My test on this is easy: Would George C. Marshall have accepted such payments? I doubt it. (Remember, he declined to write a memoir that would have made him wealthy because he thought it would have been improper to get into the failings of some of his comrades.)

Vice Admirals William McRaven and Robert Harward (navy.mil)

Two senior military officers from the shadowy world of Special Operations are playing a large and previously unreported role in shaping the Obama administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, a move that underscores that the internal debate has moved past a rigid choice between expansive missions to provide security for Afghan civilians and narrowly tailored missions to find and kill terrorists.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Debate about a “purely counterterrorism strategy” advocated by Vice President Joseph Biden was “bounced around at one point, but that has been cast aside,” said a National Security Council staffer who attends the meetings and who asked for anonymity because the debate is still ongoing, “mostly because JSOC has said ‘We’re going to do this anyway.’ And it’s not like they’re going to be in a supporting role.” Biden’s advice, which had practically no support from the armed services, was that the military should shy away from protecting the Afghan people and helping build Afghan governing institutions, and instead focus on the JSOC specialties of going after terrorists directly.

Yet the fact that JSOC veterans like McRaven, Harward and McChrystal favor an overall counterinsurgency strategy with a counterterrorism component demonstrates that the military no longer believes distinguishing between the two is tenable in the Afghanistan war. “Special Operations Forces that were traditionally used for counterterrorism better understand how their capabilities fit into a counterinsurgency campaign than perhaps they did when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began,” said Andrew Exum, a veteran of both wars and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who over the summer advised McChrystal in a review of Afghanistan strategy.

More directly, McRaven and Harward share a professional fraternity with McChrystal. Before McRaven took over JSOC — an entity that operates almost entirely in secret — McChrystal ran it for five years, supervising stealthy teams in Afghanistan and Iraq that tracked down and killed senior terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. One of McChrystal’s deputies during that period was Harward, and the bonds between the officers remain strong. “General McChrystal and Vice Admirals McRaven and Harward have established relationships through the special operations community,” said McChrystal’s spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis.

In his Afghanistan review, McChrystal said that a key goal for him would be to increase coordination between his NATO command and the independent command of JSOC, which suggested that the dichotomy between using Special Operations Forces for counterterrorism and conventional forces for counterinsurgency was eroding. “One of General McChrystal’s priorities is seeking greater unity of effort across all military activities in Afghanistan, which includes regular interaction with ISAF Joint Command, regional, and task force commanders,” Sholtis said, using the acronym for NATO’s military command in Afghanistan.

As a result, McChrystal is turning to McRaven and Harward for critical tasks in Afghanistan. McRaven runs a secretive detachment of Special Forces known as Task Force 714 — once commanded by McChrystal himself — that the NSC staffer described as “direct-action” units conducting “high-intensity hits.” In an email, Sholtis said that because Task Force 714 was a “special ops organization” he “can’t go into much detail on authorities, etc.” But the NSC staffer — who called McRaven “McChrystal Squared” — said Task Force 714 was organized into “small groups of Rangers going wherever the hell they want to go” in Afghanistan and operating under legal authority granted at the end of the Bush administration that President Obama has not revoked.

In a move signaling his own importance to McChrystal, Harward will arrive in Afghanistan later this month to command a new task force, known as Task Force 435, that will take charge of detention facilities in Afghanistan, “primarily the new one at Bagram that will open this month,” Sholtis said. In his famous August strategy review, McChrystal wrote that detention operations are “critical to successful counterinsurgency operations” and need to work toward “the long-term goal of getting the U.S. out of the detention business” through transition to Afghan control — a counterinsurgency task not traditionally given to a Special Operations veteran like Harward. McChrystal’s strategy recommended creating a new command, which Harward will now lead, of “approximately 120 personnel” focused on “defeat[ing] the insurgency through intelligence collection and analysis,” prisoner de-radicalization, and working with the Afghan corrections apparatus to “employ best correctional practices [and] comply with Afghan laws.”

Last month, McChrystal delivered a request for additional troops to the Obama administration for the Afghanistan war. The request, structured as a palette of options from which the president could choose, included so-called “high-risk” options of numbers as low as 10,000 new combat troops and a so-called “low-risk” option of an 85,000-troop reinforcement. Participants in the discussions have said on background that they viewed the 85,000-troop request as an unserious option meant to clear the way for Obama to approve a middle course of around 40,000 new troops.

