The Washington Daily News December 26, 2004
WDN News Analysis: OLF, chicken or egg?
The Pentagon has frequently cited the "fog of war" to describe confusion that can scramble the best-laid battle strategies.
By Bill Sandifer
That same phenomenon may now beset circumstances surrounding the evolving decisions that led to the Navy's selection of Washington County for its preferred outlying landing field site. Just what came when -- and in what order -- now befuddles many who have followed the process since its inception.
And the very record that reflects that evolution now appears subject to different interpretations by the Navy and OLF opponents.
One of the key issues at the heart of briefs filed by both sides is homebasing options and how -- and when -- such decisions logically and strategically influenced the Navy's alleged need for an OLF and the location for that OLF -- a classic chicken-or-egg conundrum.
Attorneys representing the Navy contend all environmental studies -- the much-argued "hard look" at issues required by the National Environmental Policy Act -- have shown clearly that all assessments have been thorough and by-the-book, building a logical path directly to Washington County.
Opposing attorneys disagree.
"There is no logic," contends Derb Carter, Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney, adding the Navy study team -- Tiger Team -- tailored its findings "in deciding to pick a site that violates (the Navy's own) criteria."
"These are the team of people assembled by the Navy to write the environmental document that is now being challenged," said Carter. "The e-mails capture exactly what was going on at that time. ... They actually reflect the context; they're not taken out of context."
The Navy doesn't fault some of the contentions in the opposition's brief, conceding that political realities were taken into account. Decisions of such magnitude, say the Navy, are not made in a "vacuum."
However, which came first, the decision to build an OLF -- initially, only a strategic option, according to Navy records -- or the decision to break up -- split homebase -- 10 East Coast Super Hornet squadrons figures prominently into the equation -- and the civil lawsuit.
A thumb on the balance?
Navy records clearly demonstrate that placing some of the squadrons outside Virginia has "zero operational benefit."
Similarly, the Navy's Environmental Impact Statement finds that an OLF outside Virginia is unnecessary unless a threshold number of Super Hornet squadrons is based outside Virginia.
However, the Navy cites NEPA requirements in contending that environmental considerations -- noise and air pollution around its Virginia facilities -- suggested a compromise, resulting in splitting the 10 squadrons originally slated for Virginia.
Less optimistic analysts predict North Carolina will never see the two squadrons slated for Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Indeed, the Navy contends the opposition lawsuit is so broad in its prohibitions that basing any squadrons outside Virginia is not allowable under the current preliminary injunction. Even a permanent injunction, says the Navy, will have to be redefined to allow such basing in North Carolina, regardless of the OLF location.
And the Navy's latest brief appears to ask the court for more specific directions.
"I think what the Navy's saying is, 'Court, give us more direction if you're going to enjoin us,'" explained Kiran Mehta, Kennedy Covington team attorney. "'Don't just say you can't build anything, or you can't do anything until you've complied with NEPA. ... Here's what you have to do before I lift my injunction.'"
The gay '90s
Following Base Realignment and Closure reviews in the 1990s, the Navy closed Cecil Field in Florida and reviewed strategies on how best to relocate Hornet squadrons that had been based there.
"When the lights (are) all turned off and the doors locked, all that (will be) left of the largest military installation in the Jacksonville area and the South's only Master Jet Base will be 30,000 acres of land, some buildings and equipment," states Globalsecurity.org (see http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/cecil-field.htm.).
The field was finally shut down in late 1999 just as Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Armed Service Committee member, was shaping the campaign for her successful bid for the Senate. Dole, in touring Eastern North Carolina, had gotten an earful of complaints, noted her spokesman Brian Nick, when residents recalled Cherry Point's failure to land a single Hornet squadron, generally regarded as worth $15-20 million per squadron to the local economy.
Ultimately, a near-concurrent effort to construct an OLF within one mile of the current Washington County site -- as well as establish more military controlled airspace, or Military Operations Areas -- failed, and Hornet squadrons went elsewhere.
