TRANSCRIPT: DOD BRIEFING ON DEFENSE REFORM INITIATIVE, MARCH 1

Date: 19990301

Text: Secretary of Defense Cohen and Deputy SecDef Hamre briefed March 1.

Following is the Pentagon transcript:

(begin transcript)

DoD News Briefing:

Monday, March 1, 1999 -- 11:00 a.m.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen & Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre

Subject: Defense Reform Initiative (DRI) __________________ unrelated issues removed ___________________

Q: Dr. Hamre, there have been a number of reports--I want to ask a Y2K question.

There have been several reports suggesting that the Pentagon perhaps isn't really as ready as it says on the Y2K issue, that there have been serious problems in some systems.

Can you just bring us up to date on how confident you are that you'll actually be ready by the year 2000?

Dr. Hamre: Sure. We meet on a monthly basis, and I'm talking about senior levels. I'm talking about the Vice Chief of Staff level. They meet with me.

A year ago I was enormously apprehensive, and frankly just as recently as November very apprehensive. We have about 83 percent of our systems fixed today. Fixed and tested. We will make that about 93 percent by the end of March. We will be at 100 percent by basically October. That's fixed and tested, and tested from one end of the system to the other.

So we'll take a finance system, a payroll system, and we'll say can a payroll clerk get it into the system, will DFAS process it, will it get to the Federal Reserve, will they transfer it on the wire, will the banks move it right down to an individual bank? And we're testing that leg, that segment, and that's just one of probably 200 tests that are going on.

Secretary Cohen: Strategic systems, you might comment...

Dr. Hamre: Strategic command and control systems have been tested already. We've done extensive testing on our early warning system out at NORAD and the fixes work. So I'm very confident that it's going to work, and I'm confident that everybody in the building knows it's the Secretary's highest priority. We will not fail.

Q: Secretary Cohen, are you confident you can reassure the United States and the rest of the world that the Pentagon's not going to have any Y2K problems?

Secretary Cohen: We are confident that we have addressed--we are addressing the issue, and we will have it fully addressed by an appropriate time.

Our concern has been our integration with other countries, of course, making sure that all of the NATO countries who are tied into our defense structure for NATO operations also are Y2K compliant. We have raised this in each and every forum that we can. So we're confident that we're also dealing with our allies on this issue.

You may also be aware that we are working with the Russians to satisfy ourselves mutually that we have an early warning type of a sharing of information so that there is no misconception and no difficulties that might come about at the end of this year.

So we're working the problem very hard. We're encouraged about where we are today compared to last year. We got a very low mark last year, but I believe the President's representative on this would put us somewhere in the B category as opposed to the D category last year, so we've made tremendous progress under the leadership of Dr. Hamre.

Dr. Hamre: But it isn't graded. This is pass/fail, and we're not going to fail.

Press: Thank you.

(end transcript) NNNN

-- (Busy@the.top), March 08, 1999

Answers

"Q: Secretary Cohen, are you confident you can reassure the United States and the rest of the world that the Pentagon's not going to have any Y2K problems?

Secretary Cohen: We are confident that we have addressed--we are addressing the issue, and we will have it fully addressed by an appropriate time."

Pheww! Do I feel reassured now.

I too I'm confident that they feel confident that they can reassure us!

Let the press roll.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), March 08, 1999.

As usual absolutely nothing substantive was said. I'm tired of pablum.

-- Mark Lurtsema (lurtsemgm@aol.com), March 08, 1999.

Talk about a no-brainer. It takes a true industrial grade yo-yo to expect SecDef to tell the world in a press conference that one or more miission-critical DOD systems will not be ready come the rollover.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), March 09, 1999.

I guess you need to catch one of them at a Senate hearing rather than a press conference. Far more "enlightening."

Diane

For more openess, Hamre testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee ...

February 24, 1999 - READINESS and MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SUBCOMMITTEE - To review the National Security ramifications of the Year 2000 computer problem.

http://www.senate.gov/~armed_services/hearings/1999/ c990202.htm

UNITED STATES SENATE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Wednesday, February 24, 1999 -- 9:30 a.m.
OPEN

Honorable John J. Hamre
Deputy Secretary of Defense
(PDF Format -- 22 pages)

http://www.senate.gov/~armed_services/statemnt/1999/ 990224jh.pdf

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 09, 1999.