Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. He had spent most of his professional life thinking about better ways of defending the United States. But when he was asked by Bill Clinton to be secretary of defense, the year-old chairman of the House Armed Services Committee hesitated.
The challenge was irresistible: with the cold war over, the nation's defense establishment would have to be rebuilt "from the bottom up. But Aspin knew what had happened to James Forrestal. In , caught between vicious interservice feuds, unable to persuade the White House to spend the money to face the Soviet threat adequately, Forrestal had been driven from office. Two months later, seeing communists under his bed, he tied a noose around his neck and jumped out of a window.
Les Aspin is apparently more stable than the tormented Forrestal, and his departure last week was all very dignified. President Clinton praised him at some length for mapping out a new defense strategy, and for his "razor-sharp mind. Although White House aides did their best to look somber, they were, of course, delighted. Aspin had come to be seen as one of the administration's main liabilities, and his replacement, Adm. Bobby Inman, an establishment favorite, was sure to be greeted enthusiastically by the press.
The president had shown that he had finally learned how to fire--and hire--someone without making a mess of it. Aspin believed that he had done a far better job than anyone, including the president, had given him credit for. His problems, he believed, were largely cosmetic. Clinton needed someone who could help convince the military that the president was not a draftdodging softy.
Aspin, verbose and academic, came across like Clinton, only more so. Aspin's bitterness is not unjustified. He was, in fact, a fall guy for the stumbles of the Clinton administration on Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti. He may be the first casualty of Clinton's error-prone foreign policy, but it is doubtful he will be the last. But his downfall at the Pentagon may have been inevitable.
