Two Key Bases Spared, Others Nixed
Base Closing Recommendations Go To Congress, President Bush
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Play CBS Video Video Second Life For A Navy Base After being shut down in 1992, the Glenview Naval Air Station is now a billion dollar downtown. Cynthia Bowers reports that the base may offer hope for other cities currently facing closure.
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Video Some Bases Getting The Boot During day one of a three-day hearing, a special commission began naming which Army and Navy bases would likely be closed or downsized. Susan Roberts reports.
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Video Life After Base Closings CBS News' Cynthia Bowers talks at length with Don Owen, the Glenview Illinois Planning Director, about what communities can do after their military base is closed by the government.
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A retired Navy jet is on display outside the Naval Air Station Atlanta in Marietta, Ga., one of four Georgia military bases targeted for closure. (CBS/AP)
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An aerial view of Fort Monroe in Virginia, which will be closed if the commission's recommendations are accepted. (AP)
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Union Representative John Joyal, with American flag, leads workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine to a noontime rally. The shipyard was taken off the closure list. (AP)
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Interactive Base Closings Map A state-by-state look at proposed base closings and those that would get bigger.
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Interactive Military 101 Basic training to learn all about America's fighting force.
The survival of the two bases marked big wins for New England congressional delegations and governors. Even as the commission was voting, elected officials from those and other states — such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. — attended the hearing and served as visual reminders of their efforts.
Some analysts have said closing both the shipyard and the submarine base would devastate the economy along the coast from Maine to Rhode Island. Loss of the submarine base, which former President Carter, a dozen admirals and high-ranking Congress members opposed, would have cost about 8,000 jobs, and closing the shipyard would have cost 4,000, some estimated. Many more jobs at businesses that depend on the bases also were at risk.
The commission did, however, decide to close Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine, rather than drastically reduce forces there as the Pentagon wanted. Commissioners argued that savings could be realized more quickly if it were shut down altogether.
"They have proved they are not a rubber stamp," said David Berteau, Pentagon official who oversaw base closings for the Pentagon in 1991 and 1993. "But we don't know yet what the common theme is because they're dealing with each of these on a case-by-case basis."
CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports that being targeted for closure does not necessarily spell disaster. After being shut down in 1992, the Glenview Naval Air Station in Illinois is now a thriving downtown development (video) that created 5,000 jobs and will soon pump $500 million a year into the local economy.
In this Web-only video, an official in Glenview, Ill., tells Cynthia Bowers how the town reinvented itself.The 62-year-old Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Pennsylvania is on the Pentagon's chopping block, with no decision by the panel reported yet. With pleas and pep rallies and T-shirts that say "Save Willow Grove," residents have tried to convince the commissioners that the National Guard facility should be spared.
"It's perfectly between Washington, New York, the whole East Coast. It just is a very strategic place," Dan McCaffrey of the Willow Grove, Pa., Chamber of Commerce told CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato.
©MMV CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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