Veterans Chief Said to Be on His Way Out

In the face of withering criticism from veterans groups, Togo West Jr. has informed President Clinton that he is job-hunting and will soon step down as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, White House and congressional sources said.

West’s impending departure comes after Vice President Al Gore personally looked into complaints lodged by veterans groups against West, whom they portrayed as an ineffectual and uninterested advocate for veterans, sources said Tuesday.

Top White House aides said that Gore did not engineer West’s departure, but other sources confirmed that the vice president met recently with West’s critics and then took a direct interest in the matter, talking with West personally.

Senior-level departures in the dwindling months of an administration are hardly surprising, but the vitriol surrounding West’s departure is unusual.

And it would leave the VA, at least temporarily, in the hands of Deputy Secretary Hershel W. Gober, a Clinton friend whose candidacy for the top job two years ago collapsed amid allegations that he had made unwanted sexual advances toward two women and that the inquiry into those charges was bungled.

West is on vacation and could not be reached Tuesday for comment. A senior VA spokesman said that, after checking with a top West aide, he had no information that West has decided to quit.

But several top presidential aides confirmed that West last week disclosed to the White House his intention to leave.

“He’s not in a hurry but he’s looking,” said one knowledgeable White House source, adding that West has expressed an interest in shepherding through the legislative process the VA’s budget for next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

It was with high expectations that West took over 1 1/2 years ago as head of the VA, the second-largest of the 14 Cabinet departments, with 250,000 employees and a $38-billion annual budget.

As Army secretary, West had earned high marks for presiding over the Army’s investigation of a variety of sex scandals, which began with the uncovering of sexual abuse of female recruits at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., and included sexual harassment charges against former Sgt. Maj. Gene C. McKinney, the Army’s top enlisted man.

At the VA, however, West quickly incurred the wrath of many veterans after the agency’s budget took a huge hit in the landmark balanced-budget act of 1997, which Clinton negotiated with congressional Republicans.

In that agreement, the VA’s spending for health care--making up half its entire budget--was “flat-lined” for five years. With overall health care costs still rising, that amounts to a sharp reduction in spending.

“West was a good soldier and he didn’t put up a big stink,” one informed source said.

Veterans service organizations, however, protested vehemently, directing most of their anger at West.

Their enmity peaked in late February, when the House Veterans Affairs Committee revealed that proposed funding for veterans health care in the Clinton budget was more than $1 billion below the amount requested by the VA.

“People were not happy with him [West] because he didn’t step forward to champion veterans--and that’s his job,” one activist in veterans affairs said.

West also was criticized by the veterans groups for his recent appearances on Capitol Hill to testify concerning the VA’s budget.

“You appeared ill-prepared, even disengaged, leaving the impression that you were disinterested in the VA’s obligation to meet the needs of America’s veterans,” David W. Gorman, executive director of the Washington-based Disabled American Veterans, wrote to West.

A month later, Gorman, joined by representatives of several other veterans groups, met with Gore to vent their complaints about West.

“The meeting was about the budget, about how disappointed we were in the administration and about how we hoped things would get better,” Gorman said Tuesday.

“The vice president asked specifically what’s been the problem the last year,” he continued. “Well, there was only one answer: a lack of pro-active leadership.”

In the meeting with Gore, the advocates pointedly referred to the political clout of the nation’s 25 million veterans and urged the vice president--who was an Army journalist in Vietnam--to “put veterans back on the radar screen,” according to Gorman.

He said that Gore vowed to “take a look into what could be done.”

One Capitol Hill Democrat familiar with the workings of the VA said he is not surprised that Gore would get involved in such a matter.

“He doesn’t want this problem to exist a year from now,” the congressional source said, referring to Gore’s presidential campaign.

West, 57, a North Carolina native, served as general counsel of the Navy Department during the Carter administration and later rose to become deputy Defense secretary.