THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410100036
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
In his days on Capitol Hill, some Senate staffers called him ``Deadeye Al,'' after the time he flew to New Mexico to personally test a trouble-plagued gun being developed by the Army.
Now, with President Clinton having tapped him as point man for 1995's military base closings, thousands of defense-dependant Americans will be scrambling to stay out of Alan J. Dixon's cross hairs.
The 67-year-old Dixon, a former two-term senator from Illinois, was confirmed with a voice vote by his old colleagues Saturday to head the 1995 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC). Seven more members will be added to the panel by year's end as the defense establishment braces for the fourth and likely largest round of base shutdowns.
As commission chairman, Dixon will assemble a staff to review base-closing recommendations to be made early next year by the Pentagon. Then he'll preside over a series of public hearings at which the commission will consider the concerns of communities whose bases are targeted.
The commission must decide by July which bases should be closed, and submit a package of recommendations that Congress and President Clinton must accept in part or not at all. That feature of the process, analysts suggest, makes it important that the chairman be able to build a consensus in support of the group's work.
Former associates describe Dixon, a Democrat, as a back-slapping, old school political operator with skills ideal for the job. A lawyer, he reveled in behind-the-scenes dealing with fellow senators and in just seven years rose to the third-highest spot in the Senate's Democratic leadership.
But Dixon preferred to use his power to win federal plums, like military bases, for Illinois rather than to advance major legislation.
``Alan was a darn effective log roller,'' Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee observed in a 1993 Chicago Sun-Times profile of Dixon.
``I never wanted to be a national senator. . . '' said Dixon, in the same story. ``What really turned me on was doing things for my state.''
Such assessments are widely credited with helping to end Dixon's legislative career two years ago. His insider style kept him from getting full credit for the goodies he brought home. And his willingness to compromise with Republicans on many issues angered Illinois Democratic loyalists, softening his natural base of support.
When Dixon backed GOP Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas despite sexual harassment allegations in 1991, thousands of blacks and women dumped him in a primary for a relative neophyte, Carol Moseley-Braun. She then won the seat in the general election, becoming the first African-American woman to sit in the Senate.
In 90-minutes of friendly questioning on Wednesday by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Dixon provided clues - but little hard evidence - of the direction in which he will attempt to take the base closure effort.
He offered some hope to communities like Norfolk, where some facilities recommended for closure in past rounds have not completed their shutdowns. ``It's appropriate to evaluate everything that's been done,'' he said, suggesting that if a persuasive case can be made for reversing old decisions, he'd support it.
Norfolk Naval Aviation Depot, subject of a bitter fight when the 1993 BRAC decided it should close, is still operating. Advocates contend the Navy should keep it as the logical place to service planes attached to the Atlantic Fleet.
Dixon also volunteered his view that Congress and the administration already may have cut too deeply into military spending. But he insisted that opinion won't keep him from supporting the closing of any base that's not needed to support the slimmed-down forces now planned.
As an Armed Services Committee member in 1990, Dixon recalled, he helped rewrite the base-closing law to give the public more input into the commission's work and guarantee public access to the data the commission reviews. The secrecy surrounding an initial round of closings in 1988 almost poisoned the process, he said; Congress and the public didn't understand the reasoning behind the decisions on which bases should close and which should remain.
As chairman, he expects he or at least one other commission member will visit every military installation recommended for closure by the Pentagon. They'll hold public hearings in affected localities and consider the impact of closing decisions on local economies, he promised.
In the Senate, Dixon was known for such hands-on approaches to problems. A former aide last week recalled the New Mexico trip Dixon made in the early 1980s for a first-hand look at the Sergeant York, a mobile, multipurpose gun the Army was developing at the time.
Dixon had read critical reports on the weapon, which Army officials touted as lethal to enemy helicopters but so simple to operate that any soldier could be trained to use it in a few hours.
A skeptical Dixon accepted an offer to go through the training himself, the aide said. One of the two guns on the Sergeant York the senator was given to test jammed after firing only two rounds and Dixon couldn't hit his target with the other gun. His report to the Armed Services Committee was soon followed by a Reagan administration decision to cancel the Sergeant York program. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Alan J. Dixon
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSING DEFENSE BASE CLOSURE AND REALIGNMENT COMMISSION by CNB