The Cool Blue Blog

Engine Start

I haven't been able to blog much recently, but there's a good reason for that.

Almost 4 and a half years ago I began working on an electric braking system for the new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Well, things are heating up as we approach first flight.

In Mid April Dreamliner ZA001, which is the first Flight Test aircraft, had its classification changed from "production status" to "Flight Status". Soon after that, the aircraft was moved to the paint hanger at Boeing's Everett facility. On May 3rd, it emerged looking mighty pretty.

The above photo shows ZA001 heading to the Fuel Dock where it was fueled and had the entire fuel system checked for leaks and such.

On May 13th, the Hamilton Sundstrand auxiliary power unit was started up and today, at 9:31 PT, the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines were fired up and ran for about an hour before being shut down. They were fired up again later this afternoon for some higher power testing.

Boeing's official release indicates that today marked, "The first all-electric start of a commercial jetliner engine on a commercial jetliner."

Jon Ostrower explains

The 'more-electric' architecture of the 787 will start the engines electrically, rather than drawing bleed air for the start. The system replaces pipes and valves for the bleed air system with cables and contactors.

In a very simplified way, the electrical power sources - the tail cone's auxiliary power unit or an external ground car - convert electrical power with two 250 kVA variable frequency starter generators (VFSGs) that sit on gearboxes and act as motors to begin spinning up the engine.

ZA001 is heading steadily towards it's first flight sometime around June 21st when our electric braking system will get it's first real-world test on the aircraft. The 787-8 will be the first commercial aircraft to be fitted with electric brakes.

Here's a look at the brake

Here you can see the four actuators that are located in front of the carbon heat sink. All together, our system controls 8 brakes.

The team I led wrote the software that controls the actuators and they've been working hard over the past four and a half years to make this system work.

As you can imagine, this close to flight test, we've been very busy making sure all goes well during the testing.

I'll be back to regular blooging soon.

Maj John Detro

Focused on a high value target from a major terrorist group, the 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment was on a direct assault mission in Northern Iraq in 2005.

Enemy assault soon ensued and then-Cpt. John Detro, an Army Physician Assistant, went to work treating the wounded while constantly threatened by incoming rounds.

"Prior to the mission, we had intelligence that the enemy was heavily armed and large in number," recalls Detro.

He explained that as his unit moved in hitting targets about a mile out, they could hear their air assets relaying information about the enemy movements. They were relocating to roof tops.

Although armed with the intel, the unit still was not fully prepared for what lay ahead.

"We assaulted the building with a force of approximately 50 personnel," Detro said. "As soon as we breached the door, the first two men were shot. We all moved into the building and received fire from above in the court yard, from adjacent stairwells, and from fighters within spider holes."

He explained that spider holes were hiding places in camouflaged walls.

Within minutes of the engagement, the 3rd Ranger Battalion had five urgent patients and 22 wounded. The infantrymen were in hand to hand combat in the hallway while Detro and two medics treated the wounded.

"At times we had to cover them [wounded] as incoming grenades landed around us," said Detro.

Detro and the other two medical personnel were wounded – though nothing major to slow them down. They received shrapnel fragments from exploding grenades. Nevertheless, they were able to move those they were treating to a nearby medical vehicle.

Bottom line – the mission was successful.

“As we were ready to leave the objective, the platoon sergeant came to the medical vehicle and stated we had a seriously injured member in the courtyard,” recounted Detro.

“The majority of the force had vacated the area so the two of us went back inside and found the ground force commander and my medic providing care to a seriously wounded soldier with a gunshot wound to the left chest which severed his auxiliary artery.”

“The medic and I did not have time to clamp it due to continued enemy presence so we placed a hemostatic dressing into the wound and compressed his arm to the chest wall.”

The two left with the patients and headed for the helicopter landing zone.

“I flew with the casualties to the Combat Support Hospital where I assisted my former boss (Colonel James Ficke, deputy commander) and his staff in performing surgeries into the next evening.”

