

    Taxpayers get stuck with the $120,000 cost of the Air Force using
    a C-141 Troop Transport to carry 1 general, 1 general's aide, and
    the general's cat from Italy to the U.S.


The Oregonian
Portland, Oregon
Friday, Decemberr 9, 1994


              Pentagon Looks Into General's Cushy Flight

              A huge C-141 transport is summoned to fly
               the new head of the Space Command from
               Italy to Colorado at a cost of $120,000

                         By John F. Harris

                 L.A. Times-Washington Post Service

    WASHINGTON - A commercial flight was leaving the next day, but
that wasn't soon enough for Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ashy.

    Instead, the new head of the U.S. Space Command traveled on an
Air Force C-141 transport jet - which flew him, one aide and the Ashy
family cat from Italy to Colorado at an estimated cost of at least
$120,000.

    Ashy's Sept. 9 flight - on a 200-passenger plane with a crew of
13 - was more convenient at the time, but it is causing big trouble
now.

    After a complaint from Capitol Hill, the acting inspector general
of the Defense Department, Derek J. Vander Schaaf, has agreed this
week to investigate the propriety of the flight and whether Air Force
public affairs personnel were truthful in answering press inquiries
about it.

    Ashy, who followed Pentagon regulations by paying a fare of $85
for the cat, declined to comment. A spokesman at the Space Command in
Colorado Springs, Colo., Lt. Col. Dennis Gauci, said Ashy and his
aide had considered taking a commercial flight out of Rome on Sept.
10 but worried that the schedule wouldn't give Ashy enough time to
take an eight-hour training course in Colorado the next day. The
course was on procedures for alerting the president in the event of
an air attack. He was sworn in to his post Sept. 13.

    Ashy, a 32-year Air Force veteran and fighter pilot, didn't want
to leave Italy any earlier because he was still commander of the 16th
Air Force, a job that included directing air missions over Bosnia.

    Air Force oficials in Washington acknowledge that Ashy's flight
looks bad, but they said no regulations were broken. Ashy, they said,
was on an especially tight schedule to get to his new posting and had
asked an aide to see whether any government planes were headed his
way. Subordinates went overboard in accommodating his request,
according to an Air Force official at the Pentagon who is familiar
with the case. An empty C-141 was ordered across the Atlantic and
back again to ferry Ashy to his new home.

    Total flight time for the C-141, which cost about $3,400 an hour
to operate, was 31 hours, and two midair refuelings were required
that added to the cost.

    The price tag gave Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, a case of
sticker shock, and he asked Vander Schaaf to investigate.

    The inspector general's office will "determine whether the travel
was proper and reasonable and address a number of related matters,
the most important of which appears to whether Air Force personel
were truthful in answering press inquiries about the flight," Vander
Schaff said in a memo Tuesday to Defense Secretary William J. Perry.

    According to Gauci, Ashy had no idea until he got on the flight
that the C-141 had been dispatched especially for him. When an aide
contacted the Air Mobility Command to ask about transport, Gauci
said, Ashy assumed he would be on a flight that was already traveling
from Europe to the United States.

    The spokesman said Ashy also didn't know that the C-141, a type
of plane ordinarily uged for carrying paratroopers, would be equipped
with a special "comfort pallet," which includes such amenities as
first-class seating, a kitchen and a sleeping area. The plane had
recently flown U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright to Russia, the
Air Force said.

    Ashy's flight might not have been publicized except for a
coincidence. In Naples, two retired military officers and their
wives, who are allowed to travel on military planes on a
space-available basis, asked the crew if they could tag along.

    Even though the plane was flying nearly empty, Air Force
officials said the crew told the couples no, because they believed
Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado was not an allowed port of entry
into the United States for travelers not on Air Force business. An
Air Force offlcial in Washington said the crew was mistaken and that
accommodations for the foursome could have been made.

    The spurned retirees took their grievances to Newsweek military
affairs columnist David Hackworth, who told Grassley.


                             - END -