But while the media has typically discussed a counterterrorism approach in Afghanistan as a low-troop option, the two counterterrorism-experienced admirals are both said to favor “as many troops as we can muster,” according to the NSC staffer, who specified that McRaven and Harward were pushing for McChrystal’s largest resource option of 85,000 new troops. A senior administration official who requested anonymity said that the Obama administration was not considering a troop escalation of more than 40,000 combat troops. (It is possible that support and logistical units could increase any troop number that the administration cites as the total estimate, as happened when President Bush announced a troop surge to Iraq of about 20,000 troops in January 2007 but about 28,000 new troops actually deployed.) On Saturday, McClatchy Newspapers reported that Obama is leaning toward an increase of 34,000 troops. An announcement is expected shortly after Obama returns from a trip to Asia on Nov. 20.

The advice of McRaven and Harward to the White House strategy review, the staffer said, was to push for a “heavy, heavy, heavy COIN [counterinsurgency] presence” in select population centers like the capitol city of Kabul, while relying on new or expanded counterterrorism units like Task Force 714 for hunting and killing terrorists outside of those population centers — particularly in areas like the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a key transit point for Taliban and al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents.

“They’re focusing on the main population centers that they think they can save with manpower on the ground, and everything else will be crossborder,” the NSC staffer said. An executive order signed by George W. Bush in mid-2008 and not revoked by Obama authorized special forces to, in some cases, cross the Afghan border into Pakistan in pursuit of top insurgent targets. “JSOC is already ramping up for that. … These are what they call kinetic, direct-action task forces,” military terminology to describe intense fighting with small units. The prospect of crossborder raids by U.S. military forces has been greeted in Pakistan as an offensive violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

The two admirals are also said to be influential with Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser. McRaven, at least, worked with Jones in a previous assignment, commanding Special Operations Forces in Europe in 2006 while Jones was ending his tour of duty as NATO commander. “A lot of people think Jones is not taking military counsel, that he’s anti-surge, he’s this, he’s that,” said the NSC staffer. “In reality, he’s taking counsel from pretty much a purely military palette of people, including McRaven.”

Asked about McRaven’s role in the strategy debates, Ken McGraw, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees JSOC, said, “It would not be appropriate for us to comment on who may or may not be involved in discussions at the White House or what may or may not have been the substance of conversations at the White House.” A spokesman for the Joint Forces Command did not return repeated phone and email messages seeking comment about Harward. A spokesman for the National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment about Jones’ interactions with Harward and McRaven.

The bonds between McChrystal and the two admirals may not have been widely known because of the secrecy surrounding almost all aspects of JSOC, but the Obama administration is getting a sense of their strength. “Harward and McChrystal were running JSOC,” said the NSC staffer, “and all three of them [have been] in the nether regions forever.”

Gates went on the attack against Pentagon “business as usual” yesterday:

“If we can’t get this right, what on earth can we get right?” Mr. Gates said in an acerbic, sometimes withering speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. “It is time to draw the line on doing defense business as usual.” From his point of view, that means overbuying weapons for wars the nation is unlikely to fight.

Parts of the plane are built in more 40 states, so it’s no surprise that even progressive senators from Massachusetts like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry don’t want to close the production line during a massive recession. What’s noteworthy is that Lockheed Martin, the principal F-22 manufacturer, doesn’t appear to be fighting the cut so hard. Lockheed also has a huge piece of the Joint Strike Fighter, Gates’ preferred replacement (to oversimplify things a bit) for the F-22, so it makes money either way. More Gates:

[T]he F-22, designed for cold-war aerial combat, has become the poster plane for each side. Mr. Gates argued to the economic club that it was a “niche, silver-bullet solution” for only a few potential situations, specifically “the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet,” and that the cheaper F-35, which is to start production in 2012, is a more versatile fighter. The F-22’s supporters say it not only provides jobs but also ensures American dominance of the skies.

Anyway: the vote on the F-22 is expected to come soon.

