Word: cheney
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Cheney was not buying. If he did go to Congress and managed to scrape up - the $1.4 billion, he kept asking, would the contractors then develop the eight prototypes and meet all the contract terms? Or would they run over budget again? "The bottom line was that no one could tell Cheney how much money it would take to finish the development program," explained a defense official. "They couldn't say that $1.4 billion would be enough. And he wasn't going to write any blank checks...
...Cheney decided he would not beg Congress for the money now, only to return later and plead for more. He ordered the Navy not to try an end run by seeking out friends on Capitol Hill to find the funds. Then he courageously killed the program. Said Cheney: "If we cannot spend the taxpayers' money wisely, we will not spend...
When top Navy and Pentagon officials belatedly learned of the Avenger mess, they downplayed it and ignored the implications. That led Cheney last April to assure Congress that the program was on track in both time and cost. After he learned that this was untrue, two high Navy officers were removed from supervising the contract and censured; in addition, an admiral was fired, and the Pentagon's top procurement officer resigned. The Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation of whether the contractors overcharged the Navy. And the Pentagon said it will try to recover the funds already spent...
...Cheney's crackdown on the A-12 was actually in line with the get-tough policy he has been pursuing for months. He had previously approved the killing of the Marine Corps's V-22 Osprey vertical-takeoff plane, the Navy's Lockheed P-7 antisubmarine patrol aircraft, the Army's FOG-M (fiber-optic guided missile) and an Air Force plan to place the MX missile on rails. Said a Pentagon official of the new procurement mood: "Programs that are bleeding cannot survive...
...soon as the Pentagon's rules were made final, the presidents of the four major TV news networks sent a letter of protest to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. So did editors of the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, TIME and the Associated Press, while the New York Times issued a similar statement. The network presidents charged that the rules "go far beyond what is required to protect troop safety and mission security . . . and raise the specter of government censorship of a free press." The A.P. protested a ban on reporting "details of major battle damage...