THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230468
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: My Turn
SOURCE: Dale Eisman
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Need to put 25,000 troops into Bosnia? No problem.
Want another carrier within shooting distance of Saddam Hussein? Done.
But move the headquarters of the Marine Corps one mile? Ulp! This could take awhile.
So it goes at the Pentagon this summer as the usual interservice jockeying for money or new weapons takes a back seat to a fight for office space.
Winning a battle that some of his predecessors lost, Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton has persuaded the top leadership of the Marine Corps to relocate their operations to the Pentagon. The new Marine commandant, Gen. Charles Krulak, and his top staff will move during the next few weeks into space now being readied for them on the Pentagon's ``E''-Ring.
The rest of the Marine hierarchy is to move into the Pentagon during the next few years, as the building - mammoth, but in many places almost decrepit - is renovated.
Because the Pentagon has little open space, the pending move has touched off a Cold War for offices. Particularly on the E-Ring, which as the outermost part of the Pentagon offers coveted views of the Potomac River and the Washington skyline.
Troops and civilian bureaucrats are digging in and trying to hold their ground.
One officer who works on the E-Ring now chuckled last week in describing how a stream of his civilian and military co-workers have found reasons to drop by in recent weeks. They chat about nothing in particular, he said, but he notices their eyes measuring the dimensions of the room and checking out his view.
The Navy wanted the Army and Air Force to give up some of their space, if not on the E-Ring at least somewhere in the Pentagon, to accommodate the Leathernecks.
But the other services have resisted those overtures, and so the Navy is having to move many of its own to make way for its Marine partners.
Until Krulak took charge last month, the Marines resisted leaving their traditional headquarters in a nearby building, the Navy Annex. They seemed to like having their own space, away from the other services.
Now Krulak is about to occupy a suite of offices to the right of Dalton's own on the fourth floor of the E-Ring. He'll be on equal footing with Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, whose suite is to Dalton's left.
The secretary is intent on improving cooperation between the services and sees bringing the Marines into the Pentagon as an important symbolic step; in a memo to his staff this month, he placed further integration of the Navy and Marines among his top priorities.
It'll be interesting to see if casualties taken during this initial Leatherneck occupation change his mind. by CNB