HISTORICAL ANALYSIS SERIES 

A CMH STUDY 

THE ARMY AND THE JOINT CmEFS OF STAFF: 

EVOLUTION OF ARMY IDEAS ON THE 

COMMAND, CONTROL, AND COORDINATION 

OF THE U.S. ARMED FORCES, 

1942-1985 

by 

Edgar F. Raines, Jr. 

and 

Major David R. Campbell 

Analysis Branch, U.S. Army Center of Military History 

Historical Analysis Series 

THE ARMY AND THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: 

EVOLUTION OF ARMY IDEAS ON THE COMMAND, 

CONTROL, AND COORDINATION OF THE 

U.S. ARMED FORCES, 1942-1985 

by 

Edgar F. Raines, Jr. 

and 

Major David R. Campbell 

Analysis Branch 

U.S. Army Center of Military History 

Washington, D.C. 
l 

Library of Congress Calaloging-in-Public3Iion Dala 

Raines, Edgar F. 

The Armyls position on Joint Chiefs of Staff reform. 

1942-1985. 

(Historical analysis series) 

Bibliography: p. 

1. United States. Army--History--2oth century. 

2. United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff. I. Campbell . 

David R. II. Title. III. Series. 

UA25.R35 1985 355.3'3042'0973 85-22937 

CMH Pub 93-3 

First Printing 1986 
FOREWORD 

This paper, the fourth publication in the Historical Analysis Series, treats a 

significant topic--the Army's initiation of and reaction to proposa ls for refo rm 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Originally established durin!; World War II to 

foster cooperation with the British high command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

have proved a perennial focus for contention. Issues of civilian control of the 

military , national strategy, and the division of the budget among the services 

have intermingled with more technical questions concerning command. control, 

and coordination. The current proposals for reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

occasioned the publication of this study , but the history of similar debates over 

forty yea rs suggests that the study will remain pertinent. 

Questions regarding what policy is and what it should be are central to 

discussion. Part of the intellectual process of formulating answers is a careful 

consideration of past experience . The Army's historical community provides 

pertinent, objective research on questions of interest. In the present essay , the 

Center of Military History offers current and future policy makers a detailed 

treatment of th:s major issue in U.S. milita ry affairs. 

Washington, D.C. 

19 April 1986 

iii 

William A. StoUt 

Brigadier General, U.S. Army 

Ch ief of Military History 
THE AUTHORS 

Edgar F. Raines, Jr., was born in Murphysboro, Illinois. He received his B.A. 

in history from Southern Illinois University in 1966 and his M.A., also in history, 

from the same school two years later. During the 1971-72 academic year, he 

was one of the first two dissertation year fellows in military history at the U.S. 

Army Center of Military History. In 1976 he obtained his Ph .D. in history from 

the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been a historian at the center 

since November 1980. 

Major David R. Campbell, a native of Chicago, 1Ilinois, received his B.A. in 

history from De Paul University in 1969 and was commissioned in the Regular 

Army in the field artillery. He has served in Vietnam, West Germany, Saudi 

Arabia and the United States. He completed his M.A. in history at Iowa State 

Universi ty in 1980. 

IV 
PREFACE 

On 27 March 1985 Senator William V. Roth of Delaware wrote Secretary 

of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and advocated the estabJishment of a Blue 

Ribbon Panel to examine the defense procurement system. Senator Roth 

observed in the course of his remarks that interservice cooperation needed 

improvement and specifically called for a review of proposals to strengthen the 

role of the chairman or the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of the 

unified and specified commands'! In so doing he became only the latest of the 

congressional advocates of reform of command and control of the U.S. armed 

forces--a tradition that stretches back to the immediate aftermath of World 

War I. 

Effective coordination between the armed services, however, had to await 

the next great armed conflict. The World War II Joint Chiefs of Staff proved 

but the ha rbinger of postwar reforms that included the creation of the Office of 

the Secretary of Defense in 1947, the establishment of a Department of 

Defense and the position of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff two years 

later, and the gradual strengthening of the powers of the secretary and the 

chairman in subsequent reforms. While these events have attracted the 

attention of many commentators, no one has yet discussed them in a 

comprehensive fashion from the perspective of one of the services. This essay 

seeks to describe the Army's cofficial positions on the various proposals to 

reform the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1942 and 1985, to identify continuities 

and discontinuities, and to provide some explanation for them. The U.S. Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, although in many respects a historical accident in that it was 

created to provide a parallel organization to the British Chiefs of Staff 

Committee, was also shaped by specifically American circumstances. The 

independent air power debate of the years between 1918 and 1941, the 

development of the Joint Army and Navy Board after 1903, and the evolution of 

the general staff concept and the changing role of the chief of staff provided 

1 Michael Ganley, "Reagan to Name Blue-Ribbon Panel on DOD Buying as 

Reform Calis Mount," Armed Forces Journa llnternationai 122 (July 1985): 12. 

v 
the intellectual and insti tutional context of the Army's initial response to the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff organization. The degree of influence exercised by the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, once established, depended not only on its formal 

statutory basis but also upon the health and vigor of other institutions, such as 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense (after 1947), the service secretaries, and 

the unified and specified commands. Of equal importance were the 

personalities of the men involved, partfcularly the president and his view of 

institutional relationships. The authors have addressed these issues to provide 

some understanding of the human realities that underlay the calls for 

institu t ional reform. 

The origins of this study date back to the late summer of 1981 when the U.S. 

Army Center of Military History provided the Army Staff with a study of Joint 

Chiefs of Staff reform proposals since 1942. Some thought was given at the 

time to preparing an account of the Army's positions on these proposals, but the 

impulse was defeated by the dea rth of secondary literature on the subject and 

the lack of time for extensive primary research . In July 1984 the then chief of 

military history, Brig. Gen. Douglas Kinnard, decided to commit the resources 

at the center needed to support extensive primary research on the project. Dr. 

Edga r F. Raines, Jr., was assigned to it in Septembe r and Maj . David R. 

Campbell in October, when he reported to the center. Dr. Raines had primary 

responsibility for researching and writing chapters one through sixj Major 

Campbell chapters seven through nine. Both writers are responsible for the 

conclusion . 

The charts which illustra te the various proposals for Joint Chie fs of Staff 

reform require a little explanation. While some of the proposals included charts 

to illustrate recommended Changes, others did not. Where charts were lacking, 

we constructed them. Unfortunately, the existing charts do not follow a 

uniform format. In the interest of minirnizing our own and the readers' 

confusion, we have supplied a uniform fo rmat throughout. Any modifica tion of 

the original charts was based on a close reading of the original sources and 

considerable discussion by the two authors. 

All historians contract numerous obligations in the course of their research 

and writing. This is particularly true of historians who are working under tight 

deadlines. Without the assistance of Mr. Edward J. Reese, Mr. Wilbert B. 

vi 
Mahoney, Ms. Teresa Hammet, and Ms. Angela Fernandes of the Modern 

Military Headquarters Branch of the National Archives, this study could not 

have been written. We are also indebted to Dr. Archie Barrett of the staff of 

the House Armed Services Committee; Dr. Richard J. Sommers and Mr. David 

A. Keough of the U.S. Army Military History Institute; Mr. Steven M. Eldridge, 

Ms. Edie M. Miley, and Mr. Thomas A. Gaskins of The Adjutant General's 

Office; Mr. Willard J. Webb of the Historical Division, Office of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff; Dr. Roger R. Trask of the Historical Office, Office of the 

Secretary of Defense; and the following current and fanner members of the 

Army Staff: Col. Harold Lee Ladehoff, Lt. Col. Robert H. Scales, and Lt. Col. 

James M. Stefan. Retired Generals Maxwell D. Taylor, William E. DePuy, John 

H. Cushman, Bruce Palmer, Jr., and David S. Parker, and former Secretaries of 

Defense Robert S. McNamara and Melvin R. Laird answered our queries about 

points that were obscure to us. 

This study would not have been completed without the active support of 

successive chiefs of military history at the U.S. Army Center of Military 

History--General Kinnard and Brig. Gen. William A. Stofft--and Col. Patrick J. 

Holland who served as acting Chief of Military History in the interim between 

General Kinnard's departure and General Stofft's appointment. Dr. David F. 

Trask, the chief historian at the center, has provided insightful comments that 

much improved the manuscript. We are also indebted to Lt. Col. Robert Frank, 

chief of the Research and Analysis Division, and Dr. Alexander S. Cochran, 

chief of the Analysis Branch, for their guidance and encouragement. Friends 

and colleagues in and outside the center have commented constructively on 

portions of the manuscript in its various stages. They include Dr. Paul J. 

Scheips, Mr. Karl E. Cocke, Ms. Rebecca C. Robbins, Ms. Romana M. Danysh, 

Mr. Wayne M. Dzwonchyk, Mr. Steven E. Everett, Mr. Douglas Clanin, Maj. 

Lawrence Greenberg, and Maj. Francis T. Julia, Jr. We are deeply indebted to 

our outside readers--Professor Daniel R. Beaver of the University of Cincinnati 

and the current holder of the Research Chair in Military History at the center; 

Professor John Y. Simon of Southern Illinois University; Professor Edward M. 

Coffman of The University of Wisconsin; Mr. Herman Wolk, Dr. George 

Watson, and Dr. Walton H. Moody of the Office of Air Force History; Dr. Roger 

R. Trask at the Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Mr. 

vii 
Willard J. Webb and Mrs. Helen M. Bailey at the Historical Division, Joint 

Chiefs of Staff; and Dr. Roger Spiller, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

Command and General Staff College . Dr. Raines had the good fortune to serve 

on the U.S. Army Special Review Committee on Department of Defense 

Organization in the [all of 1985. He thanks his fellow committee members, Col. 

Powell Hutton, Col. AI Baker, Lt. Col. Daniel Kaufman, Lt. Col. James M. 

Stefan, Lt. Col. Jack Wood, Maj. Rob Holland, and Mr. J. B. Hudson , for the 

insights that they gave him on the joint system. Mr. Terrence J. Gough at the 

center unselfishly shared with us his knowledge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Ms. Elizabeth McCormick served as a research assistant on the project duri ng 

its closing stages. Ms. Bernice Harper and Ms. Barbara Cork prov ided 

indispensable typing support. The librarians a t the center, Ms. Carol Anderson 

and Ms. Mary Sawyer, relentlessly tracked obscure volumes and secured them 

on interlibrary loan. Ms. Hannah M. ZeidJik and Ms. Ge raldine K. Judkins gave 

us the archival support we have come to expect at the center. Staff Sergeant 

Marshall Williams and Ms. Linda M. Cajka provided graphics support, while Mr. 

Lenwood Y. Brown, our editor, saw the manuscript th rough to publication. Dr. 

James E. Hewes, Jr", retired from the center before the inception of this study 

but his work on the history of the Army Staff serves as a model for all those 

who attempt to understand military administration at the highest levels. We 

are in the debt of all these people whose collective efforts account for many of 

the strengths of this study. The authors are fully accountable for any errors of 

fact or interpretation. 

v iii 
CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

t. Intellectual and Institutional Roots of Reform, 1903-1 941 ...•... 

II. The Creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and First Attempts 

at Reform, 1941-1943 ... . . . ..... . . ............ . . . . · · · · · · · " 14 

III. The Creation of a Single Military Establishment, 1943-1947 ..... 31 

IV. Creating a Department of Defense, 1947-1950 . ..... .. .•• .. . .. . 55 

V. Reorganization Plan No.6 of 1953 .... . . ... . ••. . .... .. ..... . . 70 

VI. The 1958 Amendments . . . .. . •... ..• •••..• ••• •... •• . •.. . .... 84 

VII. The Symington Committee Proposal and the Kennedy and Johnson 

Administrations, 1960-1969 . . ... . . . ................ ... . . . . .. 98 

VIII. The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, 1969-1970 . . . ..... • . . . ... . • . ... 117 

IX. President Carter and the 1978 Department of Defense 

Reorganization Attempts ............... · . · . · . · · · · · · · · · · · · ·· 133 

X. Joint Chiefs of Staff Reform in the 1980s . . .. 00 · · · · · · · 0· ····· · 149 

XI. Conclusion . . . . .. . • . ......•... .. . . • . • . ...• ••• •. . .• •• ••..... 171 

Bibliography .. . • .. ....•......••.... .. ••......•...... . ••. . . ..•. .. 17& 

ix 
Charts 

Chart Page 

I. World War II Channels of Command and Direct 

Responsibility, 1943 .. .. .•.................... . . . . •.. . ...... 21 

2. The Bessell, Caraway , and Armstrong Plan, 1943 . ....••.•...... 23 

3. The Collins Plan, 1945 .... •• ......•.. . ... •.. . . . . . • . ... .. ... 39 

4. The Eberstadt Plan, 1945 ... . ... . ..• . ..... • . . . ...• . . . ....... 42 

5. The National Security Act of 1947 .... . ....•••••.•• • • • . •.•... 45 

6. The Lutes Plan, 1947 . .. . . • . . . . . ..•. . . . . . .•.. . . . . •. . . . . . . . . . 56 

7. The Bradley Proposal, 1948 . . .............. . .......... . ... . . 58 

S. The 1949 Amendments to the National Security Act or 1947 ..... 61 

9. The Collins Proposal, 1953 ........• . . .... ••... . .. • . . . . .. • . . . 76 

10. Reorganization Plan No.6, 1953 . . . . . .. . . .•. . . . . . ••. .... .•... 79 

I!. The Army Proposal, 1957 ... . . . . . . • . .... . •. .. .. . .• . ... .. •. .. 87 

12. The 1958 Amendment . . . .. . . . . . . .•. .... .. .. .•.••.••...•• ... 93 

13. The Symington Committee Proposal, 1960 ...... . . ... .. . ..•.... 99 

14. The Cushman Proposal, 1960 ..... . .......... ..... . .... . ..... 101 

x 
Chart Page 

15. The Reeder Proposal, 1961 104 

16. The Hoelscher Proposal, 1961 ... .. . . ........... ...... .. 107 

17. The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel Proposal, 1970 ......••... 121 

18. Laird's Proposed Directive, 1970 . ..• . .....•.......••... 127 

19. Steadman's Proposal, 1978 ............ ... .. ... . ........ 137 

20. Gene ral Jones' Proposal, 1982 .....•......••......•..... 157 

21. General Meyer's Proposal, 1932 ...• . .... . • . ......••.... 159 

XI 
7

------------
THE ARMY AND THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: 

EVOLUTION OF ARMY IDEAS ON THE COMMAND, 

CONTROL, AND COORDINATION OF THE 

U.S. ARMED FORCES, 1942-1985 

CHAPTER I 

Intellectual and Institutional Roots of Reform, 

1903-1941 

The initial Army proposals to reform the Joint Chiefs of Staff during 

World War II grew out of prewar arrangements wi thin the War Department for 

command and control of the field forces and efforts to reform the Joint Army 

and Navy Board, a joint planning agency that the secretaries of war and the 

Navy established in 1903. That same year Secretary of War Elihu Root secured 

legislation creating a War Department General Staff headed by a chief of staff. 

The event was to prove of incalculable importance in conditioning Army views 

toward the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The General Staff provided soldiers with, in their view, a model of how 

all military staffs ought to be organized and operate. Any divergence in the 

organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the General Staff became almost 

automatically a weakness requiring correction. When problems surfaced during 

World War II, Army officers thus possessed both a diagnosis and a solution for 

them derived from the Army's prewar experiences. The war became the 

occasion rather than the cause for Army advocacy of Joint Chiefs of Staff 

reform. 

The chief of staff in Root's formulation coordinated the activities of the 

technical bureaus that had developed during the nineteenth century, such as the 

Adjutant General's Department, the Quartermaster Department, and the Corps 

of Engineers, and advised the secretary of war on departmental policy. The 

chief of staff commanded only the General Staff; he lacked such authority over 

the technical bureaus and the troops in the field. He issued all directions to 

them "by order of the Secretary of War." Over the years an informal political 

alliance developed between the secretary and the chief of staff. The secretary 

supported the chief of staff when the bureau chiefs resisted his attempts to 

coordinate their activitiesj the chief of staff supported the secretary of war 

during appearances before Congress. Working together, they established much 

firmer executive control over the Army and in the process largely excluded 

congressional influence over the appointment and assignment of officers, one of 

the distinctive characteristics of American civil-military relations during the 

preceding century. 1 
During World War I, the chief of staff, General Peyton C. March, 

succeeded in establishing his primacy over the bureau chiefs but not over the 

field forces deployed outside the continental United States. The commander of 

the most important field force operating overseas, General John J. Pershing, 

believed that he was the commanding general of the U.S. Army and that his 

relationship to March was similar to that which had existed between Lt. Gen. 

Ulysses S. Grant, when he was commanding general of the U.S. Army. and Maj. 

Gen. Henry W. Halleck, the chief of staff of the Army. During 1864 and 1865 

Grant had accompanied the primary Union field army in the campaign against 

Richmond, while Halleck remained in Washington to coordinate, under Grant's 

direction, administrative and logistic support for all the Union armies. March 

refused to accept the subordination for the chief of staff that this implied--

although at least two of his predecessors had done so. He succeeded in 

maintaining his independence from Pershing just as Pershing maintained his 

independence from March.2 

When Pershing succeeded March as chief of staff in 1921, he largely 

accepted March's interpretation of the role of the chief of staff in peace. 

Army Regulation 10-15 issued in November 1921 stated that "as the agent and 

in the name of the Secretary of War" the chief of staff issued "such orders as 

will ensure that the plans of the War Department are harmoniously executed by 

all branches and agencies of the Military Establishment ...... 3 

Pershing's view of the wartime role of the chief of staff was somewhat 

different. The same year that saw the publication of Army Regulation 10-15 

also witnessed the report of a board of General Staff officers charged with 

enunciating the lessons of the World War. Presided over by Pershing's alter ego, 

Maj. Gen . James G. Harbord, the board recommended that in the event of war 

the War Department establish a General Headquarters made up of officers 

selected from the General Staff to direct the American Army in the primary 

theater of operations. The board mernbers assumed that the chief of staff 

would take command of these forces and that the deputy chief of staff would 

become the ch ief of staff of the Army. The wartime role of the chief of staff 

would be to provide administrative and logistic support for the field a rmies. 

With the theater commander acting as Chief strategist while the chief of staff 

acted as chief logistician, this recommendation clearly left the chief of staff in 

2 
an inferior position. It also mirrored the relationship that Pershing believed 

should have prevailed between himself and General March in 1918.4 

The General Headquarters concept permeated all Army war planning 

during the interwar period. In 1936 a revision of Army Regulation 10-15, 

apparently framed with the intent of giving effect to these plans, gave the 

chief of staff command of Army field forces in peace and also in war until such 

time as the president "specifically designated" a commanding general for those 

forces. It was under the auspices of this regulation for which, as one scholar 

has observed, "the precise legal authority ••. is not quotable," that the chief of 

staff commanded the Army at the beginning of World War II) 

Following the March 1942 reorganization of the War Department General 

Staff in response to the deficiencies revealed by Pearl Harbor, the War 

Department issued a revised Army Regulation 10-1.5 that redefined once more 

the relationship of the chief of staff to the president, the secretary of war, and 

the Army. The chief of staff lost his title of commanding general of Army field 

forces. He became instead "the executive through whom the President of the 

United States, as Commander-in-Chief, exercises his functions in relation to 

strategy, tactics, and operations." At the same time the chief of staff acted as 

"the immediate advisor" to the secretary of war who delegated to him 

responsibility for "the planning, development, and execution of the military 

program"--that is, the budget. Finally, the chief of staff exercised "general 

supervision" over the Army. 

Legally, the revised regulation represented a diminution of the powers of 

the chief of staff, and certainly his authority as described in 1942 comported 

more nearly with the General Staff Act of 1903 than the 1936 edition. As a 

practical matter, however, the revision did not diminish his power. By 

emphasizing his direct relationship to the president, bypassing the secretary of 

war with respect to strategy, tactics, and operations, the 1942 regulation 

actually enlarged the scope of the chief of staff's authority.6 

The Joint Army and Navy Board also changed after 1918. Prior to World 

War I the board had coordinated war planning by the War and Navy 

Departments. The departments allowed the board to fall into inactivity during 

World War I, but in 1919 they agreed to upgrade and revitalize it. Heretofore 

they had detailed officers to the board by namej the members had included the 

J 
r 

professional heads of the services and usually the chief planners. After 1919 

the departments detailed members by position and in the process regularized 

the prewar membership. The board now consisted of six members, three Army 

and three Navy. Army members included the chief of staff of the Army, the 

chief of the War Plans Division, and the chief of the Operations Division 

(dropped in 192) at General Pershing's request in favor of the deputy chief of 

staff). The naval representatives consisted of the chief of naval operations, the 

deputy chief of naval operations, and the director of the Plans Division, Naval 

Operations. To assist the board, the two departments created a Joint Planning 

Committee headed by the chief planners of both services. As with the board, 

all the members of the committee were "dual hatted," that is, each held a 

position on the staff of his respective service in addition to a joint position. 

The composition and function of these joint agencies remained stable until 

1941.7 

The Joint Board throughout this period was advisory only. It had no 

executive function. It lacked any means of supervising the execution of its 

plans and did not receive reports. The board, concluded the closest student of 

its activities, was "a planning and deliberative body rather than a center of 

executive authority.II8 

As the office of the chief of staff and the Joint Board slowly evolved, 

some Army officers called for an even more wide-ranging reform of the defense 

establishment. During the debate over the reorganization of the Army in 1919 

and 1920, some officers advocated the creation of a department of national 

defense and an independent air force. The first comprehensive plan for a single 

department, however, dated from 1921. Col. John M. Palmer, a personal aide 

to General Pershing, proposed to Secretary of War John W. Weeks the creation 

of a ministry of defense to fix the missions and budgets of the two services but 

not to interfere in either their command or administration. Palmer's 

recommendation failed to secure Weeks' support, and the following year Col. 

Briant H. Wells, the assistant chief of staff, War Plans Division, enunciated 

what became the War Department's position until the eve of WorJd War II: 

maintenance of the two-department system, opposition to the creation of an 

independent air force, and support of a reformed Joint Board to coordinate 

planning between the services.9 

4 
The establishment of a single department of defense became entwined 

during the interwar pe riod with the air power controve rsy. In 1924 Brig. Gen. 

William Mitchell, the foremost advocate of an independent air force, calJed for 

a "Department of National Defense" and continued to advocate it until his 

death in 1936. Unification provided a retort to c ritics who argued that 

"triplification" c reated insurmountable problems of coordination a t the 

departmental level. The commingling of the independence and unification 

issues helped prevent a consideration of unification on its own merits by 

Mitchell's opponents, including most of the high ranking officers of the Army 

and Navy between 1919 and 1941. 10 

By the summer of 1939, with war imminent in Europe, the Army in the 

midst of a limited mobilization and the Navy undergoing even larger increases, 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an execu tive order that required the 

Joint Army and Navy Board to operate "under the direction and supervision" of 

the president in his role as commander-in-chief as well as the service 

secretaries. The order took the members of the Joint Board by surprise. The 

chief of naval operations, Admiral William D. Leahy, spoke to the president the 

next day. Roosevelt said that he wanted the board to continue to function as it 

had in the past. The order was designed to ensure that he was kept informed of 

the board's recommendations. Its reports would go through the secretaries to 

the president for final deciSion.!! 

In the months that followed, the Joint Board did not increase its 

responsibilities but the chief of staff and the chief of naval operations did. 

They dealt directly with the president without going through the service 

secretaries. This arrangement foreshadowed what became the organizational 

reality of World War II in Washington. The president became a n active 

commander-in-chief with the chief of starr of the Army and the chief of naval 

operations reporting directly to him on issues of national strategy and 

operations. The service secretaries became responsible for administrative and 

logistical support. Henry L. Stimson, who became secretary of war in 1940, 

initially resisted the diminished role of his office, but the pressures of 

mobilization and his personal respect for the chief of staff, General George C. 

Marshall, led him to accept the current arrangements as a necessary 

expedient. 12 

5 
Stimson's view of the proper chain of command in the Army derived from 

his youthful experience as a protege of Elihu Root and his service as secretary 

of war in the administration of William Howard Taft. For Stimson command 

was vested in the president. When the Chief of staff spoke, he spoke with the 

authority of the president, not in his own right. In the War Department Stimson 

championed the pure Root reforms. 

The perspective of Army officers on the General Staff differed somewhat 

from that of the secretary of war. They, after all, lacked the institutional 

memory of Stimson. For them the wartime organization of the War 

Department, the Root reform as modified by Pershing and Roosevelt, 

represented a model to which they instinctively turned when they sought a 

structure to encompass both the Army and the Navy.13 

The first major initiative for reform, however, came from the Navy and 

not the Army. In the summer of 1941 as the Army and Navy struggled to 

mobilize combat power, the General Board of the Navy proposed the creation of 

a joint general staff headed by a chief directly responsible to the president. 

The joint general staff, in the board's view, should prepare general military 

plans and issue directives to implement them. General Marshall and his closest 

advisers received the General Board's proposal with considerable enthusiasm but 

realized that it could succeed only if the Navy and President Roosevelt 

wholeheartedly supported the concept. In February 1942 the Navy Department 

backed away from the reform and the War Department, in the interest of a 

vigorous prosecution of the war, did not pursue the issue. Although nothing 

substantive immediately ensued, the incident provided the occasion for the 

General Staff to significantly modify its position on unification for the first 

time since 1922.1 4 

As mobilization continued the joint committee system became more 

elaborate. In May 1941 the Joint Board restricted the membership of the Joint 

Planning Committee to the war plans chiefs only. A Joint Strategic 

Committee, subordinate to the planning committee and consisting of planning 

officers of both services, became responsible for the preparation of joint war 

plans and joint operations plans. The planning committee could detail other 

joint studies to ad hoc groups of action officers, drawn when needed from the 

planning staffs of the two services. By September 1941, the Joint Board 

6 
recommended and the service secretaries approved the creation of a Joint 

Intelligence Committee, but it did not begin operation until four days before 

the attack on Pearl Harbor.15 

The Joint Board itself underwent one final change in composition before 

World War II. In July 1941 the service secretaries approved adding the Army's 

deputy chief of staff for air and the Navy's chief of the bureau of aeronautics 

to the board, raising its total membership to eight with only two--General 

Marshall, the chief of staff of the Army, and Admiral Harold L. Stark, Leahy's 

successor as the chief of naval operations--having command responsibilities. 

All the other members were subordinate staff officers. This membership made 

a great deal of sense given the primary responsibility of the Joint Board, the 

oversight of the preparation of joint plans. The arrangement, however, was not 

well adapted to the coordination of joint operations, an inescapable function 

once the war came. The members without operational responsibilities 

contributed to lengthy discussions useful in a leisurely consideration of plans, 

but their presence did not hasten decision making and probably retarded it. As 

war approached the Army and Navy members of the Joint Board spent more of 

their time informally exchanging information during meetings than following 

the stated agenda. In this manner the services attempted to coordinate their 

activities--inadequately, perhaps, but this was the best that the charter of the 

Joint Board allowed. This deficiency in organization for a wartime environment 

helps explain why the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization superseded the old 

Joint Board with little acrimony almost as soon as the war began.1 6 

The Root reform and its subsequent modifications sought to deal with 

three complex and interrelated issues: how to maintain civilian control of the 

military, how to ensure that civilian leaders received prompt and accurate 

military advice, and how to best translate civilian intentions into successful 

military operations. The system that Root created ope rated adequately in the 

years before World War I but suffered from the deficiency that a ll issues had to 

rise to the top for decision. Successful prosecution of major wars in the 

twentieth century, as the American experience in World War I demonstrated, 

demanded decentralization of authority for efficient execution of plans. In the 

interwar period Army officers tended toward the view that the best method of 

accomplishing this goal was to give the chief of staff the attributes of a 

7 
commander with Army Regulation 10-15 of 1936 actually proclaiming him one. 

