Ready, Aim, Fired

By Bruce van Voorst/Washington.

Despite his twinkling blue eyes and disarmingly crooked smile, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney possesses a tongue as sharp as his mind. Soon after he took office last year, he publicly scalded a four-star Air Force general for going behind his back to Congress. Military-service chiefs who oppose Cheney on budget cuts earn a solid verbal thump on the wrist. Last week Cheney fired the highly decorated Air Force chief, General Michael Dugan, for "poor judgment at a sensitive time" in speaking indiscreetly on secret and diplomatically touchy issues relating to the gulf crisis. Dugan was the first member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be dismissed since President Harry Truman in 1949 sacked Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Louis Denfeld and the first military commander to be dismissed since Truman ousted General Douglas MacArthur in 1951.

Cheney blew up after reading on-the-record comments that Dugan, in office only 79 days, made to Washington Post and Los Angeles Times correspondents accompanying him on a week-long trip through the Middle East. Dugan, a West Point graduate, talked in considerable detail about classified operational plans, including the use of Saudi bases for American B-52 flights in wartime and training routines for the supersecret F-117A Stealth fighters. In comments deeply distressing to America's allies, Dugan advocated bombing Iraqi cities --including downtown Baghdad--and said, "I don't expect to be concerned" about political constraints.

But Dugan's biggest sin, in Cheney's eyes, was references to Israel's contribution to the U.S. military effort. Dugan said that Israel had supplied the U.S. with its latest high-tech, superaccurate missiles and that based on Jerusalem's advice that Saddam is a "one-man show," the U.S. had devised a plan to decapitate the Iraqi leadership -- beginning with Saddam, his family, his personal guard and his mistress. Such targeting, Cheney was quick to point out, not only is political dynamite but also "is potentially a violation" of a 1981 Executive Order signed by President Ronald Reagan flatly banning any U.S. involvement in assassinations.

Cheney also deplored Dugan's arrogant assumption that the Army and Navy would be relegated to secondary roles as the Air Force won the war all by itself, and what the defense chief saw as Dugan's misplaced disdain for Iraqi military capability. Without any hesitation, Cheney picked up the phone and got President Bush's approval for firing Dugan. In yet further evidence of how he runs the Pentagon, the Defense Secretary's next call was to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, advising--but not asking--him of the decision to fire Dugan. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft tried to defuse Dugan's comments by noting that "the general is not in the chain of command," but Iraq did not seem to need mollifying. The general's statement, announced Radio Baghdad, "will neither shake the leaves of Iraqi palm trees nor waken a sleeping girl."

Cheney appointed Pacific Air Force General Merrill McPeak as Dugan's successor and declared the affair at an end. Perhaps. But after reading General Dugan's scenario, America's allies may remain nervous about what other unilateral military adventures rest in the Pentagon's safes.