The price for telling the truth in Government can be inordinately high, as A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a onetime civilian cost analyst for the Air Force, found out. After Fitzgerald disclosed to a subcommittee of the Joint Economic Committee in November 1968 that cost overruns on the giant C-5A cargo plane added up to a phenomenal $2 billion, his days at the Pentagon were numbered. His Air Force superiors, Fitzgerald claims, did not applaud his frankness before Congress. He was cut off from cost information about major weapons systems, an investigation of his private life was initiated, laudatory comments were...
AMERICAN NOTES: Honesty Redeemed
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