Some influential Republicans are upset at the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to head the Central Intelligence Agency, preferring a civilian to maintain the CIA's independence from the powerful Pentagon. Just a change of clothing isn't enough to distance Hayden from his fellow generals.

When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, backing Hayden, asserts, "There's no power play taking place in Washington," lock up the silverware, for the Big Con Game is afoot. Rummy is surpassed only by his buddy, Vice President Dick Cheney, in playing the capital's inside-power game — just ask Colin Powell.

Public fears brought on by 9/11 have given the American military unchallenged access to taxpayer funds and increased responsibilities and prestige that can only be compared to World War II. Along with the super-secret National Security Agency, which Hayden headed while it collected personal data on millions of Americans without a court warrant, Pentagon intelligence is shrouded in secrecy.

Its increased power has come largely at the expense of the State Department and the CIA. The Pentagon already controls some 80 percent of intelligence funding, and has greatly expanded the scope of its intelligence operations under Rumsfeld.

Last year, the Pentagon was forced to back away from domestic surveillance of anti-war activists and protests. Like most Pentagon actions, the surveillance was done secretly in the name of counter-terrorism, and surfaced only with an NBC News investigation. The civilian contractor that ran the Pentagon surveillance is the same firm that bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

Pentagon intrusions into areas normally reserved for the CIA, "human intelligence" operations involving undercover agents and spies, have been a constant concern in the CIA and among some in Congress.

The Pentagon is also encroaching on territory traditionally reserved to state and local law agencies and the National Guard. Traditional tension between the full-time military and the Guard and Reserves has reached new highs under Rumsfeld, as the part-timers have been pressed into repeated trips to Iraq. Some 70 percent of Guard members have been in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, and Guard or Reserve troops made up nearly half of our forces in Iraq in 2005. At the same time, the regular Army has kept the equipment of the reserve forces, cutting units back to the point where they are barely able to train and respond to domestic demands. The Louisiana National Guard was in Iraq when Katrina hit.

No other unit of government spends so much, with so little oversight. Annual Pentagon spending is now over $500 billion a year, with $1.3 trillion in planned new weapons systems. We support over 6,000 military bases worldwide, and spend money so fast that auditors are unable to track billions of dollars in equipment and contracts.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., no enemy of the military, has called it "unsustainable defense spending." By most accounts, the United States spends more money each year on its military than the rest of the developed world combined. Pentagon spending has grown 48 percent under George W. Bush.

The big winners in the militarization of America have been the defense contractors, ranging from weapons manufacturers to private contractors that provide everything from security to meals for American troops. Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, with the closest of ties to Bush and Cheney, have been the major beneficiaries of no-bid contracts in Iraq. Despite repeated findings of incompetence in their performance, they have routinely won bonuses and escaped serious penalties.

The close ties of a handful of defense contractors to the Pentagon have made it almost impossible for rivals to build up expertise to compete for defense contracts, because they lack the political muscle to get into the bidding game. No other federal agency is given this latitude to reward its friends.

There are implications both foreign and domestic.

At home, we put the war toys on our credit card and cut federal budgets for health, housing and education. The Pentagon is unaccountable and uncontrolled.

Abroad, people in all parts of the world regularly rank the United States as the greatest threat to world peace — above such "bad guys" as Iran and North Korea. From hard experience in many cases, they know that a military buildup of this scale will always tempt generals and presidents to use the weapons and the troops, to win another star on the shoulder or re-election by a frightened nation.

It is past time to confront what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex," before it calls all the shots.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail to: floydmckay@yahoo.com

© 2006 The Seattle Times Company

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