the person’s shoulder and said, “Let me tell you something. We got to get rid of that
son of a bitch. He’s a crook.”

Active-duty officers almost never criticize their commander in chief in public. Boyd may have been the first colonel to stalk
the halls of the Pentagon, urging fellow officers to “get rid of” a president. Usually the person to whom Boyd was talking
spun and rapidly walked away. And if Boyd later met the person in the hall, more often than not the other person ignored him.
At which point Boyd stopped and boomed out, “The son of a bitch won’t even look me in the eye!”

Boyd had more than politics on his mind. The fly-off competition between the YF-16 and the YF-17 was about to begin and he
frequently was off to Nellis or Wright-Pat. The lightweight fighter was Boyd’s dream and he knew the Blue Suiters were lying
in wait. But until the fly-off was over there was little more he could do. He wanted to examine the B-1. His instincts told
him something was terribly wrong with that project, and if he was right, that meant a skunk fight with the Air Force. There
was nothing Boyd loved more than a good skunk fight. It kept the juices flowing. It kept him at a combat edge. Without a skunk
fight, life was boring.

One day he charged down the hall to the general who was his boss and complained that his office was filled with bureaucrats
and that he wanted someone, anyone, just one person, who could do “real work.” The general and Boyd had a contentious relationship.
Boyd’s loud voice and desk pounding and language often bordered on insubordination. It probably was to avoid another exchange
that the general told Boyd he could have a young captain who was coming to the Building. When the general said the captain
had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Boyd said he would take him sight unseen. “Anybody with a Ph.D. in double-e must be
reasonably smart.”

Boyd did not tell the general he had a special project for the young officer. He did not tell the general that what he really
wanted was someone not contaminated by careerism, someone who still had his idealism, someone he could wind up and send into
battle against the Air Force.

The captain reported in June. He saluted and said, “Sir, Captain Raymond Leopold reporting for duty.”

Boyd glowered over a cigar. He looked at a tall slender officer and bellowed, “Boyd. Like
bird
in Brooklynese. Got it?”

A Ph.D. can figure out such things. “Yes, Sir.”

Boyd put his feet on the table and opened the captain’s folder. He shook his head in dismay. Leopold was a graduate of the
Air Force Academy, a “Zoomie.” “You got a warped education. The Academy teaches its graduates to be elitists, to expect too
much.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Leopold had walked into Boyd’s office with the confidence found in many firstborn children, the self-absorption embedded in
graduates of the Air Force Academy, and the intellectual pride of a twenty-seven-year-old with a Ph.D. in one of the most
difficult fields of engineering. He was among the most talented and educated young officers in the Air Force and he knew it.
He was an officer of exceptional promise. Everyone thought so. Everyone, that is, but Boyd.

Leopold was born January 6, 1946, and boasted that he was “the first of the baby boomers.” Ever since he was twelve years
old, all he had wanted was to grow up and go to the Air Force Academy. On the math portion of his college boards, he made
798, the highest ever in his south-side Chicago high school. While his classmates applied to three or four colleges, he applied
only to the Academy. He graduated in 1967 and ranked 165 in a class of 524. The ranking is deceptive because while Leopold
fared miserably in political science and English and history, he was a near genius in electrical engineering. The Air Force
sent him to graduate school and by the time he was twenty-two he had a masters degree. At Williams AFB in Arizona he was second
in his flight class to solo the T-38. Later, at a celebratory party, his classmates decided to throw him into a swimming pool.
Leopold resisted and in the resulting melee he herniated a spinal disk. His flying career was ended. During the next three-and-a-half
years, on his own with no Air Force assistance and no change of duties, he attended night school and earned his Ph.D.

Men in their twenties whose lives have been spent in academics sometimes have a childlike naïveté. This seems especially true
of those who study mathematics. And for reasons only psychologists can explain, many young people of extraordinary intellectual
gifts and accomplishments also have a deep sense of insecurity. Even the most casual question brought a response from Leopold
in which he
emphasized his ranking: first of the baby boomers, highest math SAT in his class, second in his class to solo. Leopold was
an overachiever, especially after his father died, a year before his Pentagon rotation. He was focused on his career and wanted
to be first in everything.

