Base Closing Plan's Legality Is Disputed by Sen. Warner

The Pentagon contends that putting workers in government-owned space will be cheaper in the long run and that the leased buildings in Northern Virginia fail a new security rule requiring structures to be set back 82 feet from traffic to guard against truck bombs.

Virginia officials say the Pentagon understated the costs of new construction, that urban buildings cannot meet the setback requirement and that the Pentagon and other high-security government agencies are not fleeing the capital.

In other testimony, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and military experts warned that the moves would erect barriers between researchers who are now concentrated in Arlington at the National Science Foundation and at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other military research agencies.

Arlington County Board Chairman Jay Fisette (D) asked the commission to consider moving 2,000 workers in those agencies to one of two Arlington sites that can be developed into secure leased space.

Reps. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said the Pentagon had unfairly targeted Northern Virginia and was setting itself up to fail.

Moran said Pentagon officials arbitrarily penalized local leased facilities 67 points out of 100 on ratings that are supposed to take into account factors on which the region would score highly, such as access to airports, availability of educated workers and quality of communications infrastructure.

Davis warned that three-fourths of skilled defense workers may simply quit instead of moving, given a local unemployment rate of 2 percent, a huge shortage of private-sector workers with security clearances and a national backlog of people seeking clearances now estimated at 329,000 people.

Earlier, on Capitol Hill, Williams, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and other District officials said the Pentagon understated the construction, environmental cleanup and historic preservation costs of moving Walter Reed.

Norton said Walter Reed, which has treated 4,000 wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, serves a homeland security role in the city. "The closure of Walter Reed would . . . cripple the emergency response capabilities of our nation's capital in the event of a major disaster," she said.