Conducting a total of nine surgeries throughout the night, Detro and the medical team were able to save all of the seriously injured and the majority are still serving today. For his sound judgment and exceptional performance, Detro was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor Device and Purple Heart.

Open Warfare

President Bush learned that the covert corps over at the CIA is an enemy you don't want to make. In Bush's case, he did not do anything to rile the organization as a whole, but clearly there were members within who disagreed with Bush's politics and took matters into their own hands; and put those matter into the hands of the Press.

As a result, the outlines of an operation whereby calls from terrorists to US citizens were monitored were leaked to the press and reframed as "domestic spying".

Leaked, also, we the outlines of a program whereby captured terrorists were taken to prisons on foreign in order to not let the enemy know that these people had been captured because, you know, the information they had was only good until the enemy changed protocols, which they surely would do if they knew key personnel were in our hands.

The President however took direct aim at the Intelligence community when he released memos that detailed the guidance given by Administration lawyers regarding what enhance interrogation techniques could be used and how they must be used in order to be legal.

He pissed off the CIA so much, that he was forced to visit and reassure those whose job it is to gather the intelligence necessary to keep America safe.

The president’s decision last week to release secret memorandums detailing the harsh tactics employed by the C.I.A. under his predecessor provoked a furor that continued to grow on Monday as critics on various fronts assailed his position....

Mr. Obama tried to calm the situation with his first visit to C.I.A. headquarters since taking office. Concerned about alienating the agency, Mr. Obama went out of his way to lavish praise on intelligence officers, using words like “indispensable,” “courage” and “remarkable” and promising his “support and appreciation.”

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”

But the assault continued when the President left open the door to possibly prosecute the lawyers whose advice resulted in the memos, making many leery of giving any advice at all for fear of potential prosecution under future Administrations if their advice suddenly became politically incorrect.

When the release of the memos fueled threats of a "truth commission" the CIA struck back. And now not only is the President in the line of fire, but so is the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Memos leaked from the CIA show clearly that not only was the Democratic Leadership informed of the legal advice, they were briefed on numerous occasions about just what types of enhanced interrogation techniques were being used...and on who.

This is now being reframed as a "distraction" from the real issue.

Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.

“I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was briefed on interrogation techniques five times between 2006 and 2007.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he finds it “interesting” that a document detailing congressional briefings was released just as “some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism.”

Well gee, isn't that precisely because Congress explicitly tightened their oversight of the intelligence community as a result of the Church Commission so that they would be responsible for what the intelligence community did? And now, after being fully informed and giving their consent, they want to blame the very people they oversaw?

Isn't that the definition of "disingenuous"?

Now that such revelations have been made public there is much less appetite for a "truth commission" and there is much more of an appetite for again shifting the focus.

Whereas before, the focus was clearly on doing the Left's bidding by prosecuting the "evil" Bush Administration, now many who sympathize with the Democrats initiative are trying to say that the focus should be on having a discussion about what we should and should now allow with regards to interrogations.

Such a discussion is fine with me. And we should decide as a nation how far we are willing to go to save American lives, but don't try to tell me that that's what the Democrats on the Left were trying to do all along.

Because that just won't fly.

Now here's the thing, in the wake of the 9/11 event, everyone, including the Democratic Leadership were worried and scared about what other attacks were being planned. And they wanted the answer by any means necessary. And they got that. Many attacks were in fact thwarted as a result. And the fact remains that during the eight years of the Bush Administration this country was not attacked again.

If this country is again attacked on President Obama's watch, you'll see how quickly Democrats will yet again reverse their "principled" positions as they try to assure the American people that the crap they've pulled did not compromise the security of the US and that whatever mistakes they may have made in the past will be corrected in the future.

But corrected how?

