White House Averts Open War on Gay-Military Issue

The Clinton White House struggled Tuesday to gain control of a boiling controversy over gays in the military, apparently avoiding--at least for the moment--a damaging and highly public break with leading congressional Democrats and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The fledgling Administration was given breathing room on the issue when Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), Congress’ most influential voice on defense, put off a major floor speech in which he had been expected to position himself as a leading opponent of Clinton’s proposal to lift the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces. Nunn postponed the speech after congressional leaders met with Clinton at the White House.

The White House scrambling came as an Administration that seemed to have everything on its side suddenly found itself trying to hold together its congressional coalition--over an issue that had a much lower profile in Clinton’s campaign than the economy, health care reform and other domestic concerns.

“I am convinced that if President Clinton reverses current policy regarding gays in the military, he will find a temporary victory that is very much like a defeat,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a leading opponent of Clinton’s initiative, said Tuesday.

“President Clinton will find a military that is demoralized,” Coats said. “He will find a Congress that resents his high-handed tactics and he will find an American public disturbed that their commander in chief is governed by the political promises of the past and not the military needs of the moment.”

Senate Republicans, led by Coats, threatened to strengthen the ban on homosexuals, now enforced under authority of a Pentagon directive, by writing it into law. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said that Republicans would attach an amendment to Democratic legislation in the coming week.

But Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said after the White House meeting that he is confident the issue could be handled by negotiation rather than congressional confrontation.

“I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” said Mitchell. “I think it will all be worked out beforehand.”

Despite the apparent reprieve, the White House insisted that it intends to press ahead with the issue in a limited way. White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said that Clinton would likely announce today that he is freezing all investigations and discharges of homosexuals in the military pending the outcome of his consultations with Congress and the military.

“I don’t think it gets any easier” by waiting, Myers said.

Aides to Nunn attributed the delay in his planned address to a scheduling problem. Clinton Administration officials said that Nunn may still deliver a speech in the coming days that would soften his earlier criticism of Clinton and promise an impartial airing of the issue before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to one Administration source, Defense Secretary Les Aspin talked privately with Nunn after the Georgia lawmaker called a news conference Monday to criticize Clinton’s handling of the issue. In that conversation, the official said, Aspin appeared to convince Nunn that some of his concerns could be addressed during the six months the policy is being worked out.

One knowledgeable Senate source said it appeared that the White House had spoken with Nunn to offer concessions.

While Nunn disagrees with the President, Administration aides said late Tuesday, they are confident that the Georgia senator does not intend to lead an assault on Clinton’s initiative.

Several sources on Capitol Hill and in the Administration said that, while Nunn opposes a lifting of the ban on gays in the military, his barbs Monday were prompted more by a sense that he and Congress had been slighted than by the substance of the policy initiative.

“This is all very consistent with Nunn’s career and pattern,” said John Isaacs, a longtime observer of Nunn’s politics and director of the Council for a Liveable World, a nuclear watchdog group. “He wants to make himself the key man, the one who has to be consulted, dealt with and fussed over. You can see he is personally a little bit peeved (that) he hasn’t been consulted.”

Isaacs, who has wrangled with Nunn on a wide range of military issues, said that it is unlikely Nunn would block a policy initiative to which the new Democratic Administration is truly committed. During the early years of the Jimmy Carter Administration, for instance, Nunn abandoned his earlier backing for the B-1 bomber and backed Carter in voting to kill the bomber.

“What Nunn has done is made himself a factor, made himself a player in a debate that would have gone on without him and that now will go on with him at its center,” said Isaacs. “He’s not on the losing side of any vote now. He’s building a position and he’s not locked himself in anywhere--that would be uncharacteristic of him.”

The White House is receiving support from the other side of the aisle, however. Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said Tuesday that he would back Clinton’s initiative to lift the military’s ban, calling it “a matter of conscience” that “transcends the business of politics and popularity.” D’Amato’s unexpected position signaled that Republican opposition to the ban’s lifting will not be solid.

Other players in the political drama blamed the Clinton Administration for mismanaging the issue--and especially for riling Nunn, who Clinton passed over for secretary of defense, by failing to bring him into consultations early.

“This is a chance to assert himself and the prerogatives of Congress and to take Les (Aspin) down a notch or two,” said one former Defense Department official. “Nunn sees this in part as a mano a mano test of manhood about who runs defense policy. They’re just handing this to him on a platter by not getting him signed off on it before.”

Many senators said Tuesday that they were inundated with angry calls about Clinton’s plan to lift the prohibition. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said that in one of his offices alone, he had received 484 calls on Tuesday, with only five calls in favor of a lifting of the ban. D’Amato said Tuesday that calls to his office were running almost five to one in opposition to Clinton’s proposal.

Gay and lesbian activist groups, however, have begun drives to counter those calls by rallying callers to telephone lawmakers in favor of lifting the ban. One activist group, Queer Nation, declared Tuesday that it was urging supporters of Clinton’s plan to send ballpoint pens to the President as a message urging him to sign an executive order quickly.