New Ethics, Democrats Pose Hurdle for Tower : Nominee Hurt by Defense Firm Ties, Arrogance, Talk of Vindictiveness, Drinking and Womanizing

WASHINGTON —  “I am besieged, by a thousand or more . . . I have sustained a continual bombardment . . . I shall never surrender or retreat. God and Texas, victory or death!”

Every year on March 2, Texas Independence Day, John Tower stands before a band of loyal friends and former staff members to recite those words--a famous passage in the last letter Col. William Barret Travis wrote from the Alamo. This year, the words will carry a special poignancy. Like Travis, John Goodwin Tower is a man besieged.

President Bush’s nominee for secretary of defense is embroiled in a confirmation fight of almost unparalleled nastiness--a choke-and-gouge struggle that now threatens to become an embarrassing defeat for the new Administration. And, measured by traditional Washington standards, such controversy over a 25-year veteran of the Washington power structure and an acknowledged expert in national security policy is something of a puzzle.

Normally, the Senate gives a new chief executive broad latitude in picking his Cabinet. Normally, members of the Senate club have a particularly easy time. Normally, an appointee with such credentials would be a shoo-in: former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, former senior strategic arms control negotiator, chairman of the Tower Commission, which conducted a respected investigation of White House involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.

Although Bush remains firmly behind him, and Tower may yet be confirmed, the extraordinary struggle is proof that the normal rules for Cabinet nominations are not holding.

“There’s something bewildering that’s going on here,” said noted American political historian William Leuchtenberg. Having a Cabinet nomination reach even this stage of trouble, he said, demonstrates “a basic problem with the nomination” and “a significant shift in the standards.”

Part of Tower’s problem, as Leuchtenberg suggests, is a convergence of factors outside the former senator’s control.

Chief among them is the new morality in national politics, epitomized by the transition from the ethical problems and open-throttle defense spending of the Ronald Reagan years to the promises of buttoned-down ethics and belt tightening by the Bush Administration.

In addition, Tower faces a new assertiveness by the Senate’s Democratic majority in general and by Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn of Georgia in particular.

Seen as Arrogant

The other part of Tower’s problem is personal: a personality and political style that many see as arrogant and abrasive have sowed vindictive enemies like dragon’s teeth. Reports, many dating back for years, of heavy drinking and ill-concealed womanizing have built a reputation out of step with the times and the sensitive job he seeks.

“Whatever the facts,” said one influential senator, “in the absence of the President, the secretary of defense is in charge of the troops.”

Moreover, Tower’s ties to defense contractors, resulting in more than $750,000 in consulting fees during a 2 1/2-year period after he left the Senate, raise troubling questions about whether Tower has the objectivity and independence to crack down on procurement fraud and get the most for the nation’s shrinking defense dollar.

Few Nominees Rejected

If Tower’s nomination is withdrawn by Bush or rejected by the Senate, it would mark a presidential defeat virtually without precedent.

Although the Senate has often fought with presidents on other decisions, such as treaties and Supreme Court nominees, Cabinet nominees have been viewed as members of “the President’s team” and have almost always been confirmed with little debate.

In fact, the nation went nearly 50 years before the first Cabinet nominee was rejected. And none have been rejected since 1959, when the Senate--by a three-vote margin--refused to confirm President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s lame-duck nomination of Lewis L. Strauss to be secretary of commerce. Strauss was only the eighth Cabinet nominee ever to be defeated in the Senate.

What makes matters worse for Bush is that, in this case, the wound was largely self-inflicted.

The allegations about Tower’s personal conduct could all have been anticipated; in fact, most were foreshadowed during the extraordinary five weeks of highly public delay between Bush’s election and his selection of Tower on Dec. 16.

“We all know John Tower’s had a string of girlfriends and he probably has drunk excessively by today’s standards,” said Texas State Land Commissioner Gary Mauro, a Democrat who worked to unseat Tower. However, Mauro defended his old opponent, saying that “lots of politicians in both parties have done that. I think he’s getting an unfair rap, and that’s hard for me to say because I have wanted to beat him worse than anything in the world.

‘Been a Pompous Ass’

“The only way I can explain it,” Mauro said, “is that John’s been a pompous ass.”

