2 Military Schools Pass Test

The panel deciding the fate of U.S. military bases voted Thursday to spare two California institutes but went along with a Pentagon recommendation to close the storied Walter Reed Army Medical Center, ending a century of care to presidents, soldiers and visiting world leaders.

The decisions to preserve the Defense Language Institute and the Naval Postgraduate School, both in Monterey, came as the independent commission met for a second day of votes on the first overhaul of the nation’s military installations in 10 years.

Thursday’s action by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission buoyed supporters of the Monterey schools but disappointed officials in Washington who opposed the move of the famed military hospital’s staff and services to sites in suburbs of the capital.

The panel is being watched closely by local and state officials, military commanders and the Bush administration, especially after it stunned the defense establishment this week by overturning a Pentagon recommendation to close two major New England bases, in effect overriding a key portion of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s blueprint to restructure the military.

Those reversals have intensified speculation about a decision expected today on a politically charged Pentagon recommendation to shutter the Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, one of two U.S. bases for the B-1 bomber. That planned closure is among the most contentious still to be considered, along with an Air Force plan to revamp the Air National Guard.

Because of the pending decision on the Ellsworth base, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) spent time Thursday buttonholing commissioners in the foyer of the suburban Washington hotel where they are meeting as if he were campaigning for reelection.

In a sense, he was.

Thune unseated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004 in part by promising that he would do a better job protecting the base, which had been targeted for closure in the past. Ellsworth’s shutdown would increase his estrangement from Republican leaders and spur criticism back home.

But Thune and Republican South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds, predicting the votes of the nine commissioners as best they could, expressed confidence.

“We have an idea about how some of these folks are going to come down,” Thune said, without elaborating. “I think we’ve made the arguments. We consistently are in contact with commissioners. We’re hopeful.”

The South Dakotans have insisted that the state that is home to Mt. Rushmore is capable of taking unusual measures to spare the base from closure.

“In this state,” Rounds told the Omaha World-Herald recently, “when we look at a mountain in front of us, we carve it.”

In other instances, the base closure panel has shown its willingness to reject the Defense Department’s proposals, voting to leave open two major Northeastern naval bases that the Pentagon had wanted to close -- the Naval Submarine Base New London at Groton, Conn., and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

The panel also voted to shutter some bases that the Defense Department had sought to keep open, on the grounds that Rumsfeld had “substantially deviated” from the law guiding base closures.

Some cases confronting commission members were complicated. All were contentious, leaving even some commissioners puzzling over whether they had made the right choice.

“I honestly do not know if we got it right or not,” said retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., a commission member, referring to several decisions.

In addition to closing Walter Reed and shifting its 5,600 jobs from the nation’s capital to the Maryland suburbs and to Ft. Belvoir, Va., the panel approved the Pentagon’s cost-saving plans to combine medical, educational and training programs.

The commission also agreed with the Defense Department’s plan to move 20,000 military and civilian defense jobs from leased offices near the Pentagon in Virginia to outlying areas, largely to lessen security threats.

Officials in Washington were upset by the decisions. “We are extremely disappointed to lose this historic military installation,” Mayor Anthony A. Williams said of Walter Reed hospital. “This loss will significantly affect residents, employees and neighboring jurisdictions.”

The base-closing process is part of the fifth round of closings that began in 1988. The Pentagon issued its recommendations in May, proposing to cut more than 5% of the nation’s base capacity and save $48.8 billion over 20 years.

The commission, appointed by President Bush in consultation with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, is charged with reviewing the Pentagon’s recommendations and reporting to Bush by Sept. 8. The president can forward the panel’s report to Congress or send it back to the commission, but the final reorganization plan must go to Congress by Nov. 7.

Advocates for Ellsworth and other bases hoped to share the good fortune of Monterey. The Pentagon had not recommended that the institutes there be shut down, but commission members last month questioned whether they duplicated services provided elsewhere, and threatened to vote to close them.

In opting to keep the schools open, commissioners also voted to establish a governing board to eliminate duplication.

“We’re guardedly happy,” Defense Language Institute spokeswoman Patrician Ryan said. “Meanwhile, we’ll go on with our mission as before: training language students. We did it yesterday, we’re doing it today, and we’ll do it tomorrow.”

Monterey Deputy City Manager Fred Cohn said officials had shuttled back and forth from Washington all summer to keep an eye on the panel’s progress.

“This is good news all around,” he said Thursday.

The Defense Department has nine commands based in Monterey. They provide 10,000 jobs and pump an estimated $1 billion annually into the local economy. The Defense Language Institute has been in Monterey since 1946.

The panel also voted to approve the Pentagon’s plan to transfer some of its functions from Naval Air Weapons Station at Point Mugu, part of Naval Base Ventura County, to the Navy station 150 miles inland at China Lake, moving as many as 2,250 military and civilian government jobs and about 2,760 private-sector jobs.

Times staff writer John Glionna in San Francisco contributed to this report.