Cohen Defends Pentagon on Fund Shift

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary William S. Cohen sought Thursday to rebut charges that the Pentagon illegally shifted tax dollars between defense programs without congressional consent, saying any such infractions were few and unintentional.

Responding to criticism leveled by the House Appropriations Committee, Cohen said Pentagon officials must keep straight about 5,000 separate programs and sometimes struggle with inconsistent advice from the House and Senate.

“We are bound to have some deficiencies,” he said, while insisting that Pentagon officials intend to correct any that are called to their attention.

The Appropriations Committee, in a report accompanying the annual defense spending bill, cited six cases in which the Pentagon had moved money between military program accounts allegedly against congressional advice.

It said, for example, that Pentagon officials had used $2 million in funds earmarked for other programs to continue a ballistic missile defense program called Medium Altitude Air Defense (MEADS). Congress had explicitly directed that the program be terminated, according to the report.

In another instance, the committee charged that the Pentagon had undertaken a top-secret, or “black,” program without notifying Congress as required by law.

The panel also said the Pentagon used funds intended for the procurement stage of a military satellite program toward pre-production development of the satellite. Similarly, the department sought money for procurement of the new F-22 fighter plane, even though Pentagon officials intended to use the money for development of the aircraft.

The committee report said the panel believes the instances “raise fundamental questions regarding [Defense Department] program oversight and compliance with existing law and regulations.”

The criticism was contained in a two-page section of a 313-page report accompanying the fiscal 2000 defense appropriations bill. Aides said the committee has similarly inserted language in past years’ reports to complain about what its members have viewed as Pentagon inattention to their wishes.

They declined to describe how much money was at stake because some of the money belongs in “black” programs.

Kenneth H. Bacon, the chief Pentagon spokesman, offered a different version of how the MEADS program came to receive the $2 million in funding. He said there was “conflicting guidance between the House and Senate” on a complex program.

Defense officials believed Congress wanted them to “make some changes in the program or kill it” Bacon said. To do so, they built the program around an existing missile, a Patriot 3, rather than one that they were going to develop.

Cohen noted that the committee had cited six infractions out of 5,000 line-item programs. He said the committee was making “a significant statement in and of itself, that 99.9% of the time we’re doing things right.”