Aspin was Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 1994.
An army officer from 1966 to 1968, Les Aspin served as a systems analyst in the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense McNamara
In 1971, he began a long career in Congress. "By 1985, when he became chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, he was recognized as a leading defense authority." [1]
From the official Defense Department website:
His chairmanship caused controversy among some House Democrats, particularly because he supported the Reagan administration's policies on the MX missile and aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Although temporarily removed from his committee chair by his Democratic colleagues in 1987, Aspin weathered the crisis and resumed the post. He again broke with many Democrats in January 1991 when he issued a paper supporting the Bush administration's intention to use military force to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. [2]
An adviser to Clinton on defense matters in the 1992 presidential campaign, Aspin would become his Defense Secretary (1993 - 1994).
A few years earlier, Les Aspin played a significant role in the pardon of Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger, the Defense Secretary under Reagan, was indicted at the end of the Iran-Contra investigation, and was slated to go on trial. When Weinberger's defense team consulted top Democrats, including then-Representative Les Aspin, to see what their reaction would be to a pardon, the feedback they received convinced them to go ahead with it. [See: Weinberberger]
James Brosnahan, the trial attorney who was to prosecute Weinberger, said ...
It was going to be a hell of a trial. The full story would have been told, as it pertained to the [obstruction] counts of the indictment. They [senior Reagan-Bush officials] couldn't have a trial. The cross- examination of Caspar Weinberger was going to be an event. [MotherJones]
One figure who stood to lose if the scheduled trial were to take place was Colin Powell, who was Weinberger's aide in 1985:
In an affidavit, Powell said he "saw virtually all the papers that went in and out of [Weinberger's] office" and thus would have had direct access to the evidence of missile replenishment. Early in the investigation, Powell gave conflicting accounts of his knowledge of Weinberger's extensive personal notes, denying knowledge of their existence (when Weinberger was claiming he didn't take any), and then saying in 1992 that the notes were no secret and describing them in detail (after Weinberger was forced to cough them up). [MotherJones]
We also have Aspin to thank for dipping into public funds to help destitute defense contractors in the wake 'insufficient budget increases for the military' during the Clinton years. In the tradition of C.E.Wilson, Defense Secretary in the Eisenhower Administration, Aspin and Perry [also a Defense Secretary under Clinton] provided private defense contractors with a windfall in corporate welfare:
Early in the Clinton administration, Defense Secretary Les Aspin and Under-secretary of Defense William Perry decided to encourage mergers of defense firms. First, at a meeting that Lockheed Martin’s Norman Augustine refers to as the 'last supper,' Perry bluntly told industry executives that the Pentagon would not be ordering enough ships, planes, and tanks to support the number of major military contractors that had been sustained by the Reagan military buildup of the 1980s. At the urging of then Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine, in the summer of 1993 Perry and Deutch signed off on a new policy under which the Pentagon would partially under- write defense industry mergers... In a classic example of the 'revolving door' between the defense industry and the Pentagon, Perry and Deutch had to get a conflict of interest waiver from then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin before they could give the green light to the new merger subsidy policy (both men had worked as paid consultants for their old friend Norman Augustine at Martin Marietta just prior to joining the Clinton administration). Augustine himself received $8.2 million in bonus money as a result of the Lockheed/Martin Marietta merger, which was announced just three months after Perry and Deutch cleared the new merger subsidy policy. Augustine’s lobbying for the merger subsidies, which has yielded his company over $855 million in taxpayer money, prompted one former Pentagon official to observe 'when it comes to corporate welfare, you’d better look out for St. Norman Augustine... - from "Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies" [3] by William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute
At the urging of then Martin Marietta CEO Norman Augustine, in the summer of 1993 Perry and Deutch signed off on a new policy under which the Pentagon would partially under- write defense industry mergers... In a classic example of the 'revolving door' between the defense industry and the Pentagon, Perry and Deutch had to get a conflict of interest waiver from then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin before they could give the green light to the new merger subsidy policy (both men had worked as paid consultants for their old friend Norman Augustine at Martin Marietta just prior to joining the Clinton administration). Augustine himself received $8.2 million in bonus money as a result of the Lockheed/Martin Marietta merger, which was announced just three months after Perry and Deutch cleared the new merger subsidy policy. Augustine’s lobbying for the merger subsidies, which has yielded his company over $855 million in taxpayer money, prompted one former Pentagon official to observe 'when it comes to corporate welfare, you’d better look out for St. Norman Augustine...
- from "Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies" [3] by William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute
There is a tradition of highly questionable relationships between U.S. Defense Secretaries and defense contractors - conflicts of interest, cronyism and corporate welfare. For more on this, see the pages at this site on the Eisenhower Administration and on Defense Secretaries C.E. Wilson, Dick Cheney, and William Perry.
In February of 1995, Clinton called on Aspin to head a commission to study intelligence requirements of the post-Cold War era.
Following Aspin's death in May, former Defense Secretary Harold Brown is appointed to head the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community. At about the same time, congressional intelligence committees also begin hearings on possible reforms in U.S. intelligence gathering.[4] [For more on this see Harold Brown]
