Defense secretary says base closures would save billions

WASHINGTON -- The slumping economy may stiffen Congress's resistance to closing military bases, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the changes are necessary to save billions the military needs to spend elsewhere.

In an interview, Rumsfeld said Americans must understand that if the military is forced to keep open unneeded bases, it will be starved of money it needs to modernize.

Many politicians oppose closing bases because it can hurt local economies. Rumsfeld dismissed their concerns.

"Life's hard," he said. "Yeah, it might" be more difficult to sell in Congress now that the economic boom is over. "But first of all, the economy's still growing, it's not in the dumps. And second, national security is darned important."

Second time around

Rumsfeld, now 69 and serving as Pentagon chief for the second time, spoke Friday from his office overlooking the Potomac River. His first stint as defense secretary was in 1975-1977.

In the 45-minute interview, he disclosed that he intends to announce this week a plan for substantially reducing the Pentagon bureaucracy by combining some of the civilian and military staffs in the armed services, reducing layers of civilian management and making across-the-board cuts in headquarters staffs.

Rumsfeld indicated the reductions would be less than 10 percent. He declined to give a specific figure or estimate how much could be saved.

'Crude' cutting

The across-the-board cutbacks would mirror the "mindless, crude" reductions institutions sometimes are compelled to make out of economic necessity, Rumsfeld said. He said he would take special care to ensure that truly vital functions are not eliminated.

Rumsfeld is looking at a wide range of ways to reduce the cost of running the Pentagon's far-flung operations, not just because he believes it makes sense but because the political reality is that defense budgets are not going to grow enough to meet all of the military's most critical needs.

In the past, the Pentagon has taken one of two approaches to paring bases: close them and sell the property after investing huge sums to clean up the environmental damage they had incurred in decades of use; or realign them by shifting people from several smaller bases to one large one.

This time, Rumsfeld said, the Pentagon is proposing a wider variety of options, including:

Mothballing some bases. He called this "pickling" -- to stop using the base but keep the property. This avoids the expense of environmental cleanup and keeps the base available for use in a national emergency. Taking this approach could save "a bucket of dollars," he said.

Close only part of a base.

Mothball part of a base and keep the rest open.

Move people from high-rent office space onto bases that have extra room.

Keep a base open but lease part of it rather than selling it.

Whatever the approach, Rumsfeld said, the goal should be to make it as simple and painless as possible.