Army Secretary Resigns; Leadership Vacuum Seen

Army Secretary Thomas E. White, who lost political clout when he was associated with the Enron scandal and bureaucratic clout when an artillery system he pushed was cut from the Pentagon’s budget, has resigned, the Pentagon announced Friday.

White’s departure leaves the Army nearly rudderless. The Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, is scheduled to retire in early June, and his reported successor, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John M. Keane, told associates this week that he will not accept the post, Pentagon sources said Friday. Army officials said they would not comment on the report.

A brief statement released by the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday evening announcing White’s resignation gave no reason for his departure. In the statement, Rumsfeld thanked White for his service and said that his final date of service had not yet been determined.

An Army spokesman had no comment on the resignation except to cite White’s record as a former Army officer and as secretary.

“We’re extremely proud of Mr. White for his service to our nation for so many years,” the spokesman said.

White, 59, clashed publicly with Rumsfeld last year over the defense secretary’s proposal to cancel the Crusader artillery project, which White said was vital to the Army’s future. Rumsfeld decided it was not suited for wars of the future and eventually canceled the program.

The Crusader was a 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzer that had undergone initial tests of its firing capabilities and was scheduled to enter service in 2008.

White was also beleaguered by controversy over his former role as an executive with Enron Corp., the scandal-ridden energy trading company, and by his use of a military plane to ferry him and his wife back and forth to vacation homes.

“He was almost a lame duck,” said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan defense think tank. “It was almost like he had left, even though he was still there.”

The resignation of White and the intrigue over Shinseki’s successor leaves the Army without strong leadership at a time when it wants to translate its visible success in fighting in Iraq into a greater share of the Pentagon budget pie.

It also serves to highlight ongoing problems between Rumsfeld and each of the three service secretaries.

When Rumsfeld took office, he expected the secretaries, who are civilians appointed by the defense secretary, to be agents of change, serving to push the sometimes recalcitrant military branches into shedding old ways of fighting wars and obsolete weapon systems.

But none of the secretaries has met those expectations.

The man Rumsfeld chose as secretary of the Navy, Gordon England, resigned this spring to take an appointment as deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Air Force Secretary James G. Roche, while championing transformation and change, has differed with Rumsfeld over which Air Force aircraft to invest in. Rumsfeld is seeking to spend more money on unmanned aerial vehicles and space technology, while Roche champions new fighter jets.

Roche has decided to resign at the end of President Bush’s first term, sources said Friday.

In addition to championing the Crusader, White also fought Rumsfeld’s plans to streamline the army by eliminating some of its fighting units.

Speculation that White would leave his post after the Iraq campaign ended had circulated widely for many months, and he has long been known to have been shorn of much of his power after he clashed with Rumsfeld.

There appeared to be no recent event or conflict that prompted him to submit his resignation on Friday, one senior official said, but with combat operations in Iraq coming to a close, the announcement did not come entirely as a surprise.

Rumsfeld was disturbed that the Army’s Office of Legislative Affairs had sought to fight the Crusader cancellation by preparing talking points for members of Congress to lobby for the project. When the Army’s lobbying became public, it seemed White would lose his job, but he did not.

But White’s unclear role in improprieties while he helped run an Enron subsidiary, Enron Energy Services, from 1990 to 2001 also weakened his support.

In testimony before a Senate panel last July, White repeatedly said he had played no part in manipulating California energy prices and knew nothing of the improprieties. At the hearing, White was asked about trading strategies in California’s electricity market detailed in December 2000 Enron memos. The memos described several schemes that critics say took advantage of California’s power crisis, including one that involved Enron Energy Services, of which White was vice chairman.

Enron Energy Services had long-term contracts to provide power to retail customers in California and other states.

One Enron strategy called for inflating estimates of power demand to create the appearance of a shortage in California’s electricity grid -- thereby driving up the price of power supplied by Enron’s wholesale power divisions.

White testified that he was unaware of the strategies and memos until the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made them public in 2002. He said the ploys would have hurt his subsidiary by driving up costs that Enron Energy Services could not pass on to its customers.

White, a 1967 graduate of West Point, is a Vietnam War veteran and was trained as an armor officer. He rose to the rank of brigadier general before retiring from the Army in July 1990 and taking the position at Enron.

He was appointed by Rumsfeld as Army secretary on May 31, 2001.