THE UGANDAN CONNECTION

It’s hard to believe that a place as plain vanilla as Bell Helicopter could create such a furor. For years it churned out helicopters quietly, efficiently, with little fanfare. Then word leaked out that Bell was training Idi Amin’s Ugandan police at its Tarrant County factory and training center. Amidst a brief but intense uproar, Bell stammered, not knowing quite what to do, while Dallas Congressman Jim Mattox poured it on. In the end Bell did nothing, except swear that it wouldn’t happen again.

By Christmas the Ugandan pilots and mechanics were supposed to be home, leaving behind an embarrassing political situation which they, perhaps least of all, understood. After they had trained quietly for a few days at the mammoth Bell facilities in far east Fort Worth, Jack Anderson, tipped by a disgruntled Bell employee, blew the whistle. Suddenly the Ugandan pilots and mechanics found themselves dogged relentlessly by reporters and television cameramen, recording their every move in the open. No one had much of anything to say. The Ugandans simply wanted to be left alone and their host, Bell Helicopter, wished the whole situation would blow over. It wouldn’t.

Following the Jack Anderson column, the Times Herald ran a front page story in its November 8 editions – the first real local publicity of the story, because Anderson’s column isn’t carried by the Herald or the News. In Dallas, fifth district Congressman Jim Mattox says he read the Herald story and was outraged. He quickly telephoned his Washington staff and told them to drop everything and pursue the situation. So began an incident that left behind some valuable lessons.

First, the U.S. State Department learned how easy it is to secure a routinely issued visa and enter the United States. The visas were issued in Kenya (the U.S. has no diplomatic ties to Uganda) with few questions asked. When Mattox demanded to know how many Ugandans were running around in America, it took the government hours to begin gathering the data which eventually led to an answer. As a state department spokesman later said, “We forget that this essentially is a free country. Consequently we do not control borders tightly like a military state does, and that’s why it took so long to come up with the answer.”

Second, for Bell Helicopter it raised a question reminiscent of oneraised on campuses during the turbulent Sixties. Should a corporation be willing to do literally anything for money, or should it have some sort of corporate conscience? Obviously Bell and its subcontractors were giving Amin’s police force skills which could be used in the dictator’s gen-ocidal assaults on his own people, not to mention foreigners, including the Americans remaining in Uganda. Bell quickly decided that training members of Idi Amin’s police force wasn’t such a good idea after all, even though as Bell customers, Ugandans were routinely entitled to training for flying and maintaining their Bell Helicopters.

Bell says its training obligations were incurred as a result of helicopter sales to Uganda between 1968 and 1971, just before Amin took control of the Central African nation. Bell and its Italian licensee each sold Uganda nine helicopters, most of which, Mattox believes, were disabled during last year’s Israeli raid on the Entebbe Airport. During the recent flap Bell admitted it had plans to sell Amin at least one more helicopter and also mentioned that two others were being sold to Uganda, but Bell wouldn’t say who the other manufacturers were. (If indeed it is someone other than Bell.) Such sales are approved by either the state department or department of commerce (depending upon the size of the order) but neither department will release the identity of the sellers. Bell canceled its sale to Uganda and also canceled future training obligations to the Ugandans.

Bell spokesman Marty Reisch said, “We have no plans nor intentions of training any more Ugandan pilots or mechanics,” but refused to say much more. “We decided that the company wouldn’t have anything else to say about this situation,” Reisch added.

For 26 years Bell Helicopter has been an outstanding corporate citizen of Tar-rant County. Bell is the largest private employer in the county, currently carrying about 9,000 people on its payroll. Besides facing an occasional labor dispute, the company seldom made the news – unless it was to announce a new helicopter in the line which has made Bell easily the largest American manufacturer of helicopters.

Bell’s main helicopter plant is located on the eastern edge of Fort Worth which often is mistaken for part of the mid-cities town of Hurst. The 600-acre plant site fronts old Highway 183, stretching half a mile along the highway. The buildings have a governmental look about them, low and yellow brick, with a high chain link fence surrounding the area, topped with several strands of barbed wire. Imposing signs are attached to the fence, warning “This plant contains property of the United States government. . .”

The compound has its own helicopter and control tower, complete with runways filled with various types of helicopters, mostly military. Choppers are continually buzzing in and out of the compound, something like wasps cruising to and from their nest. At the main gate, closely watched by a guard station, Bell’s motto appears emblazoned on a giant globe:’’ People the world over depend on Bell Helicopters.” How true.

From a tiny Buffalo, N.Y. outfit founded 43 years ago by the late Larry D. Bell, Bell has grown into an awesome company. Until the Korean war it mainly produced fixed-wing aircraft, but about the time it moved to Tarrant County (1951) Bell began turning toward helicopter production. After it was sold to Textron in 1960, Bell began manufacturing the U.S. helicopter fleet which fought the Vietnam War. Defense department orders were huge. In 1963 the government ordered 450 helicopters from Bell, in 1964, 720 choppers and in 1965, 720 more. One $123 million order placed in 1968 called for 2,200 light helicopters, keeping the Bell factory working three shifts and employing 10,000 people.

