Oral History Program Pat Condon Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 6 January 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Pat Condon Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 6 January 2021 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Hill/DDO’95 oral history project documents the 1995 and 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and its impact on Utah. In 1993, rumors started to circulate that Hill Air Force Base and Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) would be closed by the 1995 round of BRAC, causing state officials, local government, and local grassroots lobbying group, Hill/DDO’95, to spring into action to save Utah’s military installations from closure or realignment to other facilities. This project includes interviews from a wide range of players, from congressmen, state officials, members of Hill/DDO’95, and the civilian employees of Hill Air Force Base and (DDO). Their accounts describe the process of fighting for the base, the closure of DDO, the formation of the Utah Defense Alliance (UDA) and Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) from the Hill/DDO’95 group, and their fight to save Hill Air Force Base all over again in 2005. Also discussed is the importance of the F-35 aircraft and the “Falcon Hill” Enhanced Use Lease project to the prosperity of Hill Air Force Base and military relations in Utah. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Condon, Pat, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 6 January 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Pat Condon. It was conducted on January 6, 2021 at the home of General Pat Condon. Condon discusses his involvement in choosing what bases to close while stationed at the Pentagon. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Also present is Sarah Langsdon. AK: Today is January 6, 2021. We are in the home of General Pat Condon speaking with him for the 1995 BRAC Base Realignment and Closure Project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'm here with Sarah Langsdon. If you don't mind, let's go ahead and start with your involvement with the Base Closure Executive Group and just kind of talk about what that looked like, a little bit of what you've been telling me off-camera, and just start out from there. PC: Sure, I'm happy to do that. I was stationed in the Pentagon, in the Air Force Secretariat from 1989 to 1993. During that period of time, I was involved in the 1991 and 1993 rounds of Base Realignment and Closure. My involvement was serving on what was called the Base Closure Executive Group. It was a two-star level, but there were members of the Senior Executive Service, civilians, also a part of that group. We served in sort of an intermediate level assessment group for the secretary. At the time, my recollection is that the secretary was required to provide to OSD a list of bases that the Air Force would recommend for realignment and closure, and that list would be kind of a baseline for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to use as a starting point for their analysis. The process consisted of a working group headed by a colonel that used the criteria that were laid out for consideration of the bases for realignment and closure, use those 1 criteria to assess Air Force bases, and then present that analysis to the Base Closure Executive Group for our consideration. Then our responsibility was to take that information, formulate a set of recommendations that we would then carry to the secretary for his decision about what bases the Air Force would put forward for consideration for realignment and closure. It was an arduous process, I will tell you. Nobody wanted to give up bases, but everybody realized that, with the reductions in the Department of Defense that came about resulting from the fall of the Berlin Wall and basically the end of the Cold War, that we had more infrastructure than we needed to meet our national security needs. Because budgets were greatly reduced, there was a need to reduce the cost of maintaining Air Force infrastructure that we didn't really need in order to support defense needs. So, in spite of our recognition for the need to do this, it was an unpleasant process, I'll just put it that way, because nobody wanted to give things away, because they all had value to one degree or another. But nonetheless, we went through this process and it was a months' long process. I don't remember the exact period, but it was several months that we went through this process before we were ready to present our recommendations to the secretary. So, I did that for the '91 round of base realignment and closure and the 93 round of base realignment and closure. In both of those rounds, my recollection is we really didn't consider in any depth any of the depot bases that the Air Force had. There were five depot bases at the time, and this may be my own assumption without the benefit of data to support it, but my feeling is the reason 2 we didn't consider the depot bases is maybe twofold: First of all, there was a lot of other “low-hanging fruit” around the Air Force. A lot of other Air Force installations were much easier to deal with as far as a decision about whether to retain them or not was concerned. The second reason (again, this is my own speculation), but I don't think that we, certainly on the base closure executive group, I don't think we knew how to deal with the depot bases. They were a different breed, if you will. They're far different from an operational base where you've got a bomber wing or a fighter wing or a tanker wing or something like that. They were just a different category of base. At the time, I think we felt they were not as easy to deal with, and so we just didn't deal with them. That was my involvement when I was stationed in the Pentagon. I was not involved in the Base Closure Executive group for the '95 round of BRAC because I had transferred to Air Force Materiel Command as the director of Plans and Programs in the headquarters in 1993. So, the Base Closure Executive group had not begun its evaluation process for the '95 round before I departed the Pentagon, and so I wasn't involved. However, while at Air Force Materiel Command as the director of Plans and Programs, my directorate was responsible for manpower, installations, programming, budget, a number of things