Gays Reported Opposing Nunn Cabinet Post

NEW YORK — Sen. Sam Nunn dismissed two aides a decade ago after learning they were gay, and gay rights groups say that disqualifies him from a Cabinet post in the Clinton Administration, a published report said Sunday.

The Georgia Democrat, said to be a leading candidate for secretary of Defense, has confirmed that he asked the two openly gay aides to leave because of their sexual persuasion, the New York Times said.

Nunn says he dismissed them for security reasons, saying that the CIA and Defense Department considered them a risk because their homosexuality could leave them open to blackmail.

Gay groups have been battling Nunn since the dismissal of the two men was first reported in the Washington Blade, a gay weekly newspaper, the Times said.

Nunn, who opposes President-elect Bill Clinton’s plan to end the ban on homosexuals in the military, has said he routinely hires openly gay people in jobs that do not require security clearance.

One of the two men dismissed by Nunn is quoted as calling the senator a “homophobe.” The other says Nunn let him stay on the job for six months after he had been termed a risk. “He sat down with me, face to face,” the former aide, Greg Baldwin, is quoted as saying. “I’ve worked with homophobes and they don’t do it that way.”