Defense Seeking Greater Latitude

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon and give the military more freedom to manage itself than ever before.

The Pentagon has proposed eliminating requirements for filing hundreds of reports on its activities to Congress every year. Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress.

Some proposals are more provocative. They include allowing the Pentagon to send its initiatives directly to Capitol Hill before other agencies could review them. Once there, the legislation would require Congress to vote quickly, with only limited debate.

That "defense streamlining initiative" was quickly shelved after objections from officials within the administration itself, who decried the seeming chutzpah of a Pentagon trying to avoid the normal reviews. Drafted by the Office of Management and Budget at Rumsfeld's request, senior administration officials say it is far from abandoned.

Indeed, administration officials say it is part of a grander plan that is very much in play--to relieve the Pentagon, and later other executive branch agencies, from oversight that Rumsfeld calls burdensome and inefficient, but which critics say is a necessary inconvenience of democracy.

The proposals, said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity, are "the tip of the iceberg."

"I don't see it as an abdication of oversight, but it's time to talk seriously about, in effect, resetting the table," the senior official said. "We have an unprecedented challenge ahead of us in fighting terrorism, and it's time for a longer-term discussion about roles and visions between the branches of government."