Generally Speaking (39 page)

On August 13, she and the other knobs began Hell Week, seven days of purgatory that combined obsolete military academy harassment by upperclassmen with an exhausting regimen of physical training. The weather in Charleston was terrible, with high humidity and temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. After only one day of training, Shannon Faulkner and several male cadets became ill and were taken to the infirmary. Four days later, Faulkner announced her intention to leave the school. At a brief press conference, she told reporters the stress of the long legal battle “came crashing down,” making it impossible for her to continue as a cadet.

When the news of Shannon Faulkner's decision spread across the campus, groups of cadets unleashed rebel yells and abusive chants, deriding her. A notorious, widely circulated press photograph of the cadets' reaction showed young men in a variety of uniforms, arms raised, stomping in joy. One of the most prominent figures was a cadet officer dressed in green trousers with a wide black stripe similar to an Army officer's uniform. He was twirling in gape-mouthed, delirious ecstasy at the news that one isolated woman had failed.

I thought of the substantial Army ROTC program that we supported at the Citadel. Rejoicing in a young person's failure was absolutely counter to Army values. Although the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute, the remaining all-male bastion among state-funded military academies, liked to compare themselves favorably to the armed services' academies, I knew that the cadets at West Point would never stoop to such a spectacle.

Soon after Shannon Faulkner's departure from the Citadel, Ken Bode, moderator of Public Television's
Washington Week in Review,
asked me to watch the taping of the show and have dinner with him and journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts. At dinner, Cokie Roberts, who was rushing to prepare for that Sunday's
This Week with David Brinkley
show on ABC, asked my opinion on the Shannon Faulkner matter. I told her that I believed the young woman had fought a good fight, but in the end, events had overpowered her.

Cokie Roberts did not agree. “Getting that far and washing out after one day simply isn't to Shannon Faulkner's credit,” she insisted.

I raised the issue of the intense legal battle, the death threats, and the stress to which Faulkner had been subjected over the previous two years. “You can't put up with all that and prepare yourself physically for the challenge they were going to throw at her,” I said.

Again, Cokie Roberts disagreed. Many people shared that viewpoint, feeling that Shannon Faulkner had set back the cause of women's rights by her “failure.”

I saw things differently. One young woman, backed by a few able attorneys, had forced one of the most politically influential educational institutions in the South, where traditions of antebellum male gallantry still stubbornly persisted, to comply with the United States Constitution. Although she herself had not been able to continue at the school, the legal precedent had been set; other women soon enrolled at the Citadel.

But the case of Shannon Faulkner remained troubling for many of my friends and professional associates. Since I was the Army's senior woman officer, they came to me to voice their opinion. Why was the Army continuing to support through the ROTC program an institution such as the Citadel that obviously did not accept basic Army values? Why didn't the Army leadership “stand up and be counted” on this important matter? If Shannon Faulkner's battle had concerned race, some argued, the country's political and military leaders would have stepped forward immediately to go on the record supporting her. But because she had been one isolated woman, her struggle seemed to have not registered with the Army's senior leadership.

I found these questions compelling. After thinking about them, I went to see Sara Lister, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. One of her responsibilities was the Army ROTC program at the Citadel. We discussed the Shannon Faulkner case, and she agreed that the young woman had not been treated fairly. I told her I thought the matter ought to be brought to the attention of Secretary of the Army, Togo West. She told me to go see him.

When I had reported to the Pentagon as ADCSINT, Secretary West had told me, “As senior woman in the Army, you should feel free to bring any gender issues to me.” Now I took up his offer and made an appointment for a meeting in his office on the Pentagon E-Ring.

During our discussion, we could look out the window overlooking the Mall entrance toward the early autumn foliage.

“Mr. Secretary, women are very distressed about the Shannon Faulkner matter,” I said. I listed the concerns that had been brought to me. “Sir, we want our Army leadership to speak out on this matter.”

Secretary West was silent for a few moments. “This struggle is not being fought by the United States Army, General. Ms. Faulkner's case, and the other litigation involving VMI, is being dealt with in the federal court system.” Togo West was an experienced attorney who understood legal matters far better than I. “It would simply not be appropriate for me or any of the Army's uniformed leaders to take a public stand on matters under active litigation.”

I understood his argument. The people who had come to me were justifiably angry. They correctly saw Shannon Faulkner as a trailblazer who had been treated badly. But we did not have the broader perspective on the issue that someone serving at the strategic level of leadership such as Secretary West enjoyed.

At that level, a leader simply cannot speak freely on a controversial subject such as the Shannon Faulkner case, no matter what his personal feelings on the issue might be. Although people are often critical of leaders who seem to remain aloof on such matters, these leaders can lose authority if they overplay their hands.

I did not achieve the results I had sought entering Secretary West's office for that meeting. But I left having learned a valuable lesson about the exercise of power.

Secretary West was absolutely correct in trusting the legal system to resolve the acrimonious issue of gender integration at the Citadel and VMI.

As of April 2001, the Citadel had eighty-one women in the Corps of Cadets. Many have suffered inexcusable hazing, but they have persisted. And their numbers are increasing. The school had resisted complying with the law of the land for as long as it could, but ultimately, one brave young woman who never wore a formal cadet uniform had forced the Citadel and all its influential alumni to obey the provisions of the Constitution.

The struggle for gender integration at the Virginia Military Institute had been even longer. Begun in 1990 by Attorney General Richard Thornburgh in the administration of President George H. Bush, the suit against the school wound its way through the federal courts for six years. Finally, in July 1996, the Supreme Court ruled seven to one that VMI must accept women as cadets. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion that an all-male admissions policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The school would either have to admit women or forgo state funding. VMI could not find financial support for conversion to a private institution, as some diehards had urged. As at the Citadel, women cadets were soon admitted.

