House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, Monday called for the resignations of acting Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters and John Podesta, the deputy White House chief of staff, over a memo that Armey said showed the administration had "outrageously politicized the military base-closing process," the Associated Press reported.
A White House spokesman dismissed Armey's suggestion as political posturing.
At issue is an April 26 Air Force memo from Peters to Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre.
In it, Peters discussed an upcoming meeting that Hamre was to have with an official of Lockheed Martin on the subject of work being farmed out to the private sector with the closing of McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, Calif.
Republicans used the memo to fuel assertions that Clinton was playing favorites with California, making it easy for workers at McClellan, due to be shut down in 2001, to find work in the private sector.
In particular, Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, who released the memo, is concerned because contractors at an Air Force base in Utah scheduled for closing were also bidders for McClellan's work.
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