Unfamiliar Fronts For The U.S. Military
JONATHAN MANN, INSIGHT (voice-over): Holding its ground, but not its people. The U.S. military is facing enemies it isn't really trained for - troubling at a target range and problems with its pay. (on camera): Hello, and welcome. The United States has the most powerful military on the planet, unchallenged by any other force, any other nation. But that is not to say that the armed forces of this country go unchallenged entirely. We'll look at two different problems the Pentagon is having to face. One, a short-term confrontation over land. The other, a long-term crisis over labor. On our program today - the U.S. military on unfamiliar fronts. We begin on a small Caribbean island on the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. U.S. federal agents liberated a piece of land there this week from protesters who objected to its being used as a Navy practice range. A guard employed on the range was killed more than a year ago in what the Navy describes as a freak accident that has no bearing on the safety of civilians. But the protests have dragged on ever since. The Navy operation that put to an end was an unusual one, given the location. Not a shot was fired. We have two reports on Vieques. Here's CNN's Mike Boettcher.</s>MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Twelve hours after their arrest, the evicted Vieques protesters returned home to hero's welcome. Their protest to stop the Navy from using the eastern part of their island as a bombing range had lasted more than a year. The Vieques island squatters believed that they had made their point, even though they were forced to leave. At daybreak, on the 381st day of their protest, the Vieques squatters were suddenly confronted with the inevitable - their removal. Before them, a squadron of small Navy boats. Behind them, a small company of FBI agents. The protesters' only choice - abandon the 14 separate camps they had established across the U.S. Navy firing range. The protesters promised nonviolent resistance, and they lived up to that pledge, locking arms and quietly sitting in the makeshift shacks they had built a few months ago. A few feet away, a group of priests, nuns and Protestant ministers sang hymns while they waited to be removed. A few demanded to be arrested and were handcuffed. But FBI negotiators convinced the majority to accept what was called an "enforced removal," which did not involve arrest. Among those was Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, a Chicagoan of Puerto Rican heritage, who vowed that the protest would not end. The FBI agents, while armed with pistols and a few assault rifles, seemed determined not to be seen as using excessive force. Most of the agents quietly stood by as others escorted protesters to waiting trucks. A potentially explosive situation ended relatively peacefully.</s>RENEE SALINA, FBI AGENT: We took a different approach in coming in here. We knew these people were not armed. And we just came in, and we had already sent a communication to the press advising them how we were going to deal with these individuals.</s>BOETTCHER (on camera): The Vieques squatters say their removal will not end the protest. They vow they will return. (voice-over): At least for now, the federal government is determined that they will not return. Mike Boettcher, CNN, Vieques, Puerto Rico.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (VOICE-OVER): The Navy has used Vieques for target practice for more than 50 years. Between 1941 and 1950, it bought up two-thirds of the 52-square-mile Puerto Rican island for what it says was fair market value - roughly $1.5 million. Now the Pentagon claims it can't be replaced, at any price.</s>ADM. CRAIG QUIGLEY, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: It is a question of money to a certain extent, Jamie. But money aside, we've simply not found a location that offers the combination of attributes that Vieques offers today.</s>MCINTYRE: About 9,300 U.S. citizens live in the center of the tiny island, mostly in two coastal cites in the north and south. Protesters shut down the bombing range in April of last year after a Marine Corps F-18 mistakenly dropped two bombs on an observation post, killing a civilian security guard.</s>JUAN FIGUEROA, PUERTO RICAN LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUCATION FUND: Can you imagine if this was happening in the Florida Keys? Can you imagine if the Navy decided to use one of the Keys to do target practice 60 years ago? You probably can't imagine it because it would never happen.</s>MCINTYRE: The Navy insists there is nowhere else on America's East Coast where Marines can practice an amphibious assault while jet fighter planes drop live bombs from overhead - the kind of realistic training the military says is essential to producing battle-ready troops.</s>JAMES INHOFE, U.S. SENATE MEMBER: This is a life-and-death issue for young American troops, and I might add some of those troops are Puerto Rican troops. Now we own that island. That's owned by the Navy, and all we're asking is the same thing that I do in my state of Oklahoma when we have a live firing range at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.</s>MCINTYRE: Last year, the Navy studied 18 possible alternatives to Vieques, including nearby uninhabited islands and existing bombing ranges in the United States. None were deemed suitable, either because their beaches were too small for an amphibious landing, or the sites were too close to busy commercial air corridors, or they were home to endangered plants and animals. (on camera): There is an inherent contradiction in the Navy's position. On the one hand, officials insist there's no alternative to Vieques. But on the other hand, they've agreed to leave if the island's residents vote them out in a referendum. In that case, they concede, they'll simply have to find an alternative. Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>MANN: Public safety and national security - two key issues on one part of one small island. We asked the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region about his efforts to keep the peace.</s>REAR ADM. KEVIN GREEN, U.S. NAVAL FORCES SOUTHERN COMMAND: The question of the Navy's use of the range is one that we've been working with the people of Puerto Rico with for a number of years. The range has been open for almost 60 years and, in fact, on no occasion has anyone outside the limits of the range, outside the federal property ever been harmed by our operations. That's a record we intend to keep, and we're continually looking at methods to ensure that we guarantee the safety of the people outside the range area.</s>MANN: There are other bases around the world belonging to the U.S. military, other practice areas. Not all of them are always popular all the time with all the people who live nearest to them. If Vieques is taken from the Navy or even simply this episode continues to resonate in the United States and around the world, do you think it sets a bad precedent?</s>GREEN: Well, I think one thing that we all need to keep in mind is that this remains a very dangerous world, and the men and women of the United States Navy are committed to defending American interests worldwide. It's one of our principal responsibilities to ensure that when we send our young men and women forward that they are properly trained. I think it's important to mention that Vieques, the range at Vieques is one of 57 military training sites in the United States. We use live ordnance in 33 major range complexes in 14 states, two territories and six foreign countries. I think that the American people have, for a very long time and will in the future, support both the operation and the proper training and equipping of our men and women in uniform.</s>MANN: Let me ask you one last question, and about that in particular. The United States is, of course, at peace. The Cold War is over. The world may continue to be a dangerous place, but Americans don't feel that danger quite so sensitively as they once did. Do you think that perceptions are different now than they were 10 or 20 or 50 years ago, that the U.S. public is simply less inclined to help the military on things like this?</s>GREEN: Well, I would say this. Certainly, the Cold War is over. But this remains an era of violent peace. The responsibilities that the men and women of the Department of Defense carry out on behalf of the American people are challenging. Our carrier battlegroups and our amphibious ready groups and, in fact, the operations of the other armed services of the country put our men and women into potentially dangerous situations every month of the year. And we are committed to ensuring that they are properly prepared for those challenging and potentially dangerous situations. I think the American people understand that. One of our responsibilities, of course, is to ensure that we explain the reasons for our operations and the reasons for our careful, thorough and comprehensive training program, such as our use of the range out at Vieques.</s>MANN: Rear Admiral Kevin Green, thank you so much for being with us.</s>GREEN: Certainly. It's my pleasure.</s>MANN: We have to take a break. When we come back - the wages of war. The military has billions. Some of its men and women are broke. Stay with us.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you want to move ahead in any career, you have to know what most employers want. Like how to work with a team, how to handle responsibility, how to take on a tough job and see it through.</s>MANN (voice-over): The Pentagon is failing to attract enough new recruits, and those who are already in uniform are leaving in droves. That, despite an aggressive advertising campaign for a U.S. military that is struggling to be all that it can be. (on camera): Welcome back. High employment and a booming economy are a source of national pride in the United States, but a pain for national security. Young hopefuls are seeking fortunes in the private sector, while military personnel are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Here's CNN NEWSSTAND's Jan Smith.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:: I get frustrated a lot, just the pay in general, trying to just make ends meet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE:: Gosh, you've got sports stars making millions of dollars. What do they got to sacrifice?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE:: We are soldiers, but at the same time, we are human. Pay us. Protect our family at the same time.</s>JAN SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These men and women have volunteered to lay down their lives for their country. But some say what they get in return is simply not enough.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:: What do you want to drink?</s>SMITH: The Baehrs (ph) are a third-generation military family. But they never expected to struggle financially. Ten years ago, Private Chris Baehr made about $900 a month in basic pay, or just over $10,000 a year. Today, Sergeant Baehr earns about $22,000 a year, more than double his original salary. But now married with two children, they live from paycheck to paycheck.</s>SGT. CHRIS BAEHR: Nobody wants their family members to be distressed over certain things. And that's why, where I grew up, I was supposed to support a family, and I'm doing the best I can right now.</s>TESSA BAEHR: We've never doubted that he works hard for us.</s>SMITH (on camera): What makes you cry?</s>T. BAEHR: It seems we shouldn't have to rely on government assistance and family.