that were related to Base Realignment and Closure for 1995. So, the responsibility fell to my directorate to deal with how the command was going to address Base Realignment and Closure in 1995. It was known at the time that depot bases were going to be considered during that BRAC because it was felt that we had more depots—we had five at 3 the time, as I mentioned earlier—we had more depots than we had depot-level work to do, so there was excess capacity there. In the very early stages within Air Force Materiel Command, it was felt that the Air Force, the Secretariat, was going to ask the commanders to identify bases within their command that they thought would be ripe for consideration for realignment and closure. Our commander at the time, General Ron Yates, was an excellent commander. He was a team player. Obviously, he had parochial interests for his command, but he would put the needs of the Air Force above the needs of his command, and he was prepared to identify bases that the Air Force could then consider for realignment and closure as a part of the '95 round. So, we began a process internally, directed by my directorate, to assess our bases and identify one or more depot bases that we would recommend to the Air Force to be considered for realignment or closure. Early in that process, Hill was identified as at least one of the depot bases that we would identify. While the Base Realignment and Closure process is supposed to be apolitical, we recognized that in Congress and within the administration at the time, Hill Air Force Base in Utah was not in a very enviable political position. Our feeling was that California, where McClellan Air Force Base is; Texas, where Kelly Air Force Base was located; Georgia, where Robbins Air Force Base is located; and even Oklahoma, where Tinker Air Force Base is located, all four of those states were in a much better political position than was Hill as far as being able to defend a decision about realignment or closure. While we did workload-based analysis, there was sort of this overlaying feeling, or 4 overhanging feeling, if you will, that from a political standpoint, Hill would be one of the easier bases to lose if we were to lose a base. So, we began work internal to the command with that in mind. That information ended up not being a very closely held secret, so the people of Hill found out about that. They notified the congressional delegation. I recall a conversation with General Yates where he informed me that he had been called by Congressman Jim Hansen, who was the first district congressman at the time, and it was not a very pleasant conversation between General Yates and Congressman Hansen. But General Yates explained the situation and that’s the way that the command was going to respond. That information, once it was known here locally, I think impacted the Hill/DDO'95 committee, which was the "Save the Base" committee, if you will, that had already been formed. They were already actively engaged. They ended up having a meeting with General Yates on one of his visits out here, and there are others that you're going to interview that can give you more information about the details of that meeting because I was not there. I wasn't present for that. But nonetheless, it was pretty widely known that, at least within Air Force Materiel Command, Hill was not in a very favorable position as far as Base Realignment and Closure was concerned. Well, it turned out in the long run the Air Force did not ask the commands to identify specific bases. Even though we had done an internal analysis within the command, we looked at every base, whether they were depot bases or not, and made determinations about what would we do with the workload if that 5 particular base closed? We looked at our test bases, we looked at our Product Center bases, we looked at our Air Logistics Center bases, and so forth. We did that analysis across the command, looking at all of those bases. Again, just so we would be in a position if one of those bases did end up on the closure list, how would we deal with the workload that would have to be moved someplace else? What the Air Force decided was that they would do their own analysis, very similar to the analysis that I described earlier, that had been used in the ‘91 and ‘93 rounds where they would use the criteria established for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to do their own analysis, make their own recommendations up through the secretary for his decision, and then provide that list on through OSD, ultimately to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. At some time, and I don't remember the exact timing on this, but sometime in 1994, or maybe even early 1995, the Air Force asked Air Force Materiel Command to detail one of their senior-level people to the Pentagon to assist in the analysis of the bases that would ultimately be recommended to the secretary. We detailed a member of the Senior Executive Service named Alan Goldstayn. Alan was my deputy when I was the director of Plans and Programs in the headquarters. A very, very bright individual. So, Alan was detailed to the Pentagon to work the Base Realignment and Closure process within the Pentagon and he developed an algorithm that could be used to assess the military value of a depot base. 6 As I mentioned earlier, in the previous rounds of BRAC it was pretty easy to determine the military value of a flying operational base, a bomber wing, a fighter wing, etcetera. But it was much more difficult for an industrial base like an Air Logistics Center. But Alan developed this algorithm that could be used to determine the military value of a depot-level base. The Air Force used that algorithm in assessing Hill and McClellan and Kelly and Robins and Tinker. When they used that algorithm for that assessment, Hill came out on top. I don't remember the specific order, but I do remember Hill was at the top, and Kelly and McClellan ended up being at the bottom of the five that they assessed. I don't remember which was number four, which was number five, but they were at the bottom. Again, I don't recall the detail. I don't know whether McClellan and Kelly were recommended by the Air Force secretary to the commission for closure or for additional consideration for closure, because I know all depot bases were considered by the commission. We can get into the detail