Unfriendly Fire

by Dr. Nathaniel Frank

  In January, Clinton’s advisers acknowledged to the press that they’d been surprised by the strength of the opposition. In response, aides were exploring alternatives to an executive order. As soon as Clinton appeared to be wavering, opponents smelled weakness and prepared to pounce. Clinton had repeatedly said that lifting the ban was not open to negotiation—only to discussion over how to do it. But things got worse from here. Holum’s presence on the front lines of the battle gave Nunn and military leaders a new reason to resent the forces of reform. Over the next few weeks, conservatives rallied around a “thorny questions” strategy designed to overwhelm the debate with the specter of uncontrollable change and the full-scale imposition of the “homosexual lifestyle” on the military.

  Nunn introduced these thorns in a passionate Senate speech late that month. “Too many times,” he said, “we in the political world send down edicts and don’t think about the implications of the things that have to follow.” There are numerous “questions that have to be thought about, and every military commander will tell you that they have to go through each one of these things, probably, and plus a lot more.” Nunn then served up over forty questions in rapid succession, as if from a machine gun: “What would be the impact of changing the current policy on recruiting, retention, morale, discipline, as well as military effectiveness? Should there be restrictions on homosexual acts with other military personnel, or only with nonmilitary personnel? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on conduct between members of the same sex? Should such restrictions apply in circumstances in which conduct would not be prohibited if engaged in between members of the opposite sex? What about displays of affection between members of the same sex while they’re out of uniform? What about displays of affection that are otherwise permissible while in uniform, such as dancing at a formal event?” What about “pay and benefits and entitlements? Should homosexual couples receive the same benefits as legally married couples? If homosexual couples are given such benefits, will they also have to be granted to unmarried heterosexual couples? Will there be a related requirement for affirmative action recruiting, retention, and promotion to compensate for past discrimination? If discrimination is prohibited, will there be a need for extensive sensitivity training for members of the armed forces? Who will carry out this sensitivity training?” How will the military handle demands for “back pay, reinstatement, promotions, and similar forms of relief?” Nunn said he did not “pretend to have the answers to these questions, but there are too many people talking on this subject now who haven’t even thought of the questions, let alone the answers.”47

  Military leaders and political commentators took to the pages of major papers to magnify the angst Nunn was spreading, adopting his “thorny questions” strategy. John Marsh, Jr., secretary of the army under President Reagan, wrote in The New York Times that ending the ban by presidential decree “would raise thorny problems” about privacy, benefits, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on sodomy. “Military commanders and administrators,” he wrote, oppose “a sweeping order” because “known homosexuals threaten established values and create tensions that can undermine a unit’s spirit and confidence.”48

  Robert Novak and Rowland Evans used their Chicago Sun-Times column to echo the thorny questions. “Should the same-sex ‘spouse’ of an Army man be provided with joint living quarters on the base?” they wrote. “Should same-sex spouses be given equality in pension and survivor benefits, which could add high cost to the Pentagon’s shrinking budget? Should gays have equal rights with non-gays to dance in the officers’ club or hold hands in the enlisted Marines’ slop shoot?” By all appearances, they wrote, those trying to overturn the ban are “not close to deciding these hard-core issues. Their current thinking is limited.”49

  Novak and Evans thought that Nunn’s planned hearings could be “devastating.” To them, the central issue was not what was best for the military but “the cultural question: whether gays can be admitted to the military without also bringing their lifestyle onto the base and into the barracks.” It would be surprising, they concluded, if the “gay lobby does not have other, quite different ideas” beyond simply equal treatment in the military. “Indeed, the president may discover that the right to serve is only the first of many rights that the gay community will expect him to supply.”50

  As Nunn worked to weaken Clinton’s pledge, he deftly anointed himself the control valve between the GOP and the White House. If Clinton would agree to hold off on an executive order lifting the ban, Nunn proposed, he would close the tap on Republican efforts to write the policy into law, over Clinton’s head. If not, he would join it, virtually assuring its passage and tying Clinton’s hands. “Let’s don’t legislate on something,” he said, “and in exchange, let’s have the Executive show some restraint.” Nunn’s reference to “restraint” had special resonance: Hillary Clinton had accused Nunn of ditching her the day news broke of Bill Clinton’s affair with Gennifer Flowers. The first lady was in Nunn’s state of Georgia that day, and the senator was scheduled to keep her company for media appearances, but he never made it. Nunn, who considered himself a champion of moral propriety, may have disappeared on purpose, seeking to distance himself from Clinton’s indiscretions.51

  Later, when the Lewinsky scandal broke, Nunn complained that Clinton had “placed his own personal interests far above the national interest,” resulting in a “lowering of our moral discourse” and “the exposure of our children to a negative role model,” the same phrase he’d used in backing John Glenn’s opposition to homosexuals as moral guides for young people. Nunn even suggested that Clinton’s irresponsible actions, along with the inattentiveness of the American people, could cause dangerous international conflicts, and concluded that Clinton should engage in “personal sacrifice,” including possibly resigning from office.52 Even in 1993, “restraint” was a pointed effort to link Clinton and his fellow liberals to a lifestyle of license and irresponsibility.