</s>SMITH (voice-over): But government assistance is just what some soldiers need. The Pentagon says 7,500 military families relied on food stamps in the last fiscal year, while $21 million in food and milk vouchers were redeemed at military commissaries - vouchers obtained through WIC, the federal government's supplemental nutrition program. Here in the Killeen, Texas-Fort Hood area, more than half those on milk and food vouchers are military families. And even though the Baehrs save money by living in Fort Hood's rent-free housing, they rely on these vouchers to help feed their family, something Tessa Baehr finds humiliating.</s>T. BAEHR: It was a very hard thing for me to do, to go to the WIC office, especially when my husband has been at the same job for 10 years. You would think we would not have to rely upon public assistance to make ends meet.</s>RUDY DE LEON, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The entire Defense Department leadership has spent a substantial part of their time examining pay issues.</s>SMITH: Rudy De Leon oversees personnel issues for the Pentagon. (on camera): Are you embarrassed there are service members on food stamps and service members using the WIC program? Are you embarrassed they need these programs to make ends meet?</s>DE LEON: The point is, we think our service members aren't paid enough, and that's where we are putting major dollars, $40 billion into the budget to improve pay for all our of enlisted and officers. In terms of the WIC program, it's there, it's available to support family members, and we really shouldn't distinguish between family members that are serving versus those that are not.</s>SMITH (voice-over): The military is fighting to keep pace with the changing demographics and mounting expenses of its soldiers. Twenty years ago, most junior enlistees were single. Today, two out of every three are married, many with children. At Fort Hood, the largest military post in the country, while some depend on food stamps, others rely on charity. Half the people who come to the Killeen Community Food Bank are either in the military or are military dependents.</s>DOYLE WHITE, DIRECTOR, KILLEEN FOOD BANK: I call it the working poor. It seems to be a growing class of people. And they're hardworking folks, they're good folks, and they really try hard, but one emergency or crisis sets them back because their income is right on the border.</s>SMITH: With money so tight, you may be surprised to learn what some soldiers are doing for extra cash. (on camera): Here at the Alpha Plasma Center near Fort Hood, at lest half of the 100 to 125 people who come to sell their plasma are in the military or are military dependents. Most say they show up because they need the money.</s>JAY ORTIZ: I've got scars on my arms from coming pretty frequently.</s>SMITH (voice-over): Army medic specialist Jay Ortiz and his wife regularly sell their blood plasma. Like some other soldiers, he comes to this center twice a week, getting as much as $150 a month to help support his wife and daughter.</s>ORTIZ: We use this money for things to make it through payday by payday -- gas, bills, groceries - and to help us have a little safety deposit whenever we need something.</s>LT. GEN. LEON LAPORTE: There are soldiers that I know are going downtown and selling blood, and that saddens me that they would do that.</s>SMITH: Lieutenant General Leon LaPorte is in command at Fort Hood.</s>LAPORTE: When the chain of command is aware of these type of soldiers, we counsel them. We work with them on their financial difficulties. It's not something we want our soldiers to be doing.</s>SMITH: And what does all this financial stress do to a soldier's ability to train and perform the mission?</s>LAPORTE: Soldiers that are worried about finances have a hard time focusing on the job and, if they're deployed, have a hard time focusing on their mission.</s>C. BAEHR: Everybody worries about their family. It's more their family than myself.</s>SMITH: The military is trying to assist those with financial problems by offering budget counseling. But 4,000 junior enlistees remain on the waiting list for rent-free housing at Fort Hood, a wait that can take up to two years, in some cases, longer than their time on post. And even in modest Killeen, Texas, a top housing allowance of $475 a month for the junior enlisted is often not enough to cover basic rent and utilities for those off-post. Because of the financial pressure, the Baehrs have just decided to leave the Army at the end of the year. After a decade in the military, Sergeant Baehr will nearly double his salary by joining a family construction business. He says low pay is one reason for the current shortage of some non-commissioned officers.</s>C. BAEHR: There's a lot of NCOs that are getting out these days because they can find better jobs on the outside. And that's tough on us because these are people we come up through the ranks with, they know their job really well, and the next thing you know, they're out.</s>SMITH: And despite re-enlistment bonuses, the exodus is not limited to non-commissioned officers. Basic pay for a private starts at just under $1,000 a month. Even with a tax-free housing allowance and soldier's meal benefit, the compensation package leaves a family of five near the poverty level. Private Nicolas Scheifen (ph) and his wife are expecting their second child. After just one year, he has already ruled out a long-term commitment.</s>PRIVATE NICOLAS SCHEIFEN: It won't be a career, because the money isn't -- you know, you can make more doing my job on the outside than out here, and I don't have to be deployed. I don't have to go in the field. I don't have to work, you know, 18 hours a day.</s>WHITE: There is going to be some turbulence. Network programmers, network integrators, pilots -- there is a great demand. We're competing with the economy in ways that we have never competed before with an all- volunteer force. That's why there is such a focus on pay and benefits and housing right now. We want to compete.