Many of his fellow Republicans are equally critical.

The drinking and womanizing problem “was apparently pretty serious for a long time . . . this was in the old days . . . booze and broads, everybody knew about it,” said a Senate aide, who quickly added: “He was such a smart guy, apparently it didn’t affect his work.”

Former Texas GOP Chairman George Strake said that “I worked my heart out” on Tower’s campaigns, starting in 1966. “But I always worked for his voting record, and not necessarily for John Tower, the warm, cuddly person . . . . He’s just not a person I can warm up to.

“One time, he’ll just about hug you, and the next time act like he just didn’t know you,” Strake said.

“I’ve known him to drive half way across Texas without saying a word to others in the same car,” said another former Texas GOP chairman, Ray Hutchison of Dallas. Hutchison, like other Tower friends, attributes such behavior to shyness rather than arrogance.

Whatever the cause, Tower-- called “Iron Ass Tower” in Washington because of his ability to out-wait his opponents in any negotiation and for playing politics Texas-style, as a contact sport--has inflicted more than his share of wounds and bruises on those he was involved with over the years.

Bitter Divorce Fight

Many of the most bruising wounds involve his second wife, Lilla Burt Cummings, from whom he won an exceedingly bitter divorce in 1987. Through friends in Washington society and the news media, she has spread a trail of stories about Tower’s alleged “marital misconduct” and close relations with defense contractors.

She raised the question in divorce papers as to whether Tower had carried on extramarital affairs with three women.

Tower’s friends deny he had affairs with any of the three.

“No one ever said he didn’t like women, but the same could be said about a lot of us,” said Ronnie Dugger, publisher of a liberal magazine, the Texas Observer. “I think it may be right that some of the heat is coming from the Right. It’s the blue-nose factor. They hate any kind of irregular behavior--that is, irregular by standards of a Baptist minister.

“The fact that he’s perceived as such a little jerk makes him eminently unlikable.”

Much of the public opposition and private rumor-mongering does come from the Far Right. Some Texas Republicans believe the animosity dates to 1976, when Tower supported Gerald R. Ford against Reagan for the GOP presidential nomination. Tower has also made enemies because of his pro-choice stand on abortion.

He may also be paying a price for positions on some defense issues that some conservatives consider too soft, especially “Star Wars.”

After Bush’s election, Paul Weyrich, a prominent conservative activist, stepped in and rallied two dozen small right-wing groups into an anti-Tower coalition.

He decided to hit Tower on morality issues, which excite so-called “social conservatives” and loosen their pocketbooks. In a meeting with other conservative leaders about three weeks ago, Weyrich declared that political leaders “should have to pay publicly for their private actions.”

In testimony without apparent parallel, he told the Armed Services Committee that Tower lacked the “moral character” to be defense secretary and that he had observed him in a non-sober condition in public and with assorted women.

At a closed session of the panel, he testified also that he had personally seen 20 to 25 such situations between 1973 and 1987. Sources said Weyrich failed to produce any specifics, but his open testimony put the issue squarely on the table.

Tower has acknowledged heavy drinking in the past but says he now has it under control. “I am a man of some discipline,” he told the committee after Nunn asked him point blank if he had a drinking problem.

‘Acceptable Behavior’

Although acknowledging that Tower may occasionally have drunk heavily and chased women during the 1960s and early 1970s, Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) said “that was pretty acceptable behavior by those on the Hill at that time.”

“But those mores have changed,” said Cohen, a Tower supporter on the Armed Services Committee, adding: “And Tower has changed, too.”

In the new morality sweeping through Washington, the charges were not only aired in a Senate hearing room but published on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

The wide coverage brought waves of new allegations to the committee, which had been set to vote on the Tower nomination a week ago. As the FBI’s investigation stretched out, voting on the nomination was delayed and delayed again.

Said a former Tower aide: “What you see happening today, I think, is just a lot of chickens coming home to roost.”

A well-known Texas Democrat, who spoke on condition that he not be named, agreed, saying: “Tower alienated a helluva lot of folks in the Senate, especially when he was chairman of the Armed Services Committee and tried to handle it like he was a king.”

Tower’s favorite tactic was to out-wait the opposition.