He could then easily delegate his responsibilities to subordinates. In adopting 

this position, Army office rs did not seek in any way to question civilian control; 

they simply sought to enhance military effectiveness in carrying out policy as 

established by the president and the secretary of war. 

The strategic situation the United States faced from 1939 until the attack 

on Pearl Harbor raised the possibility of American participation in more than 

one theater. Such a prospect not only implicitly called into question Pershing's 

concept that the chief of staff would deploy to the primary theater of 

operations and act as commander of U.S. forces there but also made the issues 

of grand strategy and interservice cooperation much more important than they 

had been during World War I. Of course, the Joint Army and Navy Board dated 

from 1903 and its existence testified to a certain degree of se rvice awa reness 

about the need to coordinate the war planning of the Army and the Navy. 

Despite the increased vitality of the board after World War I, it is fair to say 

that it had nowhere near the impact on the thinking of Army officers that the 

General Staff did prior to 1941. Roosevelt's order making the board report 

directly to the president indicated that both he and the board would playa large 

role in establishing grand strategy, a much more important function than the 

boa rd had heretofore possessed. Unlike World War I when the Navy's primary 

duty was to act as an administrative transport service for the Army, the kind of 

war that Americans faced in 1940 and 1941, involving as it did the reconquest 

of Europe and island hopping in the Pacific, placed a premium on coope ration 

between the Arm y and the Navy. The approach of war also meant that 

operational control became an issue of much greater importance than it had 

assumed over the past two decades. 

All these considerations--the tendency in Army thinking to vest the chief of 

staff with the powers of a commander, the strategic problems posed by a multifront war, the need to closely coordinate naval, ground , and air ope rations, and 

the imminence of war itself--underlay Marshall's decision to accept the Navy's 

proposal to establish a single chief of staff. While this move proved abortive, 

Marshall's attitude did constitute a reversal of the War Department position of 

twenty years on unification, i.e ., that the Joint Board would suffice, and 

demonstrated that he was not wedded to existing organizational arrangements. 

8 
From the Army's perspective, the conditions by late November 1941 we re ripe 

for major institutional change--and the change followed shortly thereafter with 

the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But this reform came about in a way 

that Gene ra l Marshall could not have anticipated before Pearl Harbor and used 

another country's experience with the higher direction of a rmed forces as a 

guide . 

9 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER I 

1. The classic discussion of the political alliance between the secretary of 

war and the chief of staff is Paul Y. Hammond's Organizing for Defense: 

The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 10-31 (hereafter cited 

as Organizing for Defense). In From Root to McNamara: Army 

Organization and Administration, 1900-1963 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 3-56 

(hereafter cited as From Root to McNamara), author James E. Hewes, Jr. 

sees the Root reforms as an attempt to apply a modern functional 

organization first developed in the business world to military 

administration. Edgar F. Raines, Jr.'s "Major General J. Franklin Bell 

and Military Reform: The Chief of Staff Years, 1906-1910," 2 .... ols. 

(Ph.D. diss., Uni .... ersity of Wisconsin-Madison, 1976), I: 78-279, pro .... ides 

a case study of pre-World War I ci .... il-military relations during the tour of 

a single chief of staff. 

2. Hammond, Organizing for Defense, pp. 32-46. Edward M. Coffman, in his 

The Hilt of the Sword: The Career of Peyton C. March (Madison: 

Uni .... ersityof Wisconsin Press, 1966), pp. 104-118, argues that the "feud" 

between March and Pershing was more a product of the battle of the 

postwar memoirs than a reflection of the degree of their differences at 

the time. For a discussion of civil-military and command relations during 

the Ci .... il War the lOost up-to-date synthesis is Herman Hattaway's and 

Archer Jones' How the North Won: A Military History of the Ci .... il War 

(Urbana: Uni .... ersity of Illinois Press, 1983), but T. Harry Williams' 

Americans at War: The De .... elopment of the American Military System 

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni .... ersity Press, 1960) is still valuable 

because he attempts to discuss command relations throughout American 

military history. 

3. Army Regulation 10-15,25 Nov 21, sec. I, p. 1 (hereafter cited as AR 10-

10 
15). 

4. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Military Affairs, The National 

Defense: ... Historical Documents Relating to the Reorganization Plans 

of the War Department and to the Present National Defense Act, 69th 

Cong., 2d sess'J 1927, pp. 568-648, contains reprints of documents 

relating to the Harbord Board's deliberations. It is indicative of the 

ambiguity surrounding the topic that the board did not prepare a chart 

delineating the proposed organizational relationships. Kent Roberts 

Greenfield et al., The Organization of Ground Combat Troops 

(Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1947), 

pp. 5-6, provides an extended analysis. 

5. AR 10-15, 18 Aug 36, sec. I, p. Ij Ma rk S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar 

Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, 

Department of the Army, 1950), pp. 64-65. 

6. AR 10-15, 13 Jul 42, sec. I, p. 1. For a more extended discussion, see Ray 

S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division 

(Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief or Military History, 1951), pp. 93-

95 (hereafter cited as Washington Command Post) and Hammond, 

Organizing for Defense, pp. 118-122. 

7. The best account of the pre-World War I Joint Board is James H. Short's 

"The Joint Army and Navy Board: A History of the Development of 

America's Military Brain" (M.A. thesis, California State UniversityHayward, 1978). For the interwar period see Lawrence J . Legere, Jr.'s 

Unification of the Armed Forces (Mss., Office of the Chief of Military 

History, 1957), pp. 71-80,142-145; Cline, Washington Command Post, 44-

47; Vernon E. Davis, The Origin of the Joint and Combined Chiefs of 

Staff, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: 

Organizational Development, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Historical 

Section, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1953), I: 38-41; Terrence J . Gough et al., 

Establishment and Evolution of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff 

11 
for Operations and Plans, 1903 1983 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History, 1983), pp. 6-7. Ernest R. May's "The 

Development of Political Military Consultation in the United States," 

Political Science Quarterly 70 (1955): 161-180, although dealing with a 

broader SUbject, is also valuable. 

8. Davis, The Origin of the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff, pp. 57-58. 

9. I. B. Holley, Jr., General John M. Palmer, Citizen Soldiers, and the Army 

of a Democracy, Contributions in Military History, no. 28 (Westport, 

Conn: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 487-488; Legere, Unification of the 

Armed Forces, pp. 89-91; Ray S. Cline and Maurice Matloff, 

"Development of War Department Views on Unification," Military Affairs 

13 (1949): 65-66 (hereafter cited as "Development of War Department 

Views"). 

10. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 95-139, 185-194, provides 

the basic positions in the debate. The biographies of two Air Corps 

leaders of the interwar years provide the best introduction to the thought 

of most Army aviators: Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell: Crusader for 

Air Power (rev. ed.; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) and 

John F. Shiner, Foulois and the U.S. Army Air Corps, 1931-1935 

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), pp. 43-75, 212-

235. For a slightly different interpretation, see Edgar F. Raines, Jr., 

"Charles Thomas Menoher," Dictionary of American Military Biography, 

Roger J. Spiller et aI., ed., 3 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 

1984),2, 754-758. 

11. Cline, Washington Command Post, p. 45; Davis, The Origin of the Joint 

and Combined Chiefs of Staff, pp. 63-64. 

12. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and 

War (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), pp. 330-331, 449-451 

(hereafter cited as On Active Service); Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and 

12 
Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (New York: 

Atheneum, 1964), pp. 395-414; Forrest C. Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, 1939-

1942, vol. 2 in George C. Marshall, 3 vols. to date (New York: Viking, 

1963-1973) (hereafter cited as Ordeal and Hope). 

13. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 450. 

14. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 222-227. Cline and Matloff, 

"Development of War Department Views," p. 66. 

15. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 208-209; Cline, Washington 

Command Post, pp. 46-47. 

16. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, p. 24. 

13 
CHAPTER II 

The Creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 

First Attempts at Reform, 1941-1943 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff grew out of the ARCADIA Conference during 

December 1941 and January 1942 between Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill 

and President Roosevelt and concomitant technical discussions by the 

respective heads of the armed services of the two nations. The American 

position was largely shaped by General Marshall who advocated genuine unity of 

command in the theaters of operation based on his own experience during World 

War I and his postwar service as Pershing's aide. Unity of command overseas 

implied the need for some sort of coordinating group to issue directives to the 

theater commanders. The British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the U.S. 

Chiefs of Staff agreed that this group would be called the Combined Chiefs of 

Staff and would consist of "the British Chiefs of Staff (or in their absence from 

Washington, their duly accredited representatives), and the United States 

opposite numbers of the British Chiefs of Staff." The heads of the British Joint 

Staff Mission became the representatives of the British chiefs,! 

Because the British had three independent services, Lt. Gen. Henry H. 

Arnold, the deputy chief of staff for air and soon to become commanding 

general, Army Air Forces, became the American counterpart to the Royal Air 

Force representative. The conferees also agreed that the adjective "combined" 

would apply to those organizations, plans, and operations involving the services 

of more than one nation; "joint" would apply to situations involving two or more 

services of the same nation. 

The Combined Chiefs of Staff held their first meeting in Washington on 23 

January 1942. The American members were Generals Marshall and Arnold, 

Admiral Stark, and Admiral Ernest J. King, who Roosevelt had called to 

Washington in the wake of Pearl Harbor to serve as commander-in-chief, U.S. 

Fleet. Eight days after the meeting, King wrote Marshall and Stark that the 

existence of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in the context of the ARCADIA 

agreements appeared to imply the existence of a U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Marshall agreed and commented that given the membership there was no reason 

to retain the Joint Board. The board maintained a paper existence until 1947, 

when the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally received a legal charter in the National 
Security Act of that year.2 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff possessed a major weakness as an operating 

agency from the very beginning: It lacked the power of decision. At one of the 

early meetings General Marshall attempted to secure agreement on majority 

rule for points of dispute, but Admiral King refused to accept this solution. The 

Joint Chiefs sometimes used "vote" when describing their meetings, but the 

word referred to members having complete freedom to express their views on 

the issues before them rather than a formal and binding ballot. The result, 

observed Maj. Gen. Otto L. Nelson, Jr., the assistant deputy chief of staff of 

the Army from 1943 until 1945, was to foster compromise, procrastination, and 

straddling. When compromise was a correct solution, of course, this 

predisposition was a strength of the organization rather than a flaw. However, 

the Joint Chiefs "were not equipped or organized to handle a situation where 

there were sharply divergent views, either of which was preferable from an 

objective viewpoint to any solution that tried to scramble irreconcilables." 1n 

wartime the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to settle the difficult problems, but in 

peacetime, he predicted, the chiefs would leave the hard questions 

unanswered) 

The Joint Chiefs simply took over the Joint Board's network of supporting 

staff committees. As the war continued the committee structure became more 

elaborate. By late in the war the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization included 

some thirteen joint committees and two joint boards. 1n 1943 the Joint Chiefs, 

for the first time, even assigned a few staff officers to joint planning duties full 

time.4 

The committee system in the joint organization differed considerably 

from General Staff theory and practice. 1n the General Staff the top planning 

and coordinating was "done by men who had time to think" and who were not 

burdened "with time-consuming operating and administrative duties." Even 

after 1943 most members of the joint committees and boards had heavy 

operational responsibilities. General Nelson conceded that this system 

possessed advantages--the men at the planning level were completely aware of 

current problems because of their operational responsibilities, while their direct 

involvement in planning meant that the joint organization could be more 

streamlined with fewer staff layers than otherwise would have been the case. 

15 
He believed, nevertheless, that the disadvantages offset the advantages. These 

included a proclivity for the planners lito be narrow and partisan in their 

viewpointtt and a lack of time for them to perforrn adequately their planning 

duties. This latter characteristic meant that the joint planners ei ther delayed 

their work or reached hasty and ill-advised recommendations. Moreover, the 

nature of the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization meant that the chiefs could not 

delegate authority nownward as General Marshall did in the General Staff. At 

the same time informal methods had little scope. Everything had to be reduced 

to writing. General Staff officers regarded the joint organization as a "paper 

factory.1I5 

Relations between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the theater commanders 

received their definition during ARCADIA and in the months immediately 

following. At the conference the British and Americans agreed to establish one 

unified command, the Australian-British-Dutch-American Command, 

encompassing ground, air, and naval forces in the Philippines, the Netherlands 

East Indies, the Malay Peninsula, and Burma. The supreme commander, General 

Sir Archibald Wavell, reported directly to the Combined Chiefs of Staff in 

Washington.6 

The Australian-British-Dutch-American Command established the 

principle of unity of command in the field, but the allied governments lacked 

sufficient forces to mount a successful defense against the well conceived and 

execu ted Japanese assaul t on the region. Wi th the allied defenses crumbling--

Singapore felt on 15 February 1942--the allies had to consider command 

arrangements once the Japanese completed the conquest of the territories 

included in the command. Three days after the fall of Singapore, President 

Roosevelt suggested to Prime Minister Churchill that, given the probable loss of 

Java, the United States should undertake to reinforce the right flank of the 

command, making Australia the base for future American operations. 

Simultaneously, Britain would build up forces on the left flank based on India. 

The president expanded on this idea on 7 March when he proposed dividing the 

world into three general areas for the prosecution of the war: the Pacific 

Ocean Area, a U.S. responsibility; the Indian Ocean and Middle East Area, a 

British responsibility; and the European-Atlantic Ocean Area, a combined 

responsibility of both countries'? 

16 
Roosevelt's conception implied a more complex chain of command than 

had existed for the Australian-British-Dutch-American Command, which the 

Combined Chiefs dissolved in late February. In a conversation with General 

Marshall on 8 March, the president spelled out his view of the desirable chain of 

command. The Combined Chiefs of Staff would "direct grand strategy, being 

directly responsible to him and the Prime Minister." For the European area of 

operations, the chain of command would run from the Combined Chiefs directly 

to the supreme commander, the same arrangement that had existed for Wavell's 

command. Although the Americans would run the Pacific and the British the 

Indian Ocean, the Combined Chiefs, by their control of grand strategy, would 

coordinate operations against Japan.8 

A paper prepared by Brig. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, chief of the 

Operations Division of the War Department General Staff, amplified the 

president's ideas. In the Pacific the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under "the general 

jurisdiction" of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, would "exercise jurisdiction over 

all matters of minor strategy and operations." The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff 

would have the responsibility for establishing subarea commands in the Pacific, 

the British in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, the Combined Chiefs in 

Europe and the A tlantic. The Joint Chiefs accepted Eisenhower's paper as the 

statement of the American position on 9 March. In the same meeting Admiral 

King proposed that the supreme commander for the Southwest Pacific Subarea, 

a command that the Joint Chiefs envisioned as a successor to Wave II's 

organization, be an officer of the U.S. Army. It was a foregone conclusion that 

a naval officer would command in the central Pacific.9 

While Roosevelt secured Churchill's agreement on the division of the 

world into strategiC areas, the Joint Chiefs wrestled with defining the 

boundaries of the Southwest Pacific Subarea and the Pacific Ocean Subarea, 

and the Joint Planners prepared orders for the prospective commanders. In the 

process the term "theater" replaced the phrase "strategic area" while "area" 

replaced "subarea." The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the draft orders and 

sent them to the president, who accepted them the next day. The War and 

Navy Departments transmitted the orders to the designated commanders, 

General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, on J April. The 

orders restated the American position on the chain of command. The Combined 

17 
Chiefs of Staff would "exercise general jurisdiction over grand strategic 

policy .•• including allocation of forces and war materiel." The Joint Chiefs of 

Staff would "exercise jurisdiction over all matters pertaining to operational 

strategy" with the Chief of Staff of the Army acting as lithe Executive 

Agency" for the Joint Chiefs for the Southwest Pacific Area. "All instructions 

to you," read the order to General MacArthur, "will be issued by or through 

him." The order to Admiral Nimitz contained the same instructions, different 

only in that the commander-in-chief U.S. Fleet acted as the "Executive 

Agency."IO 

In these orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an entity implicitly exercised 

powers delegated by the president as commander-in~chief and therefore took on 

some of the attributes of a commander. Because the power of a commander is 

all embracing and the Joint Chiefs exercised operational but not administrative 

responsibilities, the agency could not be said to have exercised command in its 

own right during the war (or for that matter at any subsequent time in its 

history). At the same time the operational channel of communication passed 

through the Joint Chiefs. It took the directions of the president and converted 

them into precise military orders to the area commanders. The function was 

not simpJy mechanical. Depending on the explicitness of the directions, the 

chiefs might exercise discretion in drafting the orders. Because the chiefs had 

no command authority, they were not "in" the chain of command. They were 

simply the medium "through" which orders passed. Over the next forty years 

the difference between these two prepositions in the context of American 

command arrangements at the highest levels would cause commentators no end 

of confusion. The source of the perplexity lay in the difference between the 

legal definition of "commandll and a naturalistic description of how orders were 

actually prepared and issued. I I 

The orders of 3 April 1942 mark the beginning of what became known in 

the postwar period as the executive agent system. The service chiefs (after 

1953, the military departments) received the authority to direct operations in 

the name of some higher authority. The legal basis of the authority exercised 

by the wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff was, to say the least, ambiguous. 

President Roosevelt never issued an executive order clearly delineating the 

organization's functions as he certainly had the power to do under the First War 

18 
Powers Act. 12 The orders of 3 April, in defining the relation of the Joint Chiefs 

to the theater commanders, gave in passing a description of the responsibilities 

of the Joint Chiefs and thus provided some patina of legality for the 

organization. 

The executive agent system neatly sidestepped the informal manner of 

the Joint Chiefs' creation. The legal basis of orders issued by the service chiefs 

through their operations divisions was not subject to question. A more 

important rationale for the executive agent system, probably the decisive one, 

was that while the Joint Chiefs had responsibility for the oversight of 

operations, the organization lacked the machinery to give effect to the 

decisions of the chiefs. The services had that machinery in their operations 

divisions. The executive agent system thus represented nothing more than the 

least disruptive method of grafting the Joint Chiefs of Staff onto the existing 

organizational structure. 

While the executive agent system, once established, remained unchanged 

for the duration of the war, the same could not be said for the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff themselves. The one major change occurred early in the conflict. In 

March 1942 King replaced Stark as chief of naval operations and Marshall, to 

preserve service balance, convinced Roosevelt to create the post of chief of 

staff to the president and to appoint Admiral Leahy, the former chief of naval 

operations then serving as ambassador to Vichy France, to the office. Marshall 

conceived of the chief of staff to the president primarily as an impartial 

presiding officer for the Joint Chiefs and only secondarily as liaison with the 

White House. Given the lack of a mechanism for the Joint Chiefs to reach and 

enforce a decision when the services had irreconcilable differences, Leahy's 

role became that of a wise counselor in the discussions of the chiefs. He 

facilitated the creation of consensus and conveyed and interpreted that 

consensus to the president. Throughout the war Leahy was a futi participant in 

the meetings of the chiefs that he attended. He had, observed General 

Marshall, "a vote, so far as votes were ever counted." By the summer of 1942 

when Leahy took up his appointment, the essential outline of the wartime and 

immediate postwar organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had taken shape. 

(See Chart 1.)13 

One significant change in Leahy's role occurred during the course of the 

19 
war. Roosevelt, as an administrator, favored multiple sources of information, 

ill-defined and overlapping agency responsibilities, and competing 

bureaucracies. All this ensured that the president knew what the issues were 

and that they had to go to him for decision. (Aside from the fact that it placed 

such a heavy workload on the president that it probably contributed to his death 

in office, it was an effective style.) Roosevelt disdained formal staff work 

because he feared homogenized staff papers and the "canned" solution. Such 

attitudes coupled with the inexperience of the American service staffs in 

alliance politics meant that at the end of each of the first great wartime 

conferences the Americans ratified the British position, or so it seemed to a 

very unhappy General Marshall. Marshall demanded and obtained a marked 

increase in the quality of both Army and Joint Staff work. He also acquiesced 

in the transformation of Leahy's role from a presiding officer of the Joint 

Chiefs to a "witness to power," to quote Leahy's biographer. Leahy became the 

man at the president's elbow, well placed to remind his chief of the American 

position at the critical moment and to keep the Joint Chiefs constantly 

informed about the president's thinking. This necessarily meant that Leahy had 

less time to spend working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By 1945 he simply 

attended fewer meetings of the Joint Chiefs because of the press of his other 

obligations. I 4 

Beginning in early 1943 widespread dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff organization became manifest at the action officer level of the War 

Department General Staff. In the view of these officers, the War and Navy 

Departments perfectly approximated the administrative ideal of the president: 

competing, often hostile, bureaucracies with overlapping responsibilities and 

poor communication with one another. The result, they argued, was duplication 

of effort and considerable unnecessary confusion and working at cross purposes, 

ultimately reta rding the war effort with an incalculable increase in casualties 

and destruction. These officers, the most important of whom was Col. (later 

Brig. Gen.) William W. Bessell, saw unification as the solution. A number of 

officers prepared plans to reorganize the Joint Chiefs system. Their plans had 

two common characteristics: They sought unified command, usually with a 

civilian of cabinet rank in charge supported by a single chief of staff and a joint 

general staff, and they usually included a provision abolishing the Joint Chiefs 

20 
Chart 1 - World War" Channels of Command and Direct Responsibi lity. 19

President 

Chief of Staff t

I ". Commander in C

M:Tber 

~ 

Secretary of War - Joint Chiefs of Staff ~ Secretary of the N

.- .... 

I I ~ 

~ Member Member _ Commander in Ch

Chief of Staff .... ". U.S. Fleet & 

Chief of Naval Opera

.J 

Joint Deputy 

Chiefs of Staff 

Joint Staff Planners 

War Department ~ , Naval Staff .... General Staff 

, \ 

Forces Theater Commanders Naval Forces 

Chain of Command ---....;):. Channel of Command ( > Communication 
of StafL Two plans called for the creation of a Joint General Staff Corps 

whose members would be permanently separated from their services. One 

contemplated the abolition of service departments and possibly service staffs. 

Most recommended the creation of a separate air force. Quite often they 

included some centralized supply and procurement agency. All suffered from 

the fact that given the pressure of the war, they were more outlines of 

concepts than elaborately argued proposals. This meant that the authors had 

not thought through all the implications of their arguments. A plan prepared by 

Bessell and two other officers--lt. Cols. Paul W. Caraway and Devere P. 

Armstrong--in February 1943, on their own initiative and in their off-duty 

hours, illustrates this phase of the unification fight in the War Department. 

(See Chart 2.)15 

The Bessell proposal outlined a "progressive development from the 

existing War and Navy Departrnent organization to the predetermined objective 

of unified command.

1I The authors did not expend any effort on explaining why 

the United States should adopt such a reform, it was self-evident: ''[A] 11 of our 

war experiences (from Pearl Harbor to the present date) point to the necessity 

for unity of command at all levels." The first step was the establishment of a 

United States General Staff to support the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It would 

consist of an equal number of air, naval, and ground officers drawn directly 

from the Army and Navy. The United States General Staff would be a separate 

staff corpsj the members would wear a distinctive uniform to emphasize that 

the office rs were serving as members of a joint organization and not as 

representatives of their services. Theater commanders and their staffs would 

also be members of the United States General Staff. 

In the final stage of organizational evolution, Bessell and his collaborators 

saw the "channel of command and direct responsibility," a formulation that 

permitted them to describe how the system would actually operate and avoid 

the complications inherent in the phrase "chain of command ," running from the 

president to a secretary for national defense and then to the chief of the United 

States General Staff. The staff would assist him in exercising his 

responsibilities, which the authors did not bother to define. Presumably they 

conceived of the office as having the same powe rs in relation to the armed 

forces that the chief of staff of the Army exercised in relation to the Army--

22 
Chart 2 - The Bessell, Caraway, and Armstrong Plan, 1

President 

Secretary for 

National Defense 

Chief U.S. General Staff ~ 

, , 

Commanding General Commanding General Comma

Army Air Force 

Ground Forces Air Forces Nav

I : 

I 

i 

I f- 

L _____ Theater Commanders I-----.

Chain of Command & Staff 

-----,>~ Channel 01 Command 

- - - Coordination 
I 

which during World War II were ve ry great indeed. On it he had two deputies: 

the deputy chief of staff for plans and operations and the deputy chief of staff 

for requirements. Five assistant chiefs reported to them: the assistant chief of 

staff for plans, the assistant chief of staff for intelligence, and the assistant 

chief of staff for operations reported to the deputy chief of staff for plans and 

operations. The assistant chief of staff for personnel and the assistant chief of 

staff for logistics reported to the deputy chief of staff for requirements. 

The Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor of the Central 

Intelligence Agency, and the services, represented by a commanding general, 

U.S. Army, and the commander-in-chief, U.S. Navy, would report directly to 

the chief of the United States General Staff. The service heads would be 

assisted by their existing staffs, the War Department General Staff and the 

naval staff in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. The mission of the 

services after the adoption of the reform would be to raise, equip, and train 

personnel and units in naval, air, and ground warfare. Theater and joint task 

force commanders, reporting directly to the chief of the United States General 

Staff, would actually command those entities in operations. 

Nothing in the plan, argued the three officers, precluded the 

establishment of a separate air force at any stage of the evolution of their 

project. Ultimate ly the department 01 national defense would establish 

"common servicesll--medical, subsistence, finance, transportation, signal--for 

the three services but independent of them. The common services would report 

directly to the chief of staff of the United States General Staff. Interestingly, 

the chart that illustrated the common services, "the ultimate in logical 

development" according to the authors, included no service staffs. The text 

remained silent on that score. 

The authors urged speedy adoption of their plan "because it would hasten 

victory" by "bringing the fully-coordinated weight of the ground, naval, and air 

forces of the United States to bear against our enem ies." They estimated that 

its adoption would permit the reduction of the number of Army and Navy 

officers "presently engaged in war planning" by one-half. Once all parties 

accepted "the basic principle" involved, the government could implement the 

reorganization "with a minimum of delay." 

In this plan, Bessell and his associates c learly identified--and avoided--

24 
what can be called the "purple paucity problem": the tendency for joint staff 

officers to become advocates for the positions of their services rather than 

assessing each problem objectively on its merits without emotion in the General 

Staff tradition. The solution, they thought, was simple. The government should 

create in effect a fourth service, the joint staff corps. At the same time, they 

were also aware that the same sort of institutional pressures influence the 

service chiefs. As heads of their services they needed to defend service 

positions, but as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff they needed to assume a 

joint or national perspective. Again, the authors opted for a "purple" solution--

this time a single chief of staff of the armed forces no longer the member of 

any service--instead of direction by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Bessell, Caraway, and Armstrong admitted that their plan was only a 

sketch; they left as many questions unanswered as they answered. They did not 

make any provision for rotating the post of chief of the U.S. General Staff 

between the services, or even suggest that any possibility existed for single 

service domination. Nor did they address the issue of whether a member of the 

U.S. General Staff could ever become its chief, or, conversely, if only a 

member could aspire to that position. The authors' purpose in writing the paper 

was to initiate a discussion, not to provide definitive answers or even to 

identify all the important issues raised by their proposal. In this limited 

objective they succeeded. 

Colonel Bessell became the dominant figure during this period because of 

his energetic and persistent advocacy of unification. Of the three authors, only 

he remained in Washington until the end of the war. By late 1943, however, he 

was no longer the central figure. The issue had attracted the attention of the 

leaders of the War Department, including General Marshall. In the process, the 

rationale for reform changed from winning the war more efficiently to 

incorporating the lessons of the war into the postwar military establishment. 

The years between 1941 and 1943 were important because during those 

years action officers such as Colonel Bessell helped place the issue of reform on 

the War Department's agenda. In so doing, they identified certain problems 

with the new Joint Chiefs of Staff organization--problems that have endured 

until the present. They also advanced tentative solutions that would influence 

the formulation of the public War Department positions on unification between 

25 
1943 and 1947. Winning the war, however, took priority ove r organ izational 

reform for Secretary Stimson, General Marshall, and other leaders of the War 

Department. 

