Lehman Faces Budget Fight : Navy Secretary May Have Built Fleet He Can’t Afford

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, John F. Lehman Jr. was not supposed to become secretary of the Navy. That job awaited Robert D. Nesen, a Thousand Oaks car dealer, Republican fund-raiser and longtime political buddy of the President-elect.

But that was before the incoming chief executive heard from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a former Navy secretary himself, then-Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the late Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.), a powerful Democrat crucial to Reagan’s massive plan to modernize American military forces.

When the pulling and hauling was over, Reagan retreated from the commitment to his old California ally. The 38-year-old Lehman settled into the Navy secretary’s spacious suite on the fourth deck of the Pentagon, and Nesen set out for Australia to take up duties as ambassador there.

Since John Lehman’s first notable demonstration of getting what he wants, Washington has never stopped delivering for him. He was the youngest secretary in the history of the Navy when he took over, and he is now mentioned in the same breath with Franklin D. Roosevelt and James V. Forrestal as being among the service’s most effective civilian leaders.

He has made the Navy the nation’s most favored military service, quickly wringing from Congress commitments to build a fleet so large that critics charge there will not be enough money to operate it. He has waded into waters normally reserved for admirals, making himself the most visible exponent of a controversial strategy of placing aircraft carrier battle groups on the periphery of the Soviet Union if war breaks out between the superpowers.

He set off alarm bells in congressional offices with plans to disperse the U.S. fleet to new home ports. He provoked former Undersecretary of Defense W. Paul Thayer into declaring that the sprawling Pentagon building was too small for both of them. The White House once found it necessary to publicly correct him and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in the manner of a tolerant father, to reprimand him.

Rumors circulated that he might challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in a 1986 primary. More recently, when it became obvious that Robert C. McFarlane, the White House national security adviser, was on his way out, Lehman’s friends talked of pushing him for that post. However, John M. Poindexter, McFarlane’s deputy, was named to the job immediately on McFarlane’s resignation, and one Lehman friend said he believed the decision was hastened to head off a push for the Navy secretary.

Now, with the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law on the books, the brash Navy chief is headed for his most spirited budget joust. And his critics say he may become a victim of his own success.

Goal of 600 Vessels

Catching the early wave of enthusiasm for the President’s military buildup, Lehman and the Navy persuaded Congress to make long-term commitments toward a goal of 600 vessels. Their most impressive coup occurred in fiscal 1983, when they persuaded lawmakers to appropriate $6.8 billion for two new nuclear aircraft carriers, to bring the Navy’s total to 15.

Now, it would cost nearly as much to cut back on the Navy’s massive shipbuilding program as to finish it. When the first automatic cuts required to comply with the Gramm-Rudman law were announced last week, some major Navy programs escaped cuts because of the penalties attached to tampering with Lehman’s fixed-price contracts.

Lehman’s critics maintain that the commitment to the huge shipbuilding program will force the Navy to skimp on training, ammunition, spare parts and time at sea for oceangoing vessels. They raise the possibility of $3.5-billion aircraft carriers without planes to use them, of ships laid up for lack of crews.

“We are on a path toward disaster,” said retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information, a frequent critic of defense policy. “We are going to have a less combat-ready Navy in 1988.”

The Navy secretary who has generated this controversy is the senior member of a Lehman family triumvirate that inevitably has been likened to a Kennedy clan of the right: young, aggressive, ambitious, well-connected in Philadelphia society and ideologically committed.

Joseph Lehman, now 39, and Christopher, 37, arrived in Washington several years after their older brother, who is now 43. But they followed a path similar to his own, devoting much of their energy during the Jimmy Carter Administration to opposing the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

When the Reagan Administration came to power, Joseph Lehman joined the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Christopher, after working for Sens. Harry F. Byrd Jr. (Ind-Va.) and John Warner, Byrd’s successor, became director of the State Department’s office of strategic nuclear policy. In 1983, Christopher moved on to a job that John had held during the Richard M. Nixon Administration--as the National Security Council’s liaison officer with Congress.

