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Making a last-day revision to avoid a court challenge, the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission delivered its report to President Bush Thursday evening, barely two hours before the midnight deadline.

A news release about the report was faxed at 9:45 p.m. Washington time from the BRAC commission's office. It arrived amid court challenges from several states this week that put the BRAC panel in an "awkward position," said John Marshall, the Grand Forks attorney who has led the local base retention effort.

Facing a court challenge, the BRAC panel revised its report at the last minute by taking out recommendations to realign a fighter wing in Connecticut. Other states, too, had challenged the BRAC report in court. Once the report is filed with the president, however, no court can review it.

Marshall said he was closely monitoring the late-hour legal wrangling that seemed to threaten the months-long BRAC process.

Midnight deadline

Federal law said the BRAC panel had to file its report by midnight Thursday. The president can approve it or send it to Congress, reject it, or return it to the BRAC panel one time for revisions. Once it goes to Congress, it will become law unless Congress officially rejects it within 45 days.

Attempts in several states to stop base closures or realignments resulted in federal judges ordering the BRAC panel not to file its report until the local challenge got a hearing.

N.J. challenge

Thursday, Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the BRAC panel from delivering its report. Corzine and other New Jersey officials want to keep Fort Monmouth, N.J., off the BRAC panel's closure list.

Wednesday, a lower court had rejected the attempt New Jersey's attempt to keep Monmouth off the closure list. The Associated Press reported that the lower court cited an opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Dave Souter, written in 1994, that said federal courts couldn't tinker with BRAC recommendations.

Thursday, Corzine's request for an emergency stay was filed with Justice Souter, who could rule himself on the matter or consult the other eight justices, The AP reported.

Connecticut case

A similar attempt in Connecticut also was before the Supreme Court.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration's Supreme Court attorney, told justices that Judge Alfred V. Covello of Hartford, Conn., had been out of line Wednesday. Covello had ruled that BRAC couldn't recommend taking fighters from a Connecticut Air Guard base because the governor didn't approve it.

"Placing the commission and the president in this position is fundamentally antithetical to the proper operation" of the BRAC commission, Clement said, asking the Supreme Court to step in.

The Pentagon and White House generally have argued that federal statutes make the BRAC panel's recommendations off-limits for review by courts.

The last-minute appeals were sparked by the fact that once the BRAC report was filed with the president, no court could review it. People on all sides of the 11th-hour disputes agreed it involved uncharted waters.

Marshall's opinion

Marshall described the tough spot the BRAC panel was in.

"If they file the report, they would violate an injunction," Marshall said Thursday evening. "That doesn't make a federal judge too happy."

However, if they didn't file the report, they'd also have a problem, Marshall said.

"If they do that, the BRAC commission is in violation of the statute" to file by the midnight deadline.

"It's putting the BRAC commission in an awkward position at the last minute," Marshall said. "There's no precedent for it at all, legally."

So, the U.S. attorney general's office was pressing the Supreme Court to issue a ruling allowing the BRAC commission to file its report, lifting the injunctions and allowing the challenges to be heard later, Marshall said.

Apparently, the BRAC panel came up with a last minute revision to forestall the court challenge by Connecticut.

Thursday, the BRAC panel revised its final report, taking out the recommendation to realign the Connecticut 103rd Fighter Wing to other states, to negate the issue in Judge Covello's ruling.

If Covello's ruling later is foiled in any way - reversed, vacated, withdrawn, stayed - the BRAC panel intends to reinstate the realignment recommendation in the overall report, the BRAC panel's news release said late Thursday.

GFAFB unscathed

Left unscathed in the whole latter-day brouhaha was the BRAC panel's recommendation to keep the Grand Forks Air Force Base open, but to move most of its 48 air-refueling tankers and 80 percent of the military personnel to other bases by 2009. In a change last month, the BRAC panel agreed that eight tankers would remain until 2011, when a new model tanker should be on line and possibly assigned to the base.

Meanwhile, a new mission of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is scheduled for the base, offering a lot of potential of new technology and added personnel, base retention supporters say.

In Fargo, the Air National Guard facility will retain its personnel and get a new flying mission once the aged F-16s are mothballed as previously planned and be involved in the new UAV mission.

The nine-member BRAC panel made significant revisions to the Pentagon's initial list of proposed closures and realignments, especially criticizing the possible loss of National Guard flying missions in several states, including North Dakota.

The end result was that the BRAC panel cut the cuts proposed by the Pentagon: 33 major bases closed, 29 others realigned, saving an estimated $49 billion over 20 years.

The BRAC panel questioned the Pentagon's cost accounting, saying the actual savings would be far less and that keeping some of the bases open would not cost much.

BRAC's summary

Here's how the BRAC panel summed up its work Thursday:

"Of the 190 DOD (Department of Defense) recommendations, the commission approved 119 with no change and accepted another 45 with amendments; over 86 percent of those proposed by DOD. The Commission rejected 13 DOD recommendations in their entirety, significantly modified another 13, and made five additional closure or realignment recommendations on its own initiative. Of DOD's recommended 33 'major' closures, the Commission approved 21, recommended realignment for seven, and rejected five. In addition, it recommended one for closure rather than realignment, for a total of 22 major closures."

Anthony Principi, the former Veterans Affairs secretary who chaired the BRAC panel, said he was proud of the commission's recommendation to the president.

"We reached our decision through an open, fair, and non-partisan process," Principi said. "While we listened carefully to the input from local communities, military value was our top priority."