26 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER 11 

1. Notes, Arnold, 27 Dec 41, sub: Meeting of President Roosevelt with 

Certain Military Advisersj Minutes, meeting of United States and British 

Chiefs of Staff, 27 Dec 41j Memo, U.S. Chiefs of Staff, 14 Jan 42, U.S., 

Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The 

Conferences at Washington, 1941-1942, and Casablanca, 1943 

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), pp. 109-111, 113-

117, 232-234 (hereafter cited as Conferences at Washington and 

Casablanca). 

2. Cline, Washington Command Post, pp. 98-104; JCS Historical Division, "A 

Concise History of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1942-

1979," Joint Chiefs of Staff Special Historical Study (Washington, D.C.: 

Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1980), pp. 1-

3; Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 233-248. 

3. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, p. 245. For an example of 

General Marshall's use of "vote" in this sense, see Testimony, Marshall 

before Committee on Armed Services, 21 Oct 49, U.S. Congress, House, 

Committee on Armed Services, The National Defense Program--

Unification and Strategy: Hearings .... 81st Cong., 1st sess., 1949, p. 600 

(hereafter cited as National Defense Program). Otto L. Nelson, Jr •• 

National Security and the General Starr (Washington. D.C.: Infantry 

Journal Press, 1946), p. 403 (hereafter cited as National Security). 

4. Legere, Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 248-254. The joint 

committees and boards were: Joint Strategic Survey Committee, Joint 

Staff Planners Committee, Joint Production Survey Committee, Joint War 

Plans Committee, Joint Logistics Committee, Joint Administrative 

Committee, Munitions Assignment Board, Joint Military Transportation 

Committee, Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment, Joint 

Communications Committee. Joint Meteorological Committee, ArmyNavy Petroleum Board, Joint Security Control Committee, Joint 

27 
Intelligence Committee, and Joint Post War Committee. Nelson, National 

Security, p. 399. 

5. Nelson, National Security, pp. 402-404. 

6. Memo, JCCS-8, annex 2, 5 Jan 42, sub: Higher Direc tion of War in the 

ABDA Area and Rpt, JCCS-8, annex 1, 10 Jan 42, sub: Directive to the 

Supreme Commander in the ABDA Area, U.S. Department of State, 

Conferences at Washington and Casablanca, pp. 311, 313-316. Wavell was 

to inform the British Chiefs of Staff Committee in London of any 

proposals a t the same time that he communicated them to Washington. 

After consulting with the Dutc h staff, the British Chiefs would telegraph 

their representatives in Washington as to whether they wanted to formally 

present their opinions on the issues involved. 

7. Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition 

Warfare, 1941-1942, United States Army in World War II: The War 

Department (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 

Government Printing Office, 1953), pp. 164-168 (hereafter cited as 

Strategic Planning). 

8. Minutes, JCS 5th Meeting, 9 Mar 42, sub: Governmental and Strategical 

Control and Command in the ANZAC Area--Demarkation of New 

Strategic Areas in the Japanese War Zone, (extract), ABC 323.31 Pacific 

Ocean Area, Sec. I-A, Operations Division, ABC Decimal File, 1942-1948, 

RG 319 (Army Staf!), National Arch ives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter 

cited as NA). 

9. Memo, JCS 19/ 1, 9 Mar 42, sub: Strategic Responsibility of the United 

Kingdom and the United States and Minutes, JCS 6th Meeting, 16 Mar 42, 

sub: Command Arrangements in the Pacific (extract), ABC 323.31 

Pacific Ocean Area, Sec. I-A, Operations Division, ABC Decimal File, 

1942-1948, RG 319 (Army Staff), NAj Matloff and Snell, Strategic 

Planning, pp. 166-167. 

28 
10. Memo, sub: Directive to the Supreme Commander in the Southwest 

Pacific Area; Merno, sub: Directive to the Commander-in-Chief of the 

Pacific Ocean Areaj Memo, Marshall and King [or Roosevelt, 30 Mar 42j 

Memo, (OPD for Marshall), 30 Mar 42, sub: Summary of Strategic 

Responsibility, 30 Mar 42, ABC 323.31, Pacific Ocean Area, Sec. I-B; 

Memo, W. B. Smith for Marshall and King, 1 Apr 42j Msg, Marshall to 

MacArthur, 3 Apr 42, WD No. 1065, ABC 323.31, Pacific Ocean Area, Sec. 

2, Operations Division, ABC Decimal File, 1942-1948, RG 319 (Army 

StaIO, NAj MatloH and Snell, Strategic Planning, pp. 168-173. 

11. For a recent discussion of the confusion, see U.S. Congress, Senate, 

Committee on Armed Services, Defense Organization: The Need for 

Change, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, pp. 303-307. 

12. PL 354, 77th Cong., 18 Dec 41. The act served as the basis of the 

Marshall reorganization of the War Department in 1942. 

13. Testimony, Marshall before Committee on Armed Services, House of 

Representatives, 21 Oct 49, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, The National Defense Program, pp. 599-600; Pogue, Ordeal and 

~, pp. 298-301j B. Mitchell Simpson III, "Harold Raynsford Stark, I 

August 1939-26 March 1942," The Chiefs of Naval Operations (Annapolis: 

Naval Insti tute Press, 1980): pp. 130-131. 

14. The literature on Roosevelt is voluminous. The best short introduction to 

the subject is Frank Freidel's "Franklin Delano Roosevelt,1I Dictionary of 

American Biography: Supplement Three, 1941-1945, Edward T. James, ed. 

(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973): pp.641-667. For a general 

discussion of Roosevelt as an administrator, see James MacGregor Burns' 

Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, 1956), pp. 370-

375. For Roosevelt as commander-in-chief, see Burns' Roosevelt: The 

Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 

347-353. The best study of Roosevelt as commander-in-chief in the light 

of constitutional theory is William Emerson's IIFranklin Roosevelt as 

29 
Commander-in-Chief," Mili tary Affairs 20 (1958-59): 181-207. 

Comments by contemporaries are also valuable, in particular: Robert E. 

Sherwood's Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: 

Harper and Brothers, 1948), pp. 71-73, 157-160, and Stimson and Bundy, 

On Active Service, pp. 494-496, 561-564. For Admiral Leahy's role, see 

William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff 

to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman ••. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1950), 

pp. 95-107; and Henry R. Adams' Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet 

Admiral William D. Leahy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1984). 

Testimony, Marshall before Committee on Armed Services, 21 Oct 49, 

U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, The National 

Defense Program, p. 600. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! 

(New York: Henry Holt, 1958), pp. 169-192, discusses the shortcomings of 

American strategic planning as does Cline, Washington Command Post, 

pp. 235-237, and Matloff and Snell, Strategic Planning, pp. 363-382. 

15. For an overview of this phase, see Cline and Matloff, "Development of 

War Department Views," pp. 66-68, and Legere, Unification of the Armed 

Forces, pp. 259-283. For the paper in question, see Study, Bessell, 

Caraway, and Armstrong, "Unified Command for the Armed Forces of the 

United States," 25 Feb 1943, CCS 040 (11-2-43), sec. I, Record Group 218, 

National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as RG 218, NA). 

)0 
CHAPTER III 

The Creation of a Single Military Establishment, 

1943-1947 

As early as April 1943, General Marshall. decided that the Army, not yet 

fully mobilized, should begin planning Cor demobilization. He delegated 

responsibility for preparing preliminary studies to Lt. Gen. Brehon B. 

Somervell, the commanding general of Army Service Forces. Somervell, in 

turn, established a Special Projects Division, headed by Brig. Gen. William F. 

Tompkins, to study the problem. In June 1943, Tompkins reported that 

demobilization planning depended upon designs for the postwar military 

establishment, including the creation of a single department of national 

defense.l 

The following month, the War Department created the Special Planning 

Division of the War Department General Staff and charged it with planning for 

postwar military and industrial mobilization. Tompkins became the new 

director. As soon as Tompkins reported to the General Staff, Colonel Bessell 

sought him out, briefed him on the work already done on unification in the 

staff, and gave him a copy of the Bessell Plan of February 1942. It became the 

starting point for the Special Planning Division, or Tompkins, proposal that 

General Marshall advocated as the War Department position before the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff in November 1943. 

Tompkins advocated the creation of a single Department of War headed 

by a secretary of war and four under secretaries organized into four major 

divisions: Ground Forces, Air Forces, Naval Forces, and a Supply Department 

that "would provide centralized control of procurement, supply, and service 

functions for the three combat forces." The using agencies would procure 

certain types of special equipment. Thus, the Naval Forces would continue to 

procure shipsj the Air Forces would procure aircraft.2 

A chief of staff to the president would "serve the President in exercising 

his functions as constitutional Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces." The 

chief of staff would serve as the channel of communications from the president 

to the Department of War "on matters relating to strategy, tactics and 

operations, the preparation and presentation of the Joint Military Budget," and 

other matters considered pertinent by the president. The secretary of war 

would transmit all other orders from the president. 
Tompkins proposed to continue the Joint Chiefs of Staff--consisting of the 

chief of staff to the president, the chiefs of staff of the armed forces, and the 

chief of staff of supply--but renamed the U.S. General Staff (Joint). Tompkins 

did not specifically detail the kind of staff that would support the chiefs, only 

noting that "advantage should be taken of the experience of the present U.S. 

Chiefs of Staff in the present war." He further provided that the armed forces 

would retain small general staffs. 

The Tompkins Plan drew heavily upon the Bessell, Caraway, and 

Armstrong proposal, but there were some interesting differences. The first 

variance concerned the channels of command . Tompkins continued the dual 

channels of command that Roosevelt created during the war with the secretary 

of war responsible for logistics and administration and the military chiefs 

providing the channel for operations orders and serving as the president's 

primary advisers on national strategy. Bessell, Caraway, and Armstrong saw 

such a solution as only an intermediate step to a single chain of command and 

responsibility with the secretary of national defense responsible for all aspects 

of the mission of his department--operations as well as administration. Second, 

the earlier plan left the future status of the Army Air Forces undecided. The 

Tompkins Plan committed the War Department to an independent air force. 

Third, Tompkins proposed a common supply department, a subject that Bessell 

and his associates broached under the heading of common services, but they had 

left the organization to implement the idea undefined. Finally, Tompkins spent 

little time discussing the organization of the U.S. General Staff (Joint) and did 

not suggest separating the officers in the staff from their parent services, an 

issue on which Colonel Bessell, in particular, attached great importance. 

Bessell believed that only this measure would ensure that the chief of staff 

received objective recommendations, unclouded by service bias, from his staff) 

At the request of Admiral King the Joint StrategiC Survey Committee 

examined the Tompkins Plan. It concluded that a single military department 

clearly provided a more adequate solution than the current dual department 

system. "[T]he outstanding lesson of this war is that modern warfare is made up 

of operations called 'joint' or 'combined' operations, which could better be 

described as 'unified' operations--since aJl military elements should be so 

closely interlocked and interrelated that the concept of one whole is preferable 

32 
to articulated units." The committee recommended that the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff accept the principle of "three services within one military organizationll 

and appoint a special committee to study the question.4 

Admirals Leahy and King, however, declined to accept the principle of a 

single military department in advance of the report by the special committee. 

Leahy argued that this would "deprive the committee of any latitude.1I As a 

consequence, the instructions to the committee, chaired by Admiral James O. 

Richardson and consisting of two Army and two Navy officers (Tompkins was 

one of the Army representatives), a llowed it to recommend one department, 

two departments, or three departments as the optirna l postwar organization) 

General Marshall assented to this change, but he was not happy about it. 

He knew that a select committee of the House of Representatives, the 

Committee on Post-War Military Policy, was preparing to hold hearings that 

would include examination of the concept of a single miHtary department. He 

feared that if the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not act quickly it might lose its 

abiHty to influence the final outcome. While he could not convince Admirals 

Leahy and King of the need for speed, he did not propose to allow the Army to 

similarly abdicate its influence on the question. At the same time he did not 

want to damage his good working relations with Admiral King over an issue 

about which the admiral obviously possessed reservations. Consequently , while 

Marshall declined to testify at the hearings held by the committee, the War 

Department sent wi tnesses. Marshall's deputy, Lt. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney, 

presented a modified version of the Tompkins Plan to the select committee on 

24 April 1944. The press named it the McNarney Plan.6 

The McNarney Plan differed from the Tompkins plan in that it renamed 

the new organization the Department of the Armed Forces and abolished the 

post of under secretary for supply. McNarney renamed the chief of staff for 

supply the director of common supply. The change in title represented a down 

grading in status. The director would now be subordinate to the service chiefs, 

although he would remain a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (McNarney 

dropped the Special Planning Division title "U.S. Chiefs of Staff (Joint).") The 

Joint Chiefs "would have the sole duty of submitting recommendations to the 

president concerning matters involving military strategy and the general 

determination of budgetary needs and allocation" between the armed forces and 

33 
the supply department. Once the president had adopted a budget figure, the 

Joint Chiefs would recommend "the general budget breakdown and allocation" 

between the services and common supply. McNarney gained precision about the 

duties of the Joint Chiefs at the cost of obfuscating the duties of the chief of 

stall to the president, something the Special Planning Division had been very 

clear aboutJ 

McNarney only hinted at the powers of the chief of staff to the president. 

In a discussion of the preparation of war plans during peacetime, he observed 

that great economies would ensue if someone determined "the respective roles 

and degree of participation of air, ground, and sea elements ...... In this field he 

expected the Joint Chiefs "and especially the Chief of Staff to the Commander 

in Chief" to "perform invaluable service to the nation." He also anticipated 

that the chief of staff to the president would "playa very important rolet! in 

determining what constituted an acceptable peacetime level of readiness for 

the armed forces given the condition of international relations and would 

present his conclusions to the president. Even, on this point McNarney did not 

clearly differentiate between the functions of the chief of staff to the 

president and the Joint Chiefs as a collective body because he attributed the 

same responsibility to them as well. He did say that the proposed reform would 

permit "intelligent decision" to replace "compromise.1I At the very least 

McNarney's remarks implied that the Joint Chiefs would no longer make 

decisions by unanimity . 

The chart accompanying his testimony removed the chief of staff to the 

president from the chain of command and appeared to make him an adviser 

only. However, nothing in McNarney's remarks precluded giving the chief of 

staff to the president command-like authority over the armf"d forces as the 

executive for the president in military affairs. In such a situation, after all, the 

chief of staff to the president would only emulate General Marshall's direction 

of the Army during World War II. If that was the intent of the War Department 

proposal, McNarney did not spell out the implication. Across the whole, he cast 

a veil of ambiguity. In other respects he retained the provisions of the 

Tompkins Plan. The secretary for the armed forces, the civilian head of the 

proposed department, played a severely restricted role in formulating the 

budget of his own department. 

34 
The select committee was not a legislative committee. Its hearings were 

designed to provide a forum for the pubUc discussion of postwar issues and to 

gather information for use by the military and naval affairs committees when 

they did draft legislation. It recommended that Congress defer any attempt to 

reform the two department system until the Richardson Committee had an 

opportunity to make its report and the waT ended.8 

On 11 April 1945 the Richardson Committee submitted its report. While 

Admiral Richardson favored continuation of the two department system, the 

other three members supported a single department very similar to the 

Tompkins Plan, although there were differences in detail. The majority report 

did not include a common service of supply as Tompkins had done. It did, 

however, create in wartime a separate position of commander of the armed 

forces reporting through the secretary of the armed forces to the president. It 

also incorporated the secretary of the armed forces as a ful l member of the 

U.S. Chiefs of Staff "to facilitate complete coordination within the Department 

and to maintain the Secretary's position with regard to the political and 

economic aspects of military matters." The committee had considered and 

rejected the scheme of coordinate control with responsibilities divided between 

the civilian secretary and the chief of staff. Finally, in the majority report, the 

under secretaries had functional rather than service responsibilities as in the 

McNarney Plan. (The Tompkins Plan had provided four under secretaries but 

had not specified whether their responsibilities would be service or functional.)9 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff could not agree on the report. Admirals Leahy 

and King supported the two department :iystem while Generals Marshall and 

Arnold favored a single department. Their disagreement ended the last 

opportunity to keep postwar organization noncontroversial. The war ended in 

Europe less than one month later; another fou r months passed and Japan 

surrendered. Conforming to the schedule recommended by the House select 

committee the previous year, the Senate Military Affairs Committee began 

hearings on postwar organization in October 1945. 

In the fall of 1945 General Marshall handpicked Lt. Gen. J. Lawton 

CoJlins, the handsome and articulate chief of staff of Army Ground Forces, to 

act as the War Department spokesman on unification in testimony before the 

Senate Military Affairs Committee. The plan he presented became the Collins 

35 
Plan in the newspapers. Although it and the other plans bore the names of 

other officers, General Marshall had a much greater impact on content than 

they did.10 

Events outside the narrow confines of staff discussions ultimately had a 

greater impact on the viability of the War Department proposal than specific 

details of the plans. As the war wound down so did the Roosevelt 

administration. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox had expressed interest in 

some kind of postwar unification. His attitude had encouraged Secretary of 

War Stimson, who believed strongly that nothing he said should damage wartime 

cooperation with the Navy, to take a public stand in favor of unification. 

Stimson testified before the House select committee on 25 April 1944. A few 

days later Knox suddenly died. l1 

Knox's successor, James V. Forrestal, did not share Knox's point of view. 

His entry into office contributed to a general hardening of naval opinion on the 

issue. Unification was still entwined with the question of a separate air force--

a reform that found few friends in the Navy Department. Advocates of an 

independent air force, such as Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle and, more 

cautiously, Gen. Carl Spaatz, Arnold's successor as commanding general, Army 

Air Forces, continued to call for the separation of naval aviation from the Navy 

and its incorporation into the new service. Unification also provided a rationale 

for sorne Army officers to recommend a substantial reduction in the size of the 

postwar Marine Corps. These issues and the emotions they engendered helped 

make opposition to unification a test of institutional loyalty for many Navy and 

Marine officers.l 2 

Secretary Knox's passing from the scene, important though it was, had 

only a minimal effect compared to that of the president's. On 12 April 1945, 

the day after the Richardson Committee presented its final report to the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 

Warm Springs, Georgia. He was only sixty-three. Service as assistant secretary 

of the Navy during World War I had given him a fondness for the Navy balanced 

by a healthy respect for its tenacity in clinging to tradition. Some admirals had 

consoled themselves during the war with the thought that Roosevelt would 

never force unification on the Navy. How the habits and predilections of this 

superb politician would have affected the outcome of the fight over unification 

36 
must always remain moot. What was clear, even at the time, was that his 

successor, Vice President Harry S. Truman, was an altogether different kind of 

man. 13 

Truman's service experiences before World War II were exclusively in the 

Army. Truman had served as a captain of field artillery in the 35th Division, a 

National Guard division, in World War I. After the war he had continued in the 

Organized Reserves, attaining the rank of colonel. He was also active .in the 

American Legion, which provided one of the bases of his power in Missouri 

politics. He played a major role in convincing the Legion to declare publicly in 

favor of a department of defense. His experiences as chairman of the Senate 

"watchdog" committee on rearmament during World War II reinforced his stance 

on the issue. As the Democratic vice presidential candidate, he strongly 

advocated a single department in an article that he wrote for Collier's 

Magazine in August 1944: 

Proof that a divine Providence watches over the United 

States is furnished by the fact that we have managed to 

escape disaster even though our scrambled professional 

military set-up has been an open invitation to 

catastrophe. The bitter lessons of the past few years, 

however, make it plain that we can rely no longer upon 

chance and luck. The Nation's safety must have a more 

solid foundation.l 4 

[n short, Truman entered office with his mind already made up on the general 

issue of unification, although he remained very flexible on details. General 

Collins' presentation of the War Department position thus found a receptive 

audience in the White House. 15 

The Collins Plan of 1945 (See Chart 3.) in many ways represented the 

culmination of the Army's thoughts on how best to fight a global war with 

conventional arms. A department of defense headed by a secretary of the 

armed forces and assisted by a civilian under secretary, three functional 

assistant secretaries, a chief of staff of the armed forces, and a Joint Staff 

provided unification for policymaking. The chief of staff of the armed forces 

acted as the executive for the secretary and as his chief military adviser. 

Marshall wanted the large operating staffs to remain in the service 

departments, expanded to three in the pian by the creation of an independent 

37 
air force, and the plan reflected his view. It retained the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

renamed the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, but the functions of the U.S. Chiefs were 

restricted to making recommendations on military policy, strategy, budget, and 

requirements, rather than actually preparing war plans.l 6 

The U.S. Chiefs of Staff retained the four members of the wartime Joint 

Chiefs of Staff and added a fifth--the chief of staff of the armed forces. The 

Yalta Conference of February 1945, where Leahy had spent his entire time 

attending the meetings of the heads of government rather than the meetings of 

the Joint Chiefs with their British and Soviet counterparts, convinced Marshall 

that the chief of staff to the president needed to devote his full time to liaison. 

In the Collins Plan, the chief of staff of the armed forces would preside over 

the meetings of the U.S. Chiefs of Staff. The plan proposed a military director 

of common supply reporting directly to one of the functional assistant 

secretaries and a single military intelligence agency reporting to the chief of 

the armed services. 

The plan devoted considerable attention to the budget, because General 

Marshall knew that in peacetime the budget drove the force structure rather 

than the reverse. Collins outlined the budget process in some detail in his 

testimony before the Committee on Military Affairs: The service departments 

would develop budget proposals as normal and the U.S. Chiefs of Staff would 

comment on them and submit their comments through the secretary of the 

armed forces to the president. In this manner Marshall hoped to ensure that the 

president was aware of the implications of bUdget decisions on national strategy 

and force levels. 

This revision in the Collins Plan of the budget process sketched out by 

General McNarney in 1944 sought to leave the civilian secretary in total control 

of his department while at the same time permitting military views to reach 

the president without political adulteration . Marshall remembered vividly that 

after World War I Secretary of War Weeks had prevented General Pe rshing from 

protesting to the president budget cuts that gravely restricted the Army's 

ability to mobilize. Ma rshall knew that political considerations would always 

override military calculations in peacetime. He appears to have had a shrewd 

suspicion, however, that the Army would fare better in the postwar bUdgets in a 

single department than in a two department system. At the same time his 

38 
Chart 3 - The Collins Plan, 19 45 

President 

Secretary Armed Forces 

Assistant Secretaries U.S. Ch

Under Secretary 

Recommend Only 

Chief of Staff 

of the Armed Forces 

, If 

U.S. Navy U.S. Air Forces 

Director Common Supply Theater & Area 

Chain 01 Command 

-----.:» Channel of Command 

& Hospitalization Commanders 

U.S
postwar budgetary goals were modest. He did not desire a large standing army. 

He simply wanted enough men to permit a relatively rapid mobilization in the 

event of a crisis. 17 

The differences between the Tompkins, McNarney, and Collins Plans 

indicated that the War Department was not wedded to details. At the same 

time the continuities in the plans suggest what the leaders of the department 

considered the most important. Most obviously important was the concept of a 

single department--whether called war or national defense--headed by a civilian 

secretary. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, under different names, appeared in all the 

plans as did a single chief of staff, also under different titles. Beginning with 

the McNarney Plan, the War Department proposals paid close attention to the 

role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in fonnulating budget proposals, an issue of 

particular concern to General Marshall. 

Even amid these continuities there were changes of emphasis. The 

civilian secretary gained considerable power between the Tompkins and Collins 

Plans. By October 1945 the War Department viewed him as totally in charge of 

his department. Even the revised budget procedure recognized the primacy of 

the secretary. While the secretary gained power within the department, the 

chief of staH lost it. These changes were designed, at least in part, to make 

the proposals more palatable to the Navy. The War Department succeeded to a 

degree. One Navy member of the Richardson Committee, Rear Admiral M. F. 

Schoeifel, did join the majority in recommending a single department. 

The Navy's views on unification were complex. Generally naval officers 

accepted that the war had demonstrated the value of unity of command in the 

theaters. They also believed that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had proven its 

utility during the war and desired that it receive a statutory basis in the 

postwar reorganization. Most naval off.icers, however, did not want to go 

further. Several factors were involved. First, the Navy Department had an 

entirely different organization than the War Department. The bureau chiefs 

reported directly to the secretary of the Navy rather than through the chief of 

naval operations. The unitary command line in Army organizational charts 

easily gave the incorrect impression to men without practical experience in the 

War Department that the secretary of war depended on the chief of staff for all 

his information about the service. To naval officers it appeared as if the chief 

40 
of staff controlled the civilian secretary by controlling his sources of 

information rather than the secretary controlling the military. Second, the 

Navy was engaged in positioning itself for the postwar battle of the budget with 

the Army Air Forces, a battle that involved the issue of which service would 

constitute the nation's "first line of defense" after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Finally, the Navy's skepticism of Army intentions about the future of naval 

aviation and the Marine Corps made the Navy Department very chary about any 

Army proposals for postwar reorganization.l 8 

Secretary of the Navy Forrestal reaUzed that simple obstructionism, 

however, would not suffice. In his testimony before the Senate Military Affairs 

Committee in the fall of 1945, he presented a counter proposal--the Eberstadt 

Plan. (See Chart 4.) Forrestal had commissioned his long time friend Ferdinand 

Eberstadt, the former chairman of the Army-Navy Munitions Board and a 

former vice chairman of the War Production Board, to study unification "letting 

the chips fall where they may ." The study group Eberstadt put together 

consisted primarily of naval officers. Their report called for retention of 

independent service departments headed by civilian secretaries with cabinet 

rank and the creation of a national security council to coordinate foreign and 

military policy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff received a statutory basis but no 

explicit role in formulating the budget. (The action of the Navy Department in 

June 1945 in seeking to secure legislation increasing the size of the permanent 

Navy and Marine Corps without referring the proposed bill to the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff for comment already had suggested to Marshall that Secretary 

Forrestal and his advisers did not envision any role for that organization in the 

budget process.) The Eberstadt Plan also called for the establishment of a Joint 

Staff, headed by a chief of the Joint Staff, to support the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

This was the first mention of the position that came to be called the director of 

the Joint Staff. The plan did not specify the size of the Joint staff.l 9 

Clearly, the major difference between the two plans rested on where in 

the organizational structure they sought to coordinate the activities of the 

armed forces. The Navy Department wanted coordination by a cabinet level 

committee that would also try to keep U.S. military and naval policies aligned 

wi th the government's foreign policy. General Collins and other War 

Department spokesmen in rebuttal conceded the utility of a national security 

41 
Chart 4 . The Eberstadt Plan, 1945 

President 

National Security Council National Security R

Chairman Chairman Chairman 

National I~ ~ 

Secretary Secretary Secretary Secretary Security " National Military Secreta

of State of War of the Navy of Air Resources Security Munitions 01 Wa

Board Council Board 

i 

r-----I 

~ 

Central Intelligence 

Joint Chiefs of Staff --- Military Munitions Board 

Agency 

National P

Chain 01 Command 

L. ::::. Communication " ,. 

Coordination 
council but argued that it did not remove the need for coordination of military 

policy below the level of the cabinet. A department of national defense headed 

by a civilian secretary and supported by a chief of staff of the armed forces 

satisfied that need,20 

The National Military Establishment, the organization that evolved out of 

the clash of philosophies represented by the Collins and Eberstadt Plans, 

inclined more toward the Navy's approach than the Army's. <See Chart 5.) The 

National Security Act of 1947, the law that gave birth to the organization, did 

establish the principle that the services were part of a single entity, although 

not a cabinet department, headed by a civilian secretary. The secretary of 

defense was a cabinet officer and member of the National Security Council--an 

agency also established by this act. The three service secretaries lost their 

cabinet rank but received seats on the National Security Council. (The law also 

c reated an independent air force.) The secretary of defense, assisted by three 

civilian special assistants, had something less than full control over the military 

departments, which had to be "administered separately." This particular 

section of the statute was sufficiently vague to permit the first two secretaries 

of defense to take diametrically opposed views of their powers--the first 

restricted, the second expansionist.21 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of the three service chiefs and the 

chief of staff to the president, obtained a Joint Staff limited to 100 officers 

and headed by a director. Collectively, the Joint Chiefs became the principal 

military advisers to the president and the secretary of defense. As in the 

Eberstadt Plan, the law did not give the Joint Chiefs a role in the budget 

process. Instead the service secretaries received the right to appeal to the 

president any adverse decisions on the budget made by the secretary of defense. 

