On Defense, Levin Knows Drill

WASHINGTON —  People who have worked with Sen. Carl Levin know the technique: He’ll peer at them over the reading glasses perched on his nose, and the questions will pour forth in a cascade.

“He’ll pound away with the questions, then pound some more, until finally the person will give up and say, ‘I don’t know--I’ll have to get back to you,’ ” said Martin Hamburger, a former Levin campaign aide.

Once the rumpled, professorial Levin sets out in pursuit of the facts, Hamburger said, “he keeps going till he gets them.”

And these days, the Michigan Democrat is pursuing the facts in a new role: critic in chief of the Bush administration’s plans to build a missile defense system.

Levin took over as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in June, when Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont defected from the GOP and gave the Democrats control of the Senate. And that position has given this longtime arms-control advocate more leverage than anyone in Washington to challenge the White House’s defense plan.

In the next two months, he will be devising strategy as Senate Democrats try to keep the administration from abandoning a key arms-control treaty as it prepares to deploy the defense system.

Already Levin, 67, has used his chairmanship to compel defense officials to detail how they intend to spend an additional $3 billion requested for the program and to disclose whether the program’s research and development will violate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. At a hearing last month, Levin declared before discomfited defense officials that the specifics of the administration’s half-finished plan were “harder to zero in on than the target in a missile defense test.”

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Levin has been a prominent interrogator during his four-term career in the Senate.

During President Clinton’s impeachment trial, he was highly visible for his detailed critique of the GOP House managers’ case, which he considered flimsy. During the Reagan administration, he bored in with questions about the alleged ethical infractions of former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Levin served on the Detroit City Council for 17 years before coming to Washington in 1978. But some former associates think he may have developed his focus on the details earlier, as Detroit’s chief appellate defender, a job in which he had to make sure that criminals received all due constitutional protections before they were punished.

While he has focused intently on the intricacies of policy, Levin is famously casual about his appearance: He is known for worn pants with dry-cleaning tags still fixed to them and, according to former aide Hamburger, “probably doesn’t have a single unstained tie.”

But just below the surface is a competitive drive.

For years, Levin has carried on a pitched rivalry on the squash court with his brother, Sander M. Levin, 69, who is a 10-term House Democrat from Michigan. The two play at a club on the south end of Capitol Hill, and their records are “just about 50-50,” said Sen. Levin’s spokeswoman, Tara Andringa.

A committed liberal on most domestic issues, Levin’s record on defense has been near the political center. As ranking Democratic committee member, he was an active advocate of President Clinton’s defense program and voted for the increased defense budgets of the last two years.

Levin emphasizes that he is not a categorical opponent of antimissile systems: He supports the use of short-range, battle theater-sized systems, and he thinks the United State should keep researching a large-scale system to keep open its options.

But he says he may try to force changes in the Bush missile defense program if it becomes clear that by violating the ABM Treaty’s limits on testing, it would mean a withdrawal from the decades-old pact that arms control advocates consider key to international stability.

And Levin said he and others might try to scale back the missile defense funding increase if they decide other defense needs are more urgent.

“That’s simply a massive increase for an area where the road map is unclear.” Meanwhile, he added, the Pentagon is facing “massive shortfalls” in spending on readiness, weapon modernization and personnel needs.

Many analysts think that President Bush has the power to unilaterally push his missile defense program through Congress if he wishes. Yet Levin has some leverage.

As committee chairman, he shapes the defense authorization bill in its early form. That can allow him to offer members home-state defense projects in exchange for their support.

One of the ironies of Levin’s position is that a main obstacle is the fellow Democrat who shared the 2000 presidential campaign ticket.

Former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who sits two seats from Levin on the Armed Services Committee, generally favors missile defense, and his influence could draw other Democrats toward the Republican position.

With the 50-49 split in the Senate, Lieberman “is key,” said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms-control advocacy group.

But in his efforts to round up votes, Levin will be helped by his credibility with other senators.

Robert S. Tyrer, a former chief of staff to former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, said others in the Senate have been impressed that Levin’s positions often arise from an analysis of the details.

“He’s always solidly rooted in the facts of the matter.”