BRAC flexed its muscles

ARLINGTON, Va. – Usually it’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who does the intimidating.

But it looks like the federal panel now weighing his proposal to close or restructure dozens of major military bases didn’t get that memo.

Over three days of voting in the basement ballroom of a hotel a few miles from the Pentagon, the Base Realignment and Closure commission rejected several of the Defense Department’s highest profile recommendations and eviscerated the supporting arguments.

On Friday, when the commission pulled Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota off the closure gallows, the state’s three national lawmakers effusively praised the nine commissioners who might well have been their firing squad.

“I think we’ve seen here that this commission truly is independent,” said South Dakota’s Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth.

The word “independence” was used at least a dozen times in interviews with South Dakota’s delegation.

The commission, a mix of retired military officers, former Cabinet members and ex-lawmakers, is considering closing or restructuring 67 major bases and hundreds of smaller installations as part of an effort to save nearly $50 billion over 20 years and modernize the military.

The commission concluded that the Pentagon plan to close Ellsworth, move its planes to Texas, and cut thousands of jobs wouldn’t make the country safer or save as much money as the Pentagon said.

“We have no savings,” said commissioner Harold Gehman, a retired U.S. Navy admiral. “We’re essentially moving the airplanes from one very, very good base to another very, very good base.”

The panel also found fault with plans to close the Navy’s submarine base in New London, Conn., and the historic Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, both of which escaped the closure list Wednesday.

The commissioners praised both bases’ military value and were skeptical about Pentagon estimates that closing them would save a combined $12 billion.

Although the economic impact was not a prime consideration, some of the base closures that would have hurt local communities the most were reversed.

So did the commission overflex its authority?

“We don’t think so,” said commissioner Sam Skinner, the gravel-voiced former chief of staff for the elder President Bush. “But maybe they do over at the Pentagon.”

The Pentagon has yet to weigh in on the commission’s actions other than to issue a statement saying it had no comment.

The commission is supposed to change the Pentagon’s recommendations only when it can show that they “substantially deviated” from half a dozen strict criteria, most importantly national security.

According to commission staff, the panel is running a bit below the standard BRAC rejection rate of about 15 percent of the Pentagon’s recommendations. This round of base closures is the fifth since 1988 and is larger than all previous four rounds combined.

By Friday afternoon, commissioners had rejected about 9 percent of the Pentagon’s recommendations with about three-quarters of the process complete.

For all the commission’s confidence, it stumbled Friday as it dealt with the Pentagon’s complex and contentious reorganization of the Air National Guard. Commissioners took numerous long breaks for consultations on how to handle the legally contested reshuffling of Air Guard planes.

Even before the voting, several governors already had sued, or threatened to, to keep their planes, which can be used for natural disasters or other emergencies.

A federal judge in Philadelphia on Friday ruled that the Pentagon didn’t have the authority to dissolve a Pennsylvania Air Guard unit as it proposed. The panel voted to close the Willow Grove Naval Air Station but not deactivate the air unit there.

If President Bush doesn’t like the final list of closures he is given by the commission in the coming weeks, he can send it back with recommendations for one round of changes.

If the commission refuses and Bush holds his ground, the process would automatically dissolve.

The White House has declined to comment until the commission submits its final report, which is due by Sept. 8.

Bush has been a strong supporter of the base closing process and Rumsfeld’s plan to transform the military from a force still geared toward fighting the defunct Soviet empire to one capable of swiftly reacting to multiple threats.

“It’s just my opinion,” said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. “But I don’t think the president wants to go back to square one.”