of their visit to Hill later because by that time I had become the commander at Hill. But I do know that, at least from a military value standpoint, within the Air Force, their assessment had placed Hill at the top and Kelly and McClellan at the bottom. Then in November of 1994, I was transferred to Hill Air Force Base to be the Air Logistics Center commander, replacing Major General (at the time) Lester Lyles. AK: So, I'm a little curious about what criteria would you consider when you were trying to consider military value? PC: You know, I never saw the details of Alan's algorithm, but I can anticipate that 7 they would consider things like labor cost. They would consider things like efficiency, your ability as a depot to meet schedules within cost, things of that nature to go along with determining how cost-effective you were as a depot. But there would be other considerations as well, because none of the depot bases were single-mission bases. For example, here at Hill, in addition to the depot which was the major activity here, we had an active-duty fighter wing, we had a reserve fighter wing in the 419th, we had the responsibility for maintaining ICBMs. So, we had some infrastructure here because of the START treaties that existed at the time dealing with nuclear weapons, we had some facilities here that could not be duplicated anyplace else. So, if you were to close Hill, you would lose some capability that existed for our ICBM fleet that you just couldn't replace, because under the treaties you couldn't rebuild it somewhere else. There were a number of those kinds of factors that I'm fairly confident would have gone into his algorithm for determining military value as well, more than just the depot operations and the depot efficiencies by itself. AK: Okay. Come to think of it, I think we may have found something like that in Congressman Hansen's papers, where it was a kind of point system. Is that correct? PC: Mm-hm. AK: Okay. So, you came to Hill Air Force Base in November 1994. I want to know a little bit more about the feeling that was there. Because as we'd discussed before, Vickie McCall had mentioned being suspicious that maybe you were 8 coming to close down the base. PC: Yeah. AK: Did you meet with that in a lot of people? PC: "Maybe,” I think is not a player in that sentence. I think largely because of what I had mentioned earlier about word leaking out that that Hill was going to be identified by AFMC as a base to be closed or to be given consideration for closure. I think that suspicion existed even though, as I mentioned, the process turned out not to be that way. The Air Force and the Pentagon did their own separate analysis, but I think because that word had gotten out earlier, that suspicion existed. Not long after I became the commander, it was within a matter of three or four weeks I was invited by a group of civic leaders in town to dinner down at the Ben Lomond Hotel. It was a group, as I recall, of maybe a dozen to fifteen leaders from the community, including Vickie. We had a nice dinner at the Ben Lomond. I don't remember exactly what was served, but I remember it being a very nice dinner. Then we adjourned to an adjacent room and basically sat around in a big circle, and the very first question that came out was from Vickie McCall, who said, "Did General Yates send you here to close Hill Air Force Base?" My response was, "No, he did not. That was not my instruction. What he did tell me was that if Hill Air Force Base were to be closed that I would lead the parade out the front gate. You know, that I would obey the decision of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission and I would do everything as a 9 commander that I needed to do to ensure that the closure went as directed. But he did not send me out here to close Hill Air Force Base." By that time, it was known that the command wasn't going to be in the position of having to identify its own bases for realignment and closure. I did not realize it at the time, although I probably should have if I thought about it a little more carefully, that there was also a fairly widespread belief within the workforce at Hill that the reason I was sent there was to close the base, because of the position that I had held at Air Force Materiel Command headquarters as the director of Plans and Programs. Again, as I mentioned earlier, we were responsible for doing all of the installation-related work, and obviously, BRAC is an installation-related event. So, it was probably reasonable for them to have that suspicion. As I said, I didn't realize it at the time that that existed. I found out about that later. But it was certainly clear within the community that the feeling was there that I had come out to close the base. I have to admit, thinking back to that time, I really don't believe that influenced my actions as a commander. I mean, I went about exercising my command responsibilities that were there. We had a major activity workload within the depot, had a major responsibility as the host, or in essence the landlord, for quite a number of other tenant organizations, like the 388th fighter wing, the 419th fighter wing. The ICBM program office didn't come under my direct responsibility, although the maintenance portion of the ICBM workload did. But that was here. We were the host organization for the commander of a recruiting group for this part of the country. We had a number of other 10 organizations, including the Defense Logistics Agency. I can't remember all of the tenants that we had, but it was a pretty big job being responsible for not only the depot activity but also being responsible for all of the other tenants in terms of making sure that they were supported in the way that they needed to be supported to execute their mission. So, quite frankly, I didn't pay a lot of attention to concerns about what either the community thought or what the workforce thought about whether I was there to close the base or not. I had a big job to do and I devoted my time to doing that. So, I really don't think I was influenced greatly by that concern. Again, if I had thought more about what the workforce was thinking, I might have dealt with it a little bit differently. I might have been more assertive in assuring them that was not why I was sent there, that I was sent there to do the job of the ALC commander. AK: Okay. You kind of