The fact is, that as much as the Left may want to prosecute the Bush Administration, they still have to live with the fact that the "domestic spying" program still exists and is being defended by President Obama and his Administration. That rendition still exists, will continue to exist, as it has existed since at least President Clinton's Administration. And that enhanced interrogation techniques has only been ruled by the President's words, not by his actions. What's more, Guantanamo Bay may (or may not) close, but military commissions and detainement for life of foreign enemy combatants without a trial  is still in our future if the President has any say over the matter.

The only question is, can the Obama Administration manage to prevent another attack on the US during his term in office?

Staff Sgt. Zachary J. Rhyner

An Air Force combat controller received the Air Force's second highest award for valor on March 10 for saving his 10-man team from being overrun twice in a 6.5-hour battle in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Zachary J. Rhyner received the Air Force Cross for his actions on April 6, 2008, in the Shok Valley. Although shot in the left leg, he called in airstrikes, fired his M-4 rifle at the enemy and helped move other wounded people down a cliff. At the time of the incident, Rhyner was a senior airman who had completed training less than a year earlier.

Rhyner was part of a 130-man combined assault force whose mission was to enter Shok Valley and capture a high-value target who was funding the insurgency. Shok Valley is located below 60-foot cliffs. The mission objective was at the top of the mountains surrounding the valley.

"This was the first time U.S. special operations forces entered the territory," said Capt. Stewart Parker, the detachment commander at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, at the time.

"Initial infiltration began that day with snow on the ground, jagged rocks, a fast-moving river and a cliff," said Rhyner. "There was a 5-foot wall you had to pull yourself up. The ridgeline trail was out of control."

The U.S. and Afghan troops expected to encounter fire from about 70 insurgents.

"We were caught off guard as 200 enemy fighters approached," said Staff Sgt. Rob Gutierrez, a combat controller with the second team in the fight. "Within 10 minutes, we were ambushed with heavy fire from 50 meters. The teams were split by a river 100 to 200 meters apart, north to south."

"I have never seen a situation this bad," said Parker, who was monitoring the situation back at the base.

Rhyner was shot within the first 15 minutes, according to an account from the Air Force Special Operations Command. The team came under fire from all directions from snipers, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

"I was pulling security when I got shot in the leg," he said. "The rounds hit my left thigh and went through my leg and hit another guy in the foot."

"There was nowhere to go. I grabbed the wounded guys, but we were trapped by the enemy," Rhyner said. "I was calling in airstrikes and firing, while moving the wounded down (the cliff)."

Sergeant Gutierrez said he could see insurgent fire coming from the buildings on the hilltops above them and was trying to get across the river to meet up with Rhyner.

"Zach and I were in constant radio contact," he said. "I could hear the ammunition, sniper fire and rocket-propelled grenades with multiple blasts. We tried to push to the north to collocate with Zach's team, but every time we pushed up river, it put us in an open line of fire."

"My team ran across the freezing river. The water came off the mountains, and we were 100 to 200 feet beneath the enemy, like fish in a barrel," Sergeant Gutierrez said.

As the enemy surrounded them, Rhyner, who was being treated for his injuries, directed multiple rockets and gun runs from AH-64 Apache helicopters against enemy positions. Rhyner had been calling in airstrikes for three hours while he was injured; however, he still felt responsible for the others who had been hurt.

With disregard for his own life, he tried to get the injured to safety, still in the open line of fire. "I left injured personnel in a house and I had to get over there," Rhyner said. "I was frustrated being wounded. I tried to get the bombs there fast and talk to the pilots who didn't see what I saw on the ground."

Rhyner called in a total of 4,570 rounds of cannon fire, nine Hellfire missiles, 162 rockets, 12 500-pound bombs and one 2,000-pound bomb, constantly engaging the enemy with his M-4 rifle to deter their advance.

Toward the end of the fighting, 40 insurgents were killed and 100 wounded.

Sergeant Rhyner was directly credited with the entire team's survival due to his skill and poise under intense fire.

"If it wasn't for Zach, I wouldn't be here," Sergeant Gutierrez said.

