SELC reveals OLF smoking gun

There was no judge on the stand, no Navy brass on hand, no opponents filling a courtroom. In the world of litigation, Monday was just another day of filing reams of legal briefs among Navy attorneys and two legal teams suing to halt permanently the plans for a Washington County outlying landing field.

One brief, a motion for summary judgment, if granted, would stop OLF plans without completion of a civil trial in U.S. District Court in Raleigh.

Contained within the 74-page motion filed by Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys is a summary of more than 200,000 pages of Navy documents released under court order.

"It was like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Michelle Nowlin, SELC attorney, "but there were lots of needles. ... The documents paint a compelling picture that the process was rigged from the beginning."

"They're busted," said Plymouth Mayor Brian Roth, a 10-year veteran Navy flight officer who has been a core member of the opposition.

Roth was among a number of people who burned the midnight oil Monday reading the 74-page brief.

"After reviewing over 200,000 pages of Navy documents that reveal how the Navy made the decision to construct an OLF at the proposed site," said Derb Carter, SELC senior attorney, "it is clear that this decision was a political one and that the Navy did not meet their legal requirements to objectively review the need for a new OLF and the environmental impacts of the project. ... Specifically, these documents pull the curtain back to reveal that the Navy made a predetermined political decision to construct an OLF."

Carter cited a document from a key official noting the Navy had to "reverse engineer" its studies to justify the decision to build an OLF at the Washington County site.

The descriptive phrase came from former Navy Cmdr. John Robusto, now a civilian Navy adviser. Robusto was one of the principals who spent the summer of 2003 preparing the Navy's final environmental impact statement on the East Coast basing of new squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets. During that time, the brief alleges, Navy documents show he complained of pressure from the highest levels of the military branch to "fabricate" operational reasons that would justify breaking up the 10 squadrons of jets, all originally slated for Naval Air Station Oceana.

Navy documents acknowledge that "splitting the Atlantic Fleet (Super Hornet) community among more than one base is undesirable." The decision to base at least two squadrons in North Carolina, argues the brief, was a "pay off" to induce the state to accept an OLF.

NAS Oceana and its practice carrier field, Fentress, say documents, "have adequate capacity to accommodate all aircraft," a contention the Navy later reversed, contending those facilities provide "degraded training." The revision, argues the SELC, was based on "the political reality" of a "conflicted host community," a community that has enjoyed the prosperity of a large military presence but long has chafed under -- and sued over -- the noise of jet fighters.

The split decision had been opposed by Virginia Sen. John Warner, Republican chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, who, contends the brief, sought to have the Navy supplement its draft environmental impact statement "to amend the preferred alternative recommendations to 10 squadrons at NAS Oceana."

When the split-siting decision was announced, the brief contends Warner was "furious," complaining that the decision was not strategically but politically driven.

Meanwhile, Adm. Robert J. Natter, then Atlantic Fleet commander, was working to placate his NAS Oceana neighbors, contends the brief. He told the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce the OLF concept resulted "precisely because of community concerns over jet noise," a statement that also would be de-emphasized later.

"It started with no OLF," she said, "and then we need an OLF for noise mitigation, and then we need an OLF for surge (intense mobilization training), and then the latest shot over the bow was we need it for national security and to fight the global war on terrorism."

As mid-level officials continued to communicate on how best to deal with fallout from the political decision, Robusto received an e-mail, stating, "I gather we're still struggling on how to address the OLF distance issue (the maximum 50-miles-from-homebase limit waxed and waned) to avoid a supplemental EIS. ... (T)he OLF siting logic is confusing. ... I have a very uneasy feeling about our criteria and the process."

Robusto replied, "Very uneasy. Up until the preferred OLF site was chosen, everything made sense and all decisions could be logically explained. Now we have to reverse engineer the whole process to justify the outcome."

According to the brief, the politics of split-basing permeated the chain of command, reaching the Secretary of the Navy's office: "Mr. (Hansford) Johnson (then assistant secretary) believes that a split-siting option ... is necessary. ... I also understand that Sen. Warner, Sen. (Elizabeth) Dole and Mr. Johnson are beginning a dialogue ... (and) are attempting to derive a political win-win for VA and NC," wrote the chief of naval operations.