The act did require the loint Chiefs "to review major material and personnel 

requirements of the military forces." It made the Joint Chiefs responsible for 

"formulating policies" for both the joint training of the military forces and the 

coordination of officer education by the services. The act also created a War 

Council (subsequently renamed the Armed Forces Policy CounciJ), consisting of 

the secretary of defense, the service secretaries, and the service chiefs. The 

War Council was to advise the secretary of defense on the policies of the 

National Military Establishment. 

43 
The act defined the relationship between the Joint Chiefs and the field 

forces, giving the force of law to relationships that had evolved during and 

immediately after the war. In 1944 General Arnold had created the Twentieth 

Air Force to conduct the strategic bombardment of Japan. In order to prevent 

the theater commanders in the Pacific and Far East from diverting the 

Twentieth's high-performance 8-29s to other missions (the Twentieth was the 

only numbered air force equipped with these planes), he had proposed to retain 

direct command of the ai r force, acting as the executive agent for the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff. The Navy had wanted to leave direction to the theater 

commanders. The question had gone to President Roosevelt for a decision in 

February 1944. He had favored Arnold's approach. The Twentieth Air Force--

which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--became the model 

in the postwar period for both the Air Force's Strategic Air Command and, 

more generally, for specified commands, commands with "a broad and 

continuing mission ..• normally composed of forces from but one Service."n 

The end of the war meant the dismantling of the unified commands with 

the forces dividing along national lines, although the Combined Chiefs of Staff 

remained in existence until J 949. All the services agreed that unity of 

command was necessary in wartime operations. The only question about 

establishing postwar unified commands was not whether but when. Two issues--

command arrangements in the Pacific and the exact status o( the Army Air 

Forces' new Strategic Air Command--delayed agreement on postwar plans until 

12 December 1946, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff accepted the first Unified 

Command Plan. 23 

The plan established seven unified commands--the Far East Command, the 

Pacific Command, the Alaskan Command, the Northeast Command, the 

Atlantic Fleet (later Atlantic Command), the Caribbean Command and the 

European Command--"under the Joint Chiefs of Staff." They were commands 

with "broad continuing mission[sJ under a single commander and composed of 

significant components of two or more Services."Z4 In addition the plan made 

the Strategic Air Command "responsible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff" in the 

same manner as the unified commands. It consisted of "strategic air forces not 

otherwise aSSigned." 

44 
Chart 5 - The National Security Act of 1947 

President 

-<;,,1:. 

\'II'il BL/SHIvtE NT 

.o\'ll'L MILITARY £STA 

National Security Council Secretary of Defense 

Central Intelligence 

Agency 

I I I 

JOint Chiefs of Staff War Council Munitions Board 

JOint Staff 

(100) 

I I 

Department of 

Department of the Army Department of the Navy Air Force 

Chain of Command 
As in the orders setting up the Southwest Pacific and Pacific Ocean 

Areas, the Unified Command Plan defined the relation of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff to the unified commands (and the Strategic Air Command). While the 

language changed, the substance did not. The plan spelled out more clearly 

relationships between the services, the Joint Chiefs, and the commands, clearly 

benefiting from the practical experience gained during World War II: The Joint 

Chiefs would determine "the assignment of forces and significant changes 

therein." They would "exercise strategic direction over all elements of the 

armed forces" and prescribe "the missions and tasks of all independent 

commands." The services retained responsibility for training and for 

administrative and logistic support of the commands and the operational control 

of all forces not assigned to them. "However, all action of strategic 

significance will be referred to the Joint Chiefs of Staff." The plan also 

continued the World War II executive agent system with the commanding 

general, Army Air Forces identified as a possible executive agent along with 

the chief of staff, U.S. Army and the chief of naval operations.25 

The National Security Act took cognizance of these relationships by 

giving the Joint Chiefs of Staff the responsibility, in addition to preparing 

strategiC and logistic plans, of "providing for the strategiC direction of the 

military forces." In addition the Joint Chiefs assigned "logistic responsibilities" 

to the services in order to carry out the strategic and logistic plans approved by 

the Joint Chiefs. Finally, the act gave the Joint Chiefs the task of establishing 

unified commands when such cornmands "were in the interest of national 

security.,,26 

The major differences between the Eberstadt Plan and the National 

Security Act of 1947 lay in the creation of the National Military Establishment 

headed by a secretary of defense and the simultaneous reduction of the service 

secretaries to subcabinet level. General Marshall's successor as chief of staff, 

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially announced the passage 

of the National Security Act in a message to all Army commands. He defended 

the compromise involvedj it was not a defeat for the War Department. 

"Fundamentally, the one thing we have is a man at the top to whom we are all 

responsible." To achieve this result, he admitted, he had given up "some of the 

specific things I ••• believed should be done." Within months, others discerned the 

46 
need to reexamine some of those "specific things" General Eisenhower had 

desired.27 

The period from late 1943 until 1947 had four distinguishing 

characteristics insofar as the Army was concerned. First, the issue of reform, 

heretofore confined to the lower levels of the General Staff, became a primary 

concern of policy makers in the highest levels of the War Department. The key 

figures became General Marshall and, following his retirement, General 

Eisenhower. Second, whereas before there were many plans prepared by Army 

officers, now there was one War Department position. Third, ground forces 

officers rather than aviators took the lead in urging reform, just the reverse of 

conditions prior to 1941. When Army Air Forces officers became involved, it 

was because they held responsible positions on the War Department General 

Staff rather than because of their connection with the Army Air Forces. Maj. 

Gen. Lauris Norstad, for example, handled the detailed negotiations with the 

Navy Department which produced the compromise that led to passage of the 

National Security Act because he was the director of the Plans and Operations 

Division of the War Department General Staff, not because he was an aviator. 

Finally, the rationale for reform shifted from improving the efficiency of the 

war effort to adapting postwar organization to the "lessons" of the war. In 

effect this was the necessary condition for any public advocacy of unification 

by the War Department. As long as the war lasted, the need for good day-today relations with the Navy overrode any long-term policy considerations. Only 

after Japan surrendered did Marshall personally espouse reform before 

Congress. From the very beginning of the conflict over unification, the Army's 

position consisted of a mixture of expediency and principle with the re lative 

proportions often determined by conditions outside the Army's control.28 

Between 1943 and 1947 the War Department's efforts to secure reform 

went through two distinct stages. The first consisted of the development of a 

gradually more elaborate Army position, modified to meet criticisms. The 

Special Planning Division Proposal of 1943 (for which Bessell served as the 

intellectual midwife), the McNarney Plan of 1944, and the Collins Plan of 1945 

were simply successive drafts of the same plan. This stage culminated with 

hearings before the Senate Military Affairs Committee in the fall and early 

winter of 1945 during which General CaBins presented the War Department's 

47 
position. The second phase involved a series of compromises with the Navy 

Department to achieve at least a limited degree of unification, which finally 

produced the National Security Act of 1947. 

These compromises proved short-lived in practice because the 

organizational arrangements created by the act were unworkable. Although it 

took almost two years to amend the law, the inherent problems were clear to 

the new secretary of defense within less than three months of his taking office 

on 17 Septernber 1947. 

48 
I. 

ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER IU 

Michael S. Sherry, Preparing for the Next War: America Plans for 

Postwar Defense , 1941-45 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 

8-9 (hereafter cited as Preparing for the Next War); Legere, Unification 

of the Armed Forces, pp. 264-265; MatioH and Cline, "Development of 

War Department Views," pp. 68-69; Rpt, Tompkins to Grune rt , )0 June 44, 

sub: Progres:; Report on Demobilization Planning, appended to History of 

Special Planning Division, War Department Special Staff (Mss., 1957), 

CMH files. 

2. Memo, JCS 560, 2 Nov 43, CCS 040 (I 1-2-43), sec. I, Records of the U.S. 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, NA. 

3. For Bessell's subsequent amplification of this theme, see Legere, 

Unification of the Armed Forces, pp. 252-253. 

4. Rpt, Joint Strategic Survey Committee to Join t Chiefs of Staff, 8 Mar 44, 

sub: Reorganization of National Defense, CCS 040 01-2-43), sec. I, 

Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, NA . 

5. Minutes, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 154th Meeting, 21 Mar 44, sub: 

Reorganization of National Defense (extract); Merno, JCS 749/3, 5 Apr 

44, sub: Reorganization of National Defense; Memo, A. J. McFarland for 

Vice Chief of Naval Operations and Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, 25 

May 44, sub: Reorganization of National Defense, CCS 040 (J 1-2-43), sec. 

I, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, NA. 

6. Memo, JCS 749/2, 2 Apr 44, sub: Reorganization of National Defense, 

CCS 040 (J 1-2-43), sec. I, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 

218, NA . 

7. Testimony, McNarney before Select Committee on Post-War Military 

Policy, 24 Apr 44, U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee on Post-War 

49 
Military Policy, A Bill to Establish a Single Department of Armed Forces: 

Hearings ... , 78th Cong., 2d sess., 19~4, pp. 33-45 (hereafter cited as 

Single Department of Armed Forces). 

8. Statement, Rep. Clifton A. Woodrum before Select Committee on PostWar Military Policy, 24 Apr 44, U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee 

on Post-War Military Policy, Single Department of Armed Forces, pp. 1-

3; Demetrios Caraley, The Politics of Military Unification: A Study in 

Conflict and the Policy Process (New York: Columbia University Press, 

1966), pp. 25-34 (hereafter cited as Politics of Milita ry Unification). 

9. Rpt, Joint Chiefs of Staff Special Committee for Reorganization of 

National Defense to Joint Chiefs of Staff, II Apr 45, CCS 040 (11-2-43), 

B.P. I, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, NA. 

10. J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe: An Autobiography (Baton Rouge: 

Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 333-335 (hereafter c ited as 

Lightning Joe). For an overview, see Legere, Unification of the Armed 

Forces, pp. 274-290. 

II. George H. Lobdell, Jr., "Frank Knox," Dictionary of American Biography: 

Supplement Three: 424-426; Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, pp. 

518-519. 

12. The fullest account of the unification fight, written from a perspective 

generally favorable to the Navy, is Demetrios Caraley's Politics of 

Military Unification, pp. 86-122. Caraley discusses the attitude of Army 

Air Forces leaders toward naval aviation on pages 81 and 82. He provides 

a full account of the sources of Navy Department distrust of unification 

that Gordon W. Keiser amplifies for the Marine Corps in his The U.S. 

Marine Corps and Defense Unification: The Politics of Survival 

(Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1982). The best 

philosophical defense of the Navy's approach to defense organization is 

John C. Ries, The Management of Defense: Organization and Control of 

50 
the U.S Armed Services (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964). 

Allan R. Millett provides the best defense of the Marine Corps position in 

his Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps, (New 

York: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 445-474. For Forrestal's background, see 

Arnold A. Rogow's James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics, and 

Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 67-68. 

13. Caraley, The Politics of Unification, pp. 51-52, 90-91. 

14. Harry S. Truman, "Our Armed Forces Must Be Unified," reprinted in U.S. 

Congress, Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Department of Armed 

Forces, Department of Military Security: Hearings ... , 79th Cong., 1st 

sess., 1945, p. 192. 

15. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, 2 vols. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956), 2: 

46-48. Robert J. Donovan provides a good introduction to the Truman 

administration's first fou r years in his Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency 

of Harry S. Truman , 1945-1948 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977). This 

should be supplemented by Donald R. McCoy's The Presidency of Harry S. 

Truman (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), especially pages 

115 to 220, and Richard F. Hayes's The Awesome Power: Harry S. 

Truman as Commande r in Chief (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University 

Press, 1973). The best recent survey of national security policy in the 

Truman administration is Alla n R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the 

Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America 

(New York: Free Press, 1984), pp. 471-507 (hereafter cited as For the 

Common Defense). Robert J. Watson provides a succinct overview of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff in his "The Evolving Role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

in the National Security Structure," Evolution of the American Military 

Establishment Since World War II (Lexington, Va.: George C. Marshall 

Research Foundation, 1978): 90-104. For an overview of the Army see 

Robe rt J. Coakley's elegant account, "The Army Since Unification: An 

Old Institution in a New Environment," in the same volume (pp. 37-49). 

This should be supplemented by Russell F. Weigley's The History of the 

51 
United States Army (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 485-504. 

16. Testimony, Marshall before the Committee on Military Affairs, 18 Oct 45 

and Testimony, Collins before the Committee on Military Affairs, 30 Oct 

45, U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Department of 

Armed Forces •.• , pp. 49-65, 155-180. 

17. Testimony, Marshall before Committee on Armed Services, 21 Oct 49, 

U.S. Congress, House, The National Defense Program, pp. 597-606. For a 

more complete discussion of Marshall's views on postwar planning, see 

Michael S. Sherry's Preparing for the Next War, especially pp. 220-232. 

Russell F. WeigJey, Towards an American Army: Military Thought from 

Washington to Marshall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 

223-249 provides a good analysis of Marshall's thought on the mobilization 

issue. 

18. Caraley, Politics of Military Unification, pp. 39-40, 86-122; U.S. 

Congress, Senate, Committee on Naval Affairs, Unification of the War 

and Navy Departments and Postwar Organization for National Security, 

Report to Hon. James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, 79th Cong., 1st 

sess., 1946, reprints Eberstadt's report. The membership of the study 

group is given on pages 45 and 46. 

19. Testimony, Marshall before Committee on Military Affairs, 18 Oct 45 and 

Testimony, Forrestal before Committee on Military Affairs, 22 Oct 45, 

U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Department of 

Armed Forces ... , pp. 50-51,97-118. 

20. Testimony, Collins before Committee on Military Affairs, 30 Oct 45 and 

Testimony, John J. McCloy before Committee on Military Affairs, 23 Nov 

45, U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Department of 

A rmed Forces ... , pp. 170-180, 441-465. McCloy was a particularly 

effective witness. 
21. Public law 253, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 26 Apr 47 (hereafter cited as Pl 

253). 

22. U.S., Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of 

Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, JCS Pub 1,3 Sep 74 

(Washington: Government Printing OHice, 1974): 305 (hereafter cited as 

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms 1974); James lea Cate, 

"The Twentieth Air Force and MATTERHORN," The Pacific: 

MATTERHORN to Nagasaki , June 1944 to August 1945, 7 'lois. (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1953),5: 33-41. 

23. Memo, JCS 1259/27, 11 Dec 46, sub: Unified Command Plan, CCS 3810-

24-42), sec . 4, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of StaH, RG 218, NAj 

James F. Schnabel, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1945-

1947. The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Wilmington: Michael 

Glazer, 1979), pp. 171-186. 

24. U.S., Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dictionary of Military 

and Associated Terms, 1974, p. 346. 

25. Memo, JCS 1259/27, II Dec 46, sub: Unified Command Plan. See also 

James F. Schnabel, Policy and Direction: The First Yea r (Washington 

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Mili tary History, 1972), pp. 41-43; Steven L. 

Rearden, The Formative Years, 1947-1950 (Washington: Historical 

Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984), pp. 134, 136 (hereafter 

cited as The Forrnative Years). 

26. Pl 253, 80th Cong., 26 Apr 47. 

27 . Msg, Eisenhower to all membe rs of the Army, 26 Jul 47, CS 320, Chief of 

Staff Army Decimal File, 1947, RG 165, NA. 

28. For Norstad's role, see Walter Mi llis, ed ., The Forrestal Diaries (New 

York: Viking Press, 1951), pp. 160, 222- 223, 225-226, 228-231 , 

53 
supplemented by Caraley, The Politics of Military Unification, pp. 127, 

135, 150-152, 155. 170, 201. 218-232. For a general introduction to the 

Army Air Forces' role in the struggle (or unification during and 

immediately after the war see Herman S. Wolk, Planning and Organizing 

the Postwar Air Force , 1943-1947 (Washington D.C.: Office of Air Force 

History, 1984). 

54 
CHAPTER IV 

Creating a Department of Defense, 1947-1950 

Following the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, initiative for 

further reform passed from the Department of the Army, the new name for the 

War Department in the 1947 legislation, to the first secretary of defense, 

James Forrestal. He quickly found himself in the midst of a public debate 

between the leaders of the Air Force and the Navy over the nature of the next 

war, the national defense strategy to pursue, and the forces needed to wage the 

conflict. Given this circumstance, Forrestal came to depend heavily on the 

advice of Army officers, one of whom was Lt. Gen. LeRoy Lutes, the director 

of Service, Supply, and Procurement on the Army Staff. (During the war, Lutes 

had served as Somervell's chief planner.) A t the same time as the roles and 

missions debate, the new secretary became frustrated by his lack of power 

within the National Military Establishment. Despite his role as the principal 

architect of the 1947 act, Forrestal in December 1947 asked Lutes to 

recommend how to reorganize the National Military Establishment "to assist 

the Secretary of Defense.'d 

Many of the resulting proposals, as befitted a logistician, dealt with 

supply. lutes, however, also called for legislation to create a chief of staff of 

the armed forces or, if this was politically not feasible, the appointment of a 

high ranking military aide to the secretary who would act as his personal 

adviser and liaison with subordinate agencies. (See Chart 6.) Forrestal 

implemented most of lutes' proposals, with only slight variation, in stages over 

the next year. In December 1948 Forrestal convinced General Eisenhower, in 

retirement serving as the president of Columbia University, to act as his parttime adviser and chair the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Eisenhower, 

continuing as president of Columbia, presided intermittently over the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff from January to June 1949.2 

The lutes Plan as implemented by Forrestal became a stopgap to provide 

administrative remedies within the framework of the 1947 act. At the same 

time the secretary of defense sought to alter that framework. In the spring of 

1948 he played a large behind-the-scenes role in creating the First Hoover 

Commission, which examined the organization of the various agencies of the 

federal government.) In the summer of 1948, Forrestal also formally requested 
Chart 6 - The Lutes Plan, 1947 

President 

I 

National Sec

National Security Council Secretary of Defense 

Resources B

Central Intelligence Chief of Staff 

Agency Armed Forces 

\ 

Joint Chiefs of Staff War Council Munitions Board 

I I 

Joint Staff Department of the Army Department of the Navy 

(100) 

Chain of Command 

-----:)~ Channel of Command 
the vjews of the service secretaries and service chiefs on the need to reform 

the National Military Establishment. Discerning the Army position on what 

became the 1949 amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 is difficult 

because the Chief of Staff, General Omar N. Bradley; his deputy, General 

Collinsj and Secretary of the Army, Kenneth C. Royall, took different positions. 

For simplicity this paper discusses Bradley's views, because they appear to 

represent the consensus of the Army Staff.4 

In his testimony to the commission's task force looking into the National 

Military Establishrnent~ General Bradley called once more for the creation of a 

chief of staff of the armed forces, assisted by a military staff, to advise the 

secretary of defense when the Joint Chiefs split on issues. (See Chart 7.) The 

chief of staff of the armed forces would replace the chief of staff to the 

president as a member of the Joint Chiefs. Bradley suggested, but did not 

strongly advocate, restricting the Joint Chiefs to planning only and referring all 

other questions to "the Secretary's military staff."j 

Bradley modified this stance somewhat when he responded to Forrestal's 

questions in September 1948. He favored a senior military adviser, not a 

member of the Joint Chiefs but one who did sit on the National Security 

Council. He could attend meetings of the Joint Chiefs only as an observer. The 

senior military adviser rather than the Joint Chiefs would deal with budget 

recommendations. He headed an Armed Forces Staff, consisting of both 

military officers and civilian employees of the National Military Establishment, 

that would assist him in acting as "military advisor to the President and 

Secretary of Defense with respect to matters pertaining to the armed forces." 

Bradley restricted the Joint Chiefs to military plans and renamed the Joint 

Staff the Joint Strategic Planning Staff. He did not address the issue of the 

size of the staff. One of the supporting documents for the Bradley proposal 

mentioned in passing that the Joint Strategic Planning Staff could be IIre la tively 

small." Otherwise they ignored the question. 

Bradley proposed to make the service secretaries under secretaries 

reporting directly to the secretary of defense. He also wanted an under 

secretary of defense without administrative responsibilities for a specific 

service and six functional assistant secretaries. Bradley struck out limitations 

on the secretary's authority contained in the 1947 act and provided that he 

57 
Chart 7 - The Bradley Proposal, 1948 

President 

Assistant Secretaries Secretary of Defense 

I 

Director Common Supply 

& Hospitalization 

IfChain 01 Command 

____ C),. Channel 01 Command 

Under Secretary of 

Defense 

Joint Strategic 

Planning Staff 

I 

U.S. Air Force 

IfChief of Staf

ISenior Military Ad

Armed Forces S

L..... Joint Chiefs of S

(Plans Only) 

U.S. Army 

'I' 
would "exercise direction, authority, and control" over the service departments 

rather than "supervise and coordinate" them . He retained the National Military 

Establishment, however, and did not establish a cabinet level department for 

defense.6 

Congress amended the National Security Act twice in 1949. On 2 April it 

created the post of under secretary of defense. Even more important 

legislation followed on 10 August. (See Chart 8.) The August legislation 

abolished the National Military Establishment and replaced it with a 

Department of Defense, something Bradley and Collins desired but did not 

advocate, apparently because they believed the proposal po litically infeasible. 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff as a body became the senior military adviser to the 

National Security Council in addition to serving as such to the president and the 

secretary of defense as prescribed in the 1947 legislation. The service 

secretaries lost their seats on the National Security Council although 

Forrestal's successor, Louis A. Johnson, requested that they continue to attend 

the meetings. The practice lapsed in July 1950 when President Truman 

restricted attendance to statutory members and officials designated by the 

president. 

The secretary of defense received expanded powers over the services in 

1949, but not as extensive as Bradley desired. He also gained three assistant 

secretaries. Title II left the duties of two of the assistant secretaries to the 

discretion of the secretary of defense. Title IV specified that the remaining 

assistant secretary would be the comptroller. The legislation redesignated the 

under secretary as the deputy secretary of defense. The Joint Staff increased 

to 210 officers. Finally, Congress created the post of chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff but denied him "a vote." Since the Joint Chiefs did not hold 

formal ballots on issues, the provision was something of a non sequitur, but it 

did indicate congressional opposition to any centralization of military control in 

the Department of Defense.? 

The 1949 amendments gave the Army something more of what it had 

desired in 1945. The creation of a cabinet level department met one of the 

recommendations of the Collins Plan. The pOSition of the secretary of defense, 

while much stronger than in the original act, still lacked some of the powers 

originally vested in the office by the 1945 War Department proposal. (The new 

59 
legislation, while removing some restrictions on the sec retary's authority, 

imposed others.) The April and August amendments also provided the secretary 

with higher level assistants than the 1947 act had made available. He obtained 

a deputy secretary (originally an under secretary) and three assistant 

secretaries, the number advocated by Collins in 1945. Although the Army did 

not always address the issue of the size of the Joint Staff between 1943 and 

1949, when it did it consistently opposed imposition by Congress of an artificial 

ceiling on the size of the staff. While the ceiling remained in the 1949 

amendments, Congress at least increased its size. The result represented some 

small movement toward the Army's position. 

The greatest disappointment for the Army view, measured by its position 

in 1945, was, of course, the failure to obtain a chief of staff of the armed 

forces. By acting as the executive in dealing with the services, the chief of 

staff would have pe rmitted the secretary to develop to the fullest extent his 

control over the armed forces. The creation of a chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff did prov ide a measure of centralization, but Gene ral Bradley, who 

became the first chairman, did not take an expansive view of the powers of his 

post. He saw his role as that of "an honest broker" in the tradition of Admiral 

Leahy. He participated in discussions with the Joint Chiefs and presented their 

views to the president and the secretary of defense. Only if the president or 

the secretary asked, did he state his own opinion.8 

Bradley's proposal to give the military a role in the deliberations of the 

National Securi ty Counci l received legislative sanction in the 1949 amendments. 

The difference be t ween his proposal and the law was that, while in his 

conception the senior military adviser spoke for himself in the amendments, the 

military officer attending the council meetings--the chairman or in his absence 

the acting chairman--was bound to present the collective views of the Joint 

Chiefs. Of course, a member of the council could ask the chairman to state his 

personal views on an issue as distinct from the views of the Joint Chiefs. Given 

General Bradley's conception of the duties of his office, the question definitely 

had to be asked. 

Secretary of Defense Johnson, by way of contrast, proved a very different 

kind of administrator than his predecessor. Even before the passage of the 1949 

amendments, he adopted a direct, no-nonsense approach and controlled the 

60 
Chart 8 - The 1949 Amendments to the National Security Act of 19

President 

I 

I 

Central Intelligence 

Agency 

National Security Council Secretary of Delense 

Chairman 

War Council Munitions Boards 

Joinl Chiefs of Staff 

I I 

Joint Staff Department of the Army Department of the Navy 

(210) 

Unilied & 

Specified Commands 

- --

Chain of Command 
department "by fiat and directive," so much so that his critics in their kinder 

moments called him a dictator. Johnson conducted a running feud with Dean 

Acheson, who succeeded General Marshall as secretary of state on 21 January 

1949. Acheson considered Johnson "mentally ill." Many observers thought that 

he wanted the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1952. Certainly , 

he had a flair for publicity and great energy. He shared the president's desire 

for a balanced budget and a reduction of the large size of the Department of 

Defense expenditures when judged by pre-World War It standards. He entered 

office believing that the atomic bomb had rendered all prior military 

experience suspect. He was thus an early advocate of the primacy of strategic 

bombardment forces and the value of nuclear deterrence. In policy terms, 

these beliefs led him to impose cuts in the defense budget and to leave the Air 

Force a proportionately larger share of what remained than the other services.9 

On 23 April 1949, after receiving a split decision from the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff on the importance of the "supercarrier" U.S.S. United States and securing 

approval from the president, Johnson canceled the contract for the ship's 

construction. The manner in which he reached the decision infuriated Navy 

leaders perhaps as much as the decision itself. Johnson did not wait until he 

received a detailed ana lysis of the question nor did he give the Navy an 

opportunity to present its case to him . The secretary of the Navy and the chief 

of naval operations learned of his decision only when he announced it publicly. 

Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan immediately resigned in protest. Senior 

uniformed personnel in the Department of the Navy refused to accept the 

decision and began a publicity campaign to rescind it. The result was a 

congressional investigation, the replacement of Admiral Louis E. Denfield, the 

chief of naval operations (technically his appointment expired and the 

administration chose not to renew it), by Admira l Forrest P. Sherman, and 

much unfortunate public acrimony between the Air Force and the Navy.IO 

In terms of organizational history the "revolt of the admirals" was 

important because of the style of decision making that Johnson exhibited. He 

did not involve the service secretary in the policy debatej Johnson simply 

expected him to execute the decision of the secretary of defense. Despite the 

continued attendance of service secretaries at the National Security Council 

meetings, the role Johnson envisioned for them was the role he imposed on 

62 
Sullivan--a role that the 1949 amendments suggested if they did not quite 

mandate . His conduct of the office, not Forrestal's, defined the relationship 

between the secretary of defense and the service secretaries that has been 

followed by most succeeding secretaries of defense. II 

Johnson's style may have irritated the civilians and officers in the service 

departments, but his policies were those of the president. Initially, at least, he 

enjoyed the full support of the president and the public. By February 1950 

Truman, however, had begun to harbor doubts about Johnson, but by then the 

secretary of defense had acquired something of an independent pOlitical base. 