Excerpts taken from article by Capt. Laura Ropelis, Air Force Special Operations Command Public Affairs, Dec. 25, 2008

Trying the Enemy

Back in January, The Counterterrorism Blogs Jonathan Winer recounted the story of Ali Saleh Khalah Al-Marri

On January 28, a group of 19 former government officials with experience in intelligence and national security filed an amici curiae brief with the Supreme Court in the case to provide the court a brief finding that holding Ali Saleh al-Marri in the U.S. as an enemy combatant for seven years on U.S. soil without charge has been dangerously counterproductive in combating terrorism....

The facts that have been alleged regarding Al-Marri's criminal and terrorist-related activities are disturbing to say the least. According to the original federal criminal indictment of Al-Marri, he had more than 1750 credit card numbers and names of account holders at the time of his arrest and false identification documents. The government also alleged that Al-Marri used a calling card to call a number in Dubai linked to the reputed al-Qaeda financier Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Federal agents found folders labeled "jihad arena" and "chem," in his computer which the government said contained information on the poisonous gas hydrogen cyanide. His computer had links to Web sites related to weaponry and satellite equipment, as well as the text of lectures by Osama bin Laden.

Assuming all of this is true, the government should be well situated to try Al-Marri not only on a variety of serious fraud-related criminal charges, but for terrorist acts. Indeed, Al-Marri was initially criminally charged within the U.S. Justice system following his arrest in late 2001. On June 23, 2003, he was then designated by President Bush as an enemy combatant and transported from the Central District of Illinois, where he was being held pending criminal charges, to the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, for detention by the Department of Defense. He has been there ever since, without trial, consigned to indefinite imprisonment in the absence of any facts ever having actually been found by a trier-of-fact, rather than merely asserted by the government.

Mr Winer argued that it was good for the US to try this man in a US court to show the Jihadists how we do things under the rule of law,

As one of the 19 bipartisan group of experts who joined the team on the brief led by Suzanne Spaulding, formerly Assistant General Counsel at the CIA and General Counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I thought it might be useful to highlight why such a politically-diverse group of people all felt so strongly that the U.S. needs to end the indefinite military imprisonment of a man who if the facts are as alleged by the government was a highly-dangerous terrorist at the time of his 2001 arrest in Illinois.

In a nutshell, terrorism lives off ideological stories. These stories, or narratives, become incorporated in worldviews which however twisted, are constantly incorporating new facts. As stated in the brief:

"Subjecting individuals apprehended inside the United States to indefinite military imprisonment as enemy combatants, instead of putting them on trial, invigorates the false – but widely accepted – narrative that the United States is engaged in a war on Islam, using its vast power to victimize Muslims, and that the terrorist is a noble warrior engaged in a holy war. Such treatment of a terrorism suspect is so far outside the traditions of this Nation that it undermines the credibility of our commitment to equality, justice, and the rule of law. The result is a powerful recruitment tool for violent extremists who claim allegiance to Islam, and greater risk to the security of the Nation."

Right. Well. Al-Marri got his day in court, or more correctly was permitted by the Obama Justice Department to cop a plea: a single count of material support to terrorism which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. He's already served 8 years.

So he pled out to "material support" instead of actually being tried as a terrorist even though, according to the Justice Department press release

Between 1998 to 2001, al-Marri attended various terrorist training camps where he learned the use of weapons and operational security tradecraft that al-Qaeda employed to avoid detection, conceal their communications and protect their operations. These methods included prearranged codes and other techniques to protect communications, counter-surveillance techniques and the protection of information on computers. 

During these trips, al-Marri stayed in safe houses in Pakistan, which he agrees the government would prove were run by al-Qaeda. While in the terrorist training camps and safe houses, he used the nickname "Abdul-Rahman al-Qatari,"  and provided al-Qaeda operatives with his family contact information so they could inform his family should he be killed or "martyred" during an al-Qaeda mission.

