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Three BRAC members to attend Eielson hearing
http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7244~2909938,00.html
By SAM BISHOP News-Miner Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON--At least three members of the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission will attend a June 15 regional hearing in Fairbanks, Sen. Ted Stevens' office confirmed Tuesday.
Commission Chairman Anthony Principi will be joined by commissioners Phil Coyle and Jim Hansen.
Stevens spokeswoman Courtney Schikora Boone said a fourth member may join the group. That commissioner's name was not available Tuesday afternoon.
The nine-member commission is pondering the merits of the Department of Defense's proposed changes to the U.S. military base structure. The department's proposal would remove all fighter jets and most of the 3,000 Air Force personnel from Eielson Air Force Base, 25 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
The Fairbanks hearing will be the first such regional event held by the commission. Two other hearings scheduled earlier in other parts of the country have been canceled or delayed because of a delay in the release of information from the Department of Defense.
A Senate committee issued subpoenas to the Pentagon on Tuesday asking for more information on the decisions to shut down and realign military installations.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat, authorized the subpoenas for the panel.
The subpoenas were served by facsimile late Tuesday.
The legal move comes after weeks of complaints from members of Congress and state officials about the slow release of information from the Pentagon and the lack of backup material being provided. Officials have also objected that much information is classified and therefore cannot be discussed in public or at any of the upcoming hearings on the newest round of proposed base closures.
"The department knew this day was coming," Collins said. "There is absolutely no excuse for the department not to have completed the declassification process by now. That's just another example of foot dragging."
The committee also is seeking additional e-mails and internal Defense Department memos underlining the decisions.
The Pentagon will have until noon Monday to provide the information.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly said they are releasing the information as quickly as they can. They are in the process of declassifying much of the information so it can be released publicly.
Two of the commissioners coming to Fairbanks have Alaska connections.
Principi was secretary of veterans affairs during President Bush's first term. Prior to that, he headed a medical services company and was an executive with Lockheed Martin. After leaving the Department of Veterans Affairs in January this year, he briefly worked for Pfizer Corp., the pharmaceutical manufacturer, before taking the commission chairmanship.
Principi served as the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee's chief attorney in the mid-1980s when Gov. Frank Murkowski was an Alaska senator and served as committee chairman. Murkowski said Monday he had talked about Eielson with Principi.
Coyle, currently a senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information, has been an outspoken critic of the missile defense system, which has interceptors based at Fort Greely, 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
He served as assistant secretary of defense for test and evaluation during President Clinton's administration and before that served as a top administrator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1971, he directed the Spartan nuclear warhead test on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
Hansen served as a Utah congressman from 1981 to 2003.
At the Fairbanks hearing, the commissioners will listen to Stevens and University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton, a retired Army general, advocate for a continued significant Air Force presence at Eielson.
This week, the Defense Department released several large new files with information on its proposal to remove those fighters and personnel.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski's spokesman, Elliott Bundy, said the new files appear to contain the meeting transcripts that could reveal the reasoning behind the Eielson cutback.
"That's what we've been looking for the whole time," he said.
However, the information isn't easily deciphered, Bundy said.
"You've got to wade through it," he said.
Jim Dodson, chairman of the Save Eielson task force in Fairbanks, said he received 20 gigabytes of digital data from the Air Force that included plenty of spread sheets and graphs but no detailed minutes from meetings where the decision to realign Eielson were made.
Defense Department officials, in testimony and in the information released to date, have said they want to save money by consolidating Eielson's fighters with others at Lower 48 bases. Eielson is an expensive place to operate, they have said.
Also, under a revised structure, Alaska's airspace could provide more training opportunities for jet pilots from around the country, they said.
The department, in response to the initial criticism about delays, opened a secure reading room last week at the Pentagon in which congressional staff with security clearances could read the unreleased material.
Murkowski's aide Isaac Edwards reviewed the material late last week. Bundy said it was helpful but still cumbersome because of the volume.
The department also briefed Stevens' aide Sid Ashworth on the classified material.
"It was effective to some extent in providing answers to some questions we've had, but it didn't answer all of our questions and it in turn created more questions," Boone said.
The local task force will not ask the commission to delay the June 15 hearing, Dodson said.
"We like going first," he said.
As the first hearing, it will attract national media coverage, Dodson said. He also expects representatives from other communities to attend.
Dodson said the Defense Department recommendations contain enough misinformation to fuel a rebuttal.
"We have a great story to tell about why Eielson fits into the military's nation defense plans," Dodson said. "We hope we'll receive more information to back up that story, but if we don't, the story isn't going to go away."
The Pentagon is repeating the same mistakes it made after both world wars, Dodson said.
"They are ignoring the future threats from Asia," Dodson said.
Gov. Murkowski said he has also been working behind the scenes to defend Eielson.
"They're either reluctant to release the information or they're just declassifying it in bits and pieces," Murkowski said of the Defense Department.
The BRAC Commission did not recommend the cutback at Eielson. The Air Force suggested it and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made it part of the Pentagon's recommendations to the commission in mid-May. The whole process started when Congress in 2002 mandated this fifth round of base restructuring.
After the BRAC Commission holds its hearings and visits affected bases, it will modify the Defense Department's recommendations and forward a revised plan to President Bush by Sept. 8.
Bush will have two weeks to either accept the plan in its entirety, reject it or ask for changes. If he accepts the plan, either immediately or after changes, he will give it to Congress. Congress then will have 45 legislative days to reject the plan or it goes into effect. No congressional amendments are permitted.
Staff writer R.A. Dillon and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached at (202) 662-8721 or sbishop@newsminer.com .