Pentagon

Learning that the Defense Department may have stored away $30 billion worth of things it doesn't need made me feel a lot better about my basement. We don't have anywhere near $30 billion worth of stuff down there. In fact, according to the lowest estimate - that would be my wife's - what we have in our basement has no monetary value at all. She didn't actually prepare a formal estimate with hard numbers; I've put them together by extrapolation from the phrase "a bunch of worthless junk.

There are leaks in the Pentagon and they're not the kind the Reaganisti are always worrying about. Nobody has let the people know how their money is being legitimately wasted. The place is leaking cash. Somebody's been copping it. It appears that some Pentagon officials, members of Congress and their staffs and anybody else who can do a military contractor some good have been accepting illegal payoffs. That's not much of a surprise. With all the money thrown at the Pentagon in the last seven years, someone was sure to start stealing sooner or later.

When the Pentagon wants a few dumpsters full of money, what it generally does is come up with a weapons system. That is some fantastically expensive killing device that may or may not work, but puts on a good show for visitors from Congress. In times when money's especially tight, the Pentagon then makes any savings and cuts in less obvious places, like fuel, ammunition and maintenance to make those fancy weapons work. It is a remarkably short-sighted and ineffective way to do business.

The Pentagon is spending billions of dollars in the Persian Gulf under an obscure Civil War statute that allowed Union soldiers to steal grain for their horses. The Pentagon says the statute - the Feed and Forage Act of 1861 - permits it to spend money Congress never put in the military budget. "We are entitled to spend more money than has been appropriated by the Congress," Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said yesterday. Williams said the Army, for example, would exhaust the year's $22.5 billion operations and maintenance account by April - six months early - unless the Pentagon invoked the 130-year-old law. The Constitution says: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. " The Pentagon has used the 1861 law since August to fund its operations in the Persian Gulf.

Less than three hours after President Reagan announced a tentative arms control pact with the Soviet Union, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger yesterday publicly ordered tests begun on the hardware that might be used in the first phase of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The Soviet Union has vigorously opposed SDI - a space-based missile-shield program popularly known as "Star Wars. " "There may have been people in Washington who would have preferred that it not be announced while the Soviets were in meetings here," said Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims.

A top marshal of the Soviet Union went to the citadel of American military power yesterday and talked about "Star Wars. " It was another summit precedent-setter. Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, chief of the Soviet general staff and military adviser to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was the highest ranking Soviet, and one of the few of any rank, ever to set foot in the Pentagon. He was scheduled to go back today for breakfast and a meeting with the U.S. military chiefs. Pentagon officials declined to discuss the outcome of the meeting between Carlucci and Akhromeyev.

When spring arrived last month, so did a 135,000-lire bonus for the Pentagon's workers in Italy - $108 at current exchange rates. And when autumn rolls around, the Italians will find a similar premium in their paychecks. That is on top of their Christmas bonus of a month's pay, averaging more than $1,900, and the additional month's pay each receives at vacation time. In West Germany, the Pentagon's native workers get a Christmas bonus averaging almost $1,750 - along with an annual vacation bonus averaging $550.

LETTER-writer Mark Walker makes a snide comment regarding the lack of photos of Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon on 9/11 by pointing out how clear the security-camera photos of a shoplifting incident at a local Sears are. Because the crashes in New York were well photographed, it seems odd to some that Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon was not equally well photographed. Consider that we have no photos of the Titanic actually hitting an iceberg, so why do we accept that as fact?

The nation's biggest defense contractors may have overcharged the Pentagon by $4 billion - and potentially much more - using computerized accounting systems that do not adequately protect the government's interests, according to Defense Department auditors. The Defense Contract Audit Agency, in its first written assessment of the excess charges, released a document yesterday estimating that improper charges ranging from $20 million to $500 million may have been realized by each of 200 contractors in recent years.

The public must demand that Congress stop conspiring with the Pentagon to buy costly and ineffective weapons at the expense of readiness and troops, one of the Defense Department's leading in-house critics contends. Franklin C. Spinney, the Pentagon cost analyst who achieved notoriety at the height of the Reagan administration's military buildup by declaring it unaffordable, rocked the boat again in a study released yesterday. It argues that the military "seduces" Congress to the detriment of national security.