In 2001, al-Marri was approached by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was then the external operations chief for al-Qaeda, about assisting al-Qaeda operations in the United States. Al-Marri agreed to do so and knew at the time that he entered into the agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that he was providing himself to al-Qaeda to further their terrorist objectives. Al-Marri was also aware that al-Qaeda was responsible for attacks against the United States, including the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. In addition, he was aware of the 1996 and 1998 "fatwas" issued by Usama bin Laden against the United States.

Al-Marri was instructed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to enter the United States no later than Sept. 10, 2001, with an understanding that he was to remain in the United States for an undetermined length of time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also directed al-Marri to meet with Mustafa al-Hawsawi (hereinafter al-Hawsawi) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where al-Hawsawi provided him with $10,000. Al-Marri knew that al-Hawsawi was associated with al-Qaeda and agrees that the government would prove at trial that al-Hawsawi was a primary financier of the September 11th attacks.

Mr Winer argued that we could trust the US Court system to deal with enemy combatants.

As argued in our amicus brief, our efforts to discourage terrorism, too, are undermined by Al-Marri's continued indefinite detention. It is time for us to return to our roots as a society that trusts in legal processes rather than in an all-powerful unitary executive with unfettered unilateral discretion to decide who is an enemy combatant, and therefore, that person's fate, forever.

Was his trust misplaced? Did he suspect that the Justice Department would let a known enemy of the United States and facilitator of the 9/11 attacks cop a plea? I don't know. But that is what you risk when you try to fight a war through the legal system instead of using battlefield rules.

Andrew McCarthy summarizes the fallout

The Obama administration has already outright released, with no trial, Binyam Mohammed, an al-Qaeda operative who, like al-Marri, was assigned by KSM to carry out mass-murder attacks in the United States after 9/11. Now, al-Marri has been given a plea agreement that grossly undersells the grave seriousness of his war crimes. If Holder's objective was to demonstrate that George W. Bush was wrong to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant and that the criminal-justice system "works," this sweetheart deal suggests the opposite.

Jihadists were not impressed by our strategy of fighting them in the courtroom through the 1990s. But at least they knew the few of them we managed to apprehend and indict got slammed. I wonder what they're thinking now.

My guess is that the message to Jihadists is precisely the opposite of what Mr Winer (et. al.) had hoped to convey.

Two weeks

The Taliban have been allowed to march to within 70 miles of Pakistan's seat of power before the Government decided to take muscular action. Now the situation is at a critical juncture

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned.

"The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.

But Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid.

Pakistan has been the focus of the Obama Administration's foreign policy in recent weeks, but the effort doesn't seem to be paying many dividends.

This first big test has been something of a slow-burner, often neglected by media distracted by pirates and swine flu. Nevertheless, the accelerating power of Islamic extremists in a nuclear-armed state is as big and as scary a threat as any president has faced since the end of the Cold War -- and the administration has responded with an aggressive array of military, political, diplomatic and economic initiatives, in Pakistan, Washington and elsewhere.

The trouble is, it all may not work -- as senior administration officials frankly acknowledge. By year's end, Pakistan could morph into a catastrophe that overshadows those six or seven other big problems...

The administration began by treating Pakistan as an adjunct to its strategy for Afghanistan, because Pakistan's western tribal territories serve as bases for the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. Yet in the past month Pakistan suddenly has seemed to tip toward collapse as the Taliban rapidly expanded toward Islamabad while the country's army and weak civilian government dithered.

This is the sort of trouble U.S. administrations have often ignored until it was too late -- as in neighboring Iran before its Islamic revolution.

Not to mention Iran currently.

But back to Pakistan, the President has called both Afghanistan's and Pakistan's Presidents to a crisis meeting in Washington

"President Obama convened a crisis meeting at the White House last Monday to hear a report from Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had just returned from Pakistan," David Ignatius

" 'It had gotten significantly worse than I expected as the Swat deal unraveled,' Mullen explained in an interview. He was referring to a truce brokered in February in the Swat Valley, about 100 miles north of Islamabad. The Pakistani military had expected that the cease-fire would subdue Taliban fighters in Swat. Instead, the Muslim militants surged south into the district of Buner, on the doorstep of the capital.

