Two Key Bases Spared, Others Nixed

(CBS/AP)  Bucking the Pentagon, a federal commission voted Wednesday to spare a submarine base in Connecticut and a shipyard straddling the Maine-New Hampshire border, preserving a major military presence in New England and 12,000 defense-related jobs.

On the first of at least two days of meetings, the base-closing panel agreed with proposals to shutter hundreds of small and large facilities in all corners of the country, including major bases such as Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, a naval air station in Georgia and an Army garrison in Michigan.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted to shrink the Red River Army Depot in eastern Texas, where 2,500 civilian jobs would have been lost, rather than close it, reports CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv. While the commissioners did vote to close Fort Monmouth, an amendment tells the Army to protect the research work there for the war on terrorism.

The recommendations will be sent to President Bush, who can accept them or reject them in their entirety. Congress also will have a chance to veto the plan but has not taken that step in four previous rounds of closures.

The commission signed off on most of the Pentagon's plans to close, shrink or expand hundreds of small and large Army and Navy facilities from coast to coast. It has yet to take up any Air Force proposals, including closing Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and stripping aircraft from about two dozen Air National Guard facilities across the country.

The Pentagon proposed closing or consolidating a record 62 major military bases and 775 smaller installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years, streamline the services and reposition the armed forces.

Since the Pentagon announced its proposal in May, commissioners had voiced concerns about several parts of it, including the estimate of how much money would be saved.

In some of its first decisions, the commission voted to keep open several major Army and Navy bases that military planners want to shut down, including the Portsmouth shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and the New London submarine base in Groton, Conn., two of the Navy's oldest bases.

"Yahoo!" exclaimed Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. "Submarine base New London lives, and I think that it will live forever."

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who urged the commission to save the shipyard in Maine near the New Hampshire border, added: "This is a sweet victory."

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