already mentioned it, but I wanted to get a little more details about what kinds of BRAC efforts you were allowed to be involved in once you were the commander? PC: The rules at the time said that I could not, as commander, do anything that was out of line with the Air Force position as far as bases were concerned. So if, for example, the Air Force had identified Hill Air Force Base as a base for the commission to consider closing, I could not do anything that was contrary to that position. I could not be supportive of Hill contrary to a position that the Air Force had already taken. As it turns out, that wasn't the case. Hill was not on the list recommended by the secretary to the commission for closure, so I could be 11 supportive. I don't recall that I did a lot of that. I was supportive of committee requests from the Hill/DDO'95 committee, but I don't recall a lot of proactive activity as far as the base was concerned associated with that, other than preparing for the visit of the commissioners. In the spring of 1995, we had a visit from, my recollection is three of the commissioners came for a visit to Hill Air Force Base. Of course, we prepared for that, and the Hill/DDO’95 committee was greatly instrumental in preparing the community for that visit and really, really turned out a positive atmosphere to welcome those three commissioners. I recall that on the day that they were to visit the base, we picked them up at the Salt Lake City airport. We took a van down or a surrey down to pick them up, and the Hill/DDO'95 committee had arranged for the Salt Shakers, the ambassador group from the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, to be there at the airport to greet the commissioners. So, when the commissioners got off the airplane we had their names so they could locate us. But the Salt Shakers were there and they shook hands. They welcomed them and made them feel welcome in the state, and then we loaded them into the surrey. I don't remember the date. It was sometime in the springtime, perhaps April, I just don't remember the exact date. But it was a rainy day, and so we were driving from the airport back up to the base and I commented to the commissioners that they should feel very honored, that rainwater is a very critical commodity in the state of Utah and that we should choose to share our rainwater with them should make them feel very special. They got kind of kick out of that. 12 But anyway, as we turned off of I-15 onto Hill Field Road all the way through Layton from the highway all the way up to the base, and even inside the base, the streets were lined with people. They had signs and they were waving and cheering and they really gave the commissioners a great welcome all the way through the entrance to the base. Even after we got on the base, we took them over to what used to be the old officers club, and there were people on the base again lining the streets along our route, cheering and so forth. So, we all off-loaded there at the club. My recollection is we gave them an overview briefing of the base and so forth, and then took them on a tour for a full day. At the end of the day, they held a press conference. I did not attend the press conference because I didn't think it was appropriate for me to be there. I thought it would be more conducive to open dialog with the media if I were not present, although I did view a video of that press conference later, and I was really pleased with it. It was a very positive press conference, very positive from the standpoint of the commissioners talking about what they had seen, what they heard, and what their initial impressions were. So, I went away from that day feeling really good about the impression that we had made upon the commissioners. It was a pretty exciting time. The following morning, I was asked by Len Allen, who at the time was a radio personality here in Ogden. He had an early morning radio show, kind of a talk show, and he had invited me to come on. So, I went down to his radio station at like 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning—it was a pretty early thing—and gave him and his listeners an account of what had taken place the day before with the 13 commissioners. I told the rainwater sharing story and he really got a kick out of that. But it was obviously a big event for us, and I think the base really prepared well and really presented a very, very positive image to the commissioners. That obviously served us well in the overall outcome of that round of BRAC. AK: So, we've heard a little bit about some of the preparations that Hill/DDO’95 made for that visit. What were some of the preparations that the base made? PC: Well again, you're asking for recollections from over twenty-five years ago. We outlined what we wanted to show them through the depot, as well as the other mission areas on the base, like the 388th, the 419th, the ICBM business, and landing gear, and all of the major things that that we had going on. So, we included things like that on the tour. We did dry runs of the briefings that they were to receive along the way during their tour, we did dry runs of the tour route itself and dry runs with whoever was going to be speaking during each part of the tour and so forth. So, there was quite a bit of preparation work to make sure that we were putting our best foot forward and that we were giving them information that would be useful to them as they're making their assessment about the value overall of Hill Air Force Base. I don't remember the detail of how far in advance we began those preparations and rehearsals and so forth, but when it came time for the commissioners to visit the base, we felt we were ready. As I said, the day turned out to be, I think, a really, really good day, as evidenced by their comments to the media in that press conference. SL: Were members of the community involved in the tours, like Governor Leavitt or 14 Congressman Hansen, or was it just military? PC: My recollection is that it was just the military. Again, there's probably some record of that visit, either in the Standard Examiner or perhaps some other media. But I don't recall any of the elected officials being a part of that. I could be mistaken, but that just doesn't stick in my memory. AK: So, the BRAC visit that we just talked about was, I believe, May 24th, 1995. I have written here that all of the Air