Pentagon Policy Deputy's Move Aimed At Bolstering Rumsfeld's Hand

Inside The Pentagon | June 20, 2002 | Elaine M. Grossman

[Stand Watch Listen]

This week's Pentagon leak that Stephen Cambone would become the new head of program analysis and evaluation (PA&E) is an attempt to rectify a problem that has nagged at the Bush Pentagon since at least last summer: Independent, incisive analysis of military programs has not been consistently available from the secretary's civil service staff, in the view of several senior defense officials. They say that has thwarted Rumsfeld's ability to dramatically "transform" the armed services to meet changing threats and to defend such moves on Capitol Hill.

There has been talk of replacing Barry Watts, the current PA&E director, since shortly after he took office. That's because Watts -- just days into his tenure last summer -- oversaw a briefing to Rumsfeld that, to many observers, simply turned the defense secretary's reform objectives on their head.

Rumsfeld was reportedly infuriated when, during last year's Quadrennial Defense Review, Watts and his team showed it would take a whopping 34 Navy aircraft carriers (up from the current 12) if the defense secretary truly wanted forces deployed around the globe capable of defeating adversaries with only minimal reinforcement, as QDR planning documents called for. At the same time, the Watts briefing said, the 10-division Army could be reduced to as few as two active divisions (Inside the Pentagon, July 19, 2001, p1).

The PA&E recommendations were yet another setback in a quadrennial review process that had already largely fallen into disarray, defense sources said at the time. The briefing was quickly withdrawn and replaced. But even as the QDR moved toward its conclusion in August and September of 2001, PA&E's ability to perform reliable analysis on issues as a counterpoint to the mammoth analytical staffs at each of the services was limited, thwarting Rumsfeld's ability to embrace major change, according to some defense officials.

While the defense secretary sometimes knew what changes he wanted, he could not get his staff to marshal airtight arguments he could take to Capitol Hill, these sources say.

Cambone, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's longtime aide and principal deputy under secretary for policy, told reporters at a breakfast this week that he aims to provide such a function for Rumsfeld, whose immense trust he appears to have retained despite a rocky relationship with senior military leaders.

Calling PA&E the "connective tissue" between defense policy guidance -- which Cambone has taken the lead in drafting -- and specific programmatic outcomes, he said it is "critical to [Rumsfeld] that he have an organization there that he is able to turn to, to get the kinds of information that he's looking for."

Planning for this change over the past couple months has actually focused on moving almost all of PA&E under Cambone's policy shop, meaning he would retain his old title as well as take on a new one, a senior Pentagon official told ITP on June 19. This highly unusual action might also involve splitting PA&E's Cost Accounting Improvement Group -- which independently estimates weapons program costs -- and assigning it to either the Pentagon comptroller or acquisition czar, this official said.

At the breakfast, Cambone did not address whether he would leave his policy functions behind in taking over PA&E, which currently falls under the Pentagon comptroller's office. A Defense Department spokesman did not immediately return a reporter's call for clarification.

Pentagon officials told ITP it appeared the current PA&E leaders, Watts and his deputy, Thomas Hone, were largely kept out of the loop in the months of planning.

The role of the analytical directorate will change slightly with its new leadership, Cambone said at the June 19 Defense Writers' Group breakfast. Over the past 18 months, "as the guidance has become clearer [and] the strategy has emerged, the things that we need to do have become clearer," he said. As a result, "the role for PA&E will shift at bit."

Given Rumsfeld's focus on developing joint capabilities across the services, Cambone may discard his directorate's traditional organization plan, which is based on fairly compartmentalized, service-by-service functions, he said.

"How do you establish an analysis of joint operations and assess what are always service-based programs in the context of joint capabilities?" Cambone asked. "That's a bit of a change in emphasis."

Although Cambone's official position in the Bush Pentagon has been the deputy policy chief, Rumsfeld has tapped him for a wide variety of other leadership functions. Those began with a stint as the defense secretary's "special assistant" on last year's quadrennial review -- he largely shepherded the study, raising hackles along the way for what many military officers perceived as an abrasive style -- and led to a significant expansion of his advisory duties earlier this year.

