From Deseret News archives:
Don't buy the rumors, HAFB says
Bogus lists say base is safe, but nothing has been decided
Lists circulating on the Internet and e-mail are bogus, said Rick Mayfield, executive director of the Utah Defense Alliance.
Mayfield says he doesn't pay any attention to the speculation, even though most bets are that Hill will survive military consolidation.
"You can get yourself all worked up, or you can get a false sense of security," he said.
The Pentagon insists it has made no decisions yet.
"There is no DoD list. I say again, there is no DoD list," said Glenn Flood, spokesman for the Department of Defense. "If there's anything out there, it is pure speculation."
Vickie McCall, president of the Utah Defense Alliance — a group of business, community and elected leaders — said lobbyists are responsible for spreading some rumors.
"There are people who try to influence the process and think they have insider knowledge, but they don't. It's just pure conjecture at this point," she said.
The Base Realignment and Closure Commission hasn't even gone to work yet. President George W. Bush won't nominate the panel's nine commissioners until March.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will release the Pentagon's plan in May.
Rumsfeld has called this round the "mother of all BRACs." He plans to shut down about a quarter of the military's infrastructure, which could come to about 100 bases. That equals all military downsizing in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The bases are supplying the Pentagon with information and taking an oath to keep the deliberations secret — a shift from previous, largely open deliberations.
"This is all coming from the top down," Mayfield said. "There just isn't good information coming out of the Pentagon. There are no leaks that we feel comfortable with. It really is an operation where it's being done without a lot of outside influence. The whole theory is to keep the politics out of it."
