President Clinton Thursday nominated Retired Adm. Bobby Inman as defense secretary, moving with unusual speed to replace a departing Les Aspin. Inman held key intelligence posts in two previous administrations, one Democrat and one Republican.
"I know he will be a national asset as secretary of defense," Clinton said of his nominee. He recited an impressive resume of government service and said Inman had risen on the strength of "his brains, his talent and his hard work."Clinton was flanked by Inman and Aspin as he made his announcement and said he was acting swiftly to "ensure the greatest continuity" at the helm of the nation's armed forces.
Inman's appointment is subject to Senate confirmation, and initial congressional reaction was enthusiastic. "I think he's an excellent choice, very popular on Capitol Hill," said Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Inman, 62, is a former Navy admiral who most recently was president and chief executive officer of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Crop., in Austin, Texas.
He served in the Carter administration in the late 1970s as the nation's youngest head of the supersecret National Security Agency. President Ronald Reagan tapped him as No. 2 man at the Central Intelligence Agency, a post he held until he resigned in 1982 because of policy differences.
"You do me great honor with this appointment," Inman said in his first words as defense secretary-in-waiting. He said he hadn't sought the job and didn't want it but accepted it out of "duty and country" and out of the president's "absolute commitment" to build bipartisan support for a militarypolicy.
As if to underscore his independence, he noted he had voted for George Bush - and against Clinton - in the 1992 election.
Clinton's announcement of Inman's appointment was unusually swift for an administration where drawn-out appointment procedures have become commonplace. The search for a replacement for retired Supreme Court Justice Byron White consumed several weeks, for example, before the president settled on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And the president has yet to name a head for the civil rights division at the Justice Department - months after Lani Guinier's nomination was scuttled.
White House aides said Clinton and Aspin had discussed the resignation for several days or weeks. Meanwhile, Clinton was quietly searching for a replacement.
White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers refused Thursday to confirm Inman's pending appointment or to discuss reports that Aspin was forced out. She referred reporters to a letter of praise Clinton wrote Aspin. "The rest of it will remain between them," she said.
Aspin is the first to leave the Clinton Cabinet, and his one-year tenure will mark the shortest for a defense secretary since Elliot L. Richardson resigned the post in May 1973 after just five months to become attorney general and chief Watergate investigator. Just last Sunday Aspin told a TV interviewer, "I don't think there's any problem" that would cut short his tenure as Pentagon chief.
Aspin, 55, who had a heart pacemaker implanted last winter after being hospitalized with breathing difficulties, cited personal reasons for his decision to quit. He did not elaborate.
One Aspin aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that he had asked the secretary whether he resigned because of his health, the controversy over U.S. deaths in Somalia or Pentagon budget disagreements and that Aspin replied, "It's all those things."
Vice President Al Gore, making the rounds of the morning news programs, said Aspin "has done an outstanding job, he's a wonderful public servant and, in fact, President Clinton has asked him, after the break that he has requested, to accept other duties in the administration. We hope he'll do that."
Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, said it was "absolutely crucial" that a successor be named soon in order that the Pentagon not be in limbo while the administration struggled with tough national security issues such as North Korea's nuclear program, the war in Bosnia and the impending withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia.
The importance of the defense secretaryship has grown in recent years, and the nature of the job has changed in many ways with the demise of the Cold War. Aspin is the 18th person - all men - to hold the job since it was created in 1947.
Whereas the U.S. military for decades had focused mainly on the perceived threat from the relatively stable and predictable Soviet Union, the choices about using U.S. military might in the post-Cold War period have become more complex.
The job of defense secretary is even more complicated now by questions such as participating in the growing number of U.N. peacekeeping missions in forbidding places such as Somalia and Bosnia.