Pentagon gets more time to declassify base-closing data

After receiving more base-closure and realignment documents from the Pentagon over the weekend, the two leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have given the Defense Department four extra days to declassify the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents relating to its BRAC recommendations.

Over the weekend, the Pentagon released documents outlining scenarios used by Pentagon officials to make base-closure recommendations, as well as individual installations' responses to the department's requests for information.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced his BRAC recommendations May 13.

Since then, lawmakers have demanded the Pentagon speed up its scrub of classified information and make public all the documents.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., issued a subpoena requiring the Pentagon to release all remaining BRAC information by noon Monday.

"We are encouraged that, following our issuance of the subpoena, the Defense Department is disclosing the documents communities need to make their cases before the BRAC Commission," Collins and Lieberman said in a joint statement.

The senators represent the two states hardest hit by base closures.

"In the spirit of this commitment and assuming continued production throughout the week, we have agreed to extend the deadline to Friday at noon," they said.

Several lawmakers still are not satisfied with the Pentagon's efforts.

"The Defense Department's failure to anticipate the need to declassify the BRAC data well in advance, when they had two-and-a-half years to plan and prepare for this BRAC round, has been inexcusable," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said in a statement Monday.

The Pentagon recommended closing Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

Daniel Else, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said the department "stumbled over its own feet" in not releasing all documents more rapidly.

"If you want to do a sales job, especially to a group as capable and perceptive as the BRAC Commission, you put information out there, give them whatever they need, and let them make an intelligent decision," he added.

The base-closure process is a frenzied one, with only four months set aside for the nine-member commission to analyze the department's detailed recommendations, including the 33 major installations the Pentagon wants to shutter.

The commission's list is due to the White House by Sept. 8. Any delay in releasing information puts the installations on the list at a disadvantage because it gives lawmakers and lobbyists little time -- and incomplete details -- to mount their defense.

For its part, the department has said it is working quickly to strike classified information from the documents. It also opened classified reading rooms in the House and Senate for lawmakers and staffers with security clearances. But reviewing classified information provides little help in making a public defense to keep a base, congressional sources have said.