It rested upon his personal popularity, derived from the public perception of him 

as an effective manager who cut "waste" from the defense budget and 

e liminated inefficiencies in the services. The outbreak of the Korean War 

undercut the assumption on which Truman based his policy--that a conventional 

war was unlikely--while the initial disasters suffered by the Eighth Army 

converted Johnson into a political liability. On 21 September 1950 Truman 

replaced Johnson with General Marshall, who gave up his retirement to take up 

public office for the third time. Robert Lovett became deputy secretary of 

defense and succeeded Marshall when he retired from government se rv ice for 

the fourth and final time in September 1951.12 

One further reform, although internal to the Army, affected the operation 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1946 War Department Circular 138 went much 

further than previous regulations in giving the chief of staff command of all the 

components of the Army rather than just the field forces as in 1936. This 

proved the apogee of his powers. During 1948 and 1949, a comprehensive 

examination of the organization of the Army by the Office of the Comptroller 

of the Army and the Judge Advocate General's Office produced a challenge to 

this tendency. In December 1948 Lt. Col. George Baya of the comptroller's 

office completed a compendium of all the acts of Congress governing the Army 

since the enactment of the National Defense Act of 1916 that were still in 

force. Using this study and examining even earlier legislation, Lt. Col. 

Archibald King of the Judge Advocate General's Corps prepared a paper focused 

solely on the command of the Army. King concluded that there was no legal or 

constitutional justification for the command prerogatives granted to the chief 

of staff by Circular 138.13 

63 
King's view became law in the Army Organization Act of 1950 that 

resulted from the investigations by the two offices. It eliminated all references 

to a "command" function by the chief of staff. He was to supervise the 

Department of the Army and the field Army and preside over the Army Staff, 

all the while performing these duties "under the direction of the Secretary of 

the Army" unless otherwise directed by law. 

The exception covered by the "otherwise directed" phrase referred to his 

participation as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity he 

continued to act as an executive agent for the Joint Chiefs for certain unified 

commands including European Command and Far East Command. The 1950 act 

also made the chief of staff of the Army "directly responsible to the Secretary 

of the Army for the efficiency of the Army, its state of preparations for 

military operations, and plans therefor." This section, not a part of the original 

legislation submitted by the Department of the Army, developed out of 

congressional concern about the asymmetry of defense relationships in which 

the chief of naval operations commanded the Navy, the chief of staff of the Air 

Force commanded the Air Force, and the chief of staff of the Army was an 

adviser.l4 

Special Regulation 10-5-1, based on the work of Baya and King, went into 

force even before the passage of the act. It used traditional language to make 

clear the reality of civilian control of the Army: "Command of the Army and 

all components thereof is exercised by the President through the Secretary of 

Defense and the Secretary of the Army, who directly represent him; and as the 

personal representatives of the President, their acts are the President's acts, 

and their direction and orders are the President's directions and orders." 

Consequently, after 1950 the chief of staff could exercise strategiC direction 

and control of operations only for those units--Army, Navy, Air Force, and 

Marines--deployed overseas in unified commands for which he was the 

executive agent. He possessed responsibility but no independent authority for 

the readiness of Army units worldwide, inc luding Army units that were part of 

unified commands for which the other services acted as executive agents. The 

Army Organization Act of 1950 upheld civilian authority but in the process 

tangled the question of accountabili ty .15 

Four characteristics of the period from September 1947 to April 1949 are 

64 
worth noting. First, the initiative for reform came from outside the 

Department of the Army. Second, the Army leaders, in contrast to 1945, asked 

for what they thought was pOlitically feasible rather than what they thought 

they needed. Third, the public disarray between Army leaders over what kind 

of reforms were required helped weaken the Army's impact on the legislation 

that eventually emerged. Finally, during this period, the Army view of the role 

of the chief of staff of the Army became much more modest and the position 

lost the command-like authority that it had enjoyed since World War I. The 

Army Organization Act of 1950 codified this shih in opinions. Given 

institutional momentum and the good relations that existed between the 

secretary of the Army and the chief of staff of the Army, the change 

apparently remained confined to the lawbooks during this period. It is difficult 

to discern any differences in procedure resulting from the act, at least in the 

short term. The long term consequence, although many more factors came into 

play, was quite different. Thirty years later the chief of staff as an institution 

exercised a much less dominant influence within the Army than it had under 

Pershing or Marshall. 

The imposition of more centralized control over the Department of 

Defense, a product of both the 1949 amendments and the appointment of 

Secretary Johnson, intensified rather than lessened interservice rivalries. Less 

than a year after the passage of the legislation, the outbreak of war in Korea 

subjected the joint system to a test more rigorous than internal conflict. 

65 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER IV 

1. The standard work on Forrestal's tenure as secretary of defense is the 

recently pUblished account by Rearden, The Formative Years. Diary, 

Dwight O. Eisenhower, 2 Feb 49, The Papers of Dwight David 

Eisenhower, Alfred D. Chandler et al., eds" 11 'lois. to date (Baltimore: 

The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970-1984), 10: 461-462. For a discussion of 

lutes' World War n service, see: John O. Millett, The Organization and 

Role of the Army Service Forces (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief 

of Military History, 1954), pp. 8, 85-86, 115, 345-346, 369-370, 426-427; 

and Washington Post, 1 Feb 80, B4. Lutes recapitulates Forrestal's oral 

directive in Memo, Lutes for Forrestal, 3 Dec 47, sub: Organization and 

Procedures to Assist the Secretary of Defense, CS 320, Chief of Staff 

Army, Decimal File, 1947, RG 165, NA. 

2. Memo, Lutes for Forrestal, 3 Dec 47; Rearden, The Formative Years, pp. 

29-43; Chandler et al., eds., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, II: 

1581-1599. 

3. Forrestal, The Forrestal Diaries, p. 324. 

4. Memo, Forrestal for Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, and 

Secretary of the Air Force, 4 Aug 48; Paper, Collins, "Written Statement 

of Views of General J. Lawton Collins, Deputy Chief of Staff, U. S. 

Army, Prepared for the Committee Security Organization (Eberstadt 

Committee)," I Sep 48; Memo, Bradley for Forrestal, I Sep 48, sub: 

Recommendations for Changes in the National Security Act of 1947; 

Memo, Royall for Forrestal, 15 Sep 48, sub: Changes in the National 

Security Act, CS 040, National Military Establishment (20 Aug 48), RG 

165, NA. 

5. Testimony, Bradley before Committee on National Security Organization, 

29 Jun 48, CS 040, National Military Establishment (27 Oct 48), RG 165, 

NA. 

66 
6. Memo, Bradley for Forrestal, 1 Sep 48, sub: Recommendations for 

Changes in the National Security Act of 1947, Tab A: Recommended 

Amendments to National Security Act of 1947 in Statutory Language, Tab 

B: Synopsis of and Reasons for Proposed Changes in National Security 

Act, CS 334, War Council (I Sep 48), RG 165, NA. 

7. PL 216, 81st Cong., 10 Aug 49, The Department of Defense: Documents 

on Establishment and Organization, 1944-1978, Alice C. Cole, et al., eds. 

(Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

1978), pp. 84-107 (hereafter cited as Department of Defense). Rearden 

discusses Johnson's relations with the service secretaries in The 

Formative Years, pp. 43-50,67-73,122-123. 

8. The best account of Bradley's stewardship of the chairmanship is Omar N. 

Bradley and Clay Blair, A General's Life: An Autobiography... (New 

York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 506-519 (hereafter cited as A 

General's Life). Appearances to the contrary on the dust jacket 

notwithstanding, this portion of the book is biographical rather than 

autobiographical. Bradley died before it was written. Maxwell D. 

Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 110, 

comments on Bradley's style as chairman. See also Douglas Kinnard, The 

Secretary of Defense (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, (980), 

pp. 48-49. 

9. Johnson was, perhaps, the most controversial of all secretaries of defense. 

Historians have divided about him just as his contemporaries did. 

Rearden, The Formative Years, pp. 47-50, attempts a balanced view. 

Robert J. Donovan in his Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. 

Truman, 1949-1953 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), pp. 61-65 

(hereafter cited as Tumultuous Years), also strives for objectivity but 

discusses events from the president's vantage point. Lawrence J. Korb 

finds much to praise in The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The First Twenty-five 

Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), pp. 99-102. Three 

contemporaries were more hostile: Bradley and Blair, A General's Life, 

67 
pp. 501-503; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the 

State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), pp. 373-374, 441; 

Arthur W. Radford, From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of 

Admiral Arthur W. Radford (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1955), p. 

149. By far the most virulent critic, however, is Paolo E. Coletta, The 

United States Navy and Defense Unification, 1947-1953 (Newark: 

University of Delaware Press, 1981), pp. 126-133. 

10. The tlrevolt of the admirals" has also produced controversial literature. ]n 

addition to the works cited in the preceding footnote, see Paul Y. 

Hammond, "Super Carriers and B-36 Bombers: Appropriations, Strategy, 

and Politics,lt American Civil-Military Decisions: A Book of Case Studies 

(Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1963): 465-567, and Paolo E. 

Coletta, "Louis Emil Denfield, 15 December 1947-1 November 1949," The 

Chiefs of Naval Operations: 193-206. 

II. R. Gordon Hoxie, Command Decision and the Presidency: A Study in 

National Security Policy and Organization (New York: Reader's Digest 

Press, 1977), pp. 162-163, 197-198. Hammond, Organizing for Defense, 

pp. 295-298, is incisive on this point. 

12. Donovan, Tumultuous Years, pp. 265-267. The best short account of 

Marshall's and Lovett's tours as secretary of defense is Roger R. Trask, 

The Secretaries of Defense: A Brief History, 1947-1985 (Washington, 

D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1985), pp. 

14-19. For a more extended account, see C. W. Borklund, Men of the 

Pentagon: From Forrestal to McNamara (New York: Frederick A. 

Praeger, 1966), pp. 89-137. 

13. Hewes, From Root to McNamara, pp. 208-212; Collins, Lightning Joe, pp. 

350-354. 

14. Bulletin 9, DA, 6 Jul 50 (hereafter cited as Bul 9), contains the complete 

text of PL 581, 81st Cong., 28 Jun 50; Collins, Lightning Joe, pp. 351-352. 

68 
15. Special Regulation 10-5-1, II Apr 50 (hereafter c ited as SR 10-5- 1). For 

an extended analysis of the legal issues, see Hewes, From Root to 

McNamara, pp. 212-215. 

69 
CHAPTER V 

Reorganization Plan No. 6 of 1953 

Korea, which started out as a war of movement, became after the first 

year a war of position. As the Truman administration came to accept the view 

that the status quo ante bellum was an acceptable definition of victory, public 

frustration with the war grew. The seemingly interminable little war in 

northeast Asia helped General Eisenhower become President-elect Eisenhower 

in November 1952, the first Republican elected to the presidency since 1928. 

President Truman, conscious of how unprepared he had been when he assumed 

office following President Roosevelt's death in April 1945, directed the first 

orderly transition between administrations in American history. It was in this 

context that in November 1952 the outgoing Secretary of Defense, Robert 

Lovett, prepared a memorandum outlining the deficiencies in defense 

organization revealed by the limited war in Korea. I 

One of Lovett's major concerns was to establish the unquestioned primacy 

of the secretary of defense within his department. Lovett believed that the 

solution was quite simple, and he used as his model the reforms proposed by the 

Hoover Commission in the other cabinet level departments. He proposed to 

transfer all the functions of the offices, agencies, and employees defined by law 

in the Department of Defense to the secretary of defense. He could then 

delegate portions of his authority to these subordinate offices and employees. 

Lovett indicated that there could be "exceptions, if necessary," but the whole 

tenor of his discussion seemed to indicate that none were needed. One 

consequence of this proposal, of course, would be to remove any statutory basis 

for the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Lovett argued that in peacetime the Department of Defense should be 

ready to go to war without massive changes in its organization: "We should not 

deliberate ly maintain a Department of Defense organization which in its 

several parts would require a drastic reorganization to fight a war." He 

proposed to confine the Joint Chiefs of Staff "excluSively to planning (unctions 

and the review of war plans in the light of new weapons and new techniques." 

The Joint Staff would become simply a planning staff. A joint military-civilian 

staff would support the secretary and assume "the balance of the military staff 

functions" heretofore performed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs 
as a separate institution might "operate" and "command" in time of war but 

only "by the direction of the Secretary of Defense," who in Lovett's view was 

the deputy commander-in-chief directly responsible to the president. The 

secretary should establish unified commands with the advice of the service 

secretaries and the Joint Chiefs, and determine which military department 

would serve as the executive agent for each unified command. 

At the same time that he appeared to remove the Joint Chiefs from the 

"channel of command and responsibility," to borrow Bessell's phrase, Lovett 

wanted to give the chairman a "vote." Lovett knew full well that the Joint 

Chiefs did not decide questions by formal ballots. He simply wanted to remove 

the imputation in the 1949 amendments that the chairman did not enjoy in full 

all the powers and prerogatives of the other chiefs in the Joint Chiefs of Sta([ 

organization. He wanted the chairman to participate fully and unreservedly in 

discussions with the other chiefs. 

Lovett believed that the chairman should seek "unanimity of opinion on a 

course of action," but, failing to obtain agreement, he had to identify the points 

of disagreement very precisely and, at the same time, state his own view to the 

secretary of defense. Only then could the secretary make an informed decision. 

The chairman, noted Lovett, was "the military officer to whom the President 

and the Secretary of Defense must look for the organization and evaluation of 

military judgment." 

Lovett decried the practice of Joint Staff officers becoming advocates of 

the positions taken by their services. To avoid this, he proposed to reserve the 

preparation of efficiency reports of officers working for the Joint Staff 

exclusively to their immediate superiors for their period of joint service . 

In an organizational sense, Lovett's proposal was very close to what 

General Bradley had advocated in 1949. Bradley also had proposed to restrict 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff to planning and to provide the secretary of defense 

with a military-civilian staff separate from the Joint Staff. The differences 

were that, perhaps out of respect for the Navy's often expressed views on the 

subject, Lovett did not recommend the creation of the post of senior military 

adviser and that he wanted to deSignate the secretary the deputy commanderin-chief. The second innovation may have followed from the first. If Lovett 

had regarded the senior military adviser as simply the chief of staff of the 

71 
armed services under another name, and by chief of staff he had in mind the 

powers wielded by General Marshall during World War II, then exclusion of this 

officer may have required, in Lovett's view, some increase in the prestige and 

power of the secretary. 

Lovett's assertion that the secretary of defense should be the deputy 

commander-in-chief appeared both the logical extension of the provisions of the 

1949 amendments and, at the same time, rather controversial. Section 202 of 

the 1949 amendments proclaimed: "The Secretary of Defense shall be the 

principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of 

Defense. Under the direction of the President, and subject to the provisions of 

this Act, he shall have direction, authority, and control over the Department of 

Defense." General Bradley as chief of staff of the Army had advocated just 

such a strengthening of the role of the secretary. At no time, however, did he 

or the statute use the verb "command .,, 2 

Neither General Bradley nor his successor, General Collins, spelled out his 

view of the difference between "direction" and "command," and to reconstruct 

their positions it is necessary to have recourse to the meanings attached by the 

military to the terms at the time. The 1948 Dictionary of United States 

Military Terms for Joint Usage gave two definitions for "command" applicable 

in the context of the responsibilities of the secretary of defense: "1. The 

authority that an individual exercises over his subordinates because of his rank 

and assignment. 2. An order given by a commander; that is the will of the 

commander expressed in a definite form for the purpose of bringing about a 

particular action in a specific way.1t The 1950 edition eliminated the first 

definition but retained the second. The 1953 edition returned to the 1948 

formulation) 

None of the editions defined "direction." In common usage, of course, the 

word could be used as a synonym for "command," but it also had a broader 

meaning of "guidance" or "management." "Directive," which did make the 

Dictionary of United States Military Terms, conformed to this common usage in 

all three editions. It also had two applicable definitions: "l. A military 

communication in which a policy is established or a specific order is issued .... 3. 

Broadly speaking, any communication which initiates or governs action, 

conduct, or procedure." The evidence thus suggests that for Bradley and Collins 

72 
"to command" had a much narrower and more specific meaning than "to direc t," 

which could encompass but was not limited to the former. 4 

Their views, of course, were greatly influenced as well by the expe rience 

of their organization. Historically, the secretary of war had always exerc ised 

conside rable discretion in the purely administrative side of his depa rtment. In 

this sense the World War II experience only carried to a logical conclusion 

trends long present in the agency . During other conflicts, the secretary's 

discretion in operations had usually been much more limited than in 

administration . In operations he had ac ted as the faithful executive for the 

president, ensuring that the War Department carried out the directives of the 

commande r-in-chie f. While Roosevelt had excluded his se rvice secretaries 

from operations somewhat more than most wartime presidents, no secreta ry of 

war had aspired to the 

the War of 181 2. 

role claimed by Lovett since John Armstrong, Jr., during 

The burning of Washington in 1814 not only ended 

Armstrong's public career but a lso dissuaded his successors from emulating his 

example.5 

Bradley's purpose in 1949 in arguing that the sec retary of defense should 

have "direction, authority, and control" over the military establishment was to 

ensure that the secreta ry had the same power to manage his agency as the 

other cabine t members possessed in their departments. Eight years later, in a 

brilliant examination of American defense policy in a comparative perspective, 

Professor Samuel P. Hunti ngton argued that the most e ffective method of 

ma intaining civi lian control of the military lay in establishing what he called a 

"ba la nced type" of civ il-military re lations in the executive branch. On the one 

hand the civi li ans, the president and the secre ta ry of defense, established broad 

policy guidance. On the o the r, the military with their technical competence 

de rived from a professional education a nd long expe rie nce , drafted and issued 

the o rde rs necessary t o implement tha t policy. The c ivilians directed, and the 

milita ry commanded.6 

While elemen ts of Huntington's argumen t are implied by Bradley's 1949 

proposal, Bradley's thought a nd that of his successor remained ambiguous on the 

issue of the sec retar y of defense as the deputy commander-in-chie f. 

Huntington's analysis might have helped them clarify their position, but it was 

not available to them , and to attribute such a n argument to them would be 

73 
ahistorical. In 1949 there was no reason to explore the question because no one 

attributed to the secretary the degree of independent authority that such a title 

implied. The secretary was a political appointee whose length of tenure 

depended upon the continued support of the president. He was an agent of the 

commander-in-chief. 

There was little more reason to respond to the issue when raised by 

Lovett in 1952, because his rhetoric overstated his inte nt. He argued that the 

proper role of the secretary was to establish general policies for the 

Department of Defense within the guide lines laid down by the president. He 

neither wanted civilians to direct operations nor the military to establish 

policy. Making the sec retary of defense the deputy commander-in-chief simply 

served as a device to get the services to treat with respect the policies 

established by the secretary . 

Unfortunately, Lovett's position contained certain inherent 

contradict ions. Removing the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the channel of 

command and responsibility in peacetime and possibly placing them back in the 

channel during wartime violated the general principle he sought to establish--no 

major reorganizations of the Department of Defense when it shifted [rom peace 

to war. Moreover, if he retained the idea that the military directed operations 

and the Joint Chiefs remained outside the channel of command, then the 

responsibility for the conduct of operations would fall to the chiefs of staff in 

their role as the professional heads of their respective services. The chain of 

command would run from the president to the secretary of defense to the 

service secre taries and through the chiefs, who would act as the executives for 

the service secretaries: The chiefs would issue orders to the unified and 

specified commands using the authority derived from the service secretaries. 

(The chief of naval operations and the chief of staff of the Air Force would 

continue, of course, to command combat forces of their services not assigned to 

the unified and specified commands.) The implication in Lovett's argument 

was that the service departments should become the executive agents for the 

unified commands rathe r than the individual service chiefs in their role as 

members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But this would in turn enhance the power 

and prestige of the services, which Lovett sought to counteract by making the 

secretary the deputy commander-in-chief. 

74 
Lovett's proposal cannot be understood without some reference to the 

conditions of his service in the Department of Defense--one year as deputy 

secretary of defense under Marshall and fifteen months as head of the 

department. The limited war in Korea elicited only a limited commitment from 

the American public, which hampered the eHorts of the Truman administration 

to achieve even the partial mobilization of industry that it desired to support 

the war effort. Lovett's job within the department became one of "allocating 

scarcities" among the services. It was a thankless and frustrating task that left 

him emotionally and physically exhausted. (His first act on leaving oUice was 

to check himself into the hospital.) Privately he thought his department was 

unmanageable.? 

The incoming administration headed by President Eisenhower embraced 

Lovett's proposal and created an opportunity for the Army to once more air its 

views on defense organization. At Eisenhower's behest, Secretary of Defense 

Charles E. Wilson appointed a committee headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller, on 

which Lovett was a member, to examine the Department of Defense 

organization. General Collins, Army Chief of Staff since 1949, testified before 

the committee and presented the Army's position. As in 1949, his remarks 

reflected what the Army leadership thought it could obtain rather than what it 

thought desirable--specifically a chief of staff of the armed forces. 8 

In contrast to Lovett, Collins defended current command and control 

arrangements. (See Chart 9.) He recommended leaving the Joint Chiefs in the 

channel of command and thought "dual hatting" necessary. In his judgment, the 

chiefs brought a wealth of knowledge about their own services to the Joint 

Chiefs' meetings as a consequence of their service responsibilities. The vice 

chiefs, he argued, should run the services on a day-to-day basis in conformity to 

policies established by the Joint Chiefs. The power of the chairman needed to 

be strengthened. Specifically, he should be required to present his own views to 

the secretary in the event of a split decision in the Joint Chiefs.9 

Collins called for the establishment of a joint intelligence agency, 

reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs, to replace the three service intelligence 

directorates in Washington. He also wanted to strengthen the OHice of the 

Secretary of Defense by giving the secretary four functiona l assistant 

secretaries. Collins saw the service secretaries as the chief executors of 

75 
Chart 9 - The Collins Proposal, 1953 

President 

I 

National Security Council Secretary of Defense 

Central Intelligence 

Agency 

I I 

Armed Forces Chairman 

Joint Intelligence Agency - ~ 

Planning Council Joint Chiefs of Staff 

I I 

Department of 

Department of the Army Department of the Navy Air Force 

Unified & 

Specified Commands 

Chain of Command 
policies in the Department of Defense rather than as policy formulators. To 

strengthen decision making in the office of the secretary and to relieve the 

Joint Chiefs of routine paperwork, he suggested creatint a military executive in 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense to advise the secretary on such matters 

and to head the largely civilian staff in the office . 

Collins also outlined how he thought the budget process should operate. 

The National Security Council would provide the Joint Chiefs of Staff with 

"approved strategic guidelines." The Joint Chiefs would develop force levels 

and forward them to the secretary of defense . Once the secretary approved the 

force levels, the deputy secretary with the aid of the assistant sec retaries 

would prepare budget guidelines. The deputy sec retary would then forward 

these documents to the se rvi ce departments which would prepare detailed 

budget guidelines. The chief of staff could appeal an adverse decision on the 

budget to the president, but only if the secretary of defense or the secretary of 

the Army gave his consent--the procedure that Marshall had hoped to reform in 

1945. 10 

Reorganization Plan No.6, the administration-backed plan based on the 

report of the Rockefeller Committee, became law on 30 June 1953. (See Chart 

10.) It transferred to the secretary of defense all the functions performed by 

the subordinate offices, agencies, and employees of the Department of Defense 

except those performed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the armed services. 

Simultaneously, President Eisenhower directed Secretary Wilson to remove the 

Joint Chiefs from the channel of command and gave the secretary of defense 

the a uthority to create unified commands and appoin t the military depa rtments 

to serve as executive agents for the unified commands. However, the plan did 

not provide the military staff in the secretary's office that both Lovett and 

Collins advocated)l 

Whereas in the 1947 legislation the Joint Chiefs simply appointed the 

director of the Joint Staff, the 1953 reform provided that the appointment and 

tenure of the director was "subject to the approval of the Secretary of 

Defense." While decreasing the power of the Joint Chiefs as a collective 

entity, the plan increased the power of the chairman. The Joint Chiefs 

continued to select officers for service on the Joint Staff, but now their 

selections needed the approval of the chairman. In this one area the chairman 

77 
received a veto from which the service chiefs had no appeal. The plan 

transferred the responsibility of providing guidance to the director and 

managing the Joint Staff from the Joint Chiefs to the chairman. The reform 

provided many of the safeguards against outside influence on Joint Staff 

officers that Collins had recommended in 1949. It also gave the secretary of 

defense six additional assistant secretariesj all of the assistant secretaries--old 

as well as new--received functional responsibilities defined by law for the first 

time. This change conformed to Collins' proposal in J 945, except that it gave 

the Department of Defense three times the number of assistant secretaries that 

Collins had reCjuested then. 

In March 1954 Secretary Wilson issued a Department of Defense Directive 

designed to implement Reorganization Plan No.6. The directive provided that 

the secretary of defense would designate one of the military departments to 

serve "as the executive agency" for each of the unified commands. Wilson, 

however, left the responsibility for establishing unified commands with the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. While the first provision reflected Lovett's view, the 

second did not. 12 

Under the new arrangement, "the channel of responsibility" would run 

from the secretary of defense to the secretary of the department designated as 

executive agent. The service secretary, in turn, would authorize the military 

chief of his department to receive and transmit orders and act for the 

department as the executive agent in certain situations. These included 

strategic direction in peace and war of the unified commands assigned to the 

department and operational direction of the commands in war or emergencies. 

The service chief issued all orders by command of the secretary of defense. At 

the same time the chief had to keep the secretary of defense, his service 

secretary, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed of his actions. 

The major organizational change, the altered role of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff in the Department of Defense, represented a step back from the increased 

centralization of the channels of command advocated by the Collins Plan of 

194.5. As in World War II, the service chiefs provided operational direction of 

the combatant forces, but now it was solely by virtue of their role as heads of 

their services rather than because of their membership on the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff. In this narrow respect, the 1953 reorganization provided even less 

78 
Chart 10 - Reorganization Plan No.6, 1953 

President 

I I 

National Security National Sec

Secretary of Defense 

Council Resources B

I I I 

Central Intelligence Armed Forces 

Chai man r

Agency Planning Council Joint Chiefs of Staff 

I I 

Department o

Department of the Army Depar me t nt of the Navy Air Force 

Unified & 

Specified Commands 

Chain of Command 
centralization than the World War II system. The chairman, representing a 

solely joint perspective, now played no role in operations other than as an 

adviser. This loss, however, was at least partially offset by the increased role 

of the chairman within the Joint Chiefs. Events of the next four years would 

demonstrate, however, that a powerful chairman was not an unalloyed benefit 

from the Army's perspective. 

The Collins recommendations in 1953 are significant in the history of the 

Army position on Joint Chiefs of Staff reform for three reasons. For the first 

time the Army did not publicly espouse a single chief of staff for the armed 

forces even though the high command continued to prefer that solution in 

private. Moreover, the Army continued to advocate a budget process as far 

removed as possible from politics--where reason rather than emotion would 

prevail. Finally, the Army largely succeeded in achieving its 1945 objectives 

insofar as the Office of the Secretary of Defense was concerned. The 

remainder of its goals were, however, a long way from fruition. 

The Collins Plan of 1953 was a response to the needs of the moment 

without compromising the Army's long-range objectives. Changing conditions 

after 1953 elicited a markedly different response when the next major effort 

for reform occurred . 

so 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER V 

1. For the transition out of office, see Donovan, Tumultuous Years, pp. 402-

403. Ltr, Lovett to Truman, 18 Nov 52, CS 040, Department of Defense, 

Chief of Staff Army Decimal File, 1951-52, RG 319, NA. 

2. PL 216, 81st Congress, 10 Aug 49 , Cole et al ., Department of Defense, p. 

88. 