Johnson, as acting Navy secretary in September 2003, issued the record of decision formally calling for the OLF to be placed in Washington County, with two Super Hornet squadrons to come to Cherry Point Marine Air Station in Havelock.

However, one group appears to have been left out of OLF site decisions -- the pilots. The brief contends that, unlike the decision-makers, fighter pilots did not rank the Washington County site as their preferred choice. Its distance from NAS Oceana was listed as a drawback along with "potential BASH issues."

Bird-aircraft strike hazards rank high among the causes of aircraft losses and pilot deaths, one of the issues at the core of the civil lawsuit.

As the political landscape continued to shift and civil lawsuits were filed, the Navy placed many key personnel -- including Robusto -- off-limits to the news media. The documents turned over to opposition attorneys, according to the brief, paint a picture of Navy officials -- from the top down, said Nowlin -- working to shore up reasons for choosing Washington County. In violating some of its own site-screening criteria, the brief says, officials found it necessary to explain Navy interpretations of its own criteria.

Among those environmental criteria are "avoidance of extensive wetland complexes" and "public interest areas," including wildlife refuges and wilderness areas.

The Washington County site is bounded on the west by state-owned Van Swamp Gameland and on the east by Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Flight paths dictated by the airfield's layout would result in jets flying at the border of, and sometimes over, both areas, the Navy later conceded.

Dan Cecchini, the Navy's civilian environmental planner, indicated he interpreted the context of the Navy criteria to mean the Navy did not want to "directly place an OLF in the middle of a national wildlife refuge or a national park."

However, Navy officials earlier told the Daily News that a suggested alternative facility on Cedar Island was unsuitable because it was adjacent to "an inviolate wildlife sanctuary."

At the local level, such revisions sparked speculation and many home-brewed conspiracy theories, but Plymouth Town Councilwoman Mary Ann Byers summarized the crux of residents' suspicions:

"We knew all along there had to be something like this going on," she said, "but we just didn't have the hard facts to back it up. Now we got the hard facts. It just didn't make any sense. They wanted it too bad. Nothing made any sense about it."

Nowlin said it took "a large team" to work through the documents, provided by the Navy in a format that allowed no word searches.

"It took sifting through an awful lot of material," she said, "but, basically, I think this validates what people had felt from the very beginning. It just is illogical that the Navy could consider putting an OLF in a place like this. There was no logical reason for it. Everybody knew that; everybody could see that. It was just a matter of trying to figure out why, what was the rationale."

I've got a place on the south side of the river. Not impacted as much as those on the north, but at the end of the day its a lost cause. I'd hope that they wouldn't put the OLF there, but Warner will win, no matter how well the anti-OLF lawyers do in court.

Over the course of three years, I could never get a straight answer to the simple question of "why there."

This is a smoking gun, an exceedingly rare smoking gun, exposing the pure politics as entirely the only reason, indicting the "process" and bringing the Navy's basing mechanism out into the sunlight. It's some hard ammo.

RR, you may or may not recall how I just happened to be at an R meeting whose featured speaker was a certain highly respected Member of Congress, just after I read the Navy's EIS, which, as it turns out, is a fable.

I told him, these are my neighbors, they are among the most patriotic lovers of their country, and they are more than willing to do the right thing if they can be told "why"

Try as I might, I still never received a sufficient answer to that question, until now.

Yes Prospero I do remember that meeting. It was either the first or second time I met you. We were in agreement then, and we are now. Through hard work and prayer we can and are getting the answers to our questions, and we can beat this thing I believe.

On Thanksgiving, we should all think about all those families who are still on their family land today. As opposed to a landing strip that shouldn't be there anyway. Let's get our mind off the turkey for a few minutes and just thank God for all he does for us. And that some of us, like you and me Prospero, never had to worry about losing our family land. God Blessed us, and we should be extra Thankful today.

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