Panel Opposes Tower in 11-9 Party-Line Vote : Drinking by Bush Defense Choice Cited

In an extraordinary blow to President Bush’s power and prestige, the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday night voted to reject former Sen. John Tower as secretary of defense. The 11-9 vote was along party lines.

President Bush and embittered Senate Republicans vowed to fight for the troubled nomination on the Senate floor. But with Democrats holding a 55-45 majority, Tower now appears unlikely to win the job that he has so long and so ardently sought.

Bush, who is in Japan on a state visit to attend the funeral of Emperor Hirohito and to meet with a dozen heads of state, reacted with outward calm but the blow delivered by Senate Democrats was all the more damaging since it coincided with his first overseas mission as President.

Nunn Explains Vote

Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), explaining his opposition to Tower after weeks of agonizing, declared: “I cannot in good conscience vote to put an individual at the top of the chain of command when his history of excessive drinking is such that he would not be selected to command a missile wing, a SAC (Strategic Air Command) bomber squadron or a Trident missile submarine.”

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the panel’s senior Republican, said that the evidence of drinking and womanizing on which Nunn and other committee Democrats based their votes “represents a cobweb of fact, fiction and fantasy.”

Tower was described by a close associate as “fightin’ mad” about the committee’s action. He was said to be determined to struggle to save the nomination as long as Bush supports him.

“This is clearly the President’s ballgame, and he can’t afford to lose it. He’ll be pulling out all the stops,” the Tower associate said.

If Tower is defeated on the Senate floor, it would mark only the ninth time in history that the Senate has rejected a presidential Cabinet nominee. Most recently, in 1959, it turned down Lewis Strauss as commerce secretary near the end of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second term.

Never, however, has a Cabinet nominee been refused office because of allegations about his personal behavior.

Nor has the Senate ever denied a Cabinet post to a former senator. Tower’s defeat was the more stunning because he served as a Republican senator from Texas for 24 years, the last four as chairman of the very panel that voted him down Thursday night.

At the emotional hearing at which Tower’s confirmation was rejected, Armed Services Committee members displayed obvious discomfort over the fact that they were sitting in moral judgment of a former colleague.

Nunn said that he was voting against Tower because of the former senator’s excessive drinking, his behavior around women and the possibility that his lucrative consulting contracts with major military suppliers during the four years after he left the Senate at the end of 1984 would taint his decisions as defense secretary.

“The record of alcohol abuse by the nominee cannot be ignored,” Nunn said in a packed hearing room. The public session followed six hours of closed-door meetings over two days in which the senators pored over a seven-volume FBI investigation into Tower’s personal and business affairs.

“I have searched in vain,” Nunn said, “for a point in time when the nominee himself acknowledged this problem and dealt with it decisively.”

He said that Tower’s acknowledged problem drinking in the 1970s would have been sufficient to cause his dismissal from the U.S. military. The country, Nunn said, cannot afford to have Tower serve as “deputy commander-in-chief” with unresolved questions about alcohol abuse.

Nunn said that Tower’s attitude toward women, combined with evidence that he carried on numerous extramarital affairs, “call into question both judgment and example.” He said that Tower is incapable of setting “moral standards for the men and women in uniform.”

Warner, leading the Republican support for Bush’s nominee, said that he had asked Tower’s Senate colleagues about the Texan’s public and private behavior. “Not one U.S. senator--not one--who has served with John Tower can recall a single instance where his personal habits in any way interfered with his ability to perform his duties,” Warner said.

He said that the committee and the FBI had interviewed more than 400 witnesses, yet none could conclusively testify that Tower’s alleged drinking and womanizing had compromised his abilities.

Leaving the hearing, a distinctly weary and resigned Warner was asked his prediction on the floor vote. “Let’s take this one day at a time,” he said.

Voice Agony

The senators were unanimous in voicing the agony of judging their former colleague’s fitness to serve in the Cabinet. Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.) said: “In my 10 years on the committee I have never seen a more difficult experience.”

Exon said that he was opposing Tower because of doubts about his ability to handle alcohol and because of unspecified “sexual excesses.” He said that the FBI found numerous first-hand witnesses whose testimony is in “sharp disagreement” with Tower’s denials that he drank heavily and carried on extramarital liaisons.

Tower showed “a clear pattern of behavior around women which is at best unbecoming for a secretary of defense,” Exon said.

After the vote, former Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) urged Bush to withdraw Tower’s nomination. However, Exon said that “all the signals are that they are going to fight it out” on the Senate floor to get at least 50 votes, with Vice President Dan Quayle breaking the tie if necessary.

The aging and frail Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) delivered an impassioned defense of his friend Tower and blamed irresponsible press coverage and cowardice on the part of his colleagues for Tower’s defeat.

Decries ‘Perception’

“It’s perception that’s frightening this committee, it’s not the truth,” Thurmond said, his voice rising to a shout. “It’s perception. . . . Perception should not control this committee. Perception should not control this Congress. Perception should not control this country. It ought to be the truth.”

Committee Republicans, viewing the proceeding as judicial, said they could not find overwhelming evidence that Tower is unfit to serve. They argued that without a “smoking gun” proving wrongdoing, the Senate should allow Bush his Cabinet choices.

“What is the evidence?” asked Maine Republican William S. Cohen.

Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.) acknowledged that “there is no smoking gun.” But, he added: “the ground is littered with a substantial number of empty cartridges.”

California Republican Sen. Pete Wilson, a Tower supporter, declared that when nominees are judged on the basis of unproven allegations, “the system does not work.” He noted that one of the recent allegations about Tower’s drinking had come from a flight steward who was unable to pass a lie detector test.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that the Senate must make difficult judgments, and the rules of the courtroom do not apply.

“The requirement to sit in judgment comes not from our being without sin,” Levin said. “The requirement to render our best judgment comes from the Constitution of the United States.”

Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), in Tokyo for the Hirohito funeral, said he thought the Tower nomination was “doomed.” Cranston said he expected Democrats to vote solidly against Tower on the floor and suggested that there may be several Republicans who also would vote against the nomination.

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), speaking as if Tower’s fate in the full Senate were sealed, said: “John Tower’s career and life are in ruins.”

But Tower, his associate said, does not see it that way. “All (Bush’s) advisers feel there’s no way the President walks away” from his nominee, he said. “That would just validate and vindicate those who voted against Tower. Ronald Reagan never got hurt by sticking with his friends to the end.”

Tower will fight as long as there is a chance of victory the aide said. But “if he were to see that it was in the President’s best interest, he would withdraw,” he added.

Staff writers Melissa Healy, William J. Eaton, Brian Couturier and Michael D. Shear contributed to this story.