Speaking His Mind

The potshots at the Pentagon sounded like standard Democratic liberalism. Slash the Administration's proposed defense budget. Forget about building the MX missile. Get all those bureaucratic bigwigs out from behind their desks at the Pentagon. Crack down on the piggishness of defense contractors. Broadsides they were, but not from some out-of-step lefty: they were the prescriptions of Arizona's Barry Goldwater, the prospective chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, eminence grise of old-fashioned conservative Republicanism and a major general in the Air Force Reserve.

Goldwater, 75, has always been unusually candid, often to the discomfort of conservative comrades. Now that he has announced he will not run for reelection in 1986, the curmudgeon is even freer to speak his mind. Last spring he sent a scolding letter to CIA Director William Casey for not telling the Intelligence Committee about the U.S.-directed mining of Nicaraguan harbors. "This is an act violating international law," Goldwater wrote. "I don't like it one bit from the President or from you." As Armed Services chairman, he will have power to do much more than raise a ruckus in the newspapers.

"My principal effort is going to be in the area of getting costs down," he told the Washington Post last week. He would have the Pentagon forgo the $40 billion increase it wants next year, freezing the budget at its current level. He goes further than most Democrats have even considered suggesting. But the military, said Goldwater, "can live with it. They won't be happy. Neither will the Post Office be happy with the same money they got. Neither will my secretary be happy with the same money she got. But you can't keep pumping out money you don't have." Goldwater also wants to reduce procurement costs by getting tough with military contractors. Said he: "The so-called armaments industry has been through a long, long period of carte blanche."

The problematic MX, he figures, will be canceled when it comes up for a vote in Congress next spring. Therefore Reagan should "not push this thing... I don't think he can win it, so why get your ass knocked off?" Besides, Goldwater admitted, "my heart has never been in" the fight for the new missile, partly because it seems there are plenty of nuclear weapons already. "I'm not one of these freeze-the-nuke nuts, but I think we have enough, I think [the Soviets] have more than enough, and I don't see any big sense in going ahead building."

It is not just specific projects or expenditures, however, that Goldwater wants to scrutinize over the next two years. "It's the whole goddam Pentagon," he said. For instance, he thinks the bureaucratic apparatus serving the Joint Chiefs of Staff is particularly bloated. "Why it takes so goddam many men to sum up the thinking and discussion of four men who meet maybe three times a week, I don't know."

"Barry wants to go out in a blaze of glory," says former Arizona Republican Chairman Harry Rosenzweig. G.O.P. Congressman John McCain of Arizona, who may run for Goldwater's empty seat in 1986, thinks his timid colleagues are secretly pleased by the plain-spoken provocations. Says McCain: "When you hear Barry Goldwater make a statement, and God knows he's quotable, the sentiment on the Hill is, 'Thank God Barry said what I didn't dare.' "

By contrast, Texas Senator John Tower, the outgoing Armed Services chairman, tried not to make waves in public. That era is over. Said Goldwater: "I may not fill the role as diplomatically as John Tower did. I'd much rather go to a man and say, 'What in the hell is your problem?' "