“He just had the biggest bladder in the room,” said one Democratic House aide who sat in on several negotiating sessions with Tower. “We used to call him “Jabba the Hut” (after the “Star Wars” movie character)--very short and very close to the table. He’d call a meeting and he’d be holding 18 proxy votes in his hand, and he just sat there and sat there and sat there until, finally, he’d wear you down.”

Other times, he created permanent animosity when he was judged to have reneged on a deal.

One incident cited by lawmakers was an effort by Reagan Administration officials in the Pentagon to consolidate the Army and Navy transportation commands into a single, more streamlined unit.

Tower, a strong Navy partisan, also agreed to support it, these officials said. But, when the issue came to a vote during a late-night conference committee session, Tower took a walk and the merger failed.

Officials Still Angry

The Pentagon officials involved, although no longer in the government, are still livid about what they see as double-dealing. Tower insisted afterward that opponents had deliberately brought the matter up during the one time he left the room. Stories alleging vindictiveness and arrogance by Tower have long ranked among the modern legends of Capitol Hill.

A widely circulated story affirmed by several sources concerns a 1973 episode involving Tower, then-Sen. Edmund S. Muskie and a summer intern who was operating a Capitol elevator when the two senators stepped on.

The youth, recognizing Muskie but not Tower, who--along with a small delegation of fellow Texans--was dressed in Western garb, immediately took the elevator to the fifth floor to let Muskie off.

“Son,” Tower said, “I told you I wanted ‘three’ and you went right past my floor.” Said the impolitic intern, “Hold your horses, cowboy. We have a rule around here that we take care of senators first.”

Tower had the student fired that afternoon.

Despite Tower’s history and the highly public campaign waged against him, Bush never seriously considered any other candidate for the job, aides say.

That part of the Tower saga appears to be relatively simple: John Tower wanted the job and George Bush felt he could not deny him.

Never Personally Close

Bush and Tower have never been personally close. But the two have been political comrades at least since 1960.

In 1961, Tower became Texas’ first statewide Republican elected official in the 20th Century by winning a special Senate election after Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson became vice president. In 1964, Tower loyally supported Bush in an unsuccessful campaign for the state’s other Senate seat.

Over the next 25 years, the two men collaborated frequently on efforts to make Texas a two-party state. And those efforts came to a climax the night of July 18, 1988, when Tower stood under the lights in the New Orleans Convention Center as Bush accepted the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.

Before 6 o’clock the next morning, Tower boarded a small chartered plane for a long and bumpy flight into the heart of enemy territory--South Texas, the stomping grounds of the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen.

Stumped State for Bush

From Brownsville to Harlingen and McAllen north to San Antonio, then west to El Paso, Tower stumped through airport rally after airport rally, pursuing the sort of schedule that would make even a presidential candidate quail.

For Bush, who has consistently ranked loyalty among the highest virtues, Tower’s performance was not something to forget.

All Tower’s loyalty would not, of course, have gotten him the nomination had Bush not been convinced of his qualifications.

Beyond his defense expertise, Tower’s 20 years in the Senate have given him political skills Bush needs to deal with the Democrats.

While the Democrats have taken pains to avoid looking partisan, both sides already have begun jockeying for advantage in what will be a four-year struggle over the direction of the government. Where Nunn in particular is concerned, there are both political reasons for undercutting Tower and long-standing personal friction between the two men.

Nunn is among those figuring in the early presidential handicapping for 1992.

In the past, when Nunn’s name surfaced as a possible presidential candidate, he has been unacceptable to the party’s powerful liberal wing. But, “by going after Tower, Nunn is helping himself with liberals in his party on a conservative issue, defense,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

A second major change has taken place within the Armed Services Committee itself. Its members were badly embarrassed last year when the Justice Department disclosed the existence of the massive Operation Ill Wind defense procurement fraud investigation, a scandal that had blossomed under the committee’s nose.

Paisley Case Cited

In fact, one of the investigation’s central targets, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Melvyn R. Paisley, was confirmed by the committee after only a cursory review that failed to detect numerous questionable incidents in his past.

Said one Democratic congressional aide: “They’re pinioned by the Paisley syndrome. They know they screwed up on that one and, now, no stone can go unturned.”

