The Pentagon blitzed 45 people, including four from Tampa, with an international tour to capture their support.
By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published June 16, 2004
[Photo courtesy of Scott Miller]
In Tuzla, Bosnia, civilian Tom Pepin was allowed to hold a rocket-propelled grenade launcher seized by U.S. soldiers. As chief executive of Pepin Distributing, he once sent 6,000 cans of O'Doul's beer to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Scott Miller
Fighting insurgents in Iraq and terrorists worldwide, the U.S. military might seem to have little time left for public relations.
But that was precisely the purpose of a weeklong Defense Department program in early June, when the power and might of America's war machine was put on display for 45 carefully selected U.S. civilians, including four businessmen from Tampa.
After riding inflatable boats with Navy SEALs in the Caspian Sea, walking a peacekeeping patrol with soldiers in Bosnia, and taking off and landing aboard the USS Enterprise outside the Strait of Gibraltar, the civilians came back believers.
"When you see a jet that goes from zero to 120 mph in 2.5 seconds launched off an aircraft carrier, you see technology that gives you the impression the military is making the right investment," said Scott Miller, head of a Tampa venture capital firm and one of the participants on the recent Defense Department tour. "But it was really the personnel that impressed me most. The readiness training of the enlisted soldier and the sophistication of the senior military professionals was at a higher level than I may have expected going in."
In addition to Miller, other Tampa residents on the trip were Tom Pepin, chief executive of Pepin Distributing; Terry Fluke, vice president of the Port of Tampa; and Ben Eason, president and chief executive of Creative Loafing Newspapers, which publishes the Weekly Planet.
The rest of the group, 10 of whom were women, included an executive with the Cincinnati Reds, the head of Vail Resorts in Colorado, a sheriff from California and a law professor from Boston University.
Eason, who as a publisher of alternative newspapers might seem an unlikely candidate for such a military schmooze-fest, said he felt his journalistic skepticism was welcomed.
"You get the feeling they enjoy turning people around," said Eason, who describes himself as a well-read liberal Democrat and pragmatic businessman. "But I'm not an antiwar guy and I believe America should be engaged internationally. But that's a tough story to tell the American public."
That's one of the key reasons for the tours, officially known as a Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. It is the Pentagon's oldest orientation program for outsiders. The June event was the 67th time the program has been offered since it was instituted in 1948 by Defense Secretary James Forestal.
The Defense Department acknowledges that the junkets, which are short on sleep, long on access to top brass and packed with thrills, are unabashed efforts to proselytize to the masses by targeting community leaders.
"The payback is immense," said Lt. Col. Chet Curtis, conference director. "When you have influential people meet the men and women overseas serving on the front lines, then go home and tell people what their servicemen and women are doing, it's a boon to the Department of Defense and a boon to them. These impressions last a long time."
Participants must be nominated by military officials, but nomination is far from a guarantee of selection. The trips, usually held annually, attract about 300 nominees for fewer than 50 slots.
Miller said he was invited to apply by a senior Navy official. Pepin, the Tampa beer distributor who once sent 6,000 cans of O'Doul's beer to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was nominated by former Central Command head Gen. Tommy Franks.
People with military background need not apply for the program, nor can current or retired government employees.
"The purpose of JCOC is educational," the program's Web site says. "The goal is to reach individuals who have neutral, negative or unformed opinions on (the Defense Department) or the U.S. military."
Participants pay for their round-trip transportation to Washington, where the program begins and ends, as well as $2,500 to cover the cost of meals, receptions, hotels and photos. Transportation during the week is provided at additional cost on military transport.
The conference's Web site says the program is financially self-supporting, not including the cost of military escort officers. Curtis said the program's extra costs are part of the Defense Department's annual tour budget, which includes other, less-intensive orientations for nonmilitary. (An unrelated civilian program resulted in tragedy in 2001 when a Navy submarine with 16 civilians aboard - three of whom were at the sub's controls - collided with a Japanese trawler near Honolulu, killing nine people.)
Though the weeklong immersion trips have traditionally traveled to military bases stateside, Defense officials say the international implications of the war on terrorism persuaded them to focus the two most recent programs on overseas posts.
Curtis said the June trip's itinerary originally included Iraq and Afghanistan, but those plans were ditched at the last minute.
"Things didn't work out for obvious reasons," he said. "Maybe after the transition."
Instead, the most recent class embarked June 6 on a whirlwind tour of carefully selected military sites, close enough to the action to get the adrenaline going but distant enough to be safe. The first 24 hours in Washington included a Pentagon tour and briefing by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, then a ride aboard UH-1N helicopters over the Washington Mall to Andrews Air Force Base.
From Andrews, the group took an overnight flight to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, where they were briefed by the medical corps that cares for the wounded from Iraq. Fluke, who manages a petroleum facility at Tampa's port, said the visitors did not see any injured soldiers, but descriptions of the wounds were sufficiently graphic.
"They said the new body armor soldiers wear has both a good side and bad side," Fluke said. "The vital organs and head are not injured, but explosions shred all extremities."
After a predawn flight to Tuzla, Bosnia, the group joined soldiers on patrol through war-damaged villages. Fluke said the sight of freshly dug graves that held the remains of Croatians recently exhumed from mass graves was particularly compelling.
"We were continuously briefed about the geopolitical situation and indigenous peoples," he said. "I got an education in six days I couldn't have gotten in a year in college."
From Bosnia it was a six-hour flight to Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Republic north of Iran, where the travelers visited a Navy SEAL training camp. Then it was off to the USS Enterprise off the coast of Spain, where they watched an F-18 Tomcat break the sound barrier at carrier level.
"You could see the cone of ripples coming off the plane, then hear the thunderous kaboom," Fluke said. "The admiral in charge wanted to make sure we felt it. And that was what this whole trip was about: seeing it, feeling it, touching it."
Fluke and his fellow travelers said the war in Iraq was discussed with their hosts only in passing.
"Going in, I was on the fence about whether we should or shouldn't be in Iraq, and I'm probably still on the fence," he said. "But I made sure to shake hands with every soldier and tell them that the American public supports them, whether or not they agree with the war. I think they were appreciative of a goofy guy from Tampa patting them on the shoulder."
Eason, who said he was amazed by the access the group was given to everyone, from four-star generals to foot soldiers, said everyone seemed to agree about their mission in Iraq.
"They never flinched about the fact that they're going to be there and they're going to win there," he said. "But they also understood we can't be an occupying power; you've got to have the people working with you."
While Eason, like others, was dazzled by the expertise, training and enthusiasm of U.S. forces, he said he occasionally wondered why the military was making such an effort to impress.
"Probably about 1,500 people participated in our good time," he said. "I think it shows you the military is trying to get the word out that people should be engaged internationally. Plus they want you to think they're a swell bunch of guys. I think they also enjoyed interacting with us and hearing different perspectives."
Curtis, who is already planning the next trip for September, said the exercise is well worth the return.
"Any time you can show the American people how their tax dollars are being spent is a good use of time," he said. "Showing people deployed overseas, serving great missions, is always important."
