Navy Official Promises to Defend Base Before Panel : Point Mugu: Chief strategist for targeting closures predicts the station-closing commission will ultimately agree that the facility should remain open.

Calling the Point Mugu naval base “a national asset,” the Navy’s point man on base closures vowed to defend Point Mugu vigorously before the base-closing commission and predicted that commissioners will ultimately agree that the facility should remain open.

Deputy Assistant Navy Secretary Charles P. Nemfakos said he believes the commissioners last week should not have added Point Mugu to the list of military installations the Pentagon has recommended for shutdown.

“We are going to make the strongest possible case to the commission that they made a mistake by adding it to the list and they should not consider it for closure,” Nemfakos said in an interview.

Nemfakos’ commitment to saving Point Mugu is important because he is the Navy’s chief strategist for targeting bases to shut down as part of the service’s effort to cut overhead costs. The Navy, Army and Air Force have been forced to slash costs to meet shrinking defense budgets since the end of the Cold War.

In three rounds of base closures, Nemfakos said, Navy analysts have scrutinized Point Mugu for ways to trim costs.

In 1991, he said, the Navy decided to streamline some of its weapons-testing programs, shuffling hundreds of jobs and interweaving operations between Point Mugu and the China Lake Navy base in the upper Mojave desert. Now both bases operate under one command as the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division.

“We believe, based on our analysis in 1991 and in 1993 and 1995, that there was nothing more to be done at Point Mugu to save money,” Nemfakos said. “Since we are not going to close Point Mugu and since people are doing the job effectively and efficiently there, why move them around?”

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Yet the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to consider moving most of Point Mugu’s missile-testing work to its sister base in China Lake along with many of the base’s 9,000 employees.

In a presentation to the eight commissioners, staff members suggested that the Navy keep open its missile-test range that spans 36,000 square miles of ocean off Point Mugu. But they proposed relocating test operations to China Lake and closing or mothballing remaining facilities, runway and hangars.

Any remaining activities would move to the Port Hueneme naval base, a few miles up the coast.

Commission Chairman Alan Dixon emphasized that adding bases to the list does not mean they will automatically close. Instead, he said, they are simply added for a full evaluation.

The staff’s presentation included a controversial audit that promised huge savings if the Navy moved Point Mugu’s missile-testing operations to China Lake.

The June 8, 1994, report by the Defense Department’s inspector general concluded that the Navy could save $1.7 billion over 20 years by consolidating overlapping programs between the two weapons test centers--a conclusion strongly refuted by the Navy.

The inspector general’s office first forwarded the audit to the Navy, which wrote a tough-toned rebuttal saying its findings and analysis were based on inaccurate data and incorrect assumptions.

Displeased with the Navy’s reaction, the inspector general’s office then sent the 57-page report to Defense Department officials who were weighing bases for consolidation or shuttering.

During this time, the report was kept secret until it was disclosed by The Times in November.

Ultimately, top Defense Department officials ruled that they could not consider the report’s findings in drawing up their official recommended base closures because the report was not based on properly verified data.

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The independent base-closure commission has no such constraints and can accept information from any source.

The audit was brought to the attention of the commission by Les Farrington, a commission staff member who has spent 20 years as a congressional auditor specializing in the field of testing military hardware.

“He knows everybody and anybody in the (test and evaluation) world and that’s how he knew of the report,” commission spokesman Wade Nelson said.

Navy officials said they believe that Farrington is friends with Steve Hughes, the lead auditor of the controversial report.

Nelson said commission policy does not permit Farrington to speak directly with reporters. But Nelson, after talking to Farrington, said the Navy has exaggerated the relationship.

“Les Farrington has known Steve Hughes for four or five years, professionally only,” Nelson said. “They are only professional acquaintances. They are not personal friends.”

Farrington is scheduled to visit Point Mugu and China Lake this week on a fact-finding mission. One or more commissioners will also tour the base in the weeks ahead.

In their presentation to the commissioners last week, staff members indicated they had reviewed the inspector general’s audit, but had not evaluated the Navy’s 44-page rebuttal because they had just received it.

Nemfakos said he was perplexed why staff members were not provided the rebuttal when they obtained the original report. “The rebuttal is usually part of the report,” he said.

During the exchange with staff members, commissioners raised several questions: How can the commission make sure the missile-test range is preserved? What about the staffing needed to run the sea range? What would happen to the adjacent Channel Islands Air National Guard Base, which relies on Point Mugu’s airfield to fly its planes?

“In the case of Point Mugu, every response was ‘I don’t know’ or ‘We don’t have the information,’ ” Nemfakos said. “I think when we provide those answers, the commissioners will agree with the secretary of the Navy and the Defense Department that the facility should be kept open.”

The commission’s staff members also told commissioners that merging Point Mugu with China Lake was recommended by a special group of Defense Department officials who studied the possible merger of test facilities among the Navy, Army and Air Force.

Yet the commission’s staff failed to note that this same joint cross-service group also recommended other sweeping changes, including combining China Lake with Eglin Air Force Base and Edwards Air Force Base with a naval base along the Patuxent River in Maryland.

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None of these proposals, including those involving Point Mugu, were embraced by military leaders as workable.

And Point Mugu’s backers said it was misleading to single out the proposal to consolidate Point Mugu and China Lake and offer it as a justification to explore closing the base.

Instead, Point Mugu supporters said it appears the inspector general’s audit provided the commission with a basic blueprint for closing the base.

The Navy takes issue with the audit’s premise that folding Point Mugu into China Lake would save millions of dollars a year by eliminating 1,986 jobs.

“They made an assumption that the folks at China Lake would be able to pick up the work as if they only work half a day,” said Adm. William E. Newman, a top Navy official who oversees weapons research.

The Navy also said the audit’s plan to move the sea-range operations to Port Hueneme was unmanageable. Navy officials said the radar and other equipment could not be squeezed into the former Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory, as proposed.

Furthermore, they said it would be dangerous to operate high-powered radar near the Port of Hueneme, with ships passing.

“That’s the same thing as taking the door off the microwave and watching your food cook,” said Capt. Roger Hull, vice commander of Point Mugu.

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Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have summoned Pentagon auditors to Capitol Hill this week to go over the report. They also have scheduled a meeting with Navy officials to work up a defense of Point Mugu for their testimony before the commissioners.

A local task force is also gearing up to take on the audit at a commission hearing in San Francisco in a few weeks.

“We are going to counter the (inspector general) report page by page, line by line, word by word,” said Cal Carrera, co-chairman of the BRAC ’95 Task Force.

The Navy will also get to address the commissioners before the panel’s July 1 deadline to deliver its recommendations to President Clinton.

“I view Point Mugu as a national asset,” Nemfakos said. “I intend to make as dynamic and forceful of a case as I can.”