Downgrading a Whistle Blower

The Pentagon has long been tough on employees who publicly challenge its way of doing business. While working in the Penta gon's Program Analysis and Evaluation (P A & E) office, Franklin ("Chuck") Spinney (TIME, March 7, 1983) earned the ire of his superiors with reports on how the military routinely underestimates the costs and overrates the effectiveness of high-technology weaponry.

Spinney has been given a mediocre rating ("fully successful," Pentagonese for soso) on his civil service evaluation, which could sink his chances for a promotion or a pay raise. His supporters charge that David Chu, a Reagan appointee and head of P A & E, pressured Spinney's immediate superiors into underrating the dogged whistle blower. When Republican Congressman Jack Edwards of Alabama called Deputy Secretary of Defense William Taft IV to complain, Taft denied that Chu or any other political appointee had tried to influence the evaluation. Such action would have violated civil service rules. Spinney maintains that he will go to court, if necessary, to fight the evaluation. At week's end there were signs that the Pentagon might review its finding.