But he was standing in front of this gruff, blunt colonel and realized that none of his accomplishments mattered. In fact,
he sensed he was on probation as far as Boyd was concerned. Leopold went home thinking someone made a big mistake by assigning
him to Boyd’s office.

The next morning Leopold showed Boyd his new Hewlett-Packard calculator. Such gadgets were still rare in the summer of 1973.
Leopold had the first one in the office.

“Tiger, take that calculator of yours and do me a budget analysis,” Boyd said. “I want you to go through the entire Air Force
budget. I don’t want my ideas to contaminate your search, but pay particular attention to anything to do with the B-1. Anything
you see on the B-1, pull it out.” Boyd leaned forward and in a conspiratorial whisper added, “I think they’re fucking with
the budget.”

Then Boyd delivered what was to be called his “To Be or to Do” speech. Leopold was the first person known to receive the speech,
probably because Boyd, based on his experiences over the years, was solidifying certain conclusions about the promotion system
within the military.

“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction
you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises
and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you
will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you
can do something—something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something,
you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors.
But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.”
He paused and stared into Leopold’s eyes and heart. “To
be
somebody or to
do
something. In life there is
often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To
be
or to
do?
Which way will you go?”

Leopold did not realize it, but Boyd was laying the ground rules, testing him. All Leopold wanted was to do his job, get a
good ER, and move up the ladder. “Yes, Sir,” he said.

Leopold went to the Pentagon library and to the Library of Congress and examined the defense authorization budget and the
defense appropriation budget with as much attention to detail as those two hefty documents had ever seen. He studied the annual
Air Force budget, the Research and Development budget, and the procurement budget. He studied the budgets of the previous
eleven years and used the data to put together a preliminary analysis. In the Research and Development budget and the procurement
budget, one project stood out: the B-1 Bomber. It was drawing off a disproportionate amount of money.

Leopold came back to Boyd, who told him to look at a parametric analysis of the projected B-1 costs and to use three numbers
for starters: $500,000 for each engine, $2,000 per pound for avionics, and $200 per pound for the airframe. These numbers
came from Boyd’s work on the F-15 and the lightweight fighter.

When Leopold put the numbers on a graph, they showed an inexorable and undeniable trend. Congress had mandated that the B-1
not cost more than $25 million per copy. But the chart showed the costs were more than double that amount. Not only was the
B-1 taking a disproportionate amount of the Air Force budget, it was violating a congressional mandate.

Boyd was so excited he bounced from one foot to the other. “Great work, Tiger. Great stuff. Stay with it.” He told Leopold
to take a “metaview.” He used
meta
in the mathematical sense of a different domain, a higher level.

Boyd did not want to take these numbers to the Air Force, not yet. He ordered Leopold to recompute everything as a “best case,”
that is, to give the B-1 advocates the benefit of every doubt. Every time Leopold had a choice of numbers, he was to use the
most conservative. This meant that under scrutiny, and the Air Force would indeed subject the study to the most rigorous scrutiny,
the numbers would only get worse; that is, any adjustments would show only higher costs.

Boyd had a brief interruption from supervising the B-1 investigation when ongoing flight tests of the F-15 required his attention.
Although the F-15 was a bitter memory, Boyd perked up when an Air Force general asked him if he wanted a flight in the new
aircraft. Boyd did not like what the F-15 had become, but the general’s offer resurrected both his parental pride in the aircraft
and the persona of Forty-Second Boyd. “Hell yes,” he said. The general said he would get back to Boyd.

In the meantime Leopold discovered, as had others, that Boyd had little perception of time. Leopold might work at the Pentagon
until midnight and then, as he wearily walked into his house in Dale City some thirty miles south, the phone was ringing.
Boyd had calculated to the minute the time it took Leopold to get home. And he would have more questions, more directions
for the B-1 study.