Challenges to Combat-Zone Use of ‘Weekend Warriors’ Fail : Guard to Resume Foreign Duties

The California National Guard is returning to Central America this month, with four missions planned for December and January, after a new federal law quashed efforts in the state Legislature and courts to block the controversial assignments by the Pentagon.

The issue of routinely sending National Guard units, once thought of as “weekend warriors,” to a foreign combat zone has put some state governors--traditionally the commanders of each state’s guard units--at loggerheads with the Pentagon. The quarrel may be headed for a court fight on constitutional grounds.

In the meantime, the 146th Tactical Airlift Wing of the California Air National Guard, based at Van Nuys Airport, will dispatch two of its C-130 planes and about 28 crewmen to Central America on Friday, a spokesman for the state adjutant general’s office said last week. The 1,500-person wing is the largest unit of its kind in the National Guard.

Program Started in 1978

The crews will do the same jobs that the unit, and other Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units from around the country, have been doing since 1978 under a program named “Volant Oak,” the adjutant general’s office said.

They will be based at Howard Air Force Base just outside Panama City for 15 days, flying supplies and passengers between U. S. diplomatic missions and military bases in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Three similar missions, each with three planes and about 45 crew members, will leave Van Nuys on Dec. 26, Jan. 9 and Jan 16. There will be at least some California air guardsmen in Central America from Saturday until Jan. 31. When the missions overlap, there will be as many as 100 guardsmen and six planes.

They are the first California Guard assignments to Central America since a two-week mission by three planes and 60 men of the same California Air Guard unit in June, which went ahead despite efforts to block it by opponents of the Reagan Administration’s policy in Central America.

Mission in Thailand

Since then, the 146th sent one plane to Thailand in October and on Dec. 6 sent one plane to ferry a load of Tennessee and Florida guardsmen to Ecuador in South America.

The dispute over the proper role of the National Guard has its origin in the changed nature of what was once called the “state militia.”

Under the Pentagon’s “total force” doctrine, during the past 10 years National Guard units from all states have been converted from their longtime role as local disaster fighters and third-string military reserves into an integral part of the regular Army and Air Force.

The quarrel over the use of the California Guard in Central America began in April when it was revealed that a group of 30 Spanish-speaking military police was sent to protect other states’ guardsmen who were building a road in Honduras. That was followed by the revelation that the Air National Guard had regularly been flying the little-known Volant Oak missions throughout the region for eight years.

Opponents of the Guard’s involvement in Central America took action in the courts and the Legislature.

Strip Governor’s Power

On one front, a lawsuit sought to strip Gov. George Deukmejian--legally, the commander of the state’s guard in peacetime--of his power to agree to Central American assignments by the Pentagon.

The Legislature passed a bill that would have required Deukmejian to notify the Legislature whenever guardsmen were sent to Central America.

When Deukmejian vetoed the bill, its backers began pushing for an amendment to the state Constitution, which would have required legislative approval before the governor could allow guardsmen to be sent to any country where there had been armed conflict within two years.

Backers of both efforts agreed last week that their cause has been stalled by the passage of the Montgomery Amendment, a federal law that went into effect Oct. 15.

The amendment, a rider to a defense authorization bill signed by President Reagan in October, provides that “a governor may not withhold approval of overseas training for a National Guard unit because of any objections he or she may have to the location, type, purpose or schedule of the training,” said a spokesman for the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau.

Lawsuit Being Dropped

The lawsuit was brought by two groups, Americans for Democratic Action and the military law task force of the National Lawyers Guild. The suit, which was scheduled for a hearing in a Los Angeles Superior Court in February, “is moot because of the bill Congress passed,” Dan Stormer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said last week.

He has already notified the attorney general that the action is being dropped, he said.

“Deukmejian could always come into court and say the federal law prevents him from challenging the assignment, and he’d probably prevail,” said Bill Smith of the lawyers’ guild.

Assemblyman Tom Bates (D-Oakland), one of the principal backers of legislative restrictions on California Guard use in Central America, said that in light of the Montgomery Amendment, he was dropping the campaign for a state constitutional amendment.

Replace With Civilians

Instead, he said, he is looking for a way to divorce the state government from the National Guard altogether and replace it with a civilian organization that would take over the Guard’s role in civil disorders and natural disasters.

“Through the Montgomery Amendment, the federal government has told us that we have lost control of the Guard,” Bates said. “If the federal government is going to call the tune, they should pay the full freight.”

California spends about $20 million annually on the Guard, roughly 5% of the state guard’s budget, and the federal government provides the rest.

“I’m concerned that in the same way Eugene Hasenfus was shot down, the next plane shot down could be a California National Guard transport,” Bates said.

A spokesman for the Guard, Maj. Steve Mensik, said the “probability of one of our planes being shot down is virtually non-existent.”

No Similarities

He said there are no similarities between the kind of work the Air National Guard has been doing for eight years in Central America and the clandestine arms-running to the rebels, called contras , that Hasenfus was engaged in before Nicaraguan troops shot down his plane with a ground-to-air missile, killing the other two crewmen.

