Congressmen Fly Over Disputed Training Site

Two members of the U.S. House National Security Committee vowed to force completion of the expanded Idaho Training Range for Mountain Home Air Force Base.

They accompanied Idaho Reps. Michael Crapo and Helen Chenoweth Friday on a helicopter tour of the Owyhee desert.

Insisting pilot lives are at stake, U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said he will push for hearings before the House panel and ask that it issue a subpoena for an environmental impact statement that has been stalled within the Clinton administration since October.

The training range plan has been on hold since Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said the range would not be approved until a supplemental statement addressing concerns by the Shoshone-Paiutes, conservationists and hunters was written.

Hunter is the third-ranking member of the House National Security Committee and chairs its acquisitions subcommittee.

Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., said he will play the publicity card. He will draw on his military credibility as a top naval aviator and one of only two American flying aces during the Vietnam War.

“This training range is about bringing our pilots home alive,” Hunter said. “That for me is the key.”

But conservation groups called that a ludicrous argument. Because Mountain Home has been spared from the recent rounds of base closures, the training range no longer can be sold as a way to preserve Idaho’s Air Force base, they said.

“The Air Force will say whatever they can, to whoever they can to get this thing going,” said Craig Gehrke, Idaho director of The Wilderness Society.

The two Blackhawk Army helicopters flew about 8,000 feet above the ground and avoided contact with the Owyhee canyonlands. Conservationists worried the rotor noise would stress bighorn sheep now lambing in the canyons.