Tower given thumbs down

Press, 25 February 1989, Page 12

Tower given thumbs down

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 11-to-nine yesterday against John Tower’s nomination as United States Defence Secretary and sent it to the Senate with a recommendation that it be turned down. The vote was a bitter defeat for President Bush, who was in Tokyo with many world leaders for the funeral of Emperor Hirohito. Mr Bush’s spokesman said the President would continue to fight for his fellow Texan’s nomination in the full Senate. “The President has not lost one iota of confidence

in Senator Tower or his ability to be Defence Secretary,” the White spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater said in Tokyo.

One senior White House aide said: “We still think we can win it on the floor.” The Democrats hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate. The committee vote was along straight party lines, a development that a Republican, John McCain, of Arizona, said was a blow to Mr Bush’s stated desire to set a theme of bipartisanship at the start of his administration.

The Senate has rejected only a handful of presidential Cabinet nominees

in American history — the last in 1959. The committee’s late evening vote was also startling because Mr Tower, a senator for 24 years and an acknowledged defence expert served as the panel’s hard-driving chairman in 1981-84. In a series of speeches preceding the vote, Democrats repeatedly raised their concern about reports of excessive drinking by Mr Tower, saying that this, along with accounts of his relationships with women, would set the wrong example to the nation’s armed forces. The committee chairman, Sam Nunn, a

Georgia Democrat, said the panel had evidence from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other sources that Mr Tower had a pattern of excessive drinking and alcohol abuse during the 1970 s and still had a serious drinking problem. “I cannot in good conscience vote to put an' individual at the top of the chain of command when his history of excessive drinking is such that he would not be selected to command a missile wing, a SAC (Strategic Air Command) squadron or a Trident missile submarine,” Mr Nunn said.

The vote came after a three-hour closed meeting

so members could study the latest of. seven F. 8.1. reports on .Mr Tower, much of them dealing with his personal life.

While Democrats cited the cumulative weight of the evidence of excessive drinking and womanising, Republicans denounced many of the F. 8.1. reports as a collection of anonymous, unfounded statements against the former Texas senator.

The Senate is expected to vote next week. It last rejected a nominee in 1959 when President Dwight Eisenhower’s choice of Lewis Strauss as Commerce Secretary failed 49-46.