Pentagon Tries to Mute Critics by Job Pressure : Ex-Raytheon Executive Says He Lost Post After Navy Officials Made Implied Threats to His Firm

Pentagon officials, utilizing implied threats to cut off defense contracts and research funds, have attempted to silence criticism of President Reagan’s defense policies by employees of military contractors and academic researchers.

“No one can be overjoyed at having his feeding hand bitten,” said a senior Pentagon official, whose attitude was echoed by other Pentagon aides who sought to justify the effort. But that view has raised concerns that the experts who know the most about defense can thus be cut out of the national debate over military policies.

Retaliation Seen

In the latest example of what some see as Defense Department retaliation against an informed critic, Lawrence J. Korb, Washington vice president of the Raytheon Co., one of the nation’s largest defense contractors, lost his job after taking part in a news conference at which it was suggested that the Defense Department, in planning its budgets, should recognize the likelihood that Congress would trim President Reagan’s defense buildup in future years.

According to Korb, the Navy, complaining that it was indirectly paying Korb’s salary, put pressure on Raytheon, which in turn fired Korb. Before joining the company last Sept. 1, Korb had been an assistant defense secretary. He resigned over differences with other Pentagon officials. Korb has long been recognized as an expert on military manpower issues.

Raytheon refused to discuss the issue, and Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. said, “We had no intention or expectation in the Navy . . . that Korb would be fired. That’s not the way we operate.”

But a Pentagon official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, virtually confirmed Korb’s account of retribution, saying:

“We were paying the checks. All the Navy is saying is: ‘We’re not going to deal with this person, because he is offensive to us because of his views.’ ”

In Korb’s view, such efforts run counter to “one of the strengths of our country--that people who have certain expertise can present their viewpoints.”

“What’s the principle involved in this thing?” he asked rhetorically, answering: “The right of people who are part of the informed public to speak out on issues that are of concern to the country.”

Korb’s account is not an isolated one:

--In February, 1985, Edward N. Luttwak, a consultant to both the Pentagon and defense contractors, published “The Pentagon and the Art of War,” a book that called for reorganization of the military and criticized Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s stewardship of the Defense Department.

The result: An unsuccessful effort was made by Lehman, Luttwak said, to have the author removed from his job as a consultant to the Northrop Corp., the principal subcontractor for the Navy’s FA-18 jet fighter. And he was cut from the list of Pentagon consultants, Luttwak said.

Lehman, although offering no details on the record, said Friday that the account of his involvement is “categorically untrue.” But Lehman is known to have been displeased by the book’s treatment of the Navy after he had read the galley proofs.

Weinberger said of Luttwak: “He just lost consulting positions from total incompetence, that’s all. There’s not any pressure put on him at all.”

--In 1984, Lehman was linked to efforts to squelch a paper written for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that advocated a military reorganization plan to which the Navy objected. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Edwin J. Feulner Jr., is a longtime close friend of Lehman and, according to one source who worked on the document, only an abbreviated version of the report was published, and detailed explanations of its arguments were omitted.

Herbert Berkowitz, Heritage’s vice president for public relations, disputed this account and said that, if the report was shortened, “it was because the author was unable to answer challenges to the claims he made.”

--Last May, Donald A. Hicks, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, was quoted in Science magazine as saying that, if scientists opposing the Reagan Administration’s policies “want to get out and use their roles as professors to make statements, that’s fine, it’s a free country.”

‘Works Both Ways’

But, he said, “Freedom works both ways. They’re free to keep their mouths shut . . . . I’m also free not to give the money.”

Hicks has refused to discuss the remarks, but the Pentagon said later that the Defense Department tried “to foster an environment that encourages diverse viewpoints . . . . Dr. Hicks is not enthusiastic about the idea of using defense resources to subsidize the work of people who are outspoken critics of national defense goals or policies, but this is a personal view.”

On the other hand, it was Hicks, as senior vice president for marketing and technology at Northrop before he entered the Pentagon, who defended Luttwak in the dispute over the book and turned Lehman’s complaints aside. Hicks maintained the author’s consulting relationship with the company even as the Pentagon was terminating its ties with Luttwak.

Conflicts Not Surprising

To some extent, conflicts between high-powered officials with strongly held opinions and their critics are not surprising.

“You take guys like Lehman and Hicks--if they weren’t somewhat arrogant and cocky, they probably couldn’t be effective,” said a congressional staff member, speaking on the condition that he not be identified. “A guy like Lehman has done one helluva job. You don’t want a wet noodle in the job.”