As if the political pressures of divided government and the changed standards on the Armed Services Committee were not enough, Tower’s nomination has come along at a time when standards of public morality in general have undergone a major shift.

In reaction to the license of the 1960s and ‘70s, the standards for sexual conduct and public drunkenness have tightened, especially for those in public life.

At least three of the last nine Presidents--Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson--are known to have carried on extramarital affairs. Roosevelt’s lover, Lucy Mercer, was with him when he died. But even Roosevelt scholars did not know of the affair until it was disclosed in a book published 20 years after his death.

One prominent Supreme Court justice died in the company of his secretary during the same period. Again, no public mention was made of the case until years later.

No Longer Hushed Up

Today, that sort of behavior by a public figure quickly becomes the subject of Washington gossip and, after a time, press reports as well, as former Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart discovered in 1987. What once was winked at or hushed up has now become a near-automatic subject of censorious public debate.

The reason, in part, may be “a clearly different attitude toward women” in society, historian Leuchtenberg suggested.

“The notion that you’re a hero if you’re a womanizer hasn’t died out, but it certainly looks different,” he said.

In addition, Bush himself has made a major point of ethics in his Administration, using it to distinguish his tenure from that of Reagan. Ironically, given the allegations of Tower’s connections with defense contractors, the Armed Services Committee began hearings on the Tower nomination during what Bush aides had informally dubbed “Ethics Week.”

The ethics of Tower’s accepting lucrative consultive fees from big defense contractors is the other central issue in the debate over his nomination.

In addition, the FBI is now pursuing new allegations that Tower accepted illegal corporate campaign contributions from defense contractors while he was a member of the Senate.

Tower told the Senate that he had received $763,000 from six defense firms between the time he left government service as arms control negotiator in Geneva in April, 1986, and December, 1988, when he quit his consulting business because he was under consideration for the Pentagon post.

Tower’s clients--which included missile makers with huge stakes in the outcome of the continuing U.S.-Soviet arms talks--paid handsome fees for access and advice, Tower said.

“Being available at the end of the telephone for advice from someone who has some degree of experience and sophistication in a field is of value to people,” Tower explained to the committee.

But, pressed to describe what product or advice he provided the contractors with, Tower said only that the nature of his services was “intangible.”

That led to sharp questioning from committee Democrats.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked Tower how it would look to the public, “having come directly from negotiations which are ongoing, highly confidential, privileged negotiations, you’re then advising clients on the impact of those negotiations . . . on their product?”

Tower admitted there may be “an appearance problem” but denied he had done anything illegal or unethical.

“How can he come in and clean up this system, try to regulate it?” asked Larry Korb, former assistant secretary of defense and an admitted foe of Tower. “You have to trust the secretary of defense” not to favor one contractor over another because of a former business relationship.

And what comes next?

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and one of the key lawmakers Tower will have to deal with, said this week that the charges would inevitably weaken Tower at the Pentagon.

Bush and his aides, on the other hand, are standing firm. “He is going to be confirmed, period,” said one senior White House aide.

Long-time Washington political insiders argue that Bush, having invested his own prestige, may react to the attacks on Tower just as he did to those on Dan Quayle.

If so, one senior Democratic strategist suggested, Tower may be able to rehabilitate himself quickly.

“The strength of that institution (the Pentagon) will help him with his relationships with Congress,” said Kirk O’Donnell, for many years an aide to former House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. Given the economic stakes in the Pentagon budget, O’Donnell argued, senators and House members cannot afford not to be friends with the secretary of defense.

Integrity Dissected

As his character and integrity are painfully dissected, Tower is trying to practice a virtue he learned in East Texas. Dallas attorney Paul Eggers, Tower’s best friend and former business partner, related that he and Tower, both preachers’ sons, often tried to stump each other with Bible quotations.

Eggers said this week that Tower’s favorite, and the one he has been quoting lately, is from Paul’s epistle to the Romans.

“We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.”

Contributing to this story were staff writers David Lauter, Paul Houston, Karen Tumulty, J. Michael Kennedy, Robert Shogan, Robert Toth, William C. Rempel, Jack Nelson and Robert L. Jackson.