Both Mensik and Lt. Col. Anthony Volante, the acting air commander of the 146th, said the Air Guard planes do not fly low-altitude, secret missions in combat zones but operate much like the civilian airliners that crisscross the region every day--filing flight plans, following long-established international airways at high altitudes and reporting regularly to control towers.

Reporters who accompanied the California Air Guard on more than a score of flights in Central America in June saw no weapons, ammunition or explosives in the cargo.

The cargo loads, which are delivered to the Air Guard planes by the Air Force, are on covered pallets in sealed containers, sometimes identified only by a number. Identifiable cargo ranged from baggage for the family of a military attache in remote Belize to humanitarian aid for flood victims in Jamaica to helicopter and electronic parts for U. S. military missions.

Special Procedures

Although the air crews have no authority over what they are assigned to carry, they would know if the cargo included ammunition or other explosives because Air Force regulations require special procedures in such cases, Air Guard pilots said.

None of the pilots interviewed could recall ever employing explosive-cargo procedures during any of their Latin American missions.

The debate over the Reagan Administration’s support for the contras , who are fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, spread to state capitals as the Pentagon began assigning Army guardsmen to training sessions with the regular U. S. Army in Honduras, which in turn brought attention to bear on the long-ignored Volant Oak missions by the Air National Guard units.

Volant Oak is an example of the effects of the “total-force” doctrine. By assigning Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units from many states to Panama City on a continuous stream of overlapping two-week tours, the regular Air Force was able to turn over virtually all passenger and cargo transport duties in Latin America to them and use its own planes and pilots elsewhere.

Placing Limits

During the past year, the governors of seven states either ordered their Guard units not to accept Central American or Honduran assignments or placed limits on their participation. That gave rise to a movement in Congress to revoke the governors’ authority.

At a meeting in Hilton Head, S. C., in August, the National Governors Assn. voted unanimously to condemn any attempt to remove their traditional peacetime authority over National Guard units.

Even governors who supported use of the Guard to aid the Administration’s policies in Central America opposed any restriction on their powers.

However, in October, Reagan signed the bill containing the Montgomery Amendment, written by Rep. G. V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Mississippi), a retired major general in the National Guard of his home state.

‘Future ... at Stake’

“The future of the National Guard would be at stake if each governor was allowed to set his own foreign policy,” said Kyle Steward, Montgomery’s press secretary.

Without authority to use guard units as it wishes, the Pentagon might revoke the guard’s present status, the product of a 15-year effort on the part of the U. S. Defense Department to increase the numbers of troops that would be available in the opening days of a war.

Those who oppose the Montgomery Amendment argue, however, that the Constitution gives governors authority over the “militias” of their states in peacetime, unless the President declares a national emergency.

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York is preparing legal groundwork to challenge the Montgomery Amendment in court, said the center’s legal director, Michael Ratner.

Order Must Be Challenged

But to do so, he added, a governor or governors--the only persons with the legal standing to challenge the amendment--will have to defy a Pentagon order sending guardsmen out of the country.

To date, he said, the Pentagon has avoided making assignments of Guard units in states--such as Massachusetts, Ohio and Vermont--where the governor has indicated a willingness to challenge the order.

“There are governors who want to go to court,” Ratner said, “but maybe the federal government will just avoid asking them for Guard units.”

In Massachusetts, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis has ordered his adjutant general to refuse any order sending guardsmen to Honduras.

Debate Demanded

His press secretary, James Dorsey, said that if the Pentagon brought on a showdown, “we would want to discuss this with the other states, but we would not shy away from doing what we believe is right.”

He added, “If the President wants to send our troops to Central America, let him go to Congress under the War Powers Act and lay it all out on the table and let it be debated and voted on, as it has been for 200 years.”

The Pentagon announced plans last week to send Army National Guard units from Illinois and Puerto Rico to Honduras for training next year as part of a contingent of 4,500 reservists and guardsmen. No California ground troops were included.

In Sacramento, a spokesman for Deukmejian said the governor did not attend the meeting of governors at Hilton Head this year but went on record strongly at the time in opposition to the Montgomery Amendment.

Governor Vows Veto

Deukmejian does not plan to challenge the amendment, however, and has specifically approved each of the upcoming Air National Guard missions to Central America, the spokesman said.

If any bill, such as Assemblyman Bates proposes, to cut off funding for the National Guard should pass both houses of the Legislature, Deukmejian would veto it, the spokesman indicated.

Mensik, the spokesman for the adjutant general, said the unusual concentration of four Central American missions in only six weeks for the California guardsmen is occurring because “the Air Force Reserve always had the Christmas holiday flights, and they asked our guys as a favor to do it so they wouldn’t have to pull that duty again this year.”

The federal government pays all the expenses of the Air National Guard’s Central American missions, the adjutant general’s office has said.