PENTAGON TO LAY OFF THOUSANDS.

Byline: Steven Lee Myers The New York Times

Under pressure from Congress to reduce the Pentagon's own bureaucracy before ordering more cuts in troops or weapons, Secretary of Defense William Cohen plans to trim thousands of civilian jobs at the Pentagon and transfer thousands more military personnel out of their headquarters and into the field, officials said.

The reductions, which Cohen and Vice President Al Gore are to announce today, are part of what the officials said would be a sweeping plan to reorganize the Pentagon's bureaucracy, to streamline operations and to otherwise save money that could then be better spent developing new weaponry.

As part of the plan, Cohen also will revive the Clinton administration's request to hold two more rounds of base closings, in 2001 and 2005. Earlier this year, Congress refused to authorize two new rounds, with lawmakers arguing that the administration had to do more to save money elsewhere before shutting bases that offer enormous economic benefits to their constituents.

Altogether the plan, called the Defense Reform Initiative, could save as much as $6 billion a year in the Pentagon's budget, which this year totals about $250 billion, according to the officials, who discussed details on the condition of anonymity.

``Looking downstream, we don't have enough money and won't have enough money to pay for the weapons we need,'' one official said Sunday. ``The only way to get more money is to try to squeeze it out of the other parts of the operation.''

Much of the plan, particularly the proposal for new rounds of base closings, will require congressional approval. And that, by no means, is assured.

Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said Sunday that he would certainly work with Cohen to reduce the Pentagon's bureaucracy but would not support cuts that ``hamper national security.'' He also said it was ``unfortunate'' that Cohen planned to propose more base closings.

``We're just getting over some of the other base closings we've had in the past,'' Thurmond said.

Over the next five years, the plan would eliminate 30,000 administrative jobs out of a total of about 140,000. Civilians holding those jobs would be let go, either through attrition or layoffs, while military personnel in those positions would be reassigned to duty elsewhere.

The reductions would cut the Office of the Secretary of Defense by a third over the next 18 months, to 2,000 jobs from 3,000. Over five years they would eliminate 27,000 jobs from the 130,000 at the 13 defense agencies that provide support to the armed services, like the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

On the military side, an additional 2,500 jobs would be reassigned from administrative duties. The Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and its related staff would be cut by 29 percent, reducing a total of 2,600 jobs to about 1,950 over the next five years.

In addition, 10 percent of the 18,000 troops and officers assigned to military headquarters around the nation and the world would be reassigned to combat rather than administrative duties.

Those cuts, one official said, represented ``an effort to get more people out of headquarters and into the field.''

Cohen's plan comes six months after he presented the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is supposed to be a strategic blueprint for the military in the 21st century. That review was heavily criticized because it made no dramatic changes in battlefield doctrine and eliminated no weapons programs.