Local officials, in two hearings yesterday, evoked the terrorist bombings in London to bolster their arguments that closing military installations in the District and Virginia would threaten regional homeland security.
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, testifying before the Base Realignment and Closure Commission on Capitol Hill, said the Pentagon’s proposal to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center and realign Bolling Air Force Base would hurt the city’s response to a terrorist attack.
Mrs. Norton, a Democrat and the District’s nonvoting congressional representative, said the September 11 attacks made Walter Reed even more valuable.
“The Defense Department also failed to address the critical homeland security function of Walter Reed should our nation’s capital be hit by a terrorist attack or other major disaster, creating mass casualties,” she said. “It’s not base closing in the traditional sense of the word — this is a hospital.”
Mr. Williams, a Democrat, said in light of the attacks in London and the potential threat to the Washington region, closing Walter Reed or realigning Bolling “sends a terrible signal that our very own Department of Defense is fleeing our nation’s capital.”
Paul Strauss, the District’s shadow senator, said the federal closure commission would be “wrong to ignore the realities the sudden current events have brought.”
Closing the only military hospital in the District “struck me yesterday as ill-advised. … Today it borders on criminally negligent,” said Mr. Strauss, a Democrat.
Walter Reed in Northwest is one of dozens of U.S. military bases the Pentagon has recommended for either closure or realignment. Hundreds of soldiers have been treated at Walter Reed for injuries they received during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If Walter Reed closes, a new hospital would be built at Fort Belvoir and some of the Walter Reed staff and services would be transferred to an expanded health care facility at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. The facility would operate under the Walter Reed name.
In Virginia, the Pentagon’s recommendations include relocating nearly 23,000 jobs in Northern Virginia currently in leased office buildings that the military says do not meet federal security standards. The jobs would be moved to bases such as Fort Belvoir that are located outside the Capital Beltway.
At a public hearing in Arlington late yesterday, U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, warned the closure commission of the harm such closures can pose in a state of emergency.
He said Americans must remember “how fragile life is however and whenever the terrorists choose to attack. We are a nation at war. We can’t afford to take any missteps.”
Mr. Warner also said the shuffle was more about ending leasing arrangements than military considerations. He said the proposal ignored the intentions of Congress when it crafted rules to streamline its military infrastructure.
“I know that law and I know what Congress intended,” said Mr. Warner, who serves as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Margaret Brandis, an Arlington resident who works for a defense contractor in Rosslyn, was one of many concerned workers who showed up at that hearing.
“I foresee a major traffic nightmare if everyone in Arlington has to be reassigned to Belvoir,” said Mrs. Brandis, 53.
BRAC is scheduled to make its final recommendations to President Bush by Sept. 8.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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