Ernest Graves
A:
Sure. I'd worked with a lot of different people in the construction business, including
the Air Force. That wasn't particularly an Air Force trick. Any program manager that
has control over money uses the money to make people do what he wants. I knew the
personalities involved here. I knew Paul Hartung. I didn't know about Moshe Bar-Tov,
but I knew Paul. I could see from my experience in managing things.
When I was in charge, I always used the funding approvals. I had seen this done over
a span of 30 years. I had watched where, if you wanted something done a certain way,
you didn't approve the money until everybody was lined up that you knew would be
involved.
But that wasn't the mechanism we had set up. The mechanism I had visualized was that
we were going to get this requirement approved. Then they were going to stand aside
and the Corps was going to build it in accordance with that requirement, because if they
only had three years, they couldn't stand change orders.
They had to decide at the beginning what they were going to do. I knew this because
I'd been involved in a lot of different construction. There had to be a mechanism to
force them to agree to it. They got tied in some knots over this. But basically, they got
it right.
Q:
Mrs. Chayes recognized this and tried to fight the turnover of all this money at one
time, didn't she?
A:
I think her concern arose more after it had already been done. She may not have liked
that idea, but she certainly didn't put the weight of her position behind not doing that.
I made the arrangement with a long-time, very capable Air Force manager in her office.
He knew we had to get on with this. He had been involved with many things like this.
He wanted to look out for Toni's concepts here. But he also knew that you had to get
on with it.
Q:
Was that [Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower, Reserve Affairs,
and Installations] Joe [F.] Meis?
A:
That was Joe Meis. Joe was a very capable guy, a very practical guy, and he had been
engaged in this business between the Air Force and the Army Corps of Engineers for
years. He knew that you won some and you lost some on this, and that there was give-
and-take. I didn't discuss this with Joe, but I suspect that Joe knew that if we got this
money down to the Corps that the job would go and then we'd save a lot of wrangling.
When more money had to go later on, and there was all the wrangling, I think that
proved that.
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