"Listening to Mullen's report at the White House were two senior officials - Defense Secretary Bob Gates and special envoy Richard Holbrooke - who were serving in government back in 1979, when a Muslim insurgency toppled the Iranian government, with harmful consequences that persist to this day. The two policy veterans 'made the argument that it's worth studying the Iran model,' recalls a senior official who took part in the White House meeting.

"This was Pakistan week for the administration's foreign policy team, behind the self-congratulatory hubbub over the first 100 days. At a news conference Wednesday, Obama said that he was 'gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan.' He said his biggest worry was that 'the civilian government there right now is very fragile.'"

wrote. "Mullen described the worrying situation there, with Taliban insurgents moving closer to the capital, Islamabad.

They are, and the next two weeks will tell the story as to whether this is the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning for the Islamists.

The People's Car

During his press conference commemorating his first 100 days in office, President Obama assured us that he doesn't want to be in the automobile business.

You know, I don't want to run auto companies, I don't want to run banks....

With respect to the auto companies, I believe that America should have a functioning, competitive auto industry. I don't think that taxpayers should simply put -- attach an umbilical cord between the U.S. Treasury and the auto companies so that they are constantly getting subsidies. But I do think that helping them restructure at this unique period when sales -- you know, the market has essentially gone from 14 million down to 9 million, I don't think that there's anything inappropriate about that.

But it is pretty clear that the President has a vision for what he believes the automaker should produce in order to be profitable.

My goal on all this is to help these companies make some tough decisions based on realistic assumptions about economic growth, about their market share, about what that market is going to look like...

...I don't think that we should micromanage. But I think that like any investor, the American taxpayer has a right to scrutinize what's being proposed and make sure that their money is not just being thrown down the drain....

...I'm not an auto engineer, I don't know how to create a affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid...

Well, the President may not be an auto-engineer, but he sure sounds like he knows precisely what type of cars he wants produced.

I know that if the Japanese can design a affordable, well-designed hybrid, then doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same...

Now don't confuse this with meddling

But I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector.

If those auto companies were just producing the type of cars that the President believes the people want, then everything would be honky-dory. And he doesn't want to meddle, but he did demand that Chrysler merge with Fiat because what Fiat produces is what he wants Chrysler to produce.

The innovative element of the new company is supposed to come from Fiat, the Italian automaker that managed a remarkable turnaround in the last five years. Fiat turns out fuel-efficient engines and sporty, economical small cars — exactly the image of the future American car industry that Mr. Obama talks about in glowing terms.

But this may or may not be the kind of car that people want to buy. You know, when auto-companies were tripping all over themselves producing SUVs and trucks, it was because that's what people wanted to buy and the automakers were responding to that. It wasn't the other way around.

Now will there be a market for the types of cars that the President wants Chrysler and GM to produce?

Well if gas prices go through the roof, small fuel efficient cars are what most people will want.

And strangely, the President is in a position to produce just such an environment. His cap and trade proposal along with his refusal to champion more oil and gas exploration within the US will very likely make gasoline, and energy in general, very, very expensive.

And by owning banks, he can make sure that people get "affordable" loans just like the Government made sure that people could "afford" a home in the years leading up to the housing bubble.

Maybe the President is looking to effect an "automobile" bubble where people can buy a plug-in hybrid with no money down and no evidence that they can repay the loan. That would get the automakers back on track, eh?

The President doesn't want to run the auto-companies, but he knows some who do

The entire venture will be overseen by a new board, including four directors appointed by the president — some of whom, it appears, have already been approached about the job.

Mr. Obama insists that beyond appointing those directors — mostly “experienced C.E.O.’s,” one administration official said — Washington will keep its hands off. But he cautioned that “every dime of new taxpayer money will be repaid before Fiat can take a majority ownership stake.”

Big Brother may not be managing directly, but he will be watching...