–

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The Army views airpower as another avenue to pursue fires and collection of data on the enemy in support of ground combat forces—largely at the tactical and operational levels of war.  On the contrary, Air Force airpower enthusiasts see a more strategic use.  Throughout the development of airpower theory, doctrine, and its application, the promise was made possible by faith in airpower’s ability.  Since World War I, air forces have chafed at the thought their planes be used to support ground and seas forces. …

The Air Force is beholden to the missions it supports.  Currently, the most pressing national security dilemmas are long-term counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Air Force must realize that [irregular warfare] will continue to be a strategic imperative and ignoring the fact can place the institution in peril.

Magruder’s substantive recommendations are expressed gingerly, as you might expect from someone in the Air Force who’s questioning the relevance of his service’s most cherished principles and whose bosses are largely fighter pilots. He thinks it’s a good idea to ask how the Air Force can expand the air capacity of allied nations, and notes how the rest of the services are champing at the bit for the Air Force to invest in more unmanned aerial vehicles that have direct applications to the wars the United States is presently fighting. When it comes to the F-22 itself, Magruder notes that the amount the Senate put back into the defense authorization to fund the F-22, against Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ wishes, is equivalent to the next fiscal year’s military aid to Pakistan. “[I]t is obvious the money is strategically better spent combating terrorists, insurgents, lawlessness and pursuing our interests in that country (cross-roads radical Islam and nuclear weapons),” he writes.

Colin Clark at DOD Buzz hears that the debate on the F-22 funding will resume by Tuesday. Maybe Levin will email Magruder’s piece around.

But just now, Levin pulled an amendment that would kill the plane from floor consideration. That probably means he doesn’t have the votes.

At the same time, the White House put out a statement reiterating Obama’s veto threat over the F-22.

The Administration strongly objects to the provisions in the bill authorizing $1.75 billion for seven F-22s in FY 2010.  The collective judgment of the Service Chiefs and Secretaries of the military departments determined that a final program of record of 187 F-22s is sufficient to meet operational requirements.  As the President wrote in his letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 13, if the final bill presented to him contains this provision, the President will veto it.

Underlining in the original. (Interesting postscript: the administration is also objecting to congressional reporting requirements in the bill for how money would be spent under the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capabilities Fund, saying telling Congress how the money will be spent prior to the actual spending would “delay the release of vital funds for Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts.” So much for oversight.)

Gates didn’t mind throwing his own elbows. The 187 number “was based on input from combatant commanders who are actually going to have” to use the planes in combat, and “discussion with the Air Force leadership.” His budget increases the buys for unmanned aerial vehicles so that neither the F-22 nor the F-35 will be “the only aircraft in the attack air arsenal,” as the “only defense surf-air-missiles is not something that has a pilot in it.” And right now, the United States has 1000 “fifth-generation aircraft” compared to China’s 300, a gap that “gets even bigger” when projecting out to 2025.  The idea that a 700-plane lead over China isn’t sufficient air dominance “seems to me to be unrealistic.” Also, the “first training squadron for the F-35 at Elgin Air Force Base” is on track for 2011. Aside from that, Gates thinks Chambliss’ criticisms have merit.

Chambliss is one thing, though, and Schwartz is another. The way Chambliss framed his interactions with the Air Force chief — they’ve been exchanging letters and having private meetings, and Schwartz will testify in the near future on the defense budget — made it sound like Schwartz is unimpressed with Gates’ instruction that “I don’t want to see any guerrilla warfare on these programs.” It’s a thin line between budget subterfuge on the Hill and an honest military assessment for a need for expanding the F-22. Also worth remembering is that Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said last month that the service chiefs and the combatant commanders  “uniformly endorsed the termination of the F-22 at the number we all agreed on, the 187 [planes] and the transition to the F-35.” If Chambliss is presenting Schwartz’s position correctly — and Schwartz grudgingly endorsed the cap in an op-ed recently — that doesn’t sound particularly true.

A chaplain holds services for soldiers in an operating base in Ramadi, Iraq. (army.mil)

So there are atheists in foxholes after all.

Last week, on the eve of Veterans Day, the Secular Coalition for America and the Military Assn. of Atheists and Freethinkers held a news conference in Washington to present an open letter to President-elect Barack Obama. Citing a report that found 21 percent of those in the armed forces identifying themselves as atheists or having “no religion,” the groups called on the new administration to pursue a military policy more open to nonbelievers.