The brothers lived near each other in the Virginia suburbs, vacationed together in the summer and occasionally crossed paths on official business. But, in spite of their parallel careers, they insisted that the Lehman family had none of the hierarchy of the kind Joseph P. Kennedy established in the Massachusetts clan.

In fact, John F. Lehman Sr. was not a political man. He was an engineer who commanded a landing support ship in the Pacific during World War II. In his Philadelphia home, he presided over extended dinner table conversation with his five children, but politics was not one of his favorite subjects. Whatever political interest there was came from the Kelly side of the family, whose most famous member, Princess Grace of Monaco, was the Lehman boys’ cousin.

When still in college, John Lehman Jr. was smitten by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and enlisted both of his brothers.

Influenced by Kissinger

John Lehman’s preparation to be secretary of the Navy began when he fell under Henry A. Kissinger’s influence at the National Security Council during the Nixon Administration, and it continued during his years as a defense consultant and as a naval aviation officer. In 1980, he helped write the defense plank of the Republican Party platform, including a call for a 600-ship Navy, and actively lobbied, with the help of his brother Christopher, for the secretary’s job.

“This job was where I really felt that changes could be made,” he said. “The power, the statutory power to manage, to reform procurement and bring efficiency, is here with the secretaries of the military departments. The two essential levers are here and only here--promotions and assignments, and procurement.”

Lehman’s only resistance came from Undersecretary Thayer, who believed the Navy’s success was shortchanging the other services. But, before Thayer could restrain Lehman, Thayer was indicted for illegal stock activities that occurred before his government service. He eventually was convicted and sentenced to a four-year prison term.

Lehman now insists that Thayer’s downfall made no difference. “He was at odds with the secretary of defense and at odds with the President,” Lehman said. “Even if he had stayed, I would say confidently that it was he who would have changed.”

In his new job, Lehman demonstrated how firmly he had taken control of personnel matters when he forced the retirement of Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy, who for decades had been the most powerful political force in uniform. And he enunciated the new strategy of using aircraft carriers to challenge the Soviets in their strongholds.

Strategy Criticized

Outside the Navy, some of Lehman’s critics suspected that the main purpose of that strategy was to obtain funds for a 600-ship fleet and 15 carrier battle groups. To use carriers to attack the Soviets in their waters, they say, would require a Navy far larger than even Lehman envisioned.

“We would need 30 carriers to carry out the Lehman strategy, but it is likely that for the remainder of this century we will live with 13 to 15,” said Jeffrey Record of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.

But, for now, Lehman’s strategy prevails.

His biggest current problem appears to be finding the money to operate his growing fleet in the face of large budget cuts. But it is not his only problem. His “strategic dispersal” plan to scatter American ships in home ports along the coasts has been denounced as a ploy to win political support from the new ports rather than an effort to make the ships more difficult for Soviet missiles to strike.

By some estimates, the additional ports necessary to carry out the plan would cost the Navy $1 billion, plus tens of millions in additional operating costs every year.

The Navy secretary was contradicted by the White House during Reagan’s first term when he contended that U.S. gunboats had been stationed off Lebanon to help stabilize the regime of President Amin Gemayel after U.S. forces were put ashore as part of a peacekeeping force. The White House said that their purpose was merely to protect the U.S. Marines in Beirut.

Chastised by Weinberger

He was chastised by Weinberger after he protested that spies John A. Walker Jr. and Michael Lance Walker had received excessively light sentences. Weinberger supported the sentences as appropriate in light of the Walkers’ cooperation with authorities.

Republican political strategists consider the Navy secretary a hot political property. For the moment, Lehman said, he expects to go into private business when he leaves the Pentagon.

His brothers have got the jump on him. Christopher has joined a public affairs firm organized by several political strategists who were in the front ranks of the Reagan campaigns of 1980 and 1984. Among others, he is representing the interests of Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet occupation.

Joseph Lehman has decided to leave his job as spokesman for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to become a nuclear systems specialist for one of the country’s top aerospace companies. Both intend to return to government some day. Joseph said: “It is a permanent commitment.”