After the Vietnam War Bell’s business sagged slightly, but not for long. It discovered foreign markets. More than three dozen foreign countries have bought Bell helicopters, led by Iran, which currently has a contract with Bell to build a helicopter factory in Iran, fully equip and train maintenance personnel and help build 500 helicopters. The contract is the largest in Bell history, more than $750 million. Buoyed up by the Iranian business, Bell’s all-time high sales are nearly one billion dollars a year, making up more than one-third of Textron’s business.

Bell is also a major taxpayer. Its major factory falls within the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, which receives nearly five percent of its total tax revenues from Bell. One of the district’s two high schools is named for the late founder of Bell and from time to time Bell employees have served on the school board.

Though Bell rarely throws its weight around, it has done so when necessary. Back in the Sixties when the Fort Worth City Council was dragging its feet about widening a road leading to the Bell factory, Bell quietly passed the word that it didn’t have to stay in town. Trinity Boulevard was quickly widened. Today it leads out to the south edge of Bell’s factory, and not much else.

When the Jack Anderson story first broke, Bell’s Washington lobbyist, Jack Doyle, was willing to talk about Bell’s relationship with the Ugandans. Mattox’s staff asked how many helicopters Bell was selling to Uganda, what the scope of the training was and if Bell had any employees in Uganda. Doyle was reasonably responsive. He said Bell at one time had several employees in Uganda but that they had since left.

Just what these employees were doing in Uganda remains something of a mystery. When asked if any Bell employees were flying Amin’s helicopters, a spokesman for Uganda Inc., a Washington group attempting to get political prisoners out of the country, said he didn’t think so. ’”We think most of them are flown by Soviets or Palestinians, plus a couple of U.S. mercenaries,” he said.

The day after Mattox read the Herald story, he asked the state department to curtail the Ugandans’ training, pointing out that American business was hip deep in “aiding dictatorial regimes.” However, he added that “It is not up to American business to second-guess the American government,” which hadn’t objected to the training.

Mattox first explored the possibilities of getting the Ugandans out by Thanksgiving by revoking their visas, but soon learned that such revocations couldn’t occur without drawn-out due process hearings. Then he asked the state department to start reviewing all Ugandan visa applications in Washington, instead of routinely issuing them abroad. He asked the government to deny export licenses for American military hardware going to Uganda and also asked the Federal Aviation Administration to deny certification of the Ugandans’ training, thus depriving them of worldwide recognition of their training.

In all, 27 visas had been issued in Kenya to Ugandans. Twenty-four Ugandans were supposed to train at Bell, but only 22 made it before the government shut off the visas, actually denying entrance to two Ugandans at JFK Airport in New York, including a high Ugandan police official.

After training at Bell, nine Ugandans were supposed to take mechanical training at Fort Worth’s Acme Flying School and ten were to undergo flight training at Spinks Industries, another Tarrant County flying school. At least some of the Ugandans made it to each school, and trained there until mid-December.

Like Bell, these flying schools have been training foreigners for years. The Acme Flying School, founded in 1949, trains Israelis, Arabs and Palestinians, side-by-side, teaching them flying and maintenance skills which they can later use in fighting each other. But Acme’s policy is really a reflection of the U.S. Government, which sells arms to both sides and admits both Arabs and Israelis to America for combat-related training. “We’re not in the diplomacy business,” says Acme manager Foy Schumate. “We just train the people who come here.” Schumate, who said he is weary of press inquiries into his business, added that referrals come to him either through word-of-mouth overseas or subcontracts from aircraft manufacturers like Bell or Grumman.

No sooner had all the details of the Ugandan training in Fort Worth emerged than Mattox’s staff discovered that Idi Amin’s personal jet was being modified at the Grumman factory in Savannah, Georgia. Mattox’s staff even had customs papers on the aircraft, complete with its registration papers.

In the end, the Ugandans stayed, completing the training, but without FAA certification – the first time the FAA has denied certification on political grounds. The state department will likely shut off any further training of Ugandans. How far the U.S. should go in denying such training to nations which deny human rights is yet another question.

The interesting question is why didn’t Bell cut off its Ugandan connection months ago? Bell isn’t answering the question, but perhaps Congressman Dale Milford, whose district includes Bell, answers it best. “I don’t think it’s that big of a thing,” Milford says. “The state department has voided the contracts and that’s that. Those contracts date back to pre-Amin times and if Bell had failed to perform on them, the company might have been sued.”

Left behind is the nagging question ofhow far the U.S. should go in trying toenforce its view of human rights, by refusing to sell commodities to foreign nations which have a different view. WithUganda, and also Cambodia, the answeris obvious. With other nations the answer is less clear. As Milford puts it,”Bell is in competition with many foreignhelicopter manufacturers. If we totallydeny a foreign country helicopters, that’sfine. But if they can buy them from another country then all we’re doing is putting Americans out of work. Bell hasabout 3,000 people on the payroll becauseof its international helicopter sales. That’sa lot of jobs to play with.”