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Military pressing Hollywood stars to lure recruits

Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON: The U.S. military is turning to Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro and Julia Roberts to lure reluctant young Americans into the military, said U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen on Friday.

The idea came in part from the success of the 1986 film "Top Gun" in which Cruise played a Navy fighter jet pilot in a fast-paced training squadron of F-14 jets, said Cohen and Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon.

Both the Navy and the Air Force saw recruiting take a quick leap after that film appeared in theatres, Bacon said.

The move, Cohen told reporters, is part of a drive by the armed forces, which is struggling to get and keep troops in a booming U.S. economy.

"I have talked to a number of people to encourage them to come out and speak to the troops, to express their appreciation and to do public service announcements for us," the secretary said. "ItÕs all very positive."

Cohen said in an interview that he and his wife, Janet, had travelled to Los Angeles to talk with film stars and directors about taping announcements for television and radio praising the voluntary military service in a democracy.

"I have talked to Tom Cruise about doing some PSA," Cohen said, referring to public service announcements. "IÕve talked to Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro," he said.

"I talked to Steven Spielberg, who is now in the process of doing a documentary on the Marines going all the way from recruiting days to the end of their careers.

"I talked to Julia Roberts about the possibility of her doing something," he said over coffee.

Roberts starred in "Pretty Woman" and Oscar-winning director Spielberg has made a series of top hits including "E.T." and the World War II epics "Saving Private Ryan" and "SchindlerÕs List."

Cohen said that he received tentative commitments to help but no concrete deals had been made.

"We are just looking at people who have that status in society saying positive things about the military," said Cohen, who last August presented Spielberg with the U.S. militaryÕs top civilian medal for sparking public support for the armed forces with "Saving Private Ryan."

Cohen said he had talked to Fox television about its National Football League broadcasting team taping a pregame show aboard an aircraft carrier. He told reporters that one of the broadcasters, former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, had enjoyed travelling with Cohen to visit U.S. troops in the Balkans over the Christmas holiday.

The U.S. militaryÕs problems with recruiting have been widely publicised. The Air Force has had major headaches in retaining pilots, who are leaving the service to take higher paying jobs as commercial airline pilots.

On top of that, Cohen said, there is now a shrinking pool of teenagers in America.

"ItÕs a much bigger challenge today" than in the past, he told reporters. "We have a smaller pool with a much more vigorous economy at a time when we donÕt have a visible and identifiable enemy on the horizon in the form of the Soviet Union."