In My Time - Dick Cheney [88]
Every year, for example, I tried to kill the V-22 Osprey, a Marine Corps aircraft, but the Congress funded it. The Marines had decided before I became secretary that they needed something to replace their Vietnam-era helicopters. The problem was, instead of buying new helicopters, they decided they needed the Osprey, which would take off and land like a helicopter, but once airborne its rotors would swivel so it could fly like a conventional airplane. The requirement used to justify this project was that when landing under fire on an enemy-held beach, the Marines needed an aircraft that could move from ship to shore faster than a helicopter could manage.
There were several problems with this approach. The tilt-rotor technology was difficult to develop and the cost was at least double that of a conventional helicopter. By the time I arrived at the Pentagon, the project was significantly behind schedule.
I realized early on as secretary that I wasn’t likely to succeed in killing the Osprey, but I went ahead and knocked it out of my budget each year anyway. I figured that if the Congress was busy fighting to restore the Osprey, members wouldn’t have time to go after something I really cared about.
Years later, when I was vice president, I landed in Air Force Two at New River Marine Corps Air Station in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where a large contingent of V-22 Ospreys is based. As I disembarked from my aircraft, the Marines arranged for two of their Ospreys to do a flyover, very low and very slow, right over my head. I smiled at the gentle reminder that the United States Marine Corps had prevailed in the battle of the Osprey.
AS I WRITE THIS, looking back twenty years and more, it’s clear that 1989 was a turning point in modern history. The Cold War was ending, but the great historical change under way wasn’t so clear from the vantage point we had in March of that year. As I took office, there was a strong push from some in Congress urging us to make significant cuts in our defense budget. I was wary of cutting too deeply. Although we had seen initial signs of change in the Soviet Union, there was no denying that they still had thousands of missiles aimed at the United States. They had some six hundred thousand troops stationed in Eastern Europe. I felt strongly that it would be irresponsible to make deep cuts or changes to our strategic defense systems on the promise of change from the Soviets.
I was skeptical about whether Mikhail Gorbachev was the agent of change that many perceived him to be. When he had visited the United States in December 1987, Lynne and I were invited to the state dinner in his honor at the White House. I was seated on one side of First Lady Nancy Reagan and Gorbachev on the other, and I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions. Although he had begun making efforts to open up the Soviet Union’s economy, he still seemed to think that communism was a workable system. He also bristled when I asked him how he came to be general secretary of the Party. I told him that in our system the job of secretary of agriculture, which he had held, wasn’t normally a path to the presidency. He said he had been much more than an agriculture secretary and detailed his service in the Communist Party leadership structure. I came away from the evening thinking that he wasn’t as serious a reformer as some believed.
My view hadn’t changed by 1989. But the month after I took office, I learned an important lesson about the difference between sharing your view when you’re a member of Congress and sharing it when you’re secretary of defense.