WATCH WILSON'S INVESTIGATION IN VIDEO PLAYER RIGHT
Anchor Lead: Members of Congress tonight are asking for an official investigation into why the Marines are spending millions on a new second-rate combat vehicle said to leave troops inadequately protected on the battlefield. It’s an issue our chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson first revealed right here and Steve joins us tonight with the latest details…Steve?
Wilson Live Open: Everybody agrees when America sends its men and women into battle, they deserve more than a fighting chance—don’t they deserve the very best we can provide to keep them safe, yet they’re not getting it.
Reporter Pkg runs:
Rep. Gene Taylor/D-Mississippi: “The idea that kids will be traveling around in Iraq in vehicles that expose them to death is totally unacceptable.”
Wilson Narration: But isn’t that exactly what’s happening, virtually day in and day out for more than four years now? Wilson Narration: Hundreds of young Americans have died in one after another attack on inadequately protected vehicles…So many our enemies gloat about scenes like this when they are shown…and now comes news that for years, the Pentagon dragged its feet in fielding better vehicles…like these Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles known as M-RAP’s that could have already saved countless lives of American dads and moms, our sons, daughters and husbands torn from our families forever.
Taylor: We are expressing our frustration that people have died needlessly…
Wilson Narration: And even as Congress leaned on military officials at this recent hearing, the Marine Corps Systems Command headed by Brigadier General Michael Brogan here? It has continued to pour upwards of $700 million into this…a new combat vehicle called the Growler. It’s designed to be flown inside an Osprey helicopter and unloaded to put troops on the attack behind enemy lines. …but as we told you at six, nearly three years later this thing still fails to meet certain key requirements and couldn’t outmaneuver a turtle on a test track the other day without ending up like this.
Jerry Bazinski/Vehicle Designer: You don’t put troops into a vehicle system like that to go into battle. (Wilson) They insist it’s still the best possible solution, the best value for the money. (Basinski) Maybe in Quantico but not here in Detroit. Anybody in Detroit would tell you that don’t hold water, that dog’s not going to hunt.
Wilson Narration: Bazinski and his wife Elizabeth worked with other Detroit vehicle experts, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, and teamed with United Defense to offer the Marines this model. It met every bid specification and, they say, provided so much more protection than what the Marines ultimately bought, the Growler produced by a retired Marine colonel working with General Dynamics. The specs demanded “cover and concealment” for troops, yet the machine gunner on the Growler design the military accepted was an awfully easy target.
John Garner/Growler Project Mgr, USMC: His cover and concealment is, again, the mobility of the vehicle. Again, cover and concealment is not protection from direct fire. That’s not what it means.
Wilson Narration: Really? That’s exactly what it means, according to the Marine’s very own training guide here… Cover: Protection of the whole body from enemy weapons fire. Concealment: Protection from military observation. Does this original design provide much of either? And where, wonders dads like Brian Hart who lost a son in an unarmored Humvee, where is the oversight required of Congress?
Brian Hart/Gold Star Father: What I don’t understand is what’s wrong with Carl Levin here? He’s the senior ranking member of the senate armed services committee…
Wilson Narration: For the last five months, Levin repeatedly ducked our efforts to get him to talk about this issue. Meanwhile, House Republican Joe Knollenberg and his staff have seen documentation provided by his constituents behind the rejected Detroit model…and it’s a very different picture than the Marines have been painting in this Information Paper they’ve been spinning to Congress.
Wilson to Rep. Joe Knollenberg/R-Michigan: Are they trying to pull one over on you here? (Knollenberg) Well it certainly suggests that we have every reason to full investigate the Grower that you’re talking about, for example.
Wilson Narration: When Congresswoman Candace Miller called Marines to explain, they came with a slick presentation but…
Wilson to Rep. Candace Miller/R-Michigan: How do you know you didn’t just get a song-and-a-dance and a little seltzer down the pants and thank you very much? (Miller) Well there is one further thing that could happen here and that would be a GAO investigative report as well.
Wilson Narration: An investigation by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress…which brings us back to Senator Levin…
Wilson to Sen. Carl Levin/D-Michigan: Senator, it’s been several months and I notice that General Dynamics, the company that got the contract was one of your biggest campaign contributors and I have to ask… (Levin) what are you suggesting? (Wilson) I’m asking, Sir. (Levin) What are you suggesting? (Wilson) Well let me flat-out ask. I’m asking you to what extent does the fact that they’re one of your biggest campaign contributors… (Levin) Why don’t you find out what we’ve done first.
Wilson Narration: Well here’s what the senator did last week…asked the G-A-O to review what alleged evidence of wrongdoing provided by the Detroit auto designers and issue a full report. He claims he hasn’t spoken on the issue to protect the Bazinski’s privacy. In memory of a fallen solider, PFC John Hart, his dad’s crusade for armored Humvees has made a real difference—and the rest of us could tune out the daily death reports from Iraq…
Brian Hart: But these are our kids. We’re sending our kids to war and nothing is going to bring our son back, but his buddies have a chance. They have better equipment than they had three years ago…If a bureaucracy is broken then we have to be willing, we have to have the courage to stand up and fix it. And sometimes you win and sometimes you’re gonna lose, but you can’t sit quietly. And that’s the legacy.
Wilson live tag: I’ve reported a lot of stories on Action News in the last six years…but none more important than this. It’s more than a story of a local company that found the military procurement process can sometimes be stacked against outsiders…it’s a story about decisions that mean the difference between life and death for our friends, our neighbors, our family we send off to war—and you’ll permit me one personal note that extends a little beyond straight reporting: somebody, all of us, need to pay attention and demand the level of safety they deserve.