Worthy of note, Marine Corps officials, according to military documents, have never deemed the MOA subject closed, contending instead the decade-long effort to acquire more airspace is simply "under review."
Dole, then, was armed for bear when the OLF and MOA campaigns resumed, indicated Nick.
A letter agreeing to support the Navy's decision -- cosigned by Dole and Sen. John Warner, Armed Services Committee chairman -- was, according to her spokesman, Dole's effort to ensure politics didn't enter the Navy's decision as the senator perceived had occurred in the 1990s.
Local leaders vs. federal leaders
Capable minds on both sides of the issue, however, disagree on the substance of Dole's letter.
One member of a local delegation that met with Hansford T. Johnson, then-acting Secretary of the Navy, insists the Dole/Warner agreement -- on its face -- doesn't pass the "giggle test." Dole, he insists, would not sign the equivalent of a blank check, pledging to support the Navy's decision, if she didn't have some implicit assurance that North Carolina wouldn't be shortchanged as Dole had perceived it was in the '90s.
Also implicit in that notion, he said, is a requirement that Super Hornet squadrons be split to assure that both senators' constituents would share the military largesse.
However, navigating these murky waters is a little like navigating the Pamlico River and Sound without a chart -- finding the bottom is, at best, a random process. Opposition attorneys indicate even the Navy may be having trouble with its own narrative.
"In their last brief," said Mehta, "(the Navy) said that both the (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) and the (Final Environmental Impact Statement) had a single preferred (homebasing) alternative; in fact both of them had two alternatives."
Early in the process, the Navy, based on its records, considered Naval Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina, MCAS Cherry Point in North Carolina and Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia, as well as split-basing options calling for up to two alternatives. The now-familiar 8/2 split -- with a 6/4 alternative -- would base eight Super Hornet squadrons, along with two replacement squadrons, in Virginia and two in Cherry Point.
"Assistant Secretary Johnson's view was that, to put an OLF in North Carolina, we had to put at least two squadrons down there," said Carter. "That's the payoff."
Mehta faults the Navy for not revisiting OLF sites and existing facilities in Virginia which were originally rejected because they were beyond the Navy's 50 nautical mile limit, a limit that was bent in selecting Washington County -- 70 nautical miles from NAS Oceana.
"If you're going to bend the rules that much," contends Mehta, "why not bend them just a little bit more (to accomodate the Virginia sites) if there's other issues with respect to the Washington-Beaufort site. Of course what they never acknowledged is that there are other issues with respect to the Washington/Beaufort site."
Ivory tower vs. control tower
Attorneys opposing the Navy relied upon University of North Carolina and Duke law student teams to plumb the depths of over 200,000 pages of documents the Navy turned over under court order. Based upon statements contained within those documents -- including internal Navy e-mails -- opposition attorneys allege it's clear that politics, not operational needs, dictated the OLF site selection, requiring "reverse engineering" and "fabrication" of supporting data to support a contention the Navy insists relies on out-of-context interpretations of Navy memos and e-mails.
The record itself may be equally murky, based upon the same Navy documents. The Navy's Tiger Team is alleged to have watered down language in the Final Environmental Impact Statement to make more difficult to pin down the meaning of statements.
Mehta contends the record, at its core, is quite simple.
"It goes back to the same fundamental problem that has existed all along," he explained. "The Navy's just not objectively evaluating the need for an OLF and where to put it."
So far, Boyle's rulings appears to support that allegation. But all the legal wrangling has continued to delay resolution through a civil trial, now slated for winter 2005 at the earliest. Both Navy and opposition attorneys have filed for dismissal. A ruling on those motions is scheduled for Jan. 19.
And so it appears resolving the chicken-or-egg pre-eminence as well environmental issues, will be left to the federal court -- if not in North Carolina's Eastern District, then the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia.
"The court's objective always is to get to the truth," said Mehta. "We've had different stories from the Navy on this, and we haven't gotten there yet apparently."
Copyright © 2004 The Washington Daily News
