Biography of A. Ernest Fitzgerald

Photo of A. Ernest Fitzgerald

At the height of the Vietnam War, cost overruns and waste were business as usual in the industries that manufactured the arms of war. As a top-ranking civilian Air Force manager, A. Ernest Fitzgerald would not put up with business as usual. In 1968, Senator William Proxmire instituted hearings on the C-5A, an immense and costly cargo plane built by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Fitzgerald was a logical choice to testify, since for two years he had reported cost overruns of 2 billion dollars to his superiors. They pressured him not to testify. He did, truthfully and without concern for any consequences to himself.

It was a decision that cost Fitzgerald dearly, and immediately. He was stripped of his duties as an overseer and shunted to trivial projects, including a trip to Thailand where he was to study cost overruns on a bowling alley. Within two weeks of his testimony, he was told that his promised civil service tenure was a computer error, and his department was restructured to eliminate his position. It took four years and nearly a million dollars in legal fees to win reinstatement to his office.

Ever since, Fitzgerald has continued to wage war on fraud in the military-industrial complex. In 1981, the Reagan administration created Standard Form 189. If federal employees refused to sign the gag order, they would lose their security clearances and thus their jobs. If they did sign, they could be punished for security violations, even for the release of unclassified information that had been retroactively reclassified as top-secret. Fitzgerald refused to sign, and eventually triumphed over SF 189.

Fitzgerald also made critical investigations into spending on the MX missile in the 1980s. Investigators for U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, had been looking into Northrop Grumman Corporation's factory in Hawthorne, California. Fitzgerald found that snafus in the ordering department meant that the plant had accumulated and effectively lost parts, many plated with silver or gold, which had been classified as secret. He found that 83 boxes of the missile guidance parts had been thrown into a trash bin. As a result of this successful investigation, Fitzgerald was dismissed as liaison to Dingell's committee by an Air Force general.

Fitzgerald also looked into Pentagon waste in a story that made headlines in 1988. Taxpayers were shocked to hear of $200 hammers, coffee posts at $7,622 and $670 passenger seat armrests. "Military spec" toilet seats became a national joke. But Fitzgerald warned that the wastefulness of the military-industrial complex had spread into other industries, and that system's like the Pentagon's inefficient pricing system were finding their way into MBA programs. Defense industry style practices had even found their way into hospitals, contributing to the dramatic rise in the cost of health care.

The Navy veteran and engineering graduate is the author of a recent book, EXPOSING THE PENTAGON: An Insider's View of Waste, Mismanagement and Fraud in Defense spending.