What, Ernie, Going So Soon?:

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org

A. Ernest Fitzgerald, Pentagon scold and press darling, is retiring in March after 42 years in government service, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Fitzgerald, 79, a Navy veteran and Air Force financial management civilian employee, is perhaps most known for testifying before Congress about cost-overruns on the C-5 airlifter program in 1968. When he became President in 1969, Richard Nixon ordered Fitzgerald fired, which the Air Force did, only to bring him back in 1974 in a lower level position. It took Fitzgerald until 1982 to win a court battle against the Air Force to get back his former job. Over the years, he has, sad to say, become something of a cult hero. Just last October, he received an encomium from Scott Bloch, the head of the US Office of Special Counsel (a federal prosecutorial agency that makes a living out of protecting whistleblowers). Bloch compared Fitzgerald with the likes of Paul Revere and Patrick Henry, deeming him to be a “lamplighter of integrity.”

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org