Critics Doubt Tower Is Man to Reform Pentagon, Make Tough Choices

It seems an unlikely match of man and circumstances. As his defense secretary, President-elect George Bush has chosen former Sen. John Tower of Texas, a longtime champion of the military services who was the Senate’s point man for President Reagan’s defense buildup and is now a $500,000-a-year consultant to the arms industry.

Yet Tower will take over the Pentagon’s top job at a time when the Defense Department must cope with an inevitably shrinking budget and a major weapons-buying scandal that occurred while the budget was growing. Critics wonder whether Tower is the right man to reform Pentagon procurement practices and make the tough choices required in a time of scarce funds.

Bush, in announcing his choice of Tower, noted that people change. “Nixon went to China,” he said, implying that even so staunch an anti-communist as former President Richard M. Nixon could adapt to changed circumstances.

Cites Needed Steps

Tower himself, citing several steps that he said are needed to eradicate waste and corruption at the Defense Department, declared: “We must refine and reform our management and procurement procedures.”

But those statements have not silenced the skeptics.

“He was one that helped guide the Reagan buildup without any accountability,” said Dina Rasor, director of the Project on Military Procurement, a Washington group critical of Pentagon weapons-buying practices. “I don’t think procurement reform is going to be very high on his agenda.”

Rasor and other Tower critics doubt that his thinking on military spending has changed as dramatically as circumstances have.

When Tower was chairman of the Armed Services Committee during the first four years of the Reagan Administration, he earned a reputation as a skillful accomplice of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger in his drive to replenish the military’s coffers. Pentagon budgets were rising 10% to 15% a year after inflation.

May Accept No Growth

For next year, by contrast, President Reagan plans to ask for only a 2% increase, and analysts say that Bush will do well to persuade Congress not to cut the defense budget below 0%. Bush is expected to accept no growth at all.

“I never saw Tower do any initiative except what happened during the Reagan buildup,” Rasor said. “I see no reason to think he has changed his tune. Bush has to ask himself if he wants another Caspar Weinberger, standing up for everything the military wants. If he does, he has to accept the consequences--he won’t be taken seriously in Congress.”

In his first remarks after being named to the defense post, Tower pledged to limit Pentagon spending and cancel weapons programs if necessary. “The bottom line is that we must provide at least as much, if not more, defense for less money,” Tower said.

Tower said that he believes he could manage a no-growth Pentagon budget because of his familiarity with the Defense Department’s most critical missions and priorities.

Says Tower Prefers Stability

“He’s aware, unlike Weinberger, that predictability and stability are more important than the top (budget) line,” said acting Air Force Secretary James F. McGovern, a Tower protege who once served him as director of the Armed Services Committee staff.

Another Tower associate, also a former committee aide, said that Tower was one of the first lawmakers to take on the weapons industry for overcharging on spare parts.

Executive Stunned

This associate, who asked not to be named, recalled a hearing in 1983 when Tower blasted Pratt & Whitney executive Arthur Wegner for excessive parts costs. Wegner “was stunned and offended by the sternness of Tower’s words,” the aide recalled.

Tower’s image as a captive of industry and the uniformed services “is just totally erroneous,” the aide said. He listed a half-dozen weapons programs that Tower had recommended killing, including the Navy’s A-6 fighter, the Air Force’s A-10 attack jet and the refitting of the World War II-era aircraft carrier Oriskany.

Managing the military in a period of constrained budgets poses two critical problems for Tower, according to Lawrence J. Korb, a Brookings Institution military analyst and an assistant secretary of defense in Reagan’s first term.

Restrict Service Latitude

First, Tower must reverse the broad latitude that Weinberger granted the military services to run their own budget and acquisition shops. The job will be particularly tough for Tower, who has long been known as a soft touch for the services, particularly the Navy, in which he serves as a petty officer in the reserves.

For example, when House Democrats began pressing for reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff system in 1982, Tower came down firmly against change, according to participants in the fight.

“He did the bidding of the services and Weinberger,” said an aide to a senior Democratic senator on the Armed Services Committee. “Tower always took the Pentagon position on things, and they of course opposed reform. . . . He’s status quo oriented. He blocked meaningful reform when he was chairman.”

Already, the military services are bracing against further change. Bush and Tower have endorsed “competitive strategies,” an approach to defense planning that emphasizes tailoring U.S. weapons programs to Soviet weaknesses.

Decision-Making Authority

Just as important to the services, competitive strategies would shift decision-making authority from them to the civilians in the defense secretary’s office. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are working to slow or scuttle the adoption of competitive strategies.

A second challenge, Korb said, will be to cancel weapons systems the Pentagon does not need or cannot afford. These tough decisions will hurt the weapons’ sponsors in the military, their protectors in Congress and their manufacturers in the private sector.

“He’s going to be the guy that’s going to have to let some of these defense contractors go out of business,” Korb said. “There are too many air frame manufacturers now. He can’t be sympathetic to their concerns about lack of profits.”

Making the task especially sensitive for Tower is that he has served for the last three years as a highly paid consultant to major defense firms. He has accepted retainers of about $100,000 a year from each of five big arms makers, including LTV, Martin Marietta and Rockwell International.

Policy on Ex-Employers

Tower said that he would remove himself from all decisions involving those companies that would involve even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Aides, however, said that he had not yet decided whether he would have no dealings at all with the five firms.

Defense specialists believe that, depending in large part on Tower’s role, the Bush Administration could usher in radical change in the nation’s defense practices or merely introduce new players to implement old policies.

One congressional official said: “This is a historic opportunity to go back and really overhaul that building.”