As far as the Spokane area is concerned, the latest round of military base closures lost its urgency as an issue in May. That’s when the Defense Department announced its list of proposed shutdowns and it didn’t include Fairchild Air Force Base.

It would mean a loss of some 200 base jobs, yes, but the military installation itself would remain — with its considerable economic oomph. “Forward Fairchild,” the chorus of local voices that had been singing the base’s accolades, could take satisfaction in the accomplishment. Spokane could relax.

Not so in Connecticut, where the submarine base at Groton found itself in the path of a Pentagon torpedo. Connecticut companies had just lost out on a major defense contract, and now the sub base closure represented a severe economic blow measured in multiple billions of dollars. In a process where lobbying was supposed to be irrelevant, Connecticut dispatched a fleet of retired admirals to tell the Base Realignment and Closure Commission why Sub Marine Base New London should be deleted from the list of closures.

On Tuesday, Connecticut was celebrating. The BRAC Commission, which takes its final vote this weekend and must send its recommendation to the White House by Sept. 8, had spared the submarine base.

On its own, that development might not discredit the BRAC process’s supposed immunity to political arm-twisting. Nor would the bipartisan but clearly political lawsuit being filed by Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and Republican Sen. Rick Santorum over National Guard units recommended for deletion in Pennsylvania.

A more damning development, however, comes from Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and former Navy secretary, whose distress over base shutdowns in northern Virginia wasn’t confined to the process. Warner, who’s also a Marine veteran of Korea and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, leveled sharp accusations at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally.

The Washington Post quoted Warner Wednesday as saying Rumsfeld and a key aide, Raymond F. DuBois, maneuvered the realignment and closure process with the goal of moving thousands of Defense jobs away from the Washington, D.C., area. That, Warner noted, is not consistent with the stated principles behind BRAC, namely maximizing effectiveness and efficiency in the way American armed forces are deployed.

As early as two years before the May 13 release of proposed closures, Warner said, memos were circulating in the Pentagon calling for a sharp cutback in military functions within 100 miles of the capital. In deciding where to reduce or remove forces, the Defense Department showed a deliberate prejudice against office space in the District of Columbia region.

Obviously, Warner has a constituency to protect, but the public way in which he assailed a fellow Republican gives his concerns the weight of more than mere parochialism. This is the fifth round of BRAC closures. Before there is a sixth, the Pentagon has some credibility damage to repair.