  The first of two chapters in the battle over gay service climaxed in the last third of January 1993, the first full week of Clinton’s presidency. The topic so dominated the meetings of top military and political leaders that they only “spent a few minutes on Iraq,” according to one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On January 21, Les Aspin met with the JCS for two raucous hours of debate in the “tank,” the soundproof chamber inside the Pentagon where the JCS gather to discuss strategy. Both parties restated their positions. Aspin reiterated the president’s commitment to overturning the ban. The JCS insisted that doing so would undermine morale, hurt recruiting, force devout people to leave the military, and spread AIDS by increasing sexual promiscuity that could ultimately bring heterosexuals into contact with the virus.53

  As news stories overflowed with the drama of the battle, the Joint Chiefs and other senior officers increasingly expressed outrage that they had not been sufficiently consulted. And then, the issue spun out of control. On Sunday morning, January 24, Bob Schieffer of CBS’s Face the Nation obtained a copy of a confidential memo from Les Aspin to the president; it outlined a strategy to both compromise on Clinton’s pledge and press the JCS and congressional opponents of reform toward letting gays serve.54 How could they do both? Though they hadn’t yet named it as such, Clinton and Aspin were hovering on the brink of Moskos’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” plan. By focusing on the vague realm of “status,” and by continuing to restrict “conduct,” the White House team thought (correctly, as it would turn out) that they could strike a compromise that would avoid a revolt by Congress and the Joint Chiefs. They hoped it would appease gay rights groups, too. In the former, they were essentially correct, but in the latter, they were very wrong.

  The leaked memo wrought havoc. In it, Aspin warned the president that congressional and military opposition to reform was too strong to overcome. He recommended that Clinton meet with the JCS, saying “this is not a negotiation” but simply the “consultation that you have promised.” Aspin appeared to b
e caught totally off guard when forced to explain to the nation, without any preparation, why he was encouraging the Joint Chiefs to consult with the administration if the president’s mind was already made up. It made it seem like he was prodding the president to feign consultation with military leaders even though he had no intention of listening to their objections. Rumors surfaced that Powell was threatening to bolt. There were “reports all over Washington this week,” said Schieffer on Face the Nation, “that General Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said that he may resign if this is forced upon him.” Aspin’s reply: “Not going to happen.”55

  As angry as the military leaders were, gay groups were no happier with what they heard. The public discussion of the memo contained the first known suggestion that the White House might accept a plan that required gays to conceal their sexual identity and avoid any sexual activity while in the service. Aspin spoke of “trying to get the gay rights groups to do a little compromise” in order to ward off congressional action. He hinted what that compromise would be. “The president has said that he wants to eliminate the discrimination against gays in the military based upon status,” said Aspin on Face the Nation, but he would like “to have strict controls, or prohibitions, against people’s behavior.” Aspin said that the question of conduct was “at the heart of the ability to make this thing work” as a compromise between the military and the gay community. Some gay rights advocates wondered if Aspin had leaked the memo himself as a way to end the battle.56 Indeed, Aspin would later say publicly that he was trying to preserve political capital for other battles. And it seemed peculiar that a brand-new defense secretary would somehow lose control of a private memo to the president like this. What better way to avoid a drawn-out battle than to concede defeat before the fight had ever really begun?

  Meanwhile, George Stephanopoulos, then White House director of communications, reiterated in a press conference the following day the president’s “commitment to ending discrimination against gays in the military solely on the basis of status, and to maintain morale and cohesion in the military.”57 But the language was quickly becoming code for the limited right to serve as closeted, celibate gays. The administration, which had hoped to execute its plan in private, was wounded by the perception that it was taking neither the Joint Chiefs nor gay groups seriously.

  Nunn was also furious. First, Aspin was speaking on TV about a plan that Nunn did not feel he had been consulted about. Worse, Nunn learned from the leaked memo that Aspin had cited him by name as one of the chief impediments to the White House’s plan to end the ban. Already sensitive over matters of military and political prerogative, thick in an ideological and personal battle with two powerful men whose jobs he once coveted, Nunn dug in his heels. He held a news conference on Capitol Hill the day after the Face the Nation revelation, in which he complained that the White House had not consulted enough with him and with other congressional and military leaders. “I’ll just say that if there’s a strategy there, that it hadn’t been explained to me,” Nunn said. “Does that mean you’re dissatisfied?” asked a reporter. “No,” said Nunn, “it just means what I said. I just am not part of the strategy.”58

  The day after the leak, the Joint Chiefs met with Clinton himself. Although it was their first meeting with Clinton as president, they never even discussed the evolving trouble spots in Iraq, Bosnia, or Somalia. Instead, they focused on whether a certain variety of love—instead of a certain variety of hate—could bring down the world’s strongest military. (Ironically, that week GOP senator Phil Gramm said, by way of opposing gay service, “We’re not going to let politics destroy the greatest Army the world has ever seen”—even as politics was doing all it could to distract the nation’s leaders from pressing issues.) While the meeting was described as cordial and lacked the kind of outrage that characterized the previous week’s tête à tête with Aspin, both sides reiterated their commitments to seemingly opposite positions and the men left quickly when it was done.59

  Then it was on to Congress, where Bob Dole threatened to write the ban into law and Senator George Mitchell, the Democratic leader, informed the White House that, without Nunn’s blessing, Democrats would be powerless to stop the rest of Congress from overriding the president’s efforts. After meetings on Capitol Hill, Clinton held his ground. The words of Stephanopoulos this time did not even betray an intention to compromise on the status versus conduct distinction: “The president is sticking by his commitment to ending discrimination against homosexuals in the military,” he said.