The action follows on the heels of a much-publicized legal case involving atheism and the military. Jeremy Hall, 23, a U.S. Army specialist, grew up a Bible-reading Baptist in rural North Carolina. But his faith in God did not survive the battlefields of Iraq. Since disclosing his atheism, Hall claims he has become a target of insult and scorn — labeled “immoral,” “devil worshiper” and, curiously enough, gay — by fellow GIs and superior officers. But the pith of his complaint runs deeper than personal insult.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

In his lawsuit, filed in Kansas last year, Hall and his co-plaintiff, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, accuse the military establishment not only of prejudice against nonbelievers but of blatant favoritism toward Christianity. As the suit challenging the place of religion in the armed forces lumbers toward a constitutional showdown, Hall and the Secular Coalition for America have sparked a national conversation about one of the military’s least discussed shibboleths.

The battle lines are already drawn. Critics depict Hall’s complaint as a campaign to destroy the spiritual foundation that the nation’s military has depended on for centuries. (“His right to spew his lying hot air cannot be allowed to decrease the morale of soldiers in combat,” writes one Christian blogger.) Meanwhile, the latest crop of best-selling atheists grant Hall some form of secular sainthood.

U.S. martial leaders have long prayed before and after battle: George Washington at the close of the Revolutionary War; George Dewey after his victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila; and Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day. Chaplains have also been key components of U.S. fighting forces, from the ragtag colonial militias to the highly professional units of today.

So when Americans learn that soldiers are being evangelized on military bases, that religious materials are often circulated among troops and that depictions of Washington kneeling in prayer are ubiquitous in military circles, they might likely see all this as an organic part of a venerable tradition.

But these incidents are anything but organic — and not nearly as deeply rooted as one might imagine. In fact, they are largely the residue of a forgotten footnote to U.S. military history during the late 1940s and 1950s — a time when civilian and military leaders attempted to imbue the armed forces with religious zeal and purpose.

At issue today, however, is not the place of religion in the military. Rather, it is the official sanction that government gives it. While this matter is given special weight by those who see America in the midst of a modern holy war against terrorism, it has precedent in the nation’s last great quasi-religious crusade — the battle against atheistic communism.

More than 60 years ago, when the Cold War was menacing but still unnamed, U.S. leaders faced the luckless dilemma of picking their own poison. If they demobilized the military after World War II, as their predecessors had done after previous wars, the Soviet threat might become unmanageable. But maintaining a large standing military would betray a national principle. It was considered profoundly un-American to maintain a powerful armed force in a time of peace. According to a long line of patriots, from Samuel Adams on down, standing armies threatened liberty and smothered virtue.

Added to this dilemma was a spiritual wild card. While Americans today would probably define communism as a political or economic philosophy, decision-makers in the 1940s and 1950s viewed it as a quasi-religion. It had prophets and prophecy, missionaries and martyrs, and a belief in the ultimate perfectibility of mankind through inevitable historical process.

National-security analysts fretted over the almost “messianic” devotion of Soviet citizens. Military leaders worried that physical force alone might be insufficient in the emerging Cold War. “Over and over again, gigantic concentrations of physical power have gone down in defeat before a lesser strength propelled by conviction,” warned one brigadier general in 1949. “The Goliaths have perished at the hands of the Davids.”

President Harry S. Truman decided to run the risk of America maintaining a sizable standing military. But to many, his cure looked worse than the disease. In 1938, only one in five servicemen was younger than 21. Ten years later, soldiers under 21 made up more than half the military and accounted for 70 percent of all enlistments. America’s new standing army was regarded as puerile, impressionable and naïve.

Military leaders wondered if they stood on the verge of creating a potential Frankenstein’s monster. Their plan needed a fail-safe. So they decided not to pull the plug on their monster — but to give it a soul instead. To this end, religion became indispensable.

Military leaders vigorously blended the martial with the sacred to foster virtue and create spiritual warriors immune to the siren songs of communism. In the Fort Knox Experiment of 1947, the army toyed with the idea of simultaneously running new recruits through a physical and religious boot camp. Though this proved too blatantly unconstitutional for Army-wide adoption, the “Fort Knox methods” lived on in the Army’s commitment to develop the spiritual side of its troops.

