August 10, 2005

The following letter was sent by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission Chair Anthony J. Principi today. The letter was also read by Cabinet Secretary Terry Tamminen at the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission's field hearing in Monterey.

August 8, 2005

The Honorable Anthony J. Principi
Chairman, Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission
2521 South Clark Street, Suite 600
Arlington, Virginia  22202

Dear Chairman Principi,

I am pleased to welcome you and the other Commissioners to California for this hearing, and I regret that I cannot be there in person today.  I have asked my Cabinet Secretary to deliver this letter on my behalf as part of today's testimony.

Last month I appeared before your public hearing in Los Angeles, and I provided you with our comprehensive statewide report on the value of California's military bases.  Let me review the key findings of that report with you this afternoon.

1. We provide unique and mission-critical capabilities for the military here in California.
2. We are working closely with you and with the Defense Department to preserve and strengthen those mission-critical capabilities.
3. We are seeing the results of those efforts right here in Monterey and in San Diego, where you have visited last Friday and this morning.

While our report covers every base in the state, today I would like to focus on just the specific bases that are on the agenda, but I would like to connect my comments back to that report I presented to you in July.

In that report, we note that California has enormous strengths in technological expertise and resident human capital.  These strengths support top research universities and defense industry throughout the state, and they also provide the support for our key military institutions of higher learning, the Defense Language Institute and the Navy's Postgraduate School.

First, there is the Defense Language Institute, or DLI, which trains each year thousands of military and intelligence staff in foreign language proficiency.  After September 11, they shifted quickly to fill the gaps in our national capability, and they did so far faster than any public or private college or university could have done.  The faculty at DLI is unmatched anywhere.  They are dedicated to their mission, but they are also wedded to living in and around Monterey.  We found this out when DoD tried to close DLI in 1993 to move it to Arizona.  None of the faculty would transfer, and it would be nearly impossible to recruit new ones.  This difficulty in recruiting new faculty would create a huge hole in our national language training, and all America would suffer.  Any savings that might be created would not matter if we lost the capability to operate in foreign lands or handle the intelligence we intercept.

But there are few savings available anyway.  Thanks to an innovative agreement between the City of Monterey and the DLI, many of the base operating costs are already offset by the city support, and this is saving DoD over $40 million.  It will be hard to produce greater savings than that under any other scenario.

Then there is the Navy's Postgraduate School, which educates and trains graduate military students not just from the Navy but also from all branches of the services and from dozens of foreign allied and friendly nations.  The Postgraduate School is not like any other graduate university, because it combines technical and military disciplines in a truly unique, one-of-a-kind institution that has taken decades to build. 

The Postgraduate School is more than an educational institution.  For example, it applied those technical and military capabilities very quickly in response to September 11.  Within a few months, the School had America's first master's program in homeland security.  This kind of responsiveness just did not and could not occur in any other graduate program, public or private.  If you were to outsource graduate education, you would never be able to get that kind of response to new requirements.  Other colleges have put homeland security degree programs together - none were as quick as the Postgraduate School, which had graduates heading out the door by the time others put their initial courses together.

The Postgraduate School also applies the research that it incorporates.  For example, I am told that they took the lead on developing unmanned aerial vehicle technology solutions for our ongoing war on terrorism.  Because of the combination of this technology here in Monterey and the available air and sea test ranges down the coast at Camp Roberts, the Postgraduate School was able to move quickly and help the war fighters in Asia.  No other school in America offers that combination of technology along with nearby access to training and test ranges.  If you were to move any of that technology and military instruction from here, you would lose that capability.

And you would not save any money.  With regard to the Postgraduate School, the Defense Department's BRAC cost numbers contained numerous errors and mistakes.  The Navy calculated the costs wrong, they underestimated the number of students, and they did not account for reimbursements from other nations. 

However, even with those flawed cost calculations, the Navy still did not propose closing the Postgraduate School, or realigning it, or outsourcing it.  Last May, when you asked Navy Secretary Gordon England about closing the Postgraduate School, he said to you that "this has such value to the nation" that "at the end I said I didn't think we should do this", meaning close the school.  On that point, I agree completely with the Secretary of the Navy. I agree with him when he says this school has "more value now, in this kind of war, than ever in the past."  I also agree with the Defense Department's position, taken in their July 14 response to you, that "maintaining graduate education is a core competency of the Department."  There is no place in America that can better execute that core competency than the Postgraduate School.

I would also like to provide our views on the proposed move in San Diego. From my perspective, we agree with the Navy and the Defense Department that the actions to move from the Broadway complex to another Navy center in San Diego should be undertaken outside of the BRAC process, through ongoing negotiations between the City of San Diego and the Navy. 

Let me close with a final statement on why the military is better off in California.  We have in this state the overall capability to provide all the support needed, from vast, unencroached training and test ranges and the ideal weather to use them, to outstanding technology and academic support, to the operating forces that are the real reason we have a military in the first place.  You can see that capability at work wherever you travel in the state, and we are grateful that the Defense Department recognized that capability in their own BRAC recommendations, by leaving so many key bases in California untouched.  We ask that you consider the same strengths and capabilities as you make your own, independent evaluations, and we are confident that in a fair comparison based on accurate information, you will reach the same conclusions. 

I want to thank you again for coming here for your hearing, for taking the time to visit the sites and see for yourselves what they truly have to offer, and for permitting me to submit this letter to you today.  I wish you the best as you finish your tasks that are so important for our military and for our nation. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor, State of California

Back to BRAC

Back to the top