States Face Fund Cutoff if Guard Is Barred From Overseas Duty

The director of the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau, in the first such explicit warning, has threatened to cut off money for a state’s National Guard if a governor bars troops from being sent to Central America.

Lt. Gen. Herbert R. Temple Jr. included the warning in a letter urging Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste to reconsider his refusal to allow Ohio guardsmen to participate in exercises in Honduras.

Temple’s letter bore Friday’s date and its delivery to Celeste was reported earlier this week. In releasing the text at the Pentagon on Wednesday, however, National Guard officials cited the funding warning as the first such direct threat to a governor.

Law Being Challenged

They also said the letter made it clear the Reagan Administration will not back down in enforcing a new law that strips governors of their authority to block overseas training assignments, even though the law is now under court challenge.

“Ohio is the first state to actually deny permission for (National) Guard participation in an overseas exercise since the law was amended last year,” said Dan Donohue, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau.

“So this has become the first occasion on which Gen. Temple has spelled out the consequences. We are going to enforce the law until such time as a court rules otherwise.”

The law, enacted last year, is being challenged by a group of 12 states, led by Minnesota and including Ohio. The law repealed the authority of state governors to block overseas training exercises for their National Guard units unless they are needed for a local emergency.

Political Motives Seen

It was passed at the insistence of Defense Department officials, angered by what they viewed as the refusal of some governors for political reasons to allow guardsmen to be sent to Central America to undergo their annual two weeks of active-duty training.

The governors of Ohio, Massachusetts and Vermont have said they do not want their guardsmen deployed to such countries as Honduras, where contras maintain support bases.