Word: aspin
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...more than 20 years, Congressman and military wonk Les Aspin fantasized about becoming Secretary of Defense. Now, as he sits behind the huge desk in room 3E880, the top office in the Pentagon, Aspin's dream job has become something of a nightmare. His problem is in the timing. Rather than building an empire as his cold-war predecessors did, he has the task of bringing the Pentagon down to size and opening it up to diversity. That means smaller budgets, fewer troops, less new hardware, a streamlined bureaucracy and the possible integration of gays into the service. Making matters...
...anyone has the knowledge and nerve to pick his way through the minefield, Aspin is the one -- provided his health holds up. The Secretary, 54, suffers from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart malady causing shortness of breath and dizziness. Nine days after doctors installed a pacemaker in his chest, the irrepressible Pentagon chief was back in form last Saturday. Looking wan but energetic, the Defense Secretary showed his mastery of detail as he briefed reporters on the Administration's proposed 1994 defense budget of $263.4 billion, down $10 billion from the current year. The budget is the first installment in Clinton...
Even before that issue comes to a head, Aspin will face congressional scrutiny on another highly emotional issue. This week the Senate Armed Services Committee will begin hearings on the practical implications of Clinton's proposal to allow gays in the military. The hearings will provide a prominent stage for committee chairman Sam Nunn, who opposes much of Clinton's defense policy, especially on gays. The President stumbled into a faux pas on the issue during a press conference last week when he said, in response to a reporter's question, that he would consider separating members of the military...
Like other politicians whose districts are now threatened by Aspin's cuts, Dellums is mounting an effort to save his local bases. His argument: the Alameda installations, especially the nuclear-carrier berths, serve a specific purpose, and it would make no sense to close them if the military had to build new ones somewhere else to do similar work. The Pentagon analysis, Dellums says, "fails to take into consideration the synergism of having those bases clustered together...
...until now, Dellums' military posture certainly hasn't hurt him in his district, which he last won by 72% of the vote. That is partly because he succeeded Aspin as Armed Services Committee chairman and voters believed he would be in a position to prevent any of the Pentagon's ire from hitting close to home. "He's always been antimilitary, but right now we're looking at him as one of our last hopes to save the installation," says Mark Hutchings, a fire inspector at the Mare Island Naval Complex shipyard in Vallejo...