  Either the White House still thought full success was possible, or its definition of “ending discrimination” had become woefully corrupted. After all, no one would seriously regard it as an end to discrimination if gays were permitted to serve while they were required to conceal their identity and remain celibate twenty-four hours a day. Still, as Aspin had done in his memo, Mitchell and other allies of the president were now warning the White House that its power was not limitless. “Any executive order can be overturned by act of Congress,” Mitchell said. As a backdrop to the frenzied negotiations, hundreds of thousands of calls came into the Capitol, with the vast majority opposing gay service—largely courtesy of the furious organizing of the religious right.60

  The rest of the week consisted of frantic meetings, often lasting deep into the night, in which Clinton and Aspin engaged Nunn and other lawmakers to figure out a way to tamp down the national uproar. The compromise that became “don’t ask, don’t tell” was essentially formulated that week, though its details and permanence would not be worked out until July and beyond. Powell and Nunn, his main ally in Congress, insisted that no homosexual conduct—which would come to include saying you were gay and even holding hands off base—be permitted by service members anytime anywhere. Congress appeared to have more leverage in this area, because the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which was controlled by Congress, banned sodomy. How could the nation permit the president to issue an executive order to allow something that was criminalized in the military justice system governed by Congress? Sure, the UCMJ banned sodomy for everyone, gay and straight alike. But the average American viewed gays alone as defined by sodomy, and the ultimate policy defined “homosexual conduct” as any physical activity that a “reasonable person would understand to demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.”61

  President Clinton, for his part, held firm through the end of the month. He appeared to be motivated by both the principle of equality and the recognition that abandoning this campaign promise threatened to brand him as untrustworthy, as the White House was already taking heat for failing to deliver on middle-class tax relief and spending reductions. But in light of Aspin and Mitchell’s advice that the White House might not be able to surmount congressional opposition, his options were drying up. That week, the president and his advisers began to hint that their commitment to nondiscrimination would only extend to status, not conduct.

  On Thursday, Clinton began to make it clear that the compromise would involve only welcoming gays who did not engage in homosexual conduct, although the meaning of this was still being debated. “The principle behind this for me is that Americans who are willing to conform to the requirements of conduct within the military services in my judgment should be able to serve in the military and that people should be disqualified from serving in the military based on something they do, not based on who they are,” Clinton said. “That is the elemental principle.” He said he had won agreement from the Joint Chiefs that recruits would no longer be asked if they were gay, but said “the narrow issue on which there is disagreement is whether people should be able to say that they are homosexual without being . . . severed.”62

  That “narrow disagreement” ended up delaying the formation of a final policy for six months—similar, in the end, to what Holum’s recommendation had been, but with no executive order. On Friday, January 29, President Clinton held a news conference to announce that no final plan would be
decided on until July, enough time for Nunn to hold congressional hearings on the matter. Immediately, Bob Dole, in an effort to embarrass the president and launch his own presidential campaign for 1996, sought to write the full gay ban into law. Nunn as part of his compromise with Clinton and in an effort to control the six-month study period offered a softer bill to write the delay itself into law, a bill that prevailed over Dole’s. Nunn’s success solidified his role as lead man on the issue. The six-month study period would enable the pro-ban forces, under the leadership of Nunn and with the eager assistance of the religious right, to rally still greater support for holding the line on gay troops.

  As part of the two-step plan outlined by Secretary Aspin, the military would, in the meantime, stop asking recruits about their sexual orientation and suspend discharges based on homosexuality. But investigations of homosexuality would continue, and if they were found out, gays and lesbians would be transferred into the “standby reserves,” where they would receive no pay or benefits, and where their careers would be frozen until the final plan was in place. The standby reserves were a last-resort cadre of reservists who did not even train for deployment.63

  Clinton acknowledged the compromise was not everything he wanted, but tried to claim it as a victory, calling it a “dramatic step forward.” He said it would allow gays to serve “who are prepared to accept all necessary restrictions on their behavior, many of which would be intolerable in civilian society.” He also insisted he still planned to sign an order that summer allowing gays to serve in some capacity. While he hinted he might veto any legislation that sought to maintain the ban, part of the January compromise was that he would invite Congress to vote on whatever proposal he came up with in July. And there were still several arrows Congress had in its quiver, including writing an amendment banning gay service and attaching it to a larger bill that would be even harder for Clinton to veto.64