Pentagon Defends Ashtray Case Penalties as Warning to Other Base Commanders

The Pentagon on Friday defended its decision to abruptly relieve three senior officers of their duties at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego and said the three had failed to clear up problems of “gross negligence” in procurement practices that were highlighted in an inspection last year.

The personnel reassignments, which followed the disclosure that the base had paid as much as $900 apiece for airplane ashtrays sold by a private company, sent a message to commanding officers that they will be held responsible for procurement problems at their bases, one senior Pentagon official said.

Meanwhile, a Navy spokesman said that “over the years” one of its own workshops--the Naval Air Rework Facility in San Diego--also charged the base an average of $900 for each of several other ashtrays for the E-2C Hawkeye radar surveillance airplane.

Navy Trying to Sort It Out

The workshop has “on several occasions manufactured ashtrays” that were sold to the air station, the spokesman said, adding that the Navy was “trying to sort out what was purchased when, from whom and for how much.”

Another officer said that in 1984 the base had paid $404 for a socket wrench and $2,700.10 for a set of blocks that keep an airplane stationary on the ground, although the blocks had cost only $102 in January, 1982.

Officials held out little likelihood that punishment as severe as that imposed on the officers would be meted out to civilians responsible for the actual purchases of the ashtrays.

“There’s some sort of signal being sent there, as well as a concern for the rules and regulations,” which hold naval officers responsible for all actions taken by those under them, one official said, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.

Officers to Be Transferred

The decision to immediately remove the three men, including a rear admiral, from their posts and eventually transfer them to new jobs was announced Thursday by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

At a staff meeting before the announcement was made, Weinberger had asked Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. what steps he was taking in the wake of disclosures about the ashtrays’ cost, and Lehman had informed him that three officers had been relieved of their duties, a Pentagon official said.

One Navy officer, acknowledging that complaints had been raised that the officers were being treated unfairly because no investigation was conducted, said: “Anytime the secretary of the Navy loses confidence in his people, he can have them relieved.”

Pentagon spokesman Michael I. Burch said that the private supplier of ashtrays, Grumman Aerospace Corp. of Bethpage, N.Y., was not necessarily at fault if the Navy was willing to pay the asking price.

Weinberger “feels there’s fault on our side of the fence if we keep ordering these parts at these costs,” Burch said.

He added that inspection of the base and its procurement operations turned up examples of “gross negligence” and influenced the decision to relieve the officers of their duties--although the initial purchases were made before the officers were assigned to Miramar.

The officers are Rear Adm. Thomas J. Cassidy Jr., commander of the Navy’s Pacific air fighter fleet; Capt. Gary E. Hakanson, commander of the air station, and Cmdr. Jerry L. Fronabarger, the air station’s supply officer.

Ashtray Price Fell

A congressional source, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said that documents indicated that Grumman had sold the air station two ashtrays for $900 each in July, 1981. Sixteen months later, the price had dropped to $659.63 for two.

The same documents showed that, at another point, the air base paid $596.16 for two ashtrays from Grumman, the source said.

Meanwhile, one Navy officer took issue with a suggestion made Thursday by Weinberger that one solution to the high price of the ashtrays would be to ban smoking on the airplane. Noting that officers spend hours at the back of the aircraft viewing radar screens, he said: “That’s their office. It’s where they live and work. You want them to be comfortable.”