3. U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dictionary of United 

States Mili ta ry Terms for Joint Usage (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, 1948), p. 25 (hereafter cited as Dictionary of U.S. Milita ry Terms, 

1948); U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dictionary of 

United States Military Terms for Joint Usage (First Revision) 

(Washington , D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 19 50), p. 24 (hereafter cited as 

Dictionary of U.S. Milita ry Te rm s, 1950); U.S. Department of Defense, 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dictionary of United States Military Te rm s for 

Joint Usage (Second Revision) (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

1953), p. 26 (hereafter c ited as Dict ionary of U.S. Military Terms, 1953). 

4. U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dictionary of U.S. 

Milit a ry Te rms, 1948, p. 34 j U.S. Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, Dictionary of U.S. Military Te rms, 1950, p. 33j U.S., Joint Chie fs of 

Staff, Dictionary of U.S. Military Terms, 1953, p. 34 . The phraseology 

Changed in the first definition of "directive" in the 1953 edi tion but no t 

the meaning: "1. A military communication in which a policy is 

established or a specific action is ordered." 

5. C. Edward Skeen , "John Armstrong, Jr.," Dictionary of American Military 

BiographY, 1: 36-38, provides a succinct summary of the recent 

literature. For a more comprehensive treatment, see Skeen's J ohn 

Armstrong, Jr., 1758-1843: A Biography (Syracuse: Syracuse University 

Press, 1981). See also Theodore J. Crackel, "Henry Dearborn," 

Dictionary of American Milita ry BiographY, 1: 250-254. 

81 
6. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics 

of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1957), pp. 

80-97,163-192. 

7. Ltr, Lovett to Truman, 18 Nov 52, CS 040. David Halberstam, The Best 

and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 8-10, mentions 

Lovett's hospitalization and his reflections on defense. 

8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956, vol. I in The 

White House Years, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 1: 133; News 

Conference, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 30 Apr 53, U.S. National Archives 

and Records Service, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953, 8 vols. (Washington D.C.: Government 

Printing Office, 1960), 1: 238-248; U.S. Congress, Senate , Committee on 

Armed Forces, Report of the Rockefeller Committee on Department of 

Defense Organization, 83d Cong., 1st sess., 1953. Interpretation of 

Eisenhower's presidency has undergone a major revision in the past few 

years. For major statements of the new view, see Fred I. Greenstein, The 

Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 

1982), especially pp. 100-151, and Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The 

President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984). These can be 

supplemented by Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. 

Eisenhower (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979), pp. 61-148. The 

best account of the Department of Defense during the Eisenhower 

administration remains Douglas E. Kinnard, President Eisenhower and 

Defense Strategy Management (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 

1977) (hereafter cited as President Eisenhower). It must be read in 

conjunction with Kinnard's The Secretary of Defense, pp. 44-71, as the 

focus of the second wo rk is somewhat different from the first. Less 

va luable, but still useful, is E. Bruce Geelhoed, Charles E. Wilson and 

Controversy at the Pentagon, 1953 to 1957 (Detroit: Wayne State 

University Press, 1979). Collins does not discuss the 1953 reorganization 

in his autobiography and the Army's attitude must be pieced together 

from the arguments for and against various courses of action and the 

82 
decision finally adopted. See Study, L. F. Hamele, R. S. Emmerich, and 

K. E. Lauglotz, "Reorganization of the Department of Defense,'! 12 Mar 

53, CS 320, Chief of Staff Army Decimal File, 1953, RG 319, NA. 

9. Statement, Collins, Answers to Questions by the Rockefeller Committee, 

27 Mar 53, CS 320, Chief of Staff Army Decimal File, 1953, RG 319, NA. 

10. In a memoir written sixteen years later, Collins stated that he had 

become convinced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff system as amended in 

1958 with a strong chairman was preferable to the single chief of staff 

that he had advocated in 1945. J. Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime: The 

History and Lessons of Korea (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 372-

374. 

11. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Government Operations, 

Reorganization Plan No.6 of 1953 (Department of Defense): Hearings .... 

83d Cong., 1st sess., 1953, p. 7. For a brief legislative history, see Cole 

et al., Department of Defense, p. 158 and Msg, Eisenhower to Congress, 

30 Apr 53, pp. 149-157 in the same volume. 

12. DOD Directive No. 5100.1, 16 Mar 54; Cole et al., Department of 

Defense, pp. 293-303. 

83 
CHAPTER VI 

The 1958 Amendments 

The next reorganization of the Department of Defense, the 1958 

amendments to the National Security Act of 1947, occurred in a context of 

intense interservice rivalry between the Army and the Air Force. The leaders 

of the two services had totally different conceptions of the nature of future 

general war, the desired national strategy, and the mix of forces needed to 

carry the strategy into effect. 

Army spokesmen, such as Generals Matthew B. Ridgway, Maxwell D. 

Taylor and James M. Gavin, advocated a strategy of flexible response. For 

them, the lesson of Korea was that limited wars were possible. America had 

possessed a near monopoly of atomic weapons in June 1950, and this had not 

deterred the North Koreans. The Army, consequently, needed to prepare to 

fight such conflicts. Never again could it afford to be as unprepared for 

combat as in the summer of 1950. The drama of defeat and retreat in that 

terrible season had etched itself indelibly in the memories of the members of 

the Army Staff'! 

Air Force leaders, inc luding Generals Nathan F. Twining, Thomas O. 

White, and Curtis E. LeMay, defended the massive retaliation strategy just as 

vigorously . For them the lesson of Korea was somewhat different. Deterrence 

could not work unless the Air Forcets Strategic Air Command possessed the 

means to deliver nuclear weapons to all parts of the Soviet Union, a capability 

that it had lacked in June J 950. Only if the country made a massive investment 

in teChnology, procurement, and training could it produce a force ready to 

strike back at the Soviets within a few hours of an attack anywhere on the 

periphery of their empire. Air Force demands for the funds to increase the 

capabilities and readiness of the Strategic Air Command dominated the budget 

battles of the mid and late 1950s. The widespread belief in the United States 

during the 1950s about the "monolithic nature of Communism" made massive 

retaliation a plausible strategy to deter limited wars.2 

President Eisenhower entered office convinced that the United States was 

engaged in a long term struggle with the Soviet Union. To survive lithe long 

haui,tt America could not afford to tie up too large a proportion of its 

productive resources in supporting a massive military organization. Determined 
to avoid spending the country into defeat, Eisenhower accepted massive 

retaliation as the optimal national strategy for the United States. For the 

president, like the Army, the lesson of Korea was "never again," but in his case 

it was never again fight a limited war where the enemy had the advantage in 

manpower.3 

Eisenhower intended to act as his own chief strategist. He appointed a 

management specialist, Charles E. Wilson--the president of General Motors--to 

succeed Lovett as secretary of defense. General Bradley's successor as 

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of StaH, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, became the 

president's principal advise r on strategy in fact if not in law. Wilson and 

Radford complemented one another. Wilson was blunt and directj traits that 

sometimes caused him problems when speaking in public . He was a strong 

advocate of unanimity within the Joint Chiefs on questions of policy and 

strategy. (General Ridgway called it browbeating.) Wilson regarded the service 

secretaries as middle management. He used the Armed Forces Policy Council 

as Secretary of Defense Johnson had--to announce decisions a lready arrived at. 

in the Wilson Pentagon , the service secretaries received their instructions from 

the assistant secretaries of defense when they received any at all. Quite often 

the assistant secretaries bypassed the service secretaries and went directly to 

the se rvices. Radford, a brilliant, sei(-assured staff officer with a background 

in naval aviation, was a skilled bureaucratic infighter who, like Wilson, sought 

consensus--not the gradual working out of areas of agreement between men of 

dissimilar background but the unanimous acceptance of a predetermined 

national strategy. Whereas Admira l Leahy and General Brad ley mediated 

disagreements, Radford was an advocate of the Eisenhower "New Look," with 

its emphasis on strategic bombardment.4 

The result of these Changes in leadership style and departmental 

procedure was that General Ridgway, Army chief of staff from 1953 to 1955, 

and his successor, General Taylor, who held the post from 1955 until 1959, felt 

isolated. Not only did the secretary and the cha irman not act on Army 

objections but they a lso gave eve ry indication of not paying much attention to 

Army recommendations. The frustrations inherent in the situation soon became 

evident to the other members of the Army Staff as well. For the Army, once 

the war ended in Korea, the 1950s proved to be the worst of times. An 

85 
institution with the primary mission in war of c losing with and attacking the 

enemy found itself, under the new doctrine, relegated to the role of defending 

strategic air bases. The "New Look" caused a crisis of confidence within the 

Army, much the same as the Navy faced at the end of World War 11. Because 

massive retaliation was the policy of the Eisenhower administration , the Air 

Force became the dominant service in the Department of Defense once the 

Korean War ended. It received a larger share of the budget than the other two 

services.5 

Army leaders continued to advocate unity of command in principle during 

the 1950s, but feared that if legislation c reated a single chief of staff of the 

armed forces, the president would appoint an Air Force officer to the post and 

he would use it to inflict his strategic views on the other services. Fear that 

the Air Force intended to advocate a single chief of staff led Army leaders to 

adopt a position on Department of Defense reform in November 1957 that 

attempted to combine unity of command with public opposition to a single chief 

of staff. During the preparation of the Army position, Lt. Gen. Clyde D. 

Eddleman, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, observed that the 

ultimate Army objective remained a chief of staff of the armed forces but that 

it was impolitic to admit it. The solution , in Eddleman's view a desirable first 

step toward the ultimate goal, was the creation of the fou r-star post of director 

of joint military operations who would report to the Joint Chiefs and assume all 

their responsibilities concerning the planning, conduct, and requirements for 

military operations. (See Chart 11.) At the same time the plan abolished the 

executive agent system. The chain of command became the president, the 

secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of joint military 

operations, and the commanders of the unified and specified commands. To 

assist him, the director received two deputies and a Joint Staff modeled after 

the Operations Division of the War Department Gene ra l Staff during World Wa r 

11.6 

The Army plan reduced the Joint Chiefs to the three se rvice chiefs and, 

when the Joint Chiefs discussed a policy affecting the Marines, the 

commandant of the Marine Corps. Without a separate officer holding the office 

of chairman , the post rotated each qua rte r be tween the th ree full-time 

members. A reduced Joint Staff continued to support the Joint Chiefs. The 

86 
Chart 11 - The Army Proposal, 19 5 7 

Commander in Chief National Security C

Assistant Secretaries Armed Force

Secretary of Defense 

of Defense Policy Counc

Joint Staff Joint Chiefs of Staff 

I 

Director Joint 

M ilitary Operations Department of the Army Department of the Navy 

Deputies (21 

Joint Staff (Operationsl I 1 

1 I 

1 I 

1 1 

Unified & ~ _____ L ________ -1 _______ 

Specified Commands Administrative & Logistical Support 

Chain of Command 

- - - - Coordination 
proposal left open, subject to further study, the amount of the reduction. It 

would correspond to the much diminished mission of the Joint Staff--to review 

for the Joint Chiefs plans and policy proposals recommended by the director of 

joint military operations and provide the necessary staff support to answer 

questions referred to the Joint Chiefs by the secretary of defense. 

In the budget process, the director of joint military operations prepared a 

statement of requirements for the unified and specified commands, based on 

input from their commanders. The services prepared requirements only for 

undeployed forces in the United States and the training and mobilization bases. 

The plan also called for reform, long advocated by General Taylor, in the 

development of a functional bUdget--a joint bUdget with funds divided by task, 

such as limited war, rather than by service'? 

The proposed creation of a director of military operations combined with 

the abolition of the separate chairman constituted a very shrewd blow at the 

threat that a chairman like Admiral Radford posed for the Army. The director 

of joint military operations, given his location in the chain of command, could 

direct the unified and specified commands, but he would be subordinate to the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Unlike a single chief of staff, or even a strong chairman, 

the director of joint operations would not be well placed to influence the 

services. 

Admiral Radford, while chairman, may not have handled the chief of staff 

of the Army always in the most tactful fashion, but the solution that the Army 

Staff proposed appears, in retrospect, as a conside rable overreaction. While the 

admiral was most certainly an enthusiastic advocate of the New Look, he was 

not its author. That individual resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No 

organizational change short of a veritable constitutional revolution would have 

permitted the Army to have obtained adoption of flexible response as a national 

strategy in the 1950s. In this sense the solution the Army proposed was rather 

pointless in that it did not address the real problem that the service faced. In 

another sense using the post of chairman as a scapegoat was healthy because it 

allowed the Army to vent its frustrations. The episode clearly demonstrated 

that General Taylor and his associates thoroughly accepted the concept of 

civilian control of the military. Despite the wrenching pressures on the Army, 

no one ever questioned the right of the president to make the decisions that he 

88 
did. 

The 1957 Army position on Joint Chiefs of Staff reform had no 

appreciable effect on the legislation that Congress enacted the following year. 

Its primary historical significance is the insight that it provides into attitudes 

of members of the Army Staff. The plan was so soon overtaken by events 

because, when the effort to reform the Department of Defense developed, the 

initiative carne not from the Air Force as the Army Staff feared, but from the 

president himself. Eisenhower believed that the 1953 reforms had not gone far 

enough. His concern stemmed from his appreciation of the changes that World 

War II had wrought in the conduct of war. 

First, separate ground, sea, and air warfare is gone 

forever. If ever again we should be involved in war, we 

will fight it with all elements, with all services, as one 

single concentrated effort. Peacetime preparatory and 

organizational activity must conform to this 

fact. Strategic and tactical planning must be 

completely unified, combat forces organized into unified 

commands, each equipped with the Inost efficient 

weapons systems that science can develop, singly led and 

prepared to fight as one, regardless of service. The 

accomplishment of this result is the basic function of 

the Secretary of Defense, advised and assisted by the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff and operating under the supervision 

of the Commander in Chief. 

To this line of argument--so reminiscent of the position that he had taken 

as chief of staff of the Army during the unification debates from 1945 until 

1947--Eisenhower added a second concern derived from the interservice 

rivalries over weapons development during the 19505. The secretary of defense 

needed clear, direct, and flexible authority to manage funds appropriated to his 

department, "especially in respect to the development of new weapons •••• "g 

The president had six specific objectives designed to put these two 

principles into effect. He urged that U.S. fighting forces needed to be 

organized "into operational commands that are truly unified, each assigned a 

mission in full accord with our over-all "military objectives!' These unified 

commands, a category for Eisenhower that included specified commands as well 

as multiservice commands, would be established in the Department of Defense 

by the direction of the president with missions and force levels that conformed 

"to national objectives." They would be separate from the military 

89 
departments. All legal restrictions on the powers of a unified commander over 

his component commanders, the president told Congress, should be removed. It 

followed logically from this prescription that to achieve unity of command 

among the forces in the field as defined by the president, the military 

departments would have to be removed from the chain of command. 

Eisenhower's second objective was in fact to "clear command channels so that 

orders will proceed directly to the unified commanders from the Commander in 

Chief and the Secretary of Defense." The president considered the chain of 

command established in the wake of the 1953 reorganization "cumbersome and 

unreliable in time of peace and not usable in time of war." He had already 

directed Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy to discontinue the use of 

military departments as executive agents. Eisenhower asked Congress to 

facilitate this process by repealing the statutory authority giving the chief of 

staff of the Air Force command of major units of the Air Force and the chief of 

naval operations command of naval operating forces. 

Eisenhower had considered and rejected complete unification through the 

creation of a single service. While desirable, he believed the proposition 

politically infeasible in 1958.9 Instead, his third objective called for 

strengthening "the military staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense" to 

provide the president and the secretary with the needed "professional 

assistancell for the preparation of strategic plans and the "operational direction 

of the unified commands." The concept of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

Eisenhower argued, was "essentially sound," and therefore he sought no 

legislative changes in their functions. However, to support the shift in 

operational channels, he directed that in the future the Joint Chiefs would 

"serve as stair assisting the Secretary of Defense in his exercise of direction 

over unified commands." They would not have any independent command 

authority; they would issue commands only "under the authority and in the name 

of the Secretary of Defense ." This formula for ensuring civilian control of the 

military while interjecting military advice and expertise at the tip of the chain 

of command through the agency of a chief of staff, although in this instance a 

committee, conformed exactly to the method followed in the War Department 

between 1903 and 1941. The plan confirmed that Eisenhower had spent his 

prepresidential career in the Army, not the Navy. 

90 
Given the changes that Eisenhower had mandated with regard to the 

unified commands and the chain of command, he needed to strengthen the Joint 

Staff so that it could perform the tasks previously assigned to the operations 

staffs of the services. He hoped that the changes he directed Secretary 

McElroy to make--abolishing the committee system in the Joint Staff and 

adding an "integrated operations division"--would also increase the speed of 

decision-making and make the Joint Staff less of an arena for interservice 

rivalry. In his view members of the Joint Staff committees regarded 

themselves as representatives of their services rather than as staff officers 

with a national perspective. "Had I allowed my interservice and interallied 

staff to be similarly organized in the theaters I commanded in World War II, the 

delays and resulting indecisiveness would have been unacceptable to my 

superiors." 

The president asked Congress to assist his reorganization of the Joint 

Staff "by raising or removing the statutory limit on the size of the Joint Staff." 

Only then could the Joint Staff form an operations division of the size required. 

He asked that Congress authorize the chairman to assign duties to members of 

the Joint Staff and to appoint its director. He also asked for a revision of the 

law to remove any ambiguity over the power of the service chiefs to delegate 

the day-to-day operation of their services to their vice chiefs. Eisenhower 

wanted the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to devote most of their time 

and attention to their joint as opposed to their service responsibilities. Finally, 

he asked that Congress remove the prohibition on "voting" by the chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the meetings of the Joint Chiefs. Eisenhower 

wanted the chairman on an equal footing with the other chiefs. 

The specifics of Eisenhower's last two objectives, reorganizing the 

research and development function in the Department of Defense and removing 

all doubts about the authority of the secretary of defense within his own 

department, were only marginally related to the Joint Chiefs. Under the 

heading of the second objective, the president announced that he had informed 

Secretary McElroy that he would consider for advancement beyond the two-star 

level only those officers recommended to him by the secretary after discussion 

with the service secretaries and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president 

planned to follow the same procedure when assigning or reassigning senior 

91 
officers "to high command, staff, and departmental positions." By this method 

Eisenhower hoped to ensure that such officers possessed the ability to deal 

"objectively--without extreme service partisanship--with matters of the 

broadest significance to our national security." 

In the 1958 amendments to the National Security Act (See Chart 12.), the 

president secured virtually all that he requested. The new legislation and the 

directive that Secretary McElroy issued in December 1958 putting it into effect 

gave the Army much more than it had requested in 1953, rather less than it 

desired in 1957, and considerably less than it had contemplated in 1945. The 

act continued to centralize authority in the Department of Defense . It 

loosened but did not entirely remove, as Eisenhower desired, the curbs on the 

secretary of defense's power to shift functions within his own department. The 

secretary no longer had to administer the service departments separately; the 

amendments simply provided that they would be "organized separately ."IO 

The legislation reiterated that the Joint Staff could "have no executive 

authority," that is, command authority. While the Joint Staff could "not 

operate or be organized as an overall Armed Forces General Staff," it could "be 

organized and operate along conventional staff lines." In conformity with 

Eisenhower's proposa l, the act increased the size of the Joint Staff to 400 

officers. 

Secretary McElroy's directive defined the relationship between the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff and the chain of command. The Joint Chiefs would "serve as 

advisers and as military staff in the chain of operational command" to the 

unified and specified commands and thus were not in the chain of command. 

The directive emphasized that the Joint Chiefs lacked the power of command. 

Instead they provided "a channel of communications from the President and the 

Secretary of Defense to the unified and specified commands ••.• " In effect, the 

Joint Chiefs as a collective entity became the chief of staff to the president 

and the secretary of defense with respect to the unified and specified 

commands, a reversion to the pre-1953 state of affairs. The president and the 

secretary could delegate whatever powers they might wish for the Joint Chiefs 

to exercise in their name just as a division commander might do with respect to 

his chief of staff. 

Placing the chiefs in the channel of communications also meant that the 

92 
Chart 12 - The 1958 Amendment 

President 

Armed Forces Secretary of Defense 

Policy Council Deputy Secretary of The Join

Defense 

l 

Chairman 

Joint Staff Office of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary of Defense (400) 

, 

Unified & 

Specified Commands 

lI 

Department of the Army 

Chain 01 Command 

-----,>,. Channel 01 Command 

Department of the Navy 

Departm

Air 
chiefs would be kept informed of the latest developments in the fighting 

commands. Reports from the unified and specified commands would pass in 

most instances through the Joint Chiefs en route to the secretary of defense . 

Any advice that the ch iefs might give to the secretary, consequently, would 

rest upon the very latest information. 

At the same time the chiefs served as the channel of communication for 

all directions that the secretary might issue to the unified and specified 

commanders. While the secretary might give an order directly to one of the 

unified and specified commanders and simply inform the Joint Chiefs 

afterwards as a matter of courtesy, in most instances the secretary would 

indicate what he wanted done and the Joint Chiefs, sitting as a committee, 

would actually draft the order. Because this committee made decisions only by 

unanimity, disagreements on phrasing could pose significant delays in composing 

and transmitting orders. 

The 1958 act produced a net increase in the powers of the chairman. The 

1949 prohibition against the chairman having a "vote" disappeared as 

Eisenhower requested. The chairman likewise received responsibility for 

selecting the director of the Joint Staff, a func tion heretofore performed by 

the Joint Chiefs as a whole. Previously, the Joint Staff had performed such 

duties as the Joint Chiefs of Staff prescribed. The 1958 legislation, again in 

line with Eisenhower's wishes, provided that in the future either the chairman 

or the Joint Chiefs could determine the duties of the staff. The one diminution 

of his authority occurred with respect to his management of both the director 

of the Joint Staff and the Joint Staff itself, a function given him without 

qualification in Reorganization Plan No.6 of 1953. The 1958 statute provided 

that the chairman discharged these responsibilities "on behalf of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff." 

The overall increase in the power of the chairman aside, the 1958 

reorganization changed the debate over centralization of authority in the 

Department of Defense in a subtle yet very significant manner. When General 

Collins advocated a single chief in 1945, that officer would have acted as the 

executive for the secretary of the a rmed forces in dealings with the services as 

well as the overseas commands. Removing the services from the chain of 

command to the unifi ed commands and placing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in that 

94 
chain , increased the chairman's influence regarding the unified commands but 

did not change it toward the services. Barring a basic change in the 

organizational relationships established by the 1958 legislation, future proposals 

to strengthen the powers of the chairman would only increase his authority 

relative to the unified commands. The 1958 amendments fundamentally 

changed the terms of debate over Joint Chiefs of Staff reform. 

In line with the Army's concern about the status of the service 

secretaries, the act provided that assistant secretaries of defense could not 

issue orders to the miUtary departments unless the sec retary of defense 

delegated the responsibility to them in writing and that all o rders that the 

secretary of defense, deputy secretary of defense, or assistant secretaries of 

defense issued to the military departments had to pass through the service 

secretaries. The Army did not secure in the 1958 reforms the director of joint 

military ope rations that it had deemed necessary, but it did obtain an 

operations division on the Joint Staff. While official Army proposals had not 

addressed the composition of the Joint Staff (the 1943 plan of Bessell, Caraway, 

and Armstrong had never become the official position of the War Department), 

the reconstitution of the Joint Staff a long the lines of the Army Staff pleased 

the Army leadership. 

The most striking feature of the Army position prior to the 1958 reforms 

was that, given all the pressure generated by interservice rivalries, the Army 

did not abandon unity of command as an ultimate objective. Expediency in the 

sense of the calculation of what would o r would not secure presidential or 

congressional approva l had certainly entered into the development of earlier 

Army positions, but this was the first time that the Army leadership had 

thought that the Army's institutional future was at stake. While expediency 

dictated some reversion from the degree of unity of command advocated by 

Collins in 1945, the Army position of December 1957 in fact called for greater 

unity of command than the 1958 amendments provided. Under the 

circumstances, this action testified both to the depth of commitment of 

General Taylor and his staff to the principle involved and to their intellectual 

integrity. They did not jettison unity of command simply to save the strategy 

of flexible response. 

95 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER VI 

1. General Ridgway was most emphatic on this point in Matthew B. Ridgway 

and Harold H. Martin, "My Battles in War and Peace: Conflict in the 

Pentagon, II Saturday Evening Post, 228 (24 Jan 56): 17-19. See also: 

Matthew B. Ridgway and Harold H. Martin, Soldier: The Memoirs of 

Matthew B. Ridgway (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), pp. 269-273 

(hereafter cited as Soldier); James M. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space 

Age (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 199-287; Taylor, The 

Uncertain Trumpet, pp. 130-164. 

2. For a discussion of the Air Force's ability to deliver an atomic attack 

prior to the Korean War, see Harry R. Borowski, A Hollow Threat: 

Strategic Air Power and Containment Before Korea (Westport, Conn.: 

Greenwood, 1982). For a summary of the Air Force's positions see Robert 

F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the 

United States Air Force, 1907-1964 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air 

University, 1971), pp. 208-236. Russell F. Weigley discusses both service 

positions in The American Way of War, pp. 363-440. 

3. Eisenhower described the rationale for the "New Look" in his Mandate [or 

Change, pp. 445-458. The quotation is from page 445. See also Kinnard, 

President Eisenhower, pp. 1-36; Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. 

Eisenhower, pp. 65-69. For a good discussion of defense issues generally, 

see Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, pp. 508-530. 

4. Gee1hoed, Wilson and Controversy at the Pentagon, 34-39, 100-120; 

Radford, From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam, 317-330j Ridgway and Martin, 

Soldier, 266-273; Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, &&-130. In his memoirs (p. 

329), Radford conceded that he had perhaps pushed consensus too far. In 

doing so he was but following the desires of the president who wanted 

everyone on "the team." 

5. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, pp. 311-316i Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, pp. 

96 
23-87; Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W. W. 

Norton, 1972), pp. 167-175; Coakley, "The Army Since Unification," pp. 

40-44. 

6. Memo, Eddlernan for Taylor, 9 Dec 57, sub: Reorganization of the 

Department of Defense, CS 320 (9 Dec 57); Paper, Lt. Col. Andrew, 

"Army Position on Reorganizing the U.S. Defense Establishment to Obtain 

a More Efficient Integration of the U.S. Defense Effort," 5 Nov 57, CS 

320 (5 Nov 57), Chief of Staff Army, General Correspondence, Security 

Classified, 1955-1962, RG 319, NA . 

7. Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, pp. 127-128, gives the rationale for such an 

approach. 

8. Msg, Eisenhower to U.S. Congress, 3 Apr 58, U.S. National Archives and 

Records Service, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958". (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing 

Office, 1959), pp. 2711-290. See a lso Kinnard, President Eisenhower, pp. 

89-93, and Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, pp. 457-459. 

9. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 1956-1961, vol 2 in The White 

House Years, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 248-249 (hereafter 

cited as Waging Peace). 

10. PL 85-599, 85th Cong., 6 Aug 58; DOD Directive No. 5100-1, 31 Dec 58 , 

Cole et al., Department of Defense, pp. 316-324. For Eisenhower's 

reaction to the legislation, see Eisenhower, Waging Peace, pp. 250-254. 

97 
CHAPTER VII 

The Symington Committee Proposal and the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. 1960-1969 

The 1958 amendment to the National Defense Act of 1947 did not stifle 

all the critics of the defense establishment. Senator Stuart Symington of 

Missouri based his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president in 

1960 on his expertise in defense and the alleged shortcomings of the Eisenhower 

reorganization. Symington's interest in defense issues stemmed from his 

service as assistant secretary of war for air from 1946 until 1947, when he 

managed the legislation that became the National Security Act of 1947, and his 

subsequent service as the first secretary of the Air Force from 1947 until 1950. 

Symington did not win the nomination, but he did secure a plank in his party's 

platform that c alled [or "a complete examination o[ the organization o[ our 

Armed Forces as a first order of business of the next administration." During 

the campaign, the Democratic nominee fo r president, Senator John F. Kennedy, 

established a committee headed by Symington to examine the Department of 

Defense.! 