Sister publication Inside the Army reported in January that Cambone's portfolio had grown to include "strategy formation and policy planning; alternative force structure and capabilities assessment; military requirements generation and oversight; transformation of the armed forces; contingency planning and assessment; regional policy formulation and planning; Planning, Programming and Budgeting System issues; and the integration of DOD plans and policy with overall national security objectives."

Against that backdrop, some observers are now questioning whether the post at PA&E -- which, unlike his policy position, does not require Senate confirmation -- is something of a demotion. One reporter asked Cambone this week whether Rumsfeld had assured him he could retain power, even if he evolved into something less of a lightning rod.

"I don't have any power," Cambone scoffed. "It is not, in the way that you are thinking about it, a less visible post. . . . It is an office that sits squarely between the planning side and the budgeting side in evaluating the programs." He also downplayed reports of friction between himself and military officials.

Cambone was asked if he anticipated future clashes with Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a longtime PA&E staff analyst who has widely circulated his views via the media and the Internet on issues ranging from the defense budget to fighter aircraft aging to the rise of terrorists and other non-national or "fourth-generation warfare" elements in the post-Cold War period (see related story). The new PA&E leader smiled and ducked the question, saying he did not know the controversial analyst.

Authorized in advance by the Pentagon, Spinney recently testified on his own views before a House subcommittee regarding what he believes are serious "mismatches" between Defense Department program plans and actual spending (ITP, June 6, p1). Although his work has attracted interest in the press and on Capitol Hill, little has been done by past administrations to either embrace or reject his work -- or even acknowledge it (ITP, Aug. 10, 1995, p1).

"I am not a rogue element," Spinney told ITP this week. "I was hired to do this kind of work."

He said he would welcome what may be a fresh opportunity "to be part of a process to help return PA&E to a constructive role: to provide independent analyses and evaluations of our problems."

The PA&E organization originated under Robert McNamara, when he led the Pentagon in the 1960s. Under its initial name, Systems Analysis, the directorate became widely hated for its attempts to reduce almost any issue to a mathematical or statistical problem. It later evolved into PA&E, part of which became an alternative voice to the highly technological solutions proposed elsewhere in the secretary's staff or by the services.

Over the years, though, PA&E's influence within the Pentagon has waned, as it has become widely viewed as providing relatively empty analysis, according to a wide range of critics -- including Spinney.

Cambone appears to see his role as reinvigorating the organization, giving it a more pivotal function in Rumsfeld's plan to prepare the military for future warfighting.

Cambone's new move is "consistent with [Rumsfeld's] desire to keep the transformation process moving forward," he said. The upcoming budget plan, which spans the years 2004 to 2009, is one that "is going to make some of the major decisions and commitments with respect to the direction, pace [and] timing of this transformation effort," Cambone said.

In an interview last week with ITP, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim said he and Cambone had "reorganized our schedule to allow for a greater impact on the part of studies generated by the Defense Planning Guidance, for a closer interaction between PA&E and the policy folks, so that in fact the program review is not some kind of stand-alone effort, which for many years it was."

As part of that review, the services and defense agencies "will be asked to present in their '04 budget -- and in their outyear projection -- how they think they're going to end up in the '09 and '10 time frame," Cambone told reporters this week. "With that in mind, then, this is the budget that takes us into the next decade. And so getting the priorities straight, understanding what the trades are going to be, what the risks [are] that we are going to have to address and how we're going to resolve them -- all of that needs to be made transparent and clear."

Such trade-offs must be made "accessible to the secretary," Cambone said. "That's the purpose of the job."

If putting Cambone in PA&E were an attempt to quell controversy, he doesn't suspect the appointment would actually achieve that end.

"To the extent that [making difficult judgment calls] causes controversy, it's a function of doing the task," he said. "There's some big decisions to be made. When you make big decisions, people are going to disagree. If everyone agreed, decisions wouldn't be needed, would they?"

Cambone said he would assume the new post "in the next few days."

-- Elaine M. Grossman