Logistics Centers were added to the BRAC list in May 1995. I think that was before the visit. But I was just curious if you remembered what the feeling was on base after you found out that all five ALC's were going to be looked at during that BRAC round. Was that a surprise? PC: I don't recall specifically, but I do recall we were aware that the commissioners were going to visit all five of the depot bases. I talked with my fellow depot base commanders, my Air Logistics Center commanders after their visits, and they were happy to share what their impressions were, what they did, and so forth. So, we communicated about that. But I don't remember any feeling of angst or undue concern by virtue of the fact that the commissioners were going to visit all five bases. Again, it did behoove us to make a good impression, which we worked very hard to do, and I think we succeeded. But I really don't recall any undue concern about the fact that all five of the depot bases would be visited by the commissioners. As I mentioned, the full commission didn't visit any of the five that I'm aware of. As I said, I think we had only three of the commissioners that visited the other four depot bases. It appeared that they were kind of dividing the 15 work up amongst the various members of the commission so that no one individual got terribly overburdened. AK: So, in the following days after that visit, I believe the BRAC decision was announced in July? Do you happen to remember? PC: It was early that summer, but I don't recall precisely the date. But it was fairly early in the summer. AK: Okay. Do you remember if there were any other efforts you made in that time between the visit and the announcement? Was there anything that you could do or was it just kind of waiting to see what the decision was? PC: From our base standpoint, there really wasn't much we could do. I mean, we had our opportunity to show ourselves off to the commissioners. So, it was in their hands and there really wasn't much for us on the base to do. My suspicion is there was a flurry of activity within the Hill/DDO'95 committee because they were obviously interacting very closely with our congressional delegation and Congressman Hansen and Senator Hatch in particular, and so you can get more information from them about what they were doing after the commission visit. But there really wasn't much that we could do. I mean, we had our opportunity. We could showcase the base and now it was up to them. AK: What was the feeling on the base after the BRAC decision was announced? Did that come as a surprise to most of the workers? Obviously, you kind of knew... PC: You know, I don't know. There's a feeling of relief, obviously, and elation. I don't know that it was a huge surprise, but there was always uncertainty up until the point that the commission released its decision. So, there was some 16 apprehension and there was some anticipation awaiting the announcement. But I don't think, again, given all the things that had taken place in the months prior, I don't think it was a huge surprise. There may have been some people who were surprised that, and I'm not sure they thought of it in these terms, there may have been some surprise that military value really did outweigh political clout. But obviously, the feeling on the base was one of relief and elation. AK: As McClellan and Kelly started to close, a lot of that work was transferred out to the remaining three Air Logistics Centers. Did you see any of that workload come to Hill during your time there? PC: I did not, because I ended up retiring at the end of August of 1997. The way the Base Realignment and Closure laws were written, the bases that were identified for closure had one to six years to close. DDO was unfortunately identified for closure in the 1995 round. They closed a year after the announcement. I mean, one year later they were closed. Both Kelly and McClellan took the full six years to close. I'm sure there was the initiation of some of the workload transfer from McClellan to Hill and from Kelly to Hill during that six-year time period, but by the time I retired in 1997, not much, if any, of that had materialized in terms of operable workload at the base. AK: What involvement did you have with the DDO closure, if any? PC: Really none, other than we were the receptor for some of their workload. In my recollection, it was some of the deployable medical equipment that they were responsible for storing and distributing. That portion of the workload transferred out to Hill, and so there was construction required to build a storage facility and a 17 distribution facility for them to house that deployable medical equipment. There may have been some other things as well, but that was the bulk, as I recall, of what we received from DDO. That portion of their operation transferred along with people out to the base. So, we were involved in allocating an area for them to do the construction. I'm sure our civil engineering people were involved in the overall overseeing of the construction activity. We prepared to handle some of the manpower-related things and so forth that DDO or the Army would need some support on. But as far as the actual closure itself, other than being a receptor of some of their workload, we really didn't have a lot of involvement. AK: You talked a little off-camera about the legacy of the 1995 BRAC, but would you tell me a little more, just so we can record it, about what the legacy was that you saw that came out of the 1995 BRAC? Maybe changes to Air Force Materiel Command, or even the Utah Defense Alliance, etcetera? PC: Well, you know, obviously from an organizational standpoint, the legacy from '95 BRAC was we now have three depot bases instead of five depot bases. So, workload distribution, the assignment of new workload when that time came, was a part of that. If you go back in time, go back to Air Force Logistics Command and Air Force Systems Command, the two commands had really two different philosophies for workload assignment. Within Air Force Systems Command, they tended to focus similar workload at a specific installation. For example, aircraft development and procurement were primarily focused at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Electronic systems 18 development and procurement tended to focus at Hanscom Air Force Base up in Massachusetts. Armament systems like