In December 1960, after the ejection, the Symington Committee made its 

report. It recommended abolishing the service secretaries and replacing them 

with two functional under secretaries. (See Cha rt 13.) The comrnittee wanted 

to abolish the Joint Chiefs of Staff, restricting the service chiefs to their roles 

as heads of their services. In place of the Joint Chiefs organization the 

committee substituted the military advisory council , a group consisting of one 

senior officer drawn from each service and presided over by the chairman of 

the Joint Staff, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a new title but 

with the same functions. The members of the military advisory council would 

have no current duties or responsibilities with their services and could not 

return to them once their tours ended, thus solving the dual-hatting problem.2 

The committee sought to reorganize the unified and specified commands 

into four unified commands--the strategic, tactical, defense, and reserve 

commands--a proposal that reflected current Air Force thinking. They would 

report to the chairman of the Joint Staff who would become a full-fledged 

member of the chain of command. Finally, the committee recommended a 
Chart 13 - The Symington Committee Proposal, 1960 

President 

Secretary of Defense Service 

Chairman of the 

Joint Staff Military Adv

Joint Staff 

I 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 

I I 

U.S. Air Force U.S. Army U.S. 

Chain 01 Command 
change in budget procedures. Prior to the presentation of the budget, the 

secretary of defense would present a detailed statement of military 

requirements to congressional appropriations committees. Congress, in turn, 

would appropriate money to the Department of Defense rather than to the 

services. Sputnik and the alleged missile gap on which Kennedy had campaigned 

(but which, in fact, did not exist) made the committee very sensitive about 

questions concerning research and development. It recommended that Congress 

place research and development projects requiring a long lead time on a 

multiyear funding cycle.) 

The calls for reform of the Department of Defense produced three Army 

papers on the issue but in the end no agreement on the Army position. Even 

before the Symington Committee completed its work, Lt. Col. John H. 

Cushman, an officer in the Coordination Group in the Office of the Chief of 

StafI, "a little 'ideas' enc lave •.• originally organized in the mid-1 950s by General 

Taylor to help fight the Army's battles in the Congress and the Executive 

Branch with some new ideas ... ," prepared a paper on Department of Defense 

reform. Cushman wrote on his own initiative. The record reveals no single 

event that triggered the pape r, and after the passage of over twenty years the 

author cannot recall his precise motivation. ") think that I must have believed 

the paper might be useful input as the Army reacted to whatever the new 

adm inistration would start doing.,,4 

Efficient use of the armed forces, Cushrnan argued, rested upon 

centralization of authority and decentralization of execution. He favored 

retention of services and service secretaries. (See Chart 14.) Current problems 

between the services stemmed from improper definition of roles and missions, 

which needed to revolve around environment--maritirne, land, and aerospace. 

The practical consequence of Cushman's approach would be to give the Army 

control of close air support and tactical airlift in order to better fight ground 

wars) 

Cushrnan also called for giving combatant commands greater voice in 

decisions affecting their own force structure . In the area of command and 

control, he supported the cu rrent structure of the Joint Chiefs and the policy of 

dual-hatting. He emphasized the need to reform the Joint Staff by making its 

advice more timely and by improving the quality of its work. He advocated 

100 
Chart 14- The Cushman Proposal, 1960 

President 

Armed Forces Secretary of Defense 

Deputy Secretary of The 

Policy Council 

Defense 

I I 

Director Chairman Office of the 

Joint Staff Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary of Defense 

\ II 

Unified & 

Specified Commands fI 

De

Department of the Army Department of the Navy 

Chain of Command 

----.;)~ Channel 01 Command 

- -
three major changes: developing genuine joint doctrine by making the joint 

schools responsible for itj clarifying within the Joint 

Staff by making the staff responsible 

the chain of command 

to one person, the chairman, rather than 

to a corporate body, the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and, finally, having the secretary 

of defense make it very clear that he regarded the membe rs of the Joint Staff 

as "his" staff officers and would protect them from anyone who tried to 

influence the content of their advice. 

Just how the Army Staff reacted to the Cushman paper is unclear. No 

written comments have survived , and the author is not certain that any were 

ever made. The study did impress Cyrus Vance, who the new secretary of 

defense, Robert S. McNamara, named to head the Office of Organization and 

Management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Vance had Cushman 

assigned to his office. The pape r helped justify a directive signed by Secretary 

McNamara in March 1961 that gave the Air Force greater responsibilities in 

space , a consequence that did not please everyone on the Army Staff but did 

not produce a major outcry ei ther.6 

The Chief of StaH, General George H. Decker, was certainly interested in 

the issue of Department of Defense reform, but there is no evidence he ever 

saw Cushman's paper. Shortly after the publication of the Symington 

Committee's report, Decker personally requested comment on it by Maj. Gen. 

William O. Reede r, a retired officer who had served in the early 1950s as 

deputy assistant chief of staff for logistics on the Army Staff when Decker was 

comptroller of the Army. Reeder had enjoyed a reputation in the se rvice as a 

brilliant manage r and was then teaching business administration at Syracuse 

Unive rsi ty.7 

Reeder did not regard the committee's proposals as significant in 

themselves, but he believed that the existence of the committee signaled the 

beginning of a long ove rdue reorganization of the Department of Defense. 

"Many influential persons are aware that the Department of Defense, to include 

the military depa rtments, is so ill-organized as to imperil the actual defense of 

the nation." Reeder was particularl y critica l of the inte rlaye ring of 

administrative staffs in the Department of Defense: 

Three successive staffs, Defense, Department 

Secretarial, and Service Military, lie successively 

between the symbol of ultimate authority. the Secretary 

102 
of Defense and the first operator of any sort. No other 

organization in the world makes use of such a 

cumbersome arrangement. No student of organization 

can so define the interlocking responsibilities and 

authorities as to produce a smoothly working operation. 

Abolishing the service secretariats as the committee proposed was a step in the 

right direction in Reeder's view. <See Chart 15.) He did think, in contrast to 

the committee, that it would be useful to have assistant secretaries of defense 

without portfolios replace the service secretaries. Removed from the chain of 

command, the assistant secretaries could represent the services in the higher 

reaches of the department. Large civilian companies, such as Du Pont, he 

noted, found it prudent "to have the field represented in the group of top 

management."8 

Reeder had little respect for the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an institution. 

His service on the Army Staff made him realize that service interests 

determined pOSitions in the meetings of the Joint Chiefs. "Anyone who has 

followed briefings prior to [a] JCS meeting should easily recognize that these 

were more a preparation for battle than for agreement on the best course for 

Defense as a whole." But this was only to be expected. "The head of any 

organization must always strive to aggrandize the organization in one way or 

another; to do else is to betray the trust placed in him by his personnel." No 

service chief could accept easily a compromise on a question of vital concern to 

his service. The position taken by the chairman on a disputed issue was "as 

close to rnilitary objectivity as the JCS can reach in important matters." 

Reeder was inclined to favor some sort of military council in which the 

members had severed all ties to their services. He could not understand how 

any service could object to a body made up of military men honestly attempting 

to serve their country. He regarded the fear that a strong chairman would 

prove biased toward his own service as a weak objection. "A basic fact of 

management is that responsibility sobers. To impute bias to an officer of thirty 

years' service is to confess that one is not oneself capable of acting 

objectively." He observed that the reorganization of the unified commands 

recommended by the committee would produce more confusion than it solved. 

He did not comment on whether the chairman of the Joint Staff should be in the 

103 
Chart 15 - The Reeder Proposal, 1 961 

President 

Secretary of Defense 

Chairman of the 

Joint Staff Military A

Joint Staff 

Chain of Command 
chain of command. Discussion of the budget process he considered premature 

until the organizational arrangernents were complete. 

Rather than forwarding the study for the Army Staff as Decker planned 

("I doubt that anything very useful can a rise from that comment .•• "), Reeder 

suggested that he send it to the Army Comptroller's Office, a suggestion the 

chief of staff followed within the week. Decker told Mr. Leonard W. Hoelscher, 

the deputy comptroller of the Army, to personally review the report and make 

any recommendation he thought necessary to obtain a more effective defense 

organization. Hoelscher was not to show the paper to anyone. It was to be 

entire ly his own eHort. Decker wanted an "objective and constructive" study. 

Under no c ircumstances was Hoelscher to attempt to develop "an Army 

position.,,9 

Hoelscher completed a very detailed rej>ort on 1 February 1961. <See 

Chart 16.) He was not enthusiastic about abolishing the service secretaries and 

proposed waiting until missions of the unified commands were well defined 

before proceeding with that reform. He did not consider a military advisory 

counci l an acceptable replacement for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, 

Hoelscher wanted to make organizational and procedural changes, with the 

latter in his view more important. He wanted to give the chairman 

responsibility for formulating and presenting all policy recommendations to the 

secretary of defense with the proviso that he had to include all minority views. 

He also recommended modeling the Joint Staff on Gene ral Marshall's World War 

II reorganization of the War Department General Staff with sta rr sections J-I 

through J-4 and a sepa rate operations division to act as a genuine comrnand 

post for the sec retary of defense. IO 

Hoelscher's discussion of procedural changes was much more detailed. He 

thought the Joint Chiefs should participate as a group in solving problems; each 

chief should not be required "to propose and defend an independent solution ." 

Hoelscher wanted to shift responsibility for threat estimate and the 

development of related policies and plans from the se rvice staffs to the Joint 

Staff a nd other e lements of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Joint 

Chiefs, acting as a corporate body , would determine the means to deal most 

effectively with the threat, and recommend courses of action. Hoelscher thus 

sought to achieve genuine joint command and control by creating "purple" 

105 
procedures rather than a "purple" organization. Like his contemporaries in 

uniform, he continued to look to the organization of the War Department in 

World War II as a model of how to direct military operations. 

General Decker never required the Army Staff to develop an Army 

position because shortly after taking office Secretary McNamara indicated to 

President Kennedy that he preferred to develop to the fullest extent the powers 

conferred on his office by existing legislation before seeking a further 

amendment to the National Security Act. Decker had a full agenda of reforms 

he wished to implement within the Army , including abolishing the technical 

bureaus, replacing the pentomic division with what became the ROAD division, 

and increasing the number of helicopters in the Army; he did not immediately 

pursue Department of Defense reform on his own. He served only two years as 

chief of staff. What he might have attempted or accomplished had he served 

the four years usually accorded Army chiefs of staff must remain a matter of 

speculation)l 

The one substantial organizational change of the Kennedy years--the 

creation of the post of military representative of the president-was unrelated 

to the Symington Committee Report and proved ephemeral. The Bay of Pigs 

left Kennedy dissatisfied with the advice he had received. He had read and 

liked General Taylor's book on the defense polices followed by the Eisenhower 

administration, The Uncertain Trumpet, which included a critique of the 

failings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy asked Taylor, then living in 

retirement in New York City, to head a study group to determine the causes of 

the Cuban disaster. After some discussion on whether or not to revive Admiral 

Leahy's old post of chief of staff to the president (the decision was negative 

because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff now presided over the 

meetings of the Joint Chiefs), Kennedy created the post of military 

representative of the president and asked Taylor to accept the appointment 

shortly after the completion of the report on the Bay of Pigs operation.l 2 

There is no indication that the Army was given an opportunity to 

comment on the proposed post. General Taylor's account of the reform 

suggests that the discussion did not go beyond the confines of the White House 

Staff. The president originally wanted Taylor to succeed Allen Dulles as 

director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Only after Taylor declined did 

106 
Chart 16 . The Hoelscher Proposal, 1961 

President 

Armed Forces Secretary of Defense 

Policy Council Deputy Secretary of The 

Defense 

I I 

Director Chairman Office of the 

Joint Staff 

Plans I Operations 

Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary of Defense 

\ 

Unified & Specified 

Commands fI 

D

Department of the Army Department of the Navy 

Chain of Command 

-----:)~ Channel of Command 
Kennedy create the position of military representative. Kennedy, as Taylor had 

remarked, did not think in terms of organizationj he thought in terms of people. 

The evidence suggests that Kennedy wanted Taylor as an adviser and invented 

the position to make a place for the general rather than establishing it as the 

result of a systematic critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization. 

Taylor reported for duty at the Executive Office Building as military 

representative on I July 1961. His staff consisted of seven members drawn 

from the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency. He realized that 

the possibility for friction between his office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

organization was quite high. Fortunately the chairman, General Lyman L. 

Lemnitzer, had been a West Point classmate and a friend in the years since, and 

he and Taylor agreed very early to a number of procedures to minimize conflict 

between the two organizations. 

Taylor was generally impressed by the quality of the staff work produced 

by the Joint Staff during this period. His only complaint, but it was crucial, 

was that the Joint Staff was too slow--its papers invariably arrived after the 

president had made his decision. Despite the advantage of timeliness enjoyed 

by the Office of the Military Representative of the President--an advantage 

conferred by proximity to the White House, small size, and greater control over 

its own agenda--Taylor did not seek to perpetuate the office when he succeeded 

Lemnitzer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on I October 1962. Taylor 

had been "convinced from the start that it was an unsound position." The 

chairrnan of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "should be the No.1 military office of the 

Armed Forces in the eyes of the President, the Sec. DeC., and most, if not all, 

of Congress." In Taylor's view, if the president was unhappy with his chairman 

he needed a new officer, not a new position. Thus, when President Kennedy 

informed Taylor of the decision to make him chairman, Kennedy asked who 

should succeed as military representative. Taylor "promptly replied 'nobody' ••. " 

and the president agreed at once. At the same time, General Earle G. Wheeler 

succeeded General Decker as chief of staff. General Decker retired, yet 

another casualty of the Bay of Pigs. 13 

The demise of the military representative revealed that General Taylor 

did not want another military officer at the White House in a position to 

second-guess his a c tions as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The same 

108 
implicit institutional conflict had existed between the secretary of defense and 

the military representative, although relations between Taylor and McNamara 

had remained cordial. While McNamara's role in the appointment of Taylor as 

chairman remains obscure, the results must have pleased the secretary of 

defense. General Lemnitzer, who had never received the entire confidence of 

the administration but who enjoyed a high reputation with the countries of the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, became Supreme Allied Commander, 

Europe. Taylor, who the administration trusted, became the chairman and 

successfully opposed continuation of the military representative of the 

president, an officer who could second-guess the secretary as easily as he could 

second guess the chairman.14 

The "active-management" philosophy of Secretary McNamara had a 

greater impact on the Joint Chiefs of Staff than did the creation of the post of 

the military representative of the president. McNamara defined his role as 

"questioning, suggesting alternatives, proposing objectives, and stimulating 

progress." He averred that decisions should be made on "the lowest level in the 

organization that has the ability and information available to apply approved 

policy." The management tools that McNamara put in place--the Planning 

Programming Budgeting System and Systems Analysis--ensured that the 

necessary information was available only at the level of secretary and deputy 

secretary. (He used the deputy secretary as his alter ego.) The consequence 

was a centralization of decision making in the department.l 5 

In eHect, McNamara created the armed forces general staff advocated by 

Collins in 1945 and manned it with civilians. The secretary of defense in the 

McNamara system functioned as a deputy commander-in-chief, and as his own 

chief of staff of the armed forces. McNamara not only set policy as envisioned 

by Lovett but he also made operational decisions, at times overruling his 

prOfessional military advisers. McNamara demonstrated the utility of what 

Hoelscher proposed in February 1961, leaving structure alone and concentrating 

on procedure, but the results were not what Hoelscher anticipated. McNamara 

created a functional budget such as the one that General Taylor advocated in 

1957, but civilians largely determined the alternatives proposed and used cost 

benefits analysis, substituting efficiency for effectiveness, to select among 

those alternatives. Judgment played a large role in the assumptions upon which 

109 
the analysis was based, but these assumptions were rarely, if ever, made 

explicit. McNamara's commitment to rational and scientific decision making 

did not ease the tension within the Pentagon between the military and civilians. 

He asserted that these ideals guided his stewardship of defense, which led him 

to downplay the role of assumptions in the process.16 

Two practical consequences flowed from the McNamara procedural 

revolution. The emphasis on civilians and civilian skills by implication, if not 

always in fact, rendered military officers and military judgment superfluous. 

The effect was to question the utility of military professionalism itself and to 

produce a sense of disquiet among serving officers. Secondly, it concomitantly 

eroded the sense of trust between the secretary and the chiefs that was needed 

for the most effective functioning of the department. 

General Taylor was probably the most favorably disposed of all the 

members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1961 and 1968 toward Secretary 

McNamara. Taylor regarded him quite simply as "one of the ablest and most 

energetic administrators ever to come to Washington." Before accepting the 

appointment as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, Taylor called 

upon the secretary to discover his attitude toward Taylor's selection. As 

McNamara llseemed genuinely pleased," Taylor raised some specific problems 

about the relations between the secretary and the Joint Chiefs that troubled 

him. He believed that the Joint Chiefs had been swamped with requests for 

information from the bright, young civilians in the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense, the "whiz kids" as they were irreverently known. The Joint Staff was 

overloaded to the point that its eUectiveness was impaired. McNamara agreed 

that the chairman would have the final decision over demands placed on the 

Joint Staff except when the request carne from the secretary or the deputy 

secretary)7 

Taylor--with his own frustrations while Army chief of staff firmly in 

mind--addressed the issue of dissent in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told 

McNamara "that I respected the individual views of the Chiefs and felt that any 

dissent should be reported to the Secretary or even to the President without 

trying to circumvent the issue by noncommittal or ambiguous statements." The 

secretary said he agreed and indicated that split papers that outlined the 

strengths and weaknesses of the contending positions were much more valuable 

110 
-

in aiding him to reach a decision than papers that obscured the issues. 

Taylor then discussed the rumors current in Washington that the "whiz. 

kidsll had taken over the advisory role given by statute to the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff and that the Joint Chiefs were regularly ignored in developing 

Department of Defense policy. He recognized that the secretary could ask 

advice of anyone he chose--from "his barber or his chauffeur" if he 

desired--but asked McNamara's help to ensure that the Joint Chiefs were given 

full opportunity to discharge their legal obligation: "They CQuid not and did not 

expect that their advice would always be accepted but it should always be 

heard. 1I To this also McNamara assented . Taylor recollected in his memoirs 

that these agreements governed his relations with the secretary throughout his 

tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Taylor usually represented the Joint Chiefs in meetings with the 

president. His successor as chairman, General Earle G. Wheeler, continued this 

tradition. During a meeting of all the Joint Chiefs with President Lyndon B. 

Johnson and McNamara in 1965, the Army Chief of Staff, General Harold K. 

Johnson, and the Commandan t of the Marine Corps, General Wallace M. Green, 

Jr., disagreed about strategy. McNamara told Wheeler that he never wanted to 

have a meeting like that again. Thereafter Wheeler represented the Joint 

Chiefs. 18 

On the surface McNamara's instructions to General Wheeler appeared to 

reverse what McNamara had told General Taylor three years earlier about 

airing differences. Perhaps the key factor distinguishing the two incidents is 

that in the first case the disagreements went to the secre tary of defense while 

in the second the president was an observer. The first situation allowed the 

secretary to weigh all the factors and render a verdict--sometimes in the form 

of a decision and other times in the form of a carefully worded recommendation 

to the president. In the second the president made the decision. The most that 

the sec retary could do was advise him. 

If Secretary McNamara no longer wanted the Joint Ch iefs to air their 

differences, at least in front of the president, the latter felt the same way. 

The Joint Chiefs believed that the secretary had exploited their splits to their 

disadvantage while Taylor was chairman. Under Wheeler they made a 

concerted effort not to send papers containing minority views to the secretary . 

III 
Perhaps as a consequence, Wheeler enjoyed the confidence of the service chiefs 

who had regarded Taylor as almost a member of the adm inistration. The Joint 

Chiefs began keeping their disagreements to themselves just as the United 

States escalated its involvement in Southeast Asia. The war in Vietnam 

consumed high level attention for the next five years. Only a change in 

administrations produced the resolve to reexamine the Department of Defense 

and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The McNamara years were not, however, entirely devoid of organizational 

innovations. McNamara created the Defense Intelligence Agency that reported 

to the sec retar y through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also set up the Defense 

Supply Agency and the Defense Contract Audit Agency that reported directly 

to the secre tary of defense. The last two represented efforts to consolidate 

technical functions previously distributed throughout the services under a single 

manager and, as such, put into practice the philosophy of the "common 

services" approach enunciated by the Col lins Plan in 1945. The Defense 

Intelligence Agency did not, however, replace the intelligence directorates to 

the serv ice staffs, and thus represented someth ing less than what the War 

Department had sought. These reforms owed no intellectual debt to the 

Symington Committee Report. In the 1960s, attempts at Joint Chiefs of Staff 

reform often produced little result. They proved to be harbingers of the 

future. 

112 
-

ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER VU 

1. The New York Times, 13 Jui 60, p. 13, gives the complete text of the 

"Basic Platform" of the Democratic Party, a series of highlights a nd the 

major issues. Flora Lewis, "The Education of a Senator'" Atlantic, 228 

(Dec 1970: 55-64; Paul I. Wellman, Stuart Symington: Portrait of a Man 

with a Mission (Garden City, N.Y .: Doubleday, 1960), pp. 236-244; 

Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York: 

Atheneum, 1961), pp. 36-42; Press Release, Committee on Defense 

Reorgani zation, 14 Sep 60, Congressional Record, 87th Cong., Ist sess., 

1961 , p. 107, pt. 2, pp. 1930-1931. 

2. Rpt, Symington et al. to Kennedy, Dec. 60, Congressiona l Record, 87th 

Cong., 1st sess., 1961, p. 107, pt. 2, pp. 1928-1 930. 

3. For an excellent recent discussion of the space race and its political 

implications, see Walter A. McDuga ll, .•. The Heave ns and the Earth: A 

Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 

4. Ltr, Cushman to Raines, 18 Aug 85, JCS Reform project file, CMH. 

Cushman rose to lieutenant general before he retired. 

5. Rpt, Cushman , I Nov 60, sub: The Question of Defense Organiza tion, 

DAMO-SSP, action office r file, 1984, J CS Reform project file, CM H. 

6. Ltr, Cushman to Raines, 18 Aug 85, JCS Reform project file, CM Hj DOD 

Directive 5160.32, 6 Ma r 61, sub: Development of Space Systems; Cole et 

al. eds., Depa rtment of Defense, p. 325. 

7. l tr, Reeder to Decker, CS 320 (1 Feb 61), Chief of Staff Army, General 

Correspondence, Security Classified, 1955-1962, RG 319, NA. For a 

discussion of Reeder's career, see George W. Cullum , et a l., Biographical 

Register of the Officers & Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy ... , 9 

vols. (West Point: Association of Graduates of the U.S. Military 

113 
Academy, 1868-1950), 9: 240; Michael J. Krisman, ed ., Register of 

Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy 

(West Point: Association of Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, 

1984), p. 319; George R. Thompson et a l., The Signal Corps: The Test 

(Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), pp. 44, 

51; and George R. Thompson and Dixie R. Harris, The Signal Corps: The 

Outcome (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 

1966), pp. 181-203. 

8. Rpt, Reeder, "The Symington Report," (Jan 61), CS 320 (l Feb 61), Chief 

of Staff Army , Gene ra l Correspondence, Security Classified, 1955-1962, 

RG 319, NA. 

9. Ltr, Reeder to Decker, 10 Jan 61; Memo, Hoelscher for Decker, 1 Feb 61, 

sub: Report to Senator Kennedy from the Committee on the Defense 

Establishment (Symington Committee), both in CS 320 (l Feb 61), Chie f of 

Staff, Army, General Correspondence , Secu rity Classified , 1955-1962, RG 

319, NA . 

10. Rpt, Hoelscher to Decker, 1 Feb 61, "Comments on Report of Committee 

on Defense (l Feb 61)," Chief of Staff, Arm y, General Correspondence , 

Security Classified, 1955-1962, RG 319, NA . 

11. Ints, Decke r by Lt. Col. Da n H. Ra lls, 3 Nov 72,9 Nov 72,8 Dec 72, 18 

Dec 72; Int, Gen. Clyde D. Eddleman by Lt. Col. L. G. Smith and Lt. Col. 

M. G. Swindle r, 10 Jan 75, 11 Feb 75; Int, Gene ral Barksdale Hamlett by 

Lt. Col. Paul Walker and Col. Jack Ridgeway, 3 Nov 72,9 Nov 72,8 Dec 

72, 18 Dec 72, Senior Officers Debriefing Program, U.S. Army Military 

History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa . (hereafter cited as MHI). See 

also Edgar F. Raines, Jr., tlGeneral George H. Decker," in Billy C. 

Mossman, ed., The Chiefs of Staff: Transition into Office, Mss., 1983, 

CMH filesj Henry L. Trewhitt. McNama ra : His Ordeal in the Pen tagon 

(New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 8-9; James M. Roherty, 

Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Role of the Secretary 

114 
of Defense (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1970), pp. 65-

67. 

12. The best introduction to the Kennedy administration is Herbert S. Parmet, 

JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (New York: Doubleday 1983). 

Two older histories cum memoirs a re also useful: Theodore Sorensen, 

Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965) and Arthur M. Schlesinger, 

Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1965). These should be supplemented by Douglas 

Kinnard's discussion of Robert S. McNamara in Kinnard, The Secretary of 

Defense, pp. 72-11 2, a synthesis of the recent literature. Trewhitt, 

McNamara and Roherty, Decisions of Robert S. McNamara are also 

valuable. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? 

Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper and Row, 

1971) provides a strong defense of the McNamara tenure. Gregory 

Palmer, The McNamara Strategy and the Vietnam War: Program 

Budgeting in the Pentagon, 1960-1968 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood 

Press, 1978) is a biting critique. The military perspective on events 

during the Kennedy administration has not received as much attention. 

Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge 

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977) is useful, as is Jeffrey G. Barlow, 

"President John F. Kennedy and His Joint Chiefs of Staff" (Ph.D. diss., 

University of South Carolina , 19&1). Of the military pa rticipants only 

Maxwell O. Taylor has written extensive ly of his experiences. See 

Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, pp. 1&4-303j and Maxwell D. Taylor, 

"Reflections on the American Military Establishment," Evolution of the 

American Military Establishment: 7-22. 

13. Taylor, "Reflections on the American Military Establishment," pp. 178-

203j Ltr, Taylor to Raines, 10 Jul 85, JCS Reform project file , CM H. 

14. Kinnard, Secretary of Defense, p. 79. 

15. Trewhitt, McNamara, pp. &3-&5; Roherty, Decisions of Robert S. 

115 
McNamara, pp. 67-71; Enthoven and Smith, How Much Is Enough?, pp. 31-

32; Kinnard, Secretary of Defense, p. 79. 

16. Kinnard, Secretary of Defense, pp. 85-90. 

17. Taylor, "Reflections on the American Military Establishment," pp. 20-21; 

Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, pp. 252-256. 

18. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen and Cold War Crises, pp. 8-9; Kinnard, 

Secretary of Defense, pp. 81-82. Former Sec retary of Defense McNamara 

had no recollec tion of this meeting (Int, McNamara by Raines, 5 Dec 85, 

JCS Reform project file, CMH). 

116 
CHAPTER VIII 

The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, 1969-1970 

On 11 December 1968 President-elec t Richard M. Nixon announced his 

selection for secretary of defense--Representative Melvin R. Laird. A 10rtysix-year-old, eight-term congressman from Wisconsin, Laird was the thirdranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee and the secondranking minority member on its Defense Appropriations Subcommittee . Laird 

had made a special study of defense organization while a member of the House-

-an interest that he thought helped make him qualified to take up his new post. 

The press focused more on his reputation as being the most knowledgeable 

member of his party in the House on defense spending. Secretary McNamara 

was reputed to regard him as "his most formidable Congressional adversary and 

his toughest interrogator in hearings." Many of the policies that Laird 

inaugurated as secretary of defense contained an implicit criticism of the 

McNama ra regime.! 

