Jokes Take Wind Out of Lehman’s Sails

The Pentagon’s top civilian and military brass were gathered at a secret meeting of the Defense Resources Board on Thursday to ponder future budgets when research director Donald A. Hicks unveiled a surprise.

Flashing a graphic onto a screen, Hicks offered four options for proceeding with a controversial plan by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. to build a square-rigged sailing ship as a “suitable gift to the nation.”

Under one option, Hicks said, the tall ship would cost taxpayers $28 billion. It would be outfitted with cruise missiles, electronic countermeasures, sophisticated satellite communications, anti-submarine listening devices and a variety of other gadgets.

At that point, Hicks could not keep a straight face and broke into a wide grin. The rest of the executives gathered in the briefing room realized that the research chief was chiding Lehman--who was present--and broke into laughter. Hicks then suggested that the Pentagon adopt Option Four by sinking Lehman’s tall ship as an idea whose time has not yet come.

Often a Target

It was a bad week for the Navy secretary, whose high-profile impetuosity often makes him a target of Pentagon rivals and congressional critics.

First, his private memo to the chief of naval operations “to accelerate our efforts” to build a multimillion-dollar sailing ship leaked to the press as President Reagan was trying to parry the congressional knives that were out for his 1987 defense budget.

Then, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger let it be known that he did not think much of Lehman’s tall-ship proposal, which Weinberger learned about in the press, aides said.

Then came ridicule at the Defense Resources Board.

Amendment Drafted

And finally, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, drafted this derisive amendment that he threatened to tack onto the Pentagon’s budget-authorization bill for fiscal 1987:

“No funds authorized to be appropriated by this or any other act may be used by the Navy for:

“(1) planning, design or construction of a naval ship primarily powered by wind;

“(2) raising, refurbishing and-or recommissioning the Monitor or Merrimac, or any replica thereof;

“(3) introducing Kitty Hawk-class biplanes as light attack bombers for use aboard Navy aircraft carriers;

“(4) developing submarines made wholly or largely from balsa wood.”

An aide to Nunn said Friday that the senator considered this “a serious amendment. The last thing we would want to do is make fun of the secretary of the Navy. It does seem, however, that the secretary has bought a new pair of boat shoes that he wants to try out on a wooden deck. We just think he should buy a boat of his own.”