Word: aspine
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When he sensed that his job was in danger, Aspin "put up quite a fight," says a White House aide. He bought some new suits creased in the right places and a few camera-friendly ties. By mid-November Clinton had quietly asked White House chief of staff Mack McClarty to come up with a list of potential replacements. Working with Vice President Al Gore, he assembled the names...
...strong, forward-looking national-security policy with bipartisan support. Though impressed by Clinton, Inman still hesitated until his old friend "Chris," as Inman calls Secretary of State Warren Christopher, stepped in with an appeal. When the deal was finally cut, the President was particularly pleased that word of Aspin's departure had not leaked. On Wednesday he remarked gleefully to an aide, "It is absolutely astonishing that this thing has held...
Inman did not ask Clinton for a specific dollar commitment on the defense budget. Long convinced that the Pentagon procurement process is bloated and slow, Inman strongly believes more prudent spending could achieve savings, and is likely to make procurement reform a major goal. Aspin never really got control over the budget process. Early this year he sent memos to service chiefs telling them to propose $11 billion in reductions in addition to cuts the Bush Administration had already made in the Defense Department for fiscal 1994. But when he introduced his first Pentagon budget in March, it failed...
Though Inman will be the first career military officer to become Defense Secretary since George Marshall left the job in 1951, the admiral might not be any more forthcoming with the military than Aspin was. That's because, matters of style aside, the outgoing Secretary took few positions that led to friction with Pentagon brass. Though he came to the job willing to entertain the idea that the U.S should be prepared to use force selectively to solve regional problems like Bosnia and Haiti, he quickly became a defender of General Powell's all-or-nothing view that in places...
...Pentagon had become accustomed to light supervision by civilians under Reagan and Bush, when Defense Department officials routinely had their staff work done by uniformed personnel of the Joint Chiefs. Inman may be less likely than Aspin to fill Pentagon offices with former congressional aides. But if Inman's wise, he will fill posts more quickly. Aspin launched one of the major undertakings of his tenure, a "bottom up" review of military-force needs in the post-cold war era, even as dozens of high-level vacancies remained, including the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force...