In February 2001, First Classman (senior) Erin Claunch was honored on the floor of the Virginia General Assembly for the academic, military, and athletic excellence she had shown during her four years at VMI. She was an academically distinguished physics major, commanded the 2nd Battalion in the VMI Corps of Cadets, and had won a letter in cross-country. As an Air Force ROTC scholarship cadet, she planned to become a career officer.

It will be years, if not decades, before the most tradition-bound alumni of the Citadel and VMI accept the fact that defying the United States Constitution was futile and that the admission of women as cadets has not ruined their cherished schools. But eventually, they
will
see the wisdom of this new policy.

I am confident of this because, eventually, rational people accept reality. Over a decade ago, the Commandant of Cadets at West Point was briefing elderly visiting alumni. He showed them data concerning the Physical Training performance of a group of cadets, comparing this data to the alumni's less impressive record from decades earlier. These contemporary cadets had done more push-ups and sit-ups in two minutes and run two miles faster than the alumni.

“That's impressive, General,” an alumnus said to the commandant.

“And those are just the women,” the general replied.

One of the responsibilities I assumed in 1997 as Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence was oversight of policy affecting a widespread, complex network of relationships with foreign military and civilian defense delegations involved in procuring American weapons systems developed by the Army. Over 200 Foreign Liaison Officers (FLNOs) were assigned to every Training and Doctrine Command post in the U.S. Army where our advanced war-fighting doctrine was developed and technology was tested. This was a numerically lopsided relationship because the Army had only about thirty such officers at similar facilities overseas.

The situation sometimes reached ludicrous proportions. For example, the French LNO at Fort Rucker, Alabama, managed to get more training time on the latest U.S. aircraft than the American aviators assigned there. The problem of the “Flying Frenchman” became well known to elements of the Army staff and was emblematic of the strange new post–Cold War world in which we operated.

Arms sales drove this large foreign military presence at American installations. After the Cold War, U.S. defense contractors faced the prospect of either selling more weapons, selling fewer weapons at higher prices to the United States, or being forced to shut down their research and development facilities and production lines. With the downsizing of the U.S. military in the 1990s, the defense contractors saw foreign military sales as a means of continuing to sell their weapons systems. From the Army's perspective, foreign military sales helped reduce the per-unit development cost of these weapons. Further, selling advanced weapons to friends and allies around the world became an increasingly important part of our overall foreign policy. These countries were a diverse group, ranging from our traditional NATO partners, to Middle Eastern countries with which we wished to establish or retain close relationships, to small, prosperous nations such as Singapore. The sales bound those countries to us through shared military technology and doctrine.

This transfer of American military technology abroad involved billions of dollars each year. The process was closely observed and directed by senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Because successful defense contractors enjoyed considerable influence on Capitol Hill—components of large weapons systems were subcontracted to companies in as many congressional districts as practicable—the mantra from OSD was “Sell, sell, sell.” This inclination perfectly matched that of many foreign countries eager to obtain state-of-the-art American arms.

In order to both scout the prospects for emerging technology and to monitor the progress of weapons systems already under contract but not yet delivered, these foreign governments maintained their growing presence of LNOs and Cooperative Program Personnel at Army posts and other military bases. There were several programs governing these arms sales, all of which were subject to review by the Pentagon. Prosperous countries such as the United Kingdom often chose to purchase weapons as direct commercial sales that involved corporation-to-corporation partnerships to share the technology on a multinational basis. Less prosperous or less technically advanced countries such as Egypt usually obtained their American weapons under Foreign Military Sales programs, which included provisions for spare parts, training, manuals and computer support, and maintenance. There were also hybrids of these two basic types in which a country would pay the lower commercial price and negotiate for military training and the other provisions. These hybrid methods of procurement were preferred because they combined lower prices and less U.S. government control.

During the sometimes headlong rush to promote these exports in the 1990s, commercial and foreign military sales tended to snowball, often outpacing the detailed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) required to protect sensitive American military technology secrets from transfer abroad. After I became DCSINT in 1997, I was involved in tense internecine Pentagon disputes concerning the question of how to handle technology transfer. As the Army's senior intelligence officer, my responsibility was to protect the security of the high-technology “crown jewels” embedded in our most advanced weapons. But that was exactly the technology that the foreign buyers wanted to obtain.

There was another essential element of my responsibility. By keeping our most sensitive advanced technology from foreign dissemination, we could extend the lifespan of that technology's competitive edge on the battlefield. This would reduce the costly research and development cycle and allow our soldiers equipped with these new weapons to retain their lethal war-fighting dominance at less cost. But this position ran counter to the prevailing trend in Congress, where members took a truly bipartisan and enthusiastic approach to foreign arms sales to “friends and allies.”

The issue came to a head in the spring of 1999 in a heated dispute involving our closest ally, the United Kingdom, and one of our most advanced weapons systems, the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter equipped with the state-of-the-art Long Bow radar. The Long Bow Apache was a quantum improvement over other attack helicopters. Its ultrasensitive APG-64 radar mounted atop the main rotor mast was linked through integrated computer circuits to Stinger air-to-air missiles carried on the wingtips, which would allow the Apache Long Bow to seek out and destroy other helicopters day or night, in any weather. The electronics in the most sophisticated U.S. Army version of this system (as well as in the aircraft's ultramodern defensive countermeasure equipment) made the AH-64D truly one of our country's crown jewels.