Gay and lesbian leaders greeted with a sigh of relief the Dec. 28 nomination of Donald Rumsfeld, 68, to be Secretary of Defense. While there is little hope that the anti-gay policy know as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ( DADT ) will be quickly reversed, they believe it can be more fairly implemented and anti-gay harassment may decline within the military.
A leading contender for the position had been former Senator Dan Coats, R-Ind., a prospect that greatly troubled Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign.
Coats had one of the least friendly voting records on gay issues when he was in the Senate and strongly pushed to fully ban gays from serving in the military.
Groups like the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund ( SLDN ) made public concerns they had with Coats, while other groups and individuals used private channels to make sure that president-elect George W. Bush was aware that the issue would arise during confirmation hearings.
It is far from clear what impact that had on Bush's final decision regarding Coats, and even if it were a major factor, the Republican would be loath to admit it. Such a declaration would only alienate part of the conservative coalition that helped elect him, while doing little to build support elsewhere.
Transition advisers, speaking on background, told the press that there were some concerns over Coats' experience in managing a large operation such as the Pentagon. And the interview with Bush simply did not overcome those reservations.
The surprise decision to turn to Rumsfeld seemed to reflect the physicians' adage of "first, do no harm," by avoiding politically controversial issues such as DADT. It was reinforced at the news conference when Rumsfeld was asked about the policy and responded, "the priorities are in other areas for me."
"The signal that sends is that he will do that which Bush asks him to do," said SLDN co-director Dixon Osburn. As Bush supports DADT, "I take to mean that we are going to have the status quo rather than backsliding," he said. "That is an improvement from where the GOP was in 1993."
Osburn noted that "gay discharges have skyrocketed 73 percent since the policy was first implemented" in 1993. The organization helped about 300 clients in 1999 and "close to 600" in 2000.
The administration cannot act alone and "the current political environment is Congress is that the policy is not going to be overturned in the near term," said Osburn. But a statement that Rumsfeld made during the 1993 debate on DADT leads him to believe that the Secretary-designate understands the chain of command and will implement the policy fairly. That sort of leadership could lead to fewer discharges.
Rumsfeld's mandate from Bush to modernize the military for the 21st century may also provide cover to eventually eliminate DADT, perhaps as part of broader changes in personnel matters.
THE AIDS CONNECTION
This is the second time around the inner ring of the Pentagon for Rumsfeld. At 43 he became the youngest Secretary of Defense ever, serving in the office for the last 14 months of the Gerald Ford Administration in the mid-1970s. Previous stops had been as a moderate Republican from Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as White House chief of staff. As head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, he hired a young Dick Cheney, now Vice President-elect.
After leaving Washington, Rumsfeld worked as CEO of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle, now merged into Pharmacia, and with the high tech company General Instrument Corp. He also served on the board of directors of the RAND Corporation, a conservative think tank that produced a 1993 report saying that there need not be significant problems in allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
Few news accounts mentioned that for the last four years Rumsfeld has served as chairman of the board of Gilead Sciences. It is unusual for a man of his prestige to join what was then a very small pharmaceutical company of about 250 employees, located just south of San Francisco. It has since grown to about 750 employees.
A substantial portion of Gilead's activities are directed toward HIV. The company had the dubious distinction in the fall of 1999 of having a FDA advisory committee decline to support approval of their antiviral drug adefovir. The problems were limited efficacy combined with long-term toxicity that the committee felt required further testing.
Gilead subsequently developed adefovir at lower doses to treat hepatitis B. It has a second-generation compound with greater efficacy against HIV and lower toxicity, tenofovir, in advanced clinical trials. And it is providing marketing and distribution for Virco's genotypic and phenotypic tests for determining HIV mutation resistance to specific drugs.
All of this suggests that Rumsfeld would be supportive of Department of Defense research efforts on HIV. The Department has a strong vaccine research program. Forces both within and outside of the Pentagon have sought to eliminate those programs in the past and nearly succeeded.