Truman thought so highly of this mission that, one year later, he created the President’s Committee on Religion and Welfare in the Armed Forces, the first presidential commission devoted to religion. Its members designed campaigns to encourage soldiers to attend church; to urge local religious groups to invite servicemen to their congregations; and to revitalize the military chaplaincy.

While the military brass had no stomach for mandatory religious services, it did authorize, beginning in the late 1940s, various “character guidance” programs run by the reorganized chaplaincy. New recruits attended a minimum of six hours of chaplain lectures on such topics as the sacredness of marriage, the relationship between democracy and religion, and the dangerous faith of communism. All other personnel had to attend similar lectures once a month.

Among other things, soldiers learned that in the Cold War, the United States, a “covenant nation” due to its reliance on God, confronted the “demonic nation” of the Soviet Union. In a contest between God and Satan, military leaders bet on the home team.

This was tame compared to the religious programs of the newly independent Air Force. Under Maj. Gen. Charles I. Carpenter, the Air Force project consisted of lay retreats, on-base preaching missions by religious groups and the confiscation of obscene materials.

Carpenter also believed in the power of religion to solve the personal problems of Air Force personnel. Consider one case cited by a U.S. Air Force report. A military surgeon reported treating an airman suffering from a nervous breakdown. The diagnosis: neurosis stemming from religious confusion. The prescription: a session with the base chaplain, who set up a “systematic plan” of religious treatment.

Nor did Carpenter stop there. In late 1948, he struck a deal with the Moody Bible Institute of Science, an evangelical organization devoted to repairing the damage done to religion by Darwinism. Soon, airmen across America and throughout the world were watching films like “God of Creation” and “Duty or Destiny.” The Air Force even provided the representatives of the Moody Institute with a fully crewed B-25. By 1951, nearly 200,000 Air Force personnel were watching Moody films each year.

Nonbelievers like Hall must have existed in the 1950s, or, at the very least, troops uncomfortable with the idea of religious training. But few spoke up. It took a 1962 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to end the 15-year period of officially sanctioned military sacralization.

In the wake of Engel vs. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruling that deemed prayer in public schools unconstitutional, the Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union brought grievances of “religious indoctrination” directly to Army Sec. Cyrus R. Vance. Vance responded quickly. In March 1963, he ordered Army chaplains to create a new, secular version of character guidance — outside chapels and without sermonizing. The other services did the same.

As long as the United States remains a religious country, there will be religion in the military. And while the outcome of Hall’s lawsuit is uncertain, it has sparked a worthwhile conversation about faith and the uniform.

Understanding why the military was allowed to craft its own religious imprimatur 60 years ago takes no large stretch of the imagination. During an era when the truly religious could not be communists, the truly irreligious could not be Americans. This axiom rang particularly true for those on the front lines of the Cold War.

Those lamenting Hall’s lawsuit today should consider this slice of military history. From Puritan dreams to evangelical rallies, religion has remained a constant force in our national journey — the military’s in particular.

But the official sanctions afforded it have been anything but constant. Few today realize just how much of the military’s current positions toward religion, far from being longtime American attitudes, are merely vestiges from the Cold War era.

Those cheering Hall’s case should appreciate the extent to which the military has grown more secular over the past few decades. Where once the U.S. Air Force supplied airplanes to evangelists, it now officially insists that commanders “not take it upon themselves to change or coercively influence the religious views of subordinates.”

During the struggle against atheistic communism, comments like those of the Army’s Lt. Gen. William Boykin — who in 2004 called the war on terror a battle against “Satan” — were not only common but celebrated. Today, they are decried by the command structure, including President George W. Bush.

Throughout history, the Davids have sometimes slain the Goliaths. But more often, the stronger, better-equipped force prevailed — with or without the blessings of the Almighty.

Maybe this is what Hall means when he says that while he doesn’t believe in God, he does “believe in Plexiglas.” Whether he wanted to or not, Hall may have stumbled on the ultimate form of “coming out” in the military, and this may require the consideration of military leaders, an appreciation for the military’s religiously sanctioned past and perhaps even a decision from the next commander-in-chief.