bombs, bullets, and air-launched missiles, tended to focus at Eglin Air Force Base. Space Systems tended to focus at Los Angeles Air Force Base. So, you had the Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom, you had the aircraft system or aeronautical systems division and center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The command tended, when it had a new aircraft that came along or a new missile or a new electronic system or whatever, it was pretty much a given if it was an electronic system, it was going to Hanscom; if it was an armament system, it was going to Eglin; if it was a space system, it was going to Los Angeles. So, you knew pretty well where the workload was going to go. Air Force Logistics Command took a different approach. They tended to level the workload at their five Air Logistics Centers. So, rather than having a specific Air Logistics Center for aircraft and a specific one for spacecraft and another one for electronic systems and so forth, you found aircraft workload at all five depots, you found software development at all five depots, you found some armament related work at more than one depot—maybe not all five, but more than one. So, their workload distribution methodology was just different. Neither one right or wrong, but just different. So, when Air Force Materiel Command was formed, the idea was to, over time, develop a methodology for Air Logistics Centers similar to what we had had for Product Centers, where you had similar systems at a certain base. With the change from five depot bases to three depot bases, you had the opportunity to, 19 for example, make Hill a fighter base. They were already doing the F-16 at the time. But as new developments came along, like the F-22 was coming along, the F-35 was in its embryonic stages and so forth, the thought was, we'll put fighterrelated workload at Hill. Tinker tended to deal with big airplanes, bombers, predominantly, and tankers. So, as a new bomber came along, the B-1 I think was already coming along or being assigned to Tinker. But as you think of the B2 and a new tanker program, those programs would be more than likely assigned from a depot maintenance standpoint to Tinker. Robins tended to be more of a transport base, so as you get a new transport aircraft Robins would be the likely base. So, one of the legacies of the '95 round was the enabling of that kind of a concept to be more focused in terms of workload distribution within the Air Logistics Centers—now Air Logistics Complexes. But Air Logistics Centers, more similar to what Systems Command had done with their product centers. That's a decades-long process. But I think that's something that getting down to three centers made a little bit easier than when we had five centers. So, that's one of the legacies, I think, from an Air Force standpoint that resulted from that. From a committee standpoint, Hill/DDO'95 committee standpoint, that committee evolved over time. It went a little bit dormant after 1995, but then we had a 2005 round of Base Realignment and Closure and so the committee energized again, even though I don't think there was a serious threat to Hill Air Force Base. It was something that the community couldn't take for granted. So, the Hill/DDO'95 committee sort of remobilized, if you will, to help out with 20 everybody's understanding of the value of Hill Air Force Base in preparation for the 2005 round. That worked out pretty well. Following the 2005 round, I think there was a pretty well-understood feeling that neither the Air Force nor any of the services nor Congress had much of an appetite for another round of Base Realignment and Closure, and so the committee stayed loosely organized, but then really evolved into what is now the Utah Defense Alliance. The Utah Defense Alliance, I think, is probably the most significant legacy that came out of the whole Hill/DDO'95 committee and the '95 round of BRAC, because the Utah Defense Alliance has really established itself as an organization made up of some community business leaders, some elected officials, both city, county and even state, some representatives from the governor's office, some old retired military toads like myself, but the people who understand the value of the military mission in the state of Utah. A lot of it is focused, obviously, at Hill Air Force Base just because of its magnitude, but also the military missions that the Army has here and, even to a lesser degree, the Navy. Certainly the National Guard and the Air National Guard. The Utah Defense Alliance has really done a great job of involving, when necessary, the state legislature, the governor's office, our congressional delegation in Washington, as well as local community leaders when there is an issue that that impacts the military mission in the state of Utah that they need some help with. To me, that is probably the most significant legacy that came out of the entire ‘95 round of BRAC as far as community involvement is concerned. 21 If you look at the makeup of the Utah Defense Alliance now, we've got people on that committee who frequently communicate with the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff of the Air Force. We've got people on that committee who regularly communicate with our congressional delegation, both our congressional representative from the 1st District as well as the other district representatives around the state and our two senators. We've got people who communicate regularly with the state legislature—regularly interact with the state legislature on a number of issues not related to the military, but certainly they have the connectivity there to engage on military-related issues if the need arises—and representatives within the local community, as I mentioned, mayors and commissioners and so forth, who can engage when there's an issue that they can deal with that has an impact on the military mission in the state. I don't think there is another state anywhere in the country that has an organization as effective as the Utah Defense Alliance is in dealing with the military mission of their respective states. Again, to me, that is probably the most significant thing that came out of that round of Base Realignment and Closure in 1995 other than, obviously, the base remaining open. AK: What year did you become involved with the Utah Defense Alliance? PC: Oh, I don't remember exactly. It