It was a riveting piece of political theater, and it left Inman’s fans in Washington stunned. Here was a man widely admired for his intellect, integrity and cool professionalism–a man who seemed to be at the apex of a distinguished military career– indulging in jeremiads and conspiracy theories. Dole and Safire expressed bewilderment at Inman’s claim that they had conspired to blacken his reputation, and Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi termed his performance “bizarre.” The press, which had welcomed Inman’s appointment nearly five weeks earlier, went looking for the story behind his withdrawal. There were pieces about his business relationship with a convicted arms dealer, and there was speculation about his sexual orientation. Inman, happily married for 35 years, unabashedly insisted that he was straight and said he had once passed a lie-detector test that settled the question. Strangely– perhaps because it was so obvious–almost no one asked whether the man widely praised as Clinton’s best cabinet choice had simply not wanted the job. As Inman told NEWSWEEK’s Eleanor Clift, he had had reservations about the job all along–and his family celebrated when he decided to tell the White House no.
Inman now joins the lengthening list of presidential nominees whose career hopes were crushed in the increasingly brutal arena of Senate confirmation fights. The list includes Judge Robert Bork, the Supreme Court nominee who was beaten on ideological grounds in 1987, and the late John Tower, whose 1988 nomination as secretary of defense was rejected because of alleged alcohol problems and sexual misconduct. It also includes Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, Clinton’s first two nominees for U.S. attorney general–the victims of Nannygate I and Nannygate II. Inman, who had a nannygate problem of his own, was justified in fearing that he would be targeted by the GOP during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
NEWSWEEK has learned that GOP committee staffers were trolling for damaging information and had begun to line up hostile witnesses. “He was not a loved person in the intelligence community, despite what you in the media say,” a Republican source said. “A lot of his old colleagues thought he was a pretty bad guy who had done things that were very questionable.”
Inman’s nomination was another political fiasco for the Clinton White House. It began with the administration’s urgent need to replace Secretary of Defense Les Aspin with a proven star–someone who could guarantee bipartisan support in Congress and help tamp down the criticism of Clinton’s handling of Haiti and Somalia. Inman, who served both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, had many friends on Capitol Hill and more among the press. He was backed by Vice President Al Gore and the State Department’s Strobe Talbott, a columnist for Time magazine before joining the Clinton team. Talbott, who was probably among the many journalists who relied on Inman as a source during the Reagan years, did an excellent job of selling him. White House sources said Inman, with his years of government service, was never fully “vetted” prior to nomination.
Like most fiascoes, there were many warning signs that seem obvious in retrospect. One was Inman’s history of walking out when things didn’t go his way. After rising to political prominence during the Carter years, Inman got his toughest assignment when Reagan named him No. 2 at CIA under William Casey. Casey was widely distrusted on Capitol Hill, and Inman, with his reputation for honesty and his knack for spinning the press, was a perfect antidote to Casey’s wild-man image. But Inman left the CIA after only 16 months saying he had lost his zest for bureaucratic infighting. He headed to Texas and founded a computer-industry consortium to compete with the Japanese and left that, too, after complaining that his business partners failed to back him with top talent. He and two partners then bought Tracer Inc., a Texas defense contractor. But Inman resigned with Tracer near bankruptcy, blaming the firm’s problems on his partners and the banks.
And Inman was clearly ambivalent about becoming secretary of defense. It was obvious on Dec. 16, the day Clinton announced his nomination. “I did not seek the job [and] I did not want the job,” Inman told reporters. According to White House sources, Inman required major stroking from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, White House Counselor David Gergen and finally from Clinton himself. Even so, he kept sending signals he was having misgivings. Members of his White House confirmation team report that Inman grew increasingly prickly over the scope and intensity of the questioning he would face at his Senate hearings. Friends say his wife, Nancy, never wanted to go back to Washington; Inman’s children were opposed as well.
Inman called the White House to announce his decision on Jan. 6 and was told that Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, had died during the night. What followed then was nearly two weeks of secrecy and confusion. Clinton, bound for Europe, could ill afford the appearance of disarray within his national-security team, and the news of Inman’s defection remained tightly held while the president and his advisers tried to find a replacement. According to press accounts, they approached Sen. Sam Nunn, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, but Nunn, a Senate potentate, turned them down. They also tried Warren Rudman, the former Republican senator from New Hampshire; Rudman refused for undisclosed personal reasons. At the weekend, Clinton had breakfast with Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry, and sources said Perry seemed to be the front runner. Later, in what was clearly a sign of White House scrambling, others said that Les Aspin–who in reality had been fired by Clinton–might be asked to stay on permanently.
This suggests another explanation for in man’s melodramatic withdrawal–which is that the next secretary of defense, whoever he is, will have to manage one of the most wrenching budget cutbacks in the history of the Pentagon. NEWSWEEK sources say Aspin is now embroiled in a dispute with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget over future defense spending. The problem, these sources say, is that the Clinton administration’s defense cuts are clearly out of line with its plans to maintain active U.S. force levels at 10 army divisions, 20 tactical air wings for the air force and 11 carriers for the navy. This spending gap–$50 billion to $80 billion over the next five years–is all but guaranteed to trigger major conflicts between Congress, the Pentagon and the White House. And to Inman, always a shrewd strategist in the Beltway career game, it could well have been a signal to retreat.