If nothing else, it would give a new meaning to the policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Jonathan Patrick Herzog is an acting assistant professor of history at Stanford University and a national fellow in the Hoover Institution there. He is working on a book, “The Hammer and the Cross,” exploring how U.S. leaders used religion as a weapon in the early Cold War.

A Boeing 777 touches down. (Flickr: News46)

At 12:01 a.m. Pacific time Saturday, 27,000 Boeing Co. machinists, protesting a lack of job security, went on strike. A lengthy walkout would halt the assembly of several pricey Boeing planes, including its 777.

The aeronautic giant’s 777 is supposed to have enough fuel capacity to win the Air Force’s most lucrative contract: a $35-billion deal to replace 179 aging aerial refueling tankers. Even before the strike, Boeing said that it needed more time to put in a contract bid.

For the past month now, the Pentagon has been unable to lay out it final bidding specifications for a contract expected to pit Boeing against the combo of Northrop Grumman and Airbus, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic and Defense Space Co., or EADS.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

In February, Northrop Grumman and EADS surprisingly won the contract to build the aerial tankers. Boeing immediately filed the protest with the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The company also claimed that 40,000 U.S. jobs were on the line — including ones held by the striking machinists– to make the jet aircraft and then install mounted tanks for midair refuel transfer. Boeing and its allies in Congress pointed out that Northrop Grumman/EADS tankers would at least be partly designed and built in France.

GAO had upheld the Boeing protest and voided the deal in June, assailing the Air Force for not communicating contract requirements and not accurately computing costs. Because Boeing is asking for more time to submit its latest bid, the Pentagon’s third attempt to reward the aerial tanker contract could now be delayed until the next administration.

In other words, Boeing’s labor dispute is just the latest twist in a tangled seven-year defense contracting fiasco to procure “gas stations in the sky.” But it’s also something more. It raises questions about whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican presidential nominee, is the crusader against Washington corruption that he claims to be.

In 2001, the Air Force handed the tanker contract to Boeing, the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world. But in 2005, the Air Force terminated the deal after McCain led a three-year investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee that unearthed potentially illegal conduct by Air Force and Boeing officials. At the time, the media hailed McCain as a heroic, lonely crusader who had saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

But there may have been another side to McCain’s investigation — one that may undercut a central premise of his presidential campaign: that he will be a reformer as president.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Here’s the issue. The Associated Press revealed in March that five registered lobbyists for EADS were working for McCain’s presidential campaign, including Tom Loeffler, who served as the campaign’s co-chairman. Also, in 2006, McCain wrote two strongly worded, and likely influential, letters to the Pentagon, arguing that EADS acceptance of European Union subsidies should not be factored into who gets the tanker contract.

A top McCain Senate aide, Chris Paul, has said the Arizona senator wrote the letters without lobbyist’s help and that they reflect his interest in “full and open competition.”

But McCain’s presidential campaign rarely details the Boeing investigation as evidence of his reformer bona fides. Instead, it has been mostly Democrats, with Boeing employees as constituents, who bring up the case. They highlight a different side of McCain — his campaign’s continued ties to current and former lobbyists.

The McCain-spearheaded investigation, which began in 2002, discovered that Darleen A. Druyan, then the No. 2 weapons buyer for the Air Force, had awarded Boeing a $23-billion contract to lease rather than buy 100 aerial tankers — though purchasing the aircraft would have been far cheaper.

Druyan’s reason: She was grateful that Boeing had given her daughter and her boyfriend jobs. Boeing had also promised Druyan a job. In 2005, the Air Force ended the contract. That year Druyan, along with former Boeing Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears, were sentenced to prison.

At the time, McCain’s investigation mostly got rave reviews in the media and from taxpayer watchdog groups. “It’s the best example of congressional oversight that we’ve seen in a decade,” said Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “It was before the completely bone-headed decision to bring on all those EADS lobbyists.”

EADS Lobbyists in the McCain Campaign

Chief among the EADS lobbyists was former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler. “Loeffler has been at the intersection of special-interest money and politics for decades,” said Andrew Wheat, research director at Texans for Public Justice, a non-partisan, nonprofit policy and research organization.

