Man with a Mission

By William R. Doerner

Cap Weinberger has lionized Winston Churchill all his adult life. He has collected and read his published works many times over, and he frequently quotes the wartime British Prime Minister in dinner-party conversation. He has gone to the trouble of acquiring a canvas by Churchill, an amateur painter of some note. Two years after Weinberger became Defense Secretary, he chose to schedule a speech at Westminster College, the tiny Missouri school where Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" address in 1946. Though he employs a speechwriting staff of four, Weinberger insisted on writing much of the speech himself, including its most memorable passage. "We are perhaps in danger of becoming a nation of ascetic systems analysts," he said, "without the glowing fire and the vision and the ability to inspire that Churchill possessed in such full measure."

Although he would never presume to make the comparison directly, it is hard to believe that Weinberger, 67, does not see links between his mission at the Pentagon and Churchill's lonely crusade in the 1930s, when he strove to rearm an unwilling Britain against the onslaught of Nazism. Weinberger was never viewed as a hawk in earlier phases of his public career, notably as Budget Director and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Yet when Weinberger returned to Washington in 1981, almost overnight he began sounding Cassandra-like warnings about the Soviet Union's impending military threat. What shocked him most, according to associates, was a series of intelligence briefings that documented the extent of Soviet technological progress during his six years out of office. "I was astounded," Weinberger told Writer Theodore White, a Harvard classmate. "Their buildup had gone so far and so fast, and all of it was in offensive, not defensive, weapons." Weinberger concluded, and still believes, that the Soviets are intent on "world domination." Weinberger had no trouble conveying the urgency of his concern to the one man in a position to do something about it, Ronald Reagan. Not only had Reagan campaigned on a platform calling for a major strategic buildup in U.S. military might, he had known and trusted Weinberger from California days. The two had remained close even after Weinberger left to work in Washington. Weinberger kept Reagan's photograph on his desk, and on occasional weekends flew across the nation to Sacramento to confer with the Governor.

With Reagan's encouragement, Weinberger resurrected the B-1 bomber program, which had been scuttled by the Carter Administration, set the goal of a 600- ship Navy by 1989 and invested heavily in military readiness, hoping to lengthen the "sustainability" of U.S. forces in the field from less than 30 days to 60 days or more. One of his proudest accomplishments has been a 25% rise in military salaries over the past four years, helping increase the reenlistment rate from 55% to 68% and the proportion of high school graduates from 81% to 93%.

Even Weinberger's detractors give him credit for upgrading the quality of the men and women in uniform. But critics complain that the B-1 is already obsolete, that the 600-ship Navy is a relic of World War II thinking and that military readiness has not improved noticeably in the Weinberger era. They also charge that in his haste to "rearm America," Weinberger has often let hardware dictate strategy, with a resulting surfeit of gold-plated weapons systems. Indeed, instead of getting a firm grip on the procurement process, Weinberger has, if anything, given more leeway to the Joint Chiefs. Says one longtime acquaintance of Weinberger's: "The service chiefs simply run circles around Cap."

Weinberger's technique in selling his budgets is simplicity itself: arrive at a total and keep insisting that it is uncuttable. Every year at budget time, other Administration operatives pressure Weinberger to pare back his spending request. The President invariably sides with Weinberger. He continues to think of him as Cap the Knife, a budgetmaker who does not ask for anything that is not necessary. Says Frank Carlucci, Weinberger's deputy for two years and now a Sears, Roebuck executive: "It's that constituency of one that makes all the difference for Cap."

In countless hours of testimony before congressional committees, the Defense Secretary has adamantly refused to be drawn into what he considers the ultimate budgetary trap: volunteering nonessential items. With willful patience, he defends the entire package. Says Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater: "When he gets his mind made up, you just don't change it." Weinberger's admirers defend that strategy as both savvy and proper. "The Congress wants to be able to cut the budget and then say Weinberger said it's O.K.," says Carlucci. "That is a perversion of the process."

Weinberger's briefing-book answers, often delivered word for word more than once in the same committee hearing, beneath eyes hooded in apparent boredom, have not worn well on Capitol Hill. "It's like there's a tape recorder in his head," complains a Republican Senator. "You hear the same thing again and again." A former employee thinks that may be the real Cap, describing Weinberger as "an automaton, a robot."

