Panel on Base Closings Says the List Is Likely to Change.

The independent commission assessing the Pentagon's proposed list of domestic base closings will spare some installations but could add others that are not on the list now, the panel's chairman says.

The hurdle for changing the Pentagon's plan is high. The commission must show that the Defense Department "deviated substantially" from its guidelines to change or remove a site from the list. A simple majority of the nine-member panel can drop a site; seven members must approve adding a site for closing.

Commissions in four prior base-closing rounds changed about 15 percent of the Pentagon's recommendations. Mr. Principi, a former secretary of veterans affairs, said that it was too early to put a figure on what this panel might do, but that the Pentagon's list would not go unscathed.

"I expect there will be changes, and I think there'll be a few additions considered," he said. "The last thing this commission will be is a rubber stamp."

In testimony last Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld warned the panel against unraveling the interlinked decisions that Pentagon analysts made after two years of study and tests of some 1,000 different approaches. "I made a conscious decision not to add anything or take anything out or change anything," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

(5-23-05, The New York Times.)