Loeffler, who was finance co-chairman for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, joined McCain’s campaign in February 2006, before McCain officially announced his candidacy. “If needed,” Loeffler said at the time, “I’ll wash bottles and change tires on the Straight Talk America van.”

McCain’s cash-strapped campaign become dependent on Loeffler, who assumed a central role as fund-raiser. In 2007, the Loeffler Group earned $220,000 lobbying for EADS. Loeffler resigned in May, when McCain purged his staff of registered lobbyists to signal that his campaign does not have conflicts of interests

While Loeffler has formally left McCain’s presidential campaign, Loeffler Group lobbyist William Ball, a former Navy secretary, remains an unpaid McCain adviser.

Meanwhile, Susan Loeffler has stayed as the campaign’s co-finance chairman and recently left her position at the Loeffler Group. The Loeffler Group said it was their policy not to talk with the press.

The other two EADS lobbyists formerly associated with McCain’s presidential campaign are Kirk Blalock, a lobbyist at Fierce, Iskowitz and Blalock and the president of Young Professionals for John McCain, and Wayne Berman, who works for Oglivy Government Relations.

Blalock, who has bundled more than $250,000 for MCain’s presidential bid, did not return calls for comment. The Arizona Republic reported that he has stayed on the campaign as an unpaid fund-raiser. A spokesman for Berman said that he no longer holds his former campaign title of deputy finance chairman, and is instead an unpaid adviser and fund-raiser.

Loeffler and the other EADS lobbyists joined McCain’s presidential campaign soon after the Arizona senator, in his capacity as chairman of the Airland Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the Pentagon to rewrite its bidding requirements for the aerial tanker program. In September 2006, the Pentagon’s request for a contract proposal was still in draft stage. But it appeared the Air Force would take into consideration a suit filed by the U.S. in the WTO court that sought to end the European Union’s policy of giving no interest loans to EADS.

McCain argued in the letter (pdf), obtained by The Washington Independent, that there was no legal right for the Air Force to include a WTO matter in the contract proposal, and that including the dispute amounted to giving Boeing the contract. On Dec. 1, 2006, McCain wrote a similar letter (pdf) to Secretary of Defense-nominee Robert Gates, who four days later appeared before McCain and the rest of the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearings. The committee and full Senate swiftly confirmed Gates.

Indeed, after assuming his Cabinet post, Gates wrote a letter (pdf) to McCain confirming that the Pentagon’s thinking had changed — the final request for proposal would not include the WTO dispute.

McCain says that EADS lobbyists did not help write any of his letters to the Pentagon or influence his actions. But he does not deny that he used his role as a high-profile reformer and subcommittee chair to ensure Northrop Grumman/EADS could bid on the aerial tanker contract.

“I had nothing to do with the contract,” McCain said in March in response to audience questions in St. Louis, home of a Boeing plant, “except to insist in writing, on several occasions, as the process went forward, that it be fair and open and transparent.”

Criticism from Across the Aisle

Infuriated Democratic lawmakers who have Boeing employees in their districts — like Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) — have called the letters “a game changer” in tilting the second contract to Northrop Grumman/EADS.

“I hope voters of this state [Washington] remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs,” said Dicks after the contract was rewarded. Washington state has more than 70,000 Boeing employees, including the vast majority of the machinists on strike.

The criticism hasn’t stopped. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver two weeks ago, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who has about 3,000 constituents employed by Boeing, said that if McCain becomes president, “the tanker will be made in England and France instead of Wichita and Seattle.” Sebelieus subsequently told Crain’s Chicago Business that, “It really comes down to a American company versus a European company.”

If Boeing wins the contract, the aircraft is expected to be modified into refueling tankers in Kansas.

McCain’s campaign press office did not return repeated calls for comment. McCain’s last statement on the contract was in July when he approved of Gates re-opening the contract and facilitating “full and open competition.” McCain did say in his presidential nomination acceptance speech Thursday at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul that he “fought crooked deals at the Pentagon.” But he did not elaborate.

“It’s tough to read McCain,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog organization seeking greater government transparency. “He’s makes a lot of moves toward reform, and the next moment does something that’s questionable.”