Weinberger: The Knife Is Moving Sharply

• Share

The incident is already a Pentagon legend. On one of his first days as Secretary of Defense, Caspar W. Weinberger, 63, arrived at his desk to find a report giving the reasons for a single budget item; it was 2,916 pages long. Weinberger hit the roof, to the extent that his easygoing temper can fly. He called for an all-out war on the stultifying proliferation of paper and procedures throughout the department. As a senior official put it, the bureaucratic problem of putting together a budget had become so imposing that "the numbers were driving the policy. We set out to reverse that." Thus did the new Secretary begin to do what the President had chosen him to do. More manager than strategic thinker, Weinberger, in the words of a Reagan aide, "is someone who will run the place."

In running the place, Weinberger draws on a long history of administrative experience. He earned the President's respect and confidence in the 1960s as finance director in Reagan's California cabinet, and has remained close to the President. As Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Richard Nixon and as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under both Nixon and Gerald Ford, Weinberger became known as "Cap the Knife," the vigorous slasher of budgets and waste.

Since coming to the Pentagon, the Knife has focused on paring away bureaucratic procedures and recarving department responsibilities. He has yet to make a dent in the bloated Pentagon budget, but his procedural reforms may, in the long run, yield substantial savings. His principal targets: the Pentagon's elaborate and illogical procurement and budget planning processes. Weinberger has appointed a special assistant to search out waste and fraud and has been open to outside ideas. Ehner Staats, on his final day in office as Carter's Comptroller General, sent Weinberger a letter with 15 recommendations to improve Pentagon efficiency; eleven of the proposals have been adopted, and two more are under study.

A confident administrator who likes to trust his subordinates, Weinberger has sought to decentralize authority within the department. Last March he ordered a 50% reduction in the amount of budget-related paperwork sent to his office, thus shrinking the direct involvement of his personal staff. He has also given new responsibilities to the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, whose roles had become largely ceremonial in recent years.

Weinberger's predecessors tended to concentrate power in the Office of the Secretary, involving themselves in decisions at every level and running the Pentagon as if it were a small business. Like Reagan in the White House, Weinberger prefers to delegate, acting as chief executive of a big, diversified conglomerate. At the same time, he will take an avuncular interest in even the lowliest aide and will gladly spare a few minutes to look at a secretary's vacation snapshots. In general, he tries to devote his own time to long-range planning and big issues like the manned bomber or the MX basing system, over which he is apt to fret and ruminate. Some feel that such agonizing takes too long and that he could make up his mind faster.