was probably around the time of the 2005 round of BRAC, or shortly before or shortly after that. I have been on the board and on the executive committee since then. AK: Would you tell me a little bit about UDA's involvement in the 2005 BRAC? PC: You know, I'm really not the best one to ask about that because, as I mentioned, 22 my involvement in UDA started either right before or right after that. I don't really remember a lot of personal experience with regard to the 2005 round other than being in conversations and so forth. Again, while it was something that we couldn't ignore, it was something that we couldn't take for granted. I think there was a realization that the base wasn't really at a high threat level for that round, but that didn't mean that the community couldn't just sit back and say, "Hey, we got it made, we won't have to worry," because the committee—and I don't recall if it had been renamed Utah Defense Alliance by that time or not—but the committee certainly engaged with a congressional delegation and with the senior leadership of the Air Force to make sure everybody understood about Hill Air Force Base and its importance and so forth. That's a little bit of a challenge for Hill, particularly within the Air Force. Not quite so much with the congressional delegation, but within the Air Force. Hill isn't an obvious stopping point on the way to anywhere from Washington. We're way over here on this side of the Rocky Mountains and we're not a place that tends to get a lot of frequent visits from senior-level members of the Air Force. That has changed a little bit now, and I'll explain why in just a minute, but at least at the time when I was the commander, and I know at the time when General Sullivan was the commander, we'd look for opportunities to get senior leaders from the Air Force out here. The Air Force Association, quite frankly, was very helpful to us in that regard. At the time, they hosted a symposium called “Focus on Defense” every 23 June, and they were able to attract senior-level speakers from the Air Force, from the Pentagon, as well as senior-level members from industry. It gave us an opportunity to show off the base, to acquaint people with what goes on at Hill Air Force Base, because, quite frankly, a lot of people didn't know, didn't understand. So, even with the 2005 round of BRAC, there was a fair amount of missionary work that went on to make sure that the senior leadership in the Air Force, as well as the congressional delegation, understood Hill Air Force Base and its importance. As I mentioned, that has changed a little bit now, largely because of the GBSD, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program. It's the first development program of its magnitude at Hill Air Force Base, ever. It's roughly an $85 billion program spread over a few decades, actually, and because it's such a large program to replace the Minuteman III ICBM system, it attracts a lot of attention. So, we've had visits from the secretary of defense, the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff and a number of fairly senior officials that, quite frankly, didn't occur naturally in the past. Again, that's one of the reasons that in the 2005 round of BRAC, we couldn't just take for granted that Hill was safe. So, in getting ready for that round, the community committee basically did a lot of missionary work in making sure that, in particular, the Air Force leadership understood what Hill was all about and what its value was. AK: I think we've kind of already covered it a little bit, I just want to make sure I understand: Earlier, we talked about interservice work and the competition for 24 work that was going on during BRAC 1995. Was there any kind of interservice work that was brought in to Hill Air Force Base as a result of BRAC 1995? PC: I don't recall specifically. It's very likely that Hill was the recipient of workload that may have resulted from a closure of an Army depot or maybe even a Navy depot. I know that we had some work realigned out of Hill, some munitionsrelated work that moved to the Army, and there could have been movement in the other direction as well. But I just don't recall the specifics of that. It would not surprise me if there was some workload realignment though, either as the result of a closure of another service depot, or just a realignment of the work to make things fit a little bit better. But I just don't recall the specifics of that as a result of '95. SL: So, there was a lot of public feeling that DDO was sacrificed to save Hill. Do you think there's any credence to that at all? Or was it just because they were two separate branches of the military, that one didn't necessarily have an effect on the other? PC: This is pure speculation, because I really don't have any information that I can point to substantiate this speculation, but I don't think so. I think they were really considered independently. Some of the same community-related factors that the commission used in doing their assessment would apply both to Hill and to DDO; things like accessibility to recreation, weather, schools, a lot of the communityrelated things would have impacted DDO in the same way that they affected Hill. I think one of the things that could possibly have impacted DDO negatively is it was—and I'm speaking out of turn here because I was never the 25 Commander at DDO, and so I don't understand their mission nearly as well as I understand Hill's—but it was basically a single mission installation. They were storage and distribution for supplies, basically. It's much easier to close or realign a single-mission installation than it is a multi-mission installation. So, I think that was something that impacted them negatively. Quite frankly, I don't know all of the factors that the commissioners used in their determination to recommend closure of DDO, but I certainly think singlemission is one of those things. You don't need the same kind of infrastructure and storage and distribution center that you do at an installation as complex as Hill Air Force Base. You don't need a runway, there's a lot of infrastructure that's not required. You do need rail access, truck access, but you can find that in a lot of different locations. It’s not as easy to relocate or close something of a magnitude of Hill. So, again, pure speculation on my part, but I don't think that there was