Pentagon Promises New Base Closure Rules

Stung by allegations of White House meddling in base-closing issues, the Pentagon said Tuesday that it will fashion new, “squeaky clean” procedures to oversee decisions on whether McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and Kelly Air Force Base in Texas will get thousands of new jobs when the military pulls out.

Amid GOP charges that the administration has secretly maneuvered to try to ensure McClellan a huge Air Force maintenance contract, officials said the new procedures would ensure that no base wins an unfair advantage in the upcoming contract awards.

“A process is going to be set up to make sure this bidding is handled in the fairest possible way,” said Kenneth H. Bacon, the chief Pentagon spokesman.

The announcement came one week after the leak of a memo from acting Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters indicating that John Podesta, the deputy White House chief of staff, wanted the work to go to McClellan. Peters’ April 26 memo to Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre quotes Podesta as asking Hamre to urge defense contractor Lockheed Martin to bid for work at the base, so some of its 8,700 jobs would be preserved.

Republican leaders in Congress reacted with fury to the leak, saying it proved that the Clinton administration was still determined to honor a 1995 pledge to preserve jobs in the politically key state, although doing so broke the rules of a supposedly nonpolitical base-closing process.

“To my lights, this memo is a smoking gun,” said House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).

The hubbub over McClellan, due to close in 2001, threatens the Pentagon’s latest effort to sell another round of base closings to a balky Congress. A key vote on a new round is expected today or Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In the memo, Peters said Podesta wanted Hamre to talk to Lockheed Martin’s chief executive, Vance Coffman, about the work.

“The points he would like you to make are to encourage Lockheed Martin (1) to bid to win the work and (2) to perform the work at Sacramento,” Peters wrote, noting that Lockheed Martin was also considering doing the work in South Carolina.

“It is Sacramento’s uncertainty that is being translated into White House interest,” Peters wrote at the end of the memo.

The work, which consists of maintenance on KC-135 aircraft, has so far drawn interest only from Hill Air Force Base in Utah, which is contemplating undertaking the job in a partnership with Boeing.

Administration officials denied that any rules were broken by the memo, saying officials sought only to guarantee that there would be vigorous bidding for the aircraft maintenance work.

Joe Lockhart, deputy White House press secretary, dismissed the GOP denunciations as Republican “noise.”

Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said that Peters’ recommendation to Hamre in the memo represented “no change of policy” and that no one at the Pentagon had talked to Lockheed Martin about whether it was going to become a bidder.

But he acknowledged that the leak had been “awkward for everybody involved” and said Peters would withdraw from any role in the bidding for the work.

“Mr. Peters felt it made some sense for him to do this, to remove himself as a target of criticism here, and also to remove any question about the bidding process,” Bacon said. In Peters’ place, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force will act as chief acquisition officer.

Bacon said the “independent review authority” overseeing the contract would consist of one of several people outside the Pentagon with government procurement experience. Those officials have not yet been chosen.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have worked hard this year to gain congressional support for another round of base closings, which they contend is needed to pay for the acquisition of new weaponry.

Congress, remembering the political pain that followed the closings agreed to in 1995, has balked. But the widely publicized arguments of Cohen and the service chiefs have made that increasingly difficult, particularly for conservatives who are strong on defense issues.

Base-closing advocates say the Podesta memo has given those lawmakers cover to vote against another round.