But, in the view of Gordon Adams, a private defense budget analyst who has written extensively on the relationship between the defense industry and the Pentagon, such examples demonstrate the risks of stepping out of what he describes as “the community of bias,” in which “everyone comes to share the same perceptions of what the world looks like.”

“It has a chilling effect on thoughtful consideration” of defense issues, he said.

Battled the Services

Korb, as assistant secretary of defense in charge of manpower, military bases and logistics, frequently battled the military services as he tried to shift budget priorities while remaining a stalwart supporter of the President’s overall defense buildup. His responsibilities were repeatedly reduced in Pentagon reorganizations until he was eventually forced out of the department.

Then, at Raytheon, Korb, a retired Navy Reserve captain who spent five years as a professor at the Naval War College before joining the Pentagon staff, was repeatedly told by company officers that “you can’t antagonize the customer.” However, he maintained that, “if Raytheon is making a good missile and it works and it is (sold at) the lowest price, it doesn’t make any difference” whether company employees decide to publicly criticize the Pentagon.

The battle with his former colleagues that led to Korb’s departure from Raytheon, the ninth-largest defense contractor, stemmed from his role in an organization known as the Committee for National Security, a group of former senior Pentagon officials, military officers and arms control specialists who have expressed concern about defense budget priorities. The group urged the Pentagon to recognize that its budget requests would not survive in Congress and that it should trim its sails and shift priorities to avoid congressionally imposed reductions.

Five-Year Budget

On Feb. 25, Korb said at a press conference called by the bipartisan group that $200 billion could be trimmed from the Defense Department’s five-year budget, and the result would be a stronger force.

But the immediate result, according to Korb, was a series of telephone calls to Korb’s bosses at Raytheon the next day from Melvyn R. Paisley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, engineering and systems; Everett Pyatt, assistant secretary of the Navy for shipbuilding and logistics, and Carl Smith, a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The gist of the calls, Korb recalled in an interview, was to ask Raytheon: “How can you have a guy in your company making these statements?”

“The hidden message is: ‘Things will not go well for you while you have this guy in your employ,’ ” Korb said.

‘Can’t Count on Help’

Korb said he was summoned to company headquarters in Lexington, Mass., and was told by Philip A. Phalon, vice president for corporate marketing, that his job was in jeopardy and that the company had been told by Assistant Navy Secretary Pyatt that “you can’t count on my help anymore” in obtaining contracts. The company produces radar, sonar and missiles for the Navy and, overall, does about one-half of its $6.5-billion annual business with the Pentagon.

By March 17, Korb was told to submit his resignation. He said he then appealed to Lehman, Pyatt’s and Paisley’s boss. The Navy secretary said in an interview that he then called the president of Raytheon, D. Brainerd Holmes, who has since retired, “and recommended that they not fire” Korb.

And, on March 19, the assistant Navy secretaries wrote to Raytheon executives, toning down their earlier criticism.

‘Mr. Korb Now Understands’

“The Navy objects strongly to officers of our contractors whose salaries are paid in part by Department of Defense, speaking as company officers, attacking President Reagan’s defense program,” Pyatt wrote. “They are, of course, free to speak out as private persons. You have assured us that Mr. Korb now understands this important distinction, and so we can work with him in the years ahead.”

Paisley’s letter commended Raytheon “on the outstanding way in which you attacked our mutual concerns. Understanding between industry and government is sometimes very difficult, but, when they have that understanding, as is now the case, it benefits both.”

“Larry, too, has reached that understanding, and I am sure he will be an asset to both of us in the future,” he wrote.

But it was too late.

On His Way Out

Korb’s title of vice president was removed and he became a “special adviser.” He was offered a job with a Raytheon division in Philadelphia, which he turned down and, within four months, he was on his way out of the company. He has accepted a position as dean of the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, senior Pentagon executives and Navy officials maintained that it is within the right of the Defense Department to express its dissatisfaction to a defense supplier if one of the company’s executives displeases it.

“It shouldn’t be expected that we wouldn’t have some dialogue with the companies” when a firm’s officers criticize the Pentagon in public, said one official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified. “But we don’t call them to fire people. They have to make that decision. The contention that Korb was fired because of this technically isn’t correct.”

Nothing Stopping Them

Robert B. Sims, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said he knows of nothing “that prohibits officials from the government from corresponding with contractors and expressing their views.”

He said the case was “a matter . . . between the company and its employees.”

At Raytheon, spokesman Jeff Charney said, “It is our policy not to talk about personnel actions or conversations that do or don’t occur with a customer.”

He said Korb has “accepted a job for which he is well qualified and we wish him well.”