any consideration on the part of the commissioners that, "We'll close DDO in order to save Hill." SL: So, my other question, and I actually asked General Lester Lyles this question so I'm going to ask you: do you remember any advice that General Lyles gave you about Hill and perhaps BRAC ‘95? PC: I'd be interested in knowing what Les recalls. You know, quite frankly, I don't remember. Nothing specific related to Base Realignment and Closure. During our transition a number of the hot button issues that were going on at the time, not the least of which was the workload for the Navy, because there were some real challenges associated with that workload and there were some other factors 26 internal to the operation at Hill that we talked about. But I don't recall anything specific to the '95 round of the Base Realignment and Closure. SL: Yeah, he said, "communicate, communicate, communicate." PC: Yeah. SL: Because he was known for his "brown bag lectures" that he did where he allowed people to come in and ask questions and air their concerns. So, he did say that was one thing that he remembered telling you, was to keep that open line of communication. PC: I don't recall the exact frequency, but we had periodic opportunities. Like I'd go to the base theater, and we'd do this in several different sessions because theater could only hold so many people, but I would give basically a State of the Base presentation to the workforce, and there was an opportunity for them to ask questions during that time. We did that periodically. There was also an "Ask the Commander" feature in the Hilltop Times, and you could write in your question for the commander about any subject. You could only print so many of those each week, but we answered every one of them. In fact, one of my opportunities each week was to review the answers that the staff would respond to these questions. I can remember countless times of sending the response back and saying, "You didn't answer the question." You know, "The person asked this, answer that question." But every person that wrote in and gave their reply information so we knew who to get back to, we provided an answer. So, there were those opportunities to interact with the workforce in a fairly direct way. 27 In addition to that, General Viccillio, who by that time had become the Air Force Materiel Command commander, wanted his commanders to immerse themselves in the base activity. So, about once every other week or so, I would go spend half a day working alongside somebody on the base. I could be a security policeman at the gate or a sheet metal worker over on the aircraft line or working with civil engineers, changing a motor in the paint barn, work up in the tower, directing aircraft takeoffs and landings. I told them I only had two rules: don't let me hurt anybody, and don't let me get hurt myself. So anyway, I had those immersion opportunities to go out and literally work alongside the workforce. One of the fun things was driving the train. I got to play train engineer one time. That was a lot of fun. But anyway, there were those opportunities to get out and mingle, if you will, with the workers on the base. So, we used a number of different ways to try to communicate directly with the workforce, in addition to the normal weekly staff meetings that we had where the directors had the opportunity to interact personally with me. I don't know how effective it was. I mean, I know it wasn't perfect, but there were a variety of opportunities for people to interact in that way. We also had regular meetings with the union leadership, and I think you can get a better assessment from the union leaders that are out there, some of whom were there when I was a commander. But I think we had a really good relationship with the union. We dealt with issues that needed to be dealt with and tried to put into perspective issues that, quite frankly, did not need to come to the commander's attention. I think the union was very respectful. I think we respected 28 the union in the proper way. I believe if you were to ask those union leaders, they would tell you that we had a very good and very productive relationship between management and the union at the time. SL: As you were going out and meeting with people, do you recall if they voiced concerns about Hill closing? PC: You know, I really don't recall. As I mentioned earlier, I probably should have been more sensitive, if I had thought about it a little more carefully, to the natural concerns and natural suspicions that the workforce would have had with somebody coming from the headquarters who had been involved in Base Realignment and Closure issues coming to be the commander. But while I was aware of the concern that the community had, I wasn't as attuned to the concerns that the workforce may have had, other than the natural uncertainty about “We're going to close,” “We're not going to close,” and so forth. But I think, based on what I learned later, there was more concern on the part of the workforce about the threat of closure than I may have been aware of. SL: Yeah. I'm just interested to see, you know, we're trying to get that side of the story as well as to how people were feeling, and there were some great letters in Hansen's papers that people wrote him, asking, "Please make sure the base doesn't close." PC: Yeah. Again, a lot of that, I think, can be attributed to the initial approach that the Air Force Materiel Command took where they thought they were going to be asked to provide a list of bases to the Air Force for consideration for closure, and Hill being among those. So, I think we created within the command an 29 environment of concern and an environment of suspicion just because of the way things unfolded. But, as I said, the way things actually transpired over time tended to work in our favor in a really big way. Again, I think there are a lot of factors that went into the fact that Hill Air Force Base was not closed in 1995, and I don't want to diminish any of those because the community, I think, had a big role to play in that. To get back to what I was saying earlier about Alan Goldstayn, I think he had a tremendous impact on the way the Air Force ended up looking at its depot bases, and Hill was a beneficiary of that. SL: Thank you. AK: Thank you so much. We really appreciate you letting us come and speak with you today. PC: You bet. 30