Weinberger's determination was honed early. A bookish San Francisco public- school student, he won a scholarship to Harvard. As president of the Crimson in his senior year, an honor he still mentions with pride, he wrote conservative-minded editorials that infuriated many of his New Deal colleagues. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1941, Weinberger enlisted in the Army and met his wife Jane, then a nurse, aboard the troopship that carried him to the Pacific theater in 1942. He saw action in New Guinea and ended the war as a captain on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, another hero of his. After mustering out, Weinberger practiced law in San Francisco, but quickly grew restless in the private sector. He won election as a moderate Republican to the state assembly, became a vestryman of his Episcopal church and turned his passion for reading into an unpaid sideline, writing book reviews.

Weinberger's fling with elective politics ended unhappily with the bitter loss of a race for the California attorney general's office in 1958. In the 1966 gubernatorial contest, Weinberger backed Reagan's opponent in the primary but signed on with the former Hollywood actor in his victorious general election campaign. A year later, Governor Reagan made Weinberger his finance director, launching his career as bureaucrat extraordinaire.

In Washington, Weinberger gained a reputation for taking on tough assignments and executing them ruthlessly. As director of the Federal Trade Commission, his first federal post, his orders were to clean house; within a year, some 50 lawyers had left. As Director of the Office of Management and Budget, he made unprecedented use of a procedure called impoundment, under which federal agencies were forbidden to spend authorized funds. In 1972, Weinberger held up $11.2 billion.

Following a stint as Secretary of HEW, Weinberger returned to California and the private sector as special counsel to Bechtel Corp., the huge engineering firm. The allure was plain: Weinberger was soon making more than $500,000 a year. Yet friends say that he quickly began to miss both public office and his life in the East. Unlike many California conservatives, observed Nicholas Lemann in a penetrating article about Weinberger in the Atlantic, he felt no bitterness "toward the culture of the Eastern liberal Establishment. Weinberger loved that world and considered himself a part of it." The Weinbergers have since sold their California home and purchased one on Maine's Mount Desert Island, a bastion of old-line Yankees. Daughter Arlin, a | utility employee, is a Californian; Son Cap Jr., a public relations executive who was once president of the Operation Match computer dating service, lives in Washington.

Weinberger has a voracious appetite for work. Normally at his desk by 7:30 a.m., he puts in a twelve-hour day and leaves with a briefcase full of paperwork. Weinberger enjoys making appearances on the cocktail circuit, though he is a nondrinker. He also spends an occasional evening at the theater or a concert, with an Anglophile's preference for Purcell and other English composers. Indeed, such is his enthusiasm for Britain that last year he accepted an invitation from the Oxford Union to debate British Historian E.P. Thompson on the proposition that "there is no moral difference between the policies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." Aware that a loss would be hugely embarrassing, his staff advised against accepting the challenge, but Weinberger went ahead and won on the vote of those present, 271 to 232.

The Secretary is a frequent traveler abroad, having visited 37 nations during his tenure, and he savors the pomp and ceremony that accompany his trips to military installations. At home, his 8 a.m. staff meetings usually begin with a review of the "early bird," a packet of the previous day's news stories involving the military. Indeed, even his supporters say he is more apt to react to a press account of waste and fraud than he is to any internal effort to improve Pentagon management.

For all his perceived bellicosity, Weinberger has proved remarkably cautious in the actual deployment of force. He supported the surprise U.S. strike in Grenada, but opposed sending Marines to act as peacekeeping forces in Lebanon on the grounds that their mission was untenable.

In a speech late last year, Weinberger listed his criteria for committing troops to combat, including a reasonable expectation of congressional and public support, which are more restrictive than those of Secretary of State George Shultz. Some critics complained that by Cap's criteria, U.S. power would be unsheathed only in guaranteed no-lose situations. In part the speech was the military's requiem for Viet Nam. But viewed in another way, which Weinberger doubtless did, it was also a warning to reserve the use of armed force to occasions worthy of Churchillian fire and vision.

With reporting by Sam Allis and Bruce van Voorst/Washington