AT LAST THE TRUTH IS TOLD: THE TALE OF THE $600 TOILET SEAT.

AuthorMcKinnon, Dan

Many will remember the Pentagon's "spare parts horror stories" of the early 1980s. There were the $165 aluminum ladder, the $285 screwdriver, the $7,600 coffee maker, the $269 wrench, the $100 hammer, the $900 flashlight and the infamous $600 toilet seat. Even today there will be articles in the press that compare defense spending with that famous article of comfort which one politician called a "throne for the Pentagon."

When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, the Cold War had kept the country in crisis with the former USSR since World War II. His administration sought large increases in military defense spending intended to discourage or forestall possible Soviet aggression. Caspar Weinberger became secretary of defense and took charge of a military expansion under a new president that became known as the "Reagan Buildup."

A lot of money was going into national defense and a lot of people were watching how that money was invested. It would be no time for government waste. When money is being spent in a household, it is easy to understand an overpriced coffee pot. It is not easy to understand a multi-million-dollar weapons system. When examples of alleged overpricing of items of supply sold to the military started to make newspaper headlines, there was public outcry.

The Naval Supply Systems Command became the focal point for the Navy and initiated its BOSS (Buy Our Spares Smart) Program and created a "price fighter" organization in Norfolk, Virginia, to provide engineering and cost analysis assistance to hapless buyers trying to do the right thing and stay out of the papers. It worked. The other services established comparable programs. The Air Force had many of the so-called "horror stories"--the wrench, ladder, coffee pot, etc. Aviators believe in quality.

One day in 1985, Jim Genovese came into my office. I was the NAVSUP vice commander. Jim had the lead of the Navy program to correctly price spares. He said Sen. Bill Roth, R-Del., would announce in Congress the next day that the Navy was going to pay $600 for a toilet seat. Genovese had the drawings in hand. We looked and saw that the item was a part for a Navy P-3 surveillance aircraft. It was not a toilet seat. It was a large chunk of something that a toilet seat was attached to. Pilots sat on a real toilet seat. The seat sat upon it as you sat upon the seat. It looked more like the board with a hole I used when visiting family on their Missouri farm.

I said it would not make...

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