</s>SMITH: But for some soldiers, it is already too late. The Army has lost the battle to keep them.</s>ORTIZ: I am a very patriotic person. I love my country, and I love the service, and unfortunately, it just hurts when your country seems that it doesn't really care about you. And it's sad when you weigh those sacrifices that we give as soldiers, as people serving our country. It doesn't make sense why we get paid what we do.</s>MANN: Joining us now to talk all about this is M. Thomas Davis, retired colonel of the U.S. Army. Among other things, former director of the Army chief of staff's manpower office. Thanks so much for being with us. It seems bizarre to a civilian to hear about full-time service personnel in uniform who are also receiving government assistance to try to feed themselves and their family. How does it feel to a military man like yourself?</s>COL. M. THOMAS DAVIS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, of course, we all hate to hear that, Jonathan. It's a painful thing for us to listen to. I think you heard that from General LaPorte down there that we'd just as soon our soldiers spend their time thinking about their mission, focusing on their job as opposed to figuring out how to make ends meet. But regrettably, it's a fact of life. We're competing in a labor market that, as you've heard numerous times from Alan Greenspan and others, is very tight. The unemployment rate has gone down again. There are a lot of opportunities for soldiers on the outside to do other things, and many of them are electing to take advantage of those opportunities, particularly those in the high-tech fields such as information technology.</s>MANN: If the military had more money, would that solve the problem, do you think?</s>DAVIS: More money would certainly help because the pay scales that we have right now are, in many instances, not competitive with what's offered out there on the private economies. I've talked to a lot of young people who would be in that category of high school graduate that the military would like to have, and even working as a temp at local firms in an area such as Washington, D.C., they can make more money than they would be making if they were to join the military. And as I've described it to many people, it's an issue of them being able to have a job during the day. Go home at night, and go out and see "Saving Private Ryan" with their friends or to go to an underpaying job with a very difficult initiation course and then go off and be Private Ryan. And they are obviously choosing the former. More money would be helpful, but there are other stresses that have to be dealt with as well, such as the quality of life issues that come up that are related to these deployments we have going on.</s>MANN: Where is the biggest problem? Is it trying to get people to come in, or is it trying to get people who are already in to stay?</s>DAVIS: It's a combination of the two. I see the former - getting people to enlist in the first place - as being the major problem right now. If you look at the demographics of the country, you find that you start with about 14 million young men and women in the age group that would join the military. When you begin to deduct from those the ones who will go to college, and college attendance rates are going up rather radically right now, with a lot of incentives and other private aid that's available, you begin to walk down to the services are trying to recruit about 280,000 people, young people coming into the force for the first time for the active and reserve components out of a pool of about 800,000, which means they have to recruit about one out of three of those people likely to join. In the current economic environment, where so many opportunities are available, that's very difficult. The second part is getting them to stay in. The difficulties that people in the force have right now are much different than what we experienced years ago when I was a young officer over in Germany. These people are from Generation X, as you've heard about. The things that influence them, the value that they place on families and family time, and they all have families - two-thirds of them do, as you just heard - that changes the dynamic of their own personal situations in a rather significant way. And after one or two deployments overseas, they begin to get tired of that.</s>MANN: Should we assume that the people who are handling all of the sophisticated and dangerous weapons technology for this country, that those people are not necessarily anymore among the sharpest or the most able or the most educated of the potential candidates?</s>DAVIS: Right now, the people that we take in are, by and large, for the most part in the upper half of the mental categories and the aptitude categories that we test. We have backed off some of the higher standards that we set a few years ago, and now we're taking in more people who are in the lower categories. But generally speaking, if you compare the mental aptitude and the technical proficiency of people in the armed forces, you find that they're higher than they are in the population at large. However, the trends are certainly not favorable as you look at the need for increasingly sophisticated people to operate these equipments - the Patriot missiles, the tanks, the fighters, the sophisticated electronics on the ships. And it's going to be harder and harder to recruit those people when they have numerous opportunities to go to work for other people in the dot-com world.</s>MANN: M. Thomas Davis, U.S. Army retired, thanks so much for being with us.</s>DAVIS: Thank you very much.</s>MANN: That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. Stay with us. There is more news just ahead. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com