By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 19, 1998; Page A19

After failing for a second year to persuade his former colleagues on Capitol Hill to approve more military base closures, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen faces one of the most vexing choices of his tenure: to begin shutting facilities on his own, or eliminate planned purchases of a new generation of fighter jets, ships and ground vehicles.

Having counted on an estimated $21 billion in savings from additional base closings to help finance new weaponry through 2015, Cohen has been left with a long-term defense spending plan that does not add up. According to aides, he has not decided how to proceed. But they said that the former Republican lawmaker, hired by President Clinton 1 ½ years ago on the strength of his ties to the Hill, may have little alternative but to embark on a more confrontational course with Congress.

"The continued refusal of Congress to cut billions of dollars of wasteful spending on unneeded bases will force us to look for ways to compensate for the unrealized savings," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said yesterday. "While no final decisions have been made, the options include trimming future procurement plans and looking for other ways to reduce the cost of excess facilities."

Cohen had hoped lawmakers would agree to revive the independent base closure commission that worked well during four rounds between 1988 and 1995, selecting nearly 100 large military facilities for elimination and generally shielding the process from political interference. He argued that the number of closures has not kept pace with the reduction of U.S. military forces since the Cold War's end and that more shutdowns are needed to fund a planned surge in spending following a decade-long slump in new equipment purchases.

But lawmakers, naturally reluctant to accept the pain of more closings in their districts, have questioned the Pentagon's savings estimates. They have urged waiting for the dust from previous closures to settle before proceeding with new ones. And they have pressed the Pentagon to find alternative ways to save money.

Adding to Cohen's uphill struggle has been a large residue of congressional resentment over Clinton's attempt during the 1995 closure round to enlist private contractors to save jobs at two Air Force maintenance centers in vote-rich California and Texas.

Cohen tried adjusting his proposal this year to make congressional distaste for closings a bit more palatable. Instead of pushing for new rounds in 1999 and 2001, as he did last year, the defense secretary moved for one in 2001 and another in 2005.

Allies in the Senate put forward a more limited plan, proposing one round in 2001 and taking the president out of the selection process altogether. But a majority on the Senate Armed Services Committee wouldn't go for that, either. The House National Security Committee declined to even discuss the issue. Although the matter still may come up for floor debate over the 1999 defense authorization bills, it is widely considered dead this year.

"I frankly don't see any means that we could succeed [with] any of the proposals that have surfaced," said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.). "This is not the time – I repeat, not the time – for the Senate to take up base closing legislation."

Whatever momentum Cohen may have begun to build in favor of more closings was badly undermined three weeks ago, when a Pentagon memo surfaced recounting a White House meeting April 23 on plans for closing McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, the California base that caused a problem for Clinton in 1995. The memo, written by acting Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters and addressed to Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre, portrayed the White House as still eager to keep jobs in the Sacramento area.

Peters reported that White House officials wanted Hamre to encourage a major defense contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, to bid on McClellan's work and preserve the business in Sacramento. White House participants in the meeting disputed that account. They said that while there was discussion of getting Lockheed Martin to bid in the interest of promoting fair competition, there was no insistence that the work stay in Sacramento. Hamre, whose assistant attended the meeting, also distanced himself from the memo, calling it poorly written.

But congressional critics seized on the memo as further evidence the administration was manipulating the base closing process. Voicing some of the loudest concern have been representatives from Utah, Oklahoma and Georgia – states with military depots that stand to inherit some of McClellan's workload. But the allegations of improper political meddling carried wider resonance in a Congress all too ready to see intrigue and deception in the administration.

"Both sides of the aisle were really shocked by what happened in that California situation," Warner said. "To have written that memo in that way and at that time was just a crippling blow."

Warner, the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he has urged Cohen to continue working with Congress to draft new base closing legislation. What is needed, he said, "is a new statute that clearly prevents any repetition of the problems we encountered in California."

Cohen's aides said their boss will continue to fight to reestablish the Base Realignment and Closure process, known as BRAC. But they said he also has the option under existing law of moving unilaterally to shut military facilities – an option, they added, that could get the job done but would be politically messier than the BRAC route.

Cohen would be required to submit studies to Congress assessing the strategic, economic and environmental impacts of shutting each facility with more than 300 civilian employees. He also would run the risk of repeated legislative maneuvers to delay or block the closings.

In testimony before a Senate panel last week, Cohen was asked about the possibility of simply allowing some bases to "wither" by denying them upkeep. Cohen called this "the least desirable of any option for a secretary to exercise," saying "it would not be fair" to defense employees at these bases or to the local communities.