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. military officer said Monday that the nation's military leadership is embarrassed by allegations of misconduct against at least 10 U.S. military members at a Colombia hotel on the eve of President Obama's visit over the weekend. "We let the boss down," Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference. He said he regretted that the scandal, which also involved 11 Secret Service agents accused of cavorting with prostitutes at the hotel, diverted attention from Obama's diplomacy at a Latin America summit.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The Pentagon said Wednesday that it is ready to resume a trial at Guantanamo Bay for the acknowledged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and four other men, more than two years after President Obama halted the case in an ultimately failed effort to prosecute them in a civilian court. A Department of Defense legal official known as the convening authority has approved trying the five together on capital charges that include terrorism and murder, making them eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon plans to resume programs that would pay for military training and equipment in Yemen, nearly a year after halting aid to the key counterterrorism partner because of escalating internal chaos. While no agreements have been cemented, U.S. defense officials said as much as $75 million in military assistance could begin to flow this year. The officials said the Pentagon and State Department were putting together a letter to send to Congress to request restarting the aid. The plan is in line with the Obama administration's intention to provide significant security and civilian aid to Yemen in 2012-13 as long as the Middle Eastern country makes progress toward a new government and the money is kept from insurgents.

WASHINGTON - Top Pentagon officials are considering putting elite special-operations troops under CIA control in Afghanistan after 2014, just as they were during last year's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, sources told the Associated Press. The plan is one of several possible scenarios Pentagon staffers are debating. It has not yet been presented to Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta, the White House, or Congress, the sources said. If the plan were adopted, the United States and Afghanistan could say there are no more U.S. troops on the ground in the war-torn country because once the SEALs, Rangers, and other elite units are assigned to CIA control, even temporarily, they become spies.

WASHINGTON - The head of the Air Force on Wednesday disputed a report that some unidentified remains from the Sept. 11, 2001, plane crash site near Shanksville, Pa., had been disposed of in a landfill, casting more confusion on an episode that has embarrassed the Pentagon and Dover Air Force Base, which handles the remains of the nation's war dead. A report commissioned by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and released Tuesday found that some unidentifiable remains of victims from the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the United Airlines Flight 93 crash near Shanksville were "placed in sealed containers that were provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor.

WASHINGTON - Some cremated remains of people who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks were disposed of in a landfill, the Pentagon revealed Tuesday, tracing the problems with the handling of remains at Dover Air Force Base back more than a decade. A report by a panel that was tasked with reviewing procedures at Dover described "gross mismanagement" at the mortuary in Delaware where the nation's war dead arrive, including the mishandling of remains from an unknown number of victims of the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pa. Remains that could not be identified or tested were cremated, the report said, and "then placed in sealed containers that were provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon on Wednesday offered new details of its plan for shifting from a combat mission in Afghanistan to one focused on training and advising Afghan forces as they gradually shoulder more of the combat burden. The Army identified five U.S.-based brigades, as well as an Army Reserve organization, that will be reconfigured and sent to Afghanistan between April and August to "generate, employ and sustain" Afghan forces. The Army called this a "new mission" after more than 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - New orders from the Pentagon: The military on Thursday formally opened thousands of jobs to women in units that are closer to the front lines than ever before, reflecting what's already been going on as female American soldiers fight and die next to their male comrades. The new rules, affecting thousands of jobs, will break down more of the official barriers that have restricted the military positions women can take. They're being sent to Congress, and if lawmakers take no action after 30 work days the policy will take effect.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon outlined a plan Thursday for slowing the growth of military spending, including cutting the size of the Army and Marine Corps, retiring older planes and trimming war costs. It drew quick criticism from Republicans, signaling the difficulty of scaling back defense budgets in an election year. The changes Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described at a news conference are numerous but hardly dramatic. They aim to save money by delaying some big-ticket weapons like a next-generation nuclear-armed submarine, but the basic shape and structure of the military remains the same.

WASHINGTON - As traditional military operations are cut back, the Pentagon is moving to expand the worldwide reach of the U.S. Special Operations Command to strike back wherever threats arise. U.S. officials say the Pentagon and the White House have embraced a proposal by special-operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven to push troops that are withdrawing from war zones to reinforce special-operations units in areas somewhat neglected during the decade-long focus on al Qaeda. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta shared few details in the new Pentagon budget he outlined yesterday, but officials explained the plan in greater detail to the Associated Press.