Pentagon

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?

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.

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.

WASHINGTON - Senior Pentagon leaders are taking another look at sharply reducing the number of unpaid furlough days that department civilians will have to take in the coming months, suggesting they may be able to cut the number from 14 to as few as seven, defense officials said Thursday. If the number is reduced, it would be the second time the Pentagon has cut the number of furlough days. It had initially been set at 22 days. The officials say no decision has been made and that they are not ruling out efforts to drop the furloughs entirely.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel informed President Obama of the latest sexual-assault allegations against a military man who was assigned to prevent such crimes - the second involved in similar accusations - and the president made clear he wants that behavior stopped, officials said Wednesday. Hagel spokesman George Little told reporters that Hagel's staff was working on a written directive that would spell out steps aimed at resolving a problem that has outraged lawmakers.

WASHINGTON - Sexual assaults in the military are a growing epidemic across the services, and thousands of victims are still unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs, according to a new Pentagon report. Troubling numbers estimate that up to 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year, according to survey results. The report was released Tuesday and comes just days after the Air Force's head of sexual-assault prevention was arrested on a charge of groping a woman in a Virginia parking lot. And it follows a heated debate over whether commanders should be stripped of the authority to overturn military jury verdicts, such as one officer did in a recent sexual-assault conviction.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon announced Friday that it has reached a preliminary agreement on a complex $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in what would represent the latest major weapons sale to U.S. allies in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will attempt to finalize the arms package next week when he is scheduled to visit the three countries. Ultimately, the deal will need the assent of Congress. Defense officials said they have kept lawmakers apprised of the negotiations and revealed basics of the agreement to lawmakers on Thursday.

WASHINGTON - North Korea likely has a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile, according to a new assessment by the Pentagon's intelligence arm that comes amid growing alarm over Pyongyang's warmongering. The conclusion by the Defense Intelligence Agency said the weapon would have "low reliability," but the disclosure during a congressional hearing Thursday is likely to raise fresh concerns about North Korea's capabilities and intentions. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.)

WASHINGTON - Senior Pentagon leaders are taking another look at sharply reducing the number of unpaid furlough days that department civilians will have to take in the coming months, suggesting they may be able to cut the number from 14 to as few as seven, defense officials said Thursday. If the number is reduced, it would be the second time the Pentagon has cut the number of furlough days. It had initially been set at 22 days. The officials say no decision has been made and that they are not ruling out efforts to drop the furloughs entirely.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday that it would ask Congress to change military law so that commanders can no longer overturn convictions without explanation, a proposal that follows a public outcry over the handling of some sexual-assault cases. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he wanted to take away senior commanders' long-standing authority to toss out jury verdicts after a court-martial but before the case can be heard on appeal. While commanders could still reduce or even eliminate sentences, under Hagel's proposal they would have to justify their actions in writing for the first time and could not set aside convictions in major cases.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told the Pentagon on Wednesday to brace for further cuts in defense spending and said the military needed to make fundamental changes in the way it operates to cope with new fiscal realities. Noting that the military has "grown enormously more expensive in every way" over the last decade, Hagel said the Pentagon would have to tackle soaring personnel costs and reexamine how it buys billion-dollar weapons systems as it shrinks the size of the armed forces in the coming years.

WASHINGTON - In response to increasingly hostile rhetoric from North Korea, the Pentagon said Wednesday it was deploying a missile-defense shield to Guam to protect the United States and its allies in the region. The North renewed its threat to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. The threat issued by the General Staff of the Korean People's Army capped a week of psychological warfare and military muscle moves by both sides that have rattled the region. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it would deploy a land-based, high-altitude missile-defense system to Guam to strengthen the Asia-Pacific region's protections against a possible attack.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel got a stark taste of the challenges that continue to bedevil Afghanistan, as insurgents carried out two deadly bombings Saturday, one within earshot of the Pentagon chief. The Afghan government, meanwhile, abruptly canceled a ceremony scheduled for Saturday that had been meant to show that Kabul and Washington had finally reached a deal for the handover of a U.S. military prison. Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the last minute balked at the proposed terms of the handover of the Parwan Detention Facility, Afghan and U.S. officials said, dashing hopes that a resolution of a contentious issue that has poisoned the relationship between the two countries was in sight.