The theme of change permeated Laird's first press conference in 

December 1968 when he was still a secretary of defense designate. He 

announced that he intended to reappraise the "defense establishment and 

defense policy, and the organization of the Department of Defense." In making 

this statement Laird was but redeeming a pledge made by the president-elect 

during the campaign, one urged on him by Laird and Robert F. Froehlke, who 

became the assistant secretary of defense for administration unde r Laird. In 

July, with President Nixon's approva l, La ird established the Blue Ribbon 

Defense Panel, also known as the Fitzhugh Panel. The composition of the panel 

was unlike that of any of the comm issions which preceded it. Only Wilfred J. 

McNeil, a retired rear admiral who served as assistant sec retary of defense 

(comptroller) from 1949 until 1959, had any firsthand experience with defense 

organization. The chairman, Gilbert Fitzhugh, was the chairman of the board 

of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He had never served in the a rmed 

forces. He, rather than McNeil, served as the model fo r the remaining 

members. "The members were chosen," Laird noted, "because we did not want 

people with a narrow Defense Department viewpoint...... The administration 

wanted "people who had broad expe rience in business, Jabor, and civic aifairs.,,2 

The membership testified to the secretary of defense's well-developed 
political skills. By 1969 the war in Vietnam was highly unpopular with the 

American public. The conflict in turn brought the institutions charged with its 

conduct into disrepute. The prestige and trust the public previously gave to the 

men connected with founding the Department of Defense, men such as Senator 

Symington, largely vanished. The failure of the assumptions behind 

containment to adequately explain conditions in Vietnam suggested to some 

critics of the policy that there was a need to address the broader issue of 

containment as a way of conducting foreign relations with the Soviet Union. 

Academic revisionists on the origins of the Cold War suggested that the United 

States was at least equally to blame with the Soviet Union for starting the Cold 

War. The policymakers who enjoyed expert status on questions of defense 

organization were also members, in the view of their critics, of the somewhat 

sinister "elite" that had given America the Cold War and Vietnam. 3 

In these circumstances, Secretary Laird's appointment of a committee 

expert in almost every area but defense constituted, perhaps, the only method 

of ensuring that the public perceived the effort as genuine and not self-serving. 

Because Laird achieved his own well-deserved status as a defense expert only 

after years of hard work, his selections for the panel raised the issue of what he 

expected to come out of its deliberations. Did he expect to obtain a series of 

recommendations that he could implement, or did he perhaps simply hope to 

reassure the public that he would identify and correct problems in his 

department? What little evidence that exists suggests that he hoped for both. 

That Laird saw a panel composed largely of businessmen as competent to 

address the issue of defense organization also suggests that he, like McNamara 

and Wilson, saw the problem as one of management rather than command. In 

this, at least, the new secretary was much closer to his predecessor than his 

much publicized criticisms of McNamara suggested. 

While the Fitzhugh Panel deliberated, Secretary Laird introduced what he 

called "participatory management." He relied on the Joint Chiefs to design the 

force structure. Laird, unlike McNamara, provided the Joint Chiefs with 

detailed budgetary guidance so that its proposals were realistic. Civilian 

systems analysts evaluated military requests, but they no longer developed 

independent proposals as they had done under McNamara. Laird's successor, 

Elliott L. Richardson, eventually downgraded the rank of the head of the 

118 
systems analysis office from assistant secretary to director. Then in 1974 

Richardson's successor, James R. Schlesinger, restored the rank of assistant 

secretary to the post. It has been up and down in status ever since. At no time, 

however, has the office wielded the power that it did in the McNamara 

Pentagon.4 

The result of Laird's budgetary innovations was that, on the average, 

Laird only reduced military requests by 4 percent before he submitted the 

department's budget request to Congress; the comparable figure for McNamara 

was almost 22 percent. When Laird did overrule a request by the military, he 

did it on the basis of what he called a "net assessment"--a combination of 

political, fiscal, and military rationales. In contrast, McNamara had never 

hesitated to overrule the Joint Chiefs on strictly military grounds--setting his 

military judgment against their judgment. Laird also encouraged the services 

to appeal his decisions so long as they argued cases on their merits and did not 

do so at the expense of another service. McNamara had discouraged such 

efforts.5 

"Participatory management" significan tl y decreased the level of tension 

that existed between the civ ilians in the Pentagon and the military; but other 

events related to Vietnam created other kinds of strains in the department. 

Secretary Laird was much more aware of the lack of popular support for the 

war than either President Nixon or his National Security Adviser, Dr. Henry 

Kissinger. On this basis, Laird opposed the operations into Cambodia and Laos 

and supported rapid "Vietnamization." On at least two occasions the chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Wheeler, and his successor, Admiral 

Thomas H. Moorer, received instructions from the White House with the 

admonition not to inform the secretary of defense. Whether because the 

secretary of defense did not know of the president's decisions or because he did 

not agree with them, Laird often issued orders to the commander of the 

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams, that 

contradicted orders coming directly from the White House (often from Dr. 

Kissinger speaking in the president's name). Kissinger, by dint of his skill at 

bureaucratic in-fighting, became, in the view of the Army vice chief of staff, 

the de facto chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Laird failed to appreciate 

this poaching in his domain; the two men remained rivals until Laird 

119 
retired by prearrangement after President Nixon's reelection in 1972. The 

upshot was that Abrams had to cope with three sources of direction: the White 

House, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the normal Joint Chiefs of 

Staff chain of command. The possibilities in such a situation for confusion and 

working at cross purposes is so evident as to require no further comment.6 

This was the organizational context in which the Fitzhugh Panel 

submitted its report to President Nixon on I July 1970. The panel received a 

broad charter to study the organization and management of the Department of 

Defense and to prepare a report enumerating recommended changes. It made 

113 recommendations on a wide ra nge of subjects. Onl y four dealt specifically 

with the reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while a few others 

decisively influenced the institutional environment in which the Joint Chiefs 

ope rated. The most important of the recommendations dealing with 

institutional environment proposed to divide the functions of the Department of 

Defense into three major groupings: management of personnel and material 

resources; evaluation, including financial controls, weapons testing, and cost 

effectiveness analysisi and military ope rations, including operational command, 

intelligence, and communications. (See Chart 17.) Each grouping, said the 

panel, should report to the secretary of defense through its own deputy 

secretary, one of whom should act as the principal assistant to the secre ta ry , 

outranking all other members of the department except the secretary himself'? 

In the first grouping, resources management, the deputy secretary of 

defense for management of resources would oversee the military departments, 

which would "continue under the immediate supervision of their Secretaries"i 

the Defense Supply Agency; the Advanced Research Projects AgencYi and three 

functional areas. The panel grouped research and advanced technology, 

engineering deve lopment, installations, and procurement in one functiona l a rea. 

Manpower and reserve affairs constituted the second, while health and 

environmental affairs made up the third. The panel recommended that an 

assistant secretary of defense head each functional area. 

In the second grouping, evaluation, the deputy secretary of defense for 

evaluation received responsibility for the comptroller function, including 

internal audit and inspection services, program and force analysis (a 

modification of the existing systems ana lysis unit under the assistant secretary 

120 
Chart 17 - The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel Proposal, 1

President 

Secretary of Defense 

Deputy Secretary of JOint C

Defense for Operations 

Operations Staff Chief Military Operations 

, 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 

Chain of Command 

----:>~ Channel of Command 

Jo
of defense for systems analysis), test evaluation, and two agencies--the Defense 

Contract Audit Agency and the Defense Test Agency. 

The third grouping, operations, was the most important in terms of the 

future role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the panel's opinion, the secretary of 

defense should delegate to the deputy secretary of defense for military 

operations the responsibility for unified commands, operational requirements, 

intelligence, telecommunications (to include computers), international security 

affairs, and two agencies--the Defense Communications Agency and the Civil 

Defense Agency. The panel wanted to remove the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 

the operational channel of command and replace it with a chief of military 

operations assisted by a staff. 

In another Joint Chiefs of Staff-related recommendation, the panel 

proposed to establish three new unified commands--Strategic Command, 

Tactical Command, and Logistics Command. The Strategic Command would 

consist of the Strategic Air Command , the Joint Strategic Target Planning 

StaU, the Continenta l Air Defense Command (enlarged by abolishing the 

Alaskan Command and receiving its strategiC defense forces and missions), and 

Fleet Ballistic Missile Ope rations. The Tactical Command would consist of all 

general purpose forces assigned to combatant commands. It would have three 

subcommands--European Command, Pacific Command (enlarged by receiving 

general purpose forces and missions from Alaskan Command), and an unnamed 

command formed by merging Atlantic Command, Strike Command, and 

Southern Command. The Logistics Command would be a unified services of 

supply for the military. Although much more detailed, the panel's proposal to 

reorganize unified commands along functional as opposed to the existing 

geographic lines was very similar to a recommendation by the Symington 

Committee in 1960. The major divergence lay in the panel's proposal for a 

logistics command in place of the committee's Reserve Command. 

In still another Joint Chiefs of Staff-related recommendation, the panel 

proposed to increase the influence and responsibility of unified commanders 

concerning resource allocations by giving them "express responsibility and 

capability for making recommendations to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for 

Operations ...• " Finally, the panel urged the reduction of the Joint Staff from 

400 to 250 officers and the transfer of the 150 staU officers previously with the 

122 
Joint Staff to the office of the deputy for military operations. 

The panel's most significant recommendation was to formally remove the 

Joint Chiefs {rom the operational channel of command and replace it with a 

chief of military operations. The chief of military operations, supported by an 

operations staff drawn from the joint and service staffs, would report directly 

to a proposed deputy secretary of defense for operations. The operational 

channel of command would then run from the president to the secretary of 

defense, to the deputy secretary of defense for operations, to the chief of 

military operations, to the unified and specified commands. The panel argued 

that the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Itcommittee" system of decision making would 

never be responsive enough during an international crisis. This suggestion was 

similar to the Army position in November 1957 that proposed a director of joint 

military operations but left the Joint Chiefs in the channel of command and 

responsibility. Fitzhugh was not certain who should fill the chief of military 

operations position. He mentioned that it could be the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff or another officer selected by the president and the secretary of 

defense. 

No detailed statement of the Army pOSition on the recommendations of 

the Blue Ribbon Panel survives, although General Bruce Palmer, Jr., the Army 

vice chief of staff from 1968 until 1973, remembers that the Army Staff 

prepared a detailed response to the Fitzhugh report. The Army Staff rejected 

the suggestion for the establishment of three new unified commands as 

unnecessary. It simply represented an additional headquarters layer between 

Washington and the field. The staff also opposed creation of a chief of military 

operations. Instead it favored strengthening the pOSition of the chairman, as 

did Palmer. The only major internal difference in the Army arose over the 

question of establishing the post of deputy secretary of defense for operations. 

Palmer and Secretary of the Army Stanley R. Resor disagreed. Resor rather 

liked the idea of a civilian deputy secretary of defense for operations. Palmer 

objected that there were already too many civilians in the chain of command. 

He would have preferred to have the chairman deal directly with the president 

--a reversion to the World War II command structure.8 

The war in Vietnam also placed a check on reform impulses in the Army 

Staff. General Palmer described the situation succinctly in a memorandum for 

123 
\ 

the Chief of Staff, General William C. Westmoreland, in early September 1970: 

"Certainly much can be said for the argument that the changing threat, 

unsettled conditions in many areas of the world such as SE Asia, ME and Latin 

America, reductions in our own forces wo rld-wide, and the evolving 

implications of the Nixon doctrine all combine to make this an inopportune time 

to be changing our command structure.,,9 

On 1 September 1970 Acting Secretary of the Army Thaddeus R. Beal 

made the Army's official response to the secretary of defense on the report of 

the Blue Ribbon Panel. Beal informed Laird that the report did not provide "a 

persuasive ra tionale" for the extensive reform of the command structure that it 

proposed. The Army, therefore, opposed the recommendation. Beal also told 

the secretary of defense that he did not believe that the unified commands 

could adequately influe nce force structure and force modernization as proposed 

by the Fitzhugh Panel. "The operational planning horizon for a unified 

command is about eighteen months away. The unified command can look that 

far ahead, but they cannot look seven to ten years ahead as required for 

defining requirements for new weapons systems," he warned. In Beal's view, to 

do so would require extensive and costly increases in the staffs of the unified 

commands and would not be cost effective.l 0 

Even though all the services opposed the organizational reforms 

advocated by the Fitzhugh Panel, Secretary Laird established a Blue Ribbon 

Action Committee to implement decisions by the secretary of defense on the 

recommendations of the Fitzhugh report. Lt. Gen. William E. Depuy, the 

assistant vice chief of staff, represented the Army on the committee until midSeptember when Maj. Gen. David S. Parker, the chairman of the Special 

Review Panel in the Office of the Chief of Staff looking into the organization 

of the Department of the Army, succeeded him. Froehlke, the assistant 

secretary of defense for administration and later secretary of the Army, 

chaired the action committee)! 

Very early the commHtee's function changed from that of oversight of 

implementation to serving as "a sounding board on which to bounce off 

recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel." Froehlke, speaking for 

the secretary, asked the committee members to give their personal opinions as 

distinguished from the positions of their se rvices. The committee members 

124 
"made it perfectly clear that in most cases their opinion would be that of their 

parent Service." In the committee meeting of 24 September, General Parker 

vigorously opposed the establishment of a chief of military operations as a 

separate entity from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as did the other 

three service representatives. Froehlke noted that Secretary Laird intended to 

"dual hat" Admiral Moorer into the position of chief of military operations, but 

the secretary of defense did not want to bind future secretaries of defense to a 

dual-hat solution. All the service representatives thought that a separate chief 

of military operations would cause "considerably more staffing and a far less 

efficient operation.,,12 

Secretary of Defense Laird announced at a press conference in the fall of 

1970 that he would remove the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the operational 

channel of command and designate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as 

the "sale link" between himself and the unified combat commanders. (See 

Chart 18.) Laird did not think that legislation was necessary on this issue: "We 

feel if we move forward that we can effectively administer the department 

within the present provisions of the law, and we are not going to Congress at 

this time for a change in the law.'d 3 

When the Department of Defense finally issued the promised directive in 

December 1971, the Changes proved much more modest than those so 

confidently announced by Secretary Laird over a year earlier. The directive 

defined the chain of command as running "from the President to the Secretary 

of Defense and through the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the commanders of the 

Unified and Specified Commands." In executing nuclear war plans and other 

operations requiring a quick reaction time, the channel of communication would 

run from the National Command Authority, that is, from those individuals 

authorized to initiate nuclear operations (the president and the secretary of 

defense "or their duly deputized alternates or successors"), through the 

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, representing the Joint Chiefs, to the 

commanders of the unified and specified commands.l 4 

The recommendation to reduce the Joint Staff from 400 to 250 officers 

died when Secretary Laird decided not to implement the recommendation for a 

chief of military operations with an operations staff. He also took no action on 

the establishment of the three new unified commands recommended by 

125 
Fitzhugh or in augmenting the staffs in those commands. The proposal to 

create three deputy secretaries of defense also never went beyond the proposal 

stage although Laird obtained a second deputy secretary, duties unspecified, in 

1972. 15 

The changes in the channel of command announced by Laird in the fall of 

1970 promised to give the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsibilities 

independent of his position on the Joint Chiefs. However, the directive issued 

in 1971 did no such thing. It further defined the role of the chairman in a crisis, 

but his prerogatives remained dependent upon his membership in the Joint 

Chiefs. The result was an incremental increase in the formal power of the 

chairman, but the fact that the Department of Defense directive simply 

authorized a procedure that the chiefs had followed since 1961 made the change 

more cosmetic than substantive. The reform that Laird proposed in 1970 

probably merited the comment that it was a major step toward creating a single 

chief of staff of the armed forces. Laird's proposal would have made the 

chairman the de facto chief of staff to the secretary of defense for the unified 

and specified commands, the role played since 1958 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

as a collective entity. The 1971 directive, in contrast, was decidedly not 

revolutionary. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Blue Ribbon 

Panel's report had absolutely no impact on the channel of command.l 6 

The paucity of evidence surrounding the Army's response to the Blue 

Ribbon Panel's proposal makes most speculation about motives profitless. The 

Army's position on the unified commands proposed by the group is entirely 

consistent with the skeptiCism and sometimes outright opposition by the authors 

of the studies that critiqued the similar proposal by the Symington Committee 

in 1960. Concerning the issue of unified command and control, however, there 

is a break in continuity between the Army's 1970 posi tion and earlier Army 

positions. In 1957 the Army proposed a director of joint military operations, 

but in 1970, when the Fitzhugh Panel proposed much the same position under a 

different name, the Army opposed it. The context in which the two proposals 

were made, however, differed significantly. The late 1950s was a time of 

intense interservice rivalry. In 1970 the principal cleavage was not between the 

services as in the Eisenhower administration or between the civilians and the 

military as under Secretary McNamara but between civilians--Secretary laird 

126 
Chart 18 - Laird's Proposed Directive, 1970 

President 

Secretary of Defense 

~" , 

Chairman 

Joint Staff Joint 

'r/ ' Joint Chiefs of Staff , " 

.,L, 

'IV 'IV 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 

Chain of Command 

---,;)~ Channel 01 Command 

( ) Communication 
and Dr. Kissinger and their staffs--over the control of U.S. policy toward 

Vietnam. In this bureaucratic battle the Joint Chiefs and General Abrams often 

found themselves in the middle. From this politically explosive reality the 

Fitzhugh Panel was shielded--either by design or by its members' own general 

lack of experience in government. The panel's conclusions, consequently, 

simply ignored the most pressing organizational issues that the Joint Chiefs 

faced--the need for consistent, unambiguous political guidance from the 

secretary of defense and the president, and a certain modicum of respect by 

those officials for the chain of command. The panel's report was simply 

superfluous and Generals Westmoreland and Palmer treated it that way . There 

was, after all, a war in progress. 

While on the surface there was a certain inconsistency between the 

Army's position in 1957 and its position in 1970, there was a deeper consistency 

between 1945 and 1970. In 1957 the Army opted for a director of joint military 

operations at the same time that it sought to emasculate the chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1970 the Army Staff opposed a chief of military 

operations but advocated a stronger chairman. Even the channel of command 

suggested by Secretary Laird in 1970 would have been much closer to the one 

proposed by General Collins in 1945 than the one envisioned in the Army's 1957 

position. In the end, of course, the report of the Blue Ribbon Panel produced 

few Changes. 

The next major reform proposal surfaced eight years later. The long 

hiatus can be explained by the importance that the civilian and military leaders 

accorded to other issues, the transient nature of their tenures, and the personal 

interests of the men involved. The Army spent the next few years concerned 

with disengaging from Vietnam, making the transition from a largely conscript 

to an all volunteer force, and adjusting its doctrine to focus once more on a 

major war in Europe. Once General Westmoreland retired, none of the Joint 

Chiefs served a full four years until the very end of the decade. General 

Palmer served briefly as acting chief of staff while General Abrams' 

confirmation was pending in the Senate. Abrams died after only two years in 

office. His successor, General Frederick C. Weyand, retired from the service 

after two years. General Bernard W. Rogers, who followed Weyand, became 

Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1979 after 

128 
three years as chief o( staff. All these men, but particularly General Abrarns 

who tended to ignore the "joint arena,'! concentrated on internal Army issues. 

Winding down the war, the vocal public opposition to the strategy of 

disengagement pursued by the Nixon administration, detente, and Watergate 

consumed the attention of President Nixon. Dr. Kissinger became secretary of 

state in the second Nixon administration and the true vicar of American foreign 

policy as Watergate took up more of the president's attention and eventually led 

to his resignation and replacement by Gerald R. Ford, a vice president who had 

not even been on the Republican ticket in 1972. Ford's own strengths lay in 

domestic politics and he depended heavily upon the secretary of state for 

advice. Even if Kissinger had desired to advocate reform of the Joint Chiefs, 

his attempt to hold all the policy threads in his own hands kept him shuttling 

from crisis to crisis. There was likewise little job securit y for secretaries of 

defense once Laird departed: Richardson held the post for only six months 

before becoming attorney general; Sch lesinger served less than two and a half 

yearsj and Donald H. Rumsfeld, who succeeded him, remained in office 

approximately only fourteen months. Schlesinger, who served the longest, was 

primarily a strategist and had little interest in reorganization. The advent of a 

new administration changed these conditions and reopened the debate on 

reform)7 

129 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER VUI 

1. Bruce Cossaboom, "Nixon Picks Laird To Be Secretary of Defense," 

Armed Forces Journal, 106 (14 Dec 68): 31. The best analysis of Laird's 

tour as Secretary of Defense is Kinnard, Secretary of Defense, pp. 113-

152. See also Lawrence J. Korb, The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon: 

American Defense Policies in the 19705 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood 

Press, 1979), pp. 26-96. 

2. Armed Forces Journal, 106 (21 Dec 68): 11, (15 Mar 69): 30-33, (5 Jul 69): 

11-12; Ltr, Laird to Raines, 18 JuI 85, JCS Reform project files, CMH. 

3. The "new left" critique of American diplomacy has produced a vast 

literature, both for and against. Seminal works in the movement include: 

William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, rev. ed. (New 

York: Dell, 1962); Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and 

Potsdam (New York: Vintage, 1967); and Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The 

Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 

(New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 

4. Korb, Fall and Rise of the Pentagon, pp. 85-92; Cole et al., Department of 

Defense, pp. 239-240; Ur, Alfred Goldberg to Lt. Col. Robert Frank, 16 

Sep 85, JCS Reform project files, CMH. 

5. Korb, Fall and Rise of the Pentagon, pp. 83-96; Kinnard, Secretary of 

Defense, pp. 120-125. 

6. Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam 

(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984), pp. 89-99, 200. 

7. U.S. Department of Defense, Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, Report to the 

President and the Secretary of Defense on the Department of Defense •.• 

(Washington D.C.: Department of Defense, 1970). 

130 
8. Int, Palmer by Raines, 20 Sep 85, JCS Reform project files, CMH. 

9. Memo, Palmer for Westmoreland, II Sep 70, sub: Highlights of 4 Sep JCS 

Meeting, Bruce Palmer, Jr., Mss, MHI. 

10. Memo, Beal for Laird, I Sep 70, sub: Blue Ribbon Defense Panel Report, 

JCS Reform project files, CMH. 

11. News release 713-70, Office of Assistant Secreta ry of Defense , Public 

Affairs, I Sep 70, "Secretary Laird Announces Members of Blue Ribbon 

Action Committee," OS D 020 Departmen t of Defense (J Sep 70), Office of 

the Secretary of Defense, Decimal Fi les- - 1970, OSD History Office, The 

Pentagon, Washing ton, D.C . (hereinafter cited as OSD/HO). 1..tr, Parker 

to Raines, 19 Jul 85, JCS Reform project fi les, CMH. 

12. Memo, Froehlke for La ird and Packa rd, 24 Sep 70, sub: I3RAC Meeting--

September 211, OSD 020, Department of Defense (211 Sep 70), OUice of the 

Secretary of Defense, Decimal Files, 1970, OSD/ HO. 

13. L. Edgar Prina, "Toward a Single Chief of Staff," Navy Magazine, XIII 

(Oct 1970): 37. Prina uses the phrase "chain of command" in the a rticle, 

but the context clea rl y indica tes that he meant "channe l of command.

1I 

14. DOD Directive 5100.30, 2 Dec 71, sub: World-Wide Military Com mand and 

Control System (WWMCCSh U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of 

Defense Dictionary of Mili tary and Associa ted Terms, JCS Pub. I, 3 Sep 

711 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 22 1. 

15. PL 92-596 (86 Stat. 1317), 27 Oct 72; Cole e t a l., eds., Departmen t of 

Defense, pp. 257-258. 

16. Prina, "Towa rd a Single Chief of Staff," p. 37. Watson mentions the 

earlier procedure in his "The Evolving Role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," 

p. 104, n. 16. 

131 
17. For a discussion of Schlesinger as 

Secret a ry of De fense, pp. 153- 191. 

sec retary of defense , see Kinnard, 

The literatu re on the 19705 is not 

vast. Five essays in Mossman, Chi e fs of Staff Transition into Office, 

provide a good introduction to the Army in the 1970s: Robert Griffith, 

"General William C. Westmoreland"; James E. Hewes, "Bruce Palme r, 

Jr." a nd "Creighton W. Abrams"; and Edgar F. Raines, Jr., "Frederick C. 

Weyand" and "Bernard W. Rogers." 

132 
CHAPTER IX 

President Carter and the 1978 Department of 

Defense Reorganization Attempts 

President Jimmy Carter attained the White House in 1976 by denying that 

he was a politician and running against the government he sought to lead. 

Reorganization of the government--to include the Department of Defense--was 

one of the items on his reform agenda. On 20 September 1977, he directed 

Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to devise plans to study three major areas 

in his department: defense management structure, the national military 

command structure, and defense resource management.l 

Brown established three study groups, one for each area, headed by Paul 

Ignatius, Richard Steadman, and Donald B. Rice, respectively. Unlike Laird, 

Brown turned to men who had first-hand experience with the Department of 

Defense. Like Brown himself, the study group leaders were all veterans of the 

McNamara management team at defense. Ignatius, the president of the Air 

Traffic Association, had served as assistant secretary of the Army, 1961-1963; 

under secretary of the Army, 1964j assistant secretary of defense, 1964-1967; 

and secretary of the Navy, 1967-1969. Steadman, a partner in J. H. Whitney 

and Company of New York, had held the post of deputy assistant secretary of 

defense for East Asia and Pacific affairs, 1966-1969. Rice, the president of the 

RAND Corporation, had been the director of Cost Analysis, Office of the 

Secretary of Defense, 1967-1969, and deputy assistant secretary of defense for 

resource analysis, 1969-1970. 2 

The Ignatius Study Group finished its report, "The Defense Management 

Structure Study," in the summer of 1978. Although not focused on the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, it did make three recommendations that had a minor impact on 

that organization. First, the study proposed the establishment of a long range 

planning office that emphasized coordination between the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff and the under secretary of defense for policy. Secretary Brown 

had only the year before convinced Congress to establish this position and that 

of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering in place of the 

second deputy secretary of defense position that Secretary Laird had secured. 

The under secretaries ranked between the remaining deputy secretary of 
defense and the various assistant secretaries. While the under secretary of 

defense for research and engineering handled hardware problems, the under 

sec retary of defense for policy dealt with the non-hardware issues related to 

international affairs. Both the assistant secretary of defense for international 

security affairs and the director of net assessment, the official that prepared 

estimates of the relative strengths of foreign and American forces, reported to 

the under secretary of defense for policy. The study group believed that the 

need to coordinate the under secretary's efforts and the preparation of plans by 

the Joint Chiefs was clearly evident.3 

The group a lso suggested use of the Armed Forces Policy Council as 

originally chartered to provide the sec retary of defense with regular advice 

toward the formulation of defense policy. Recently council meetings had 

included up to forty people and were used to pass information rather than to 

establish policy. Ignatius thought the meetings should be limited to the 

secretary of defense and his nine principal subordinates. Finally, the study 

group advocated continued reduction of headquarters staffs by greater 

dependence on subordinate commands. 

On 13 July 1978 the administrative assistant to the secretary of the 

Army, John G. Connell, Jr., asked the members of the Army Secretariat and the 

Army Staff to review the recommendations of the Ignatius Study Group. The 

differences between the two groups on issues related to the organization of the 

Joint Chiefs proved inconsequential. Connell's office forwarded the comments 

to Secretary of the Army Clifford L. Alexander, Jr., in August and then began 

work on a consolidated Army position on each issue. Secretary Alexander, after 

personally reviewing these comments, prepared the Army's final position. He 

considered the establishment of a long range planning office to have "merit." 

He warned, however, that the emphasis should be placed on policy rather than 

planning. Coordination between the under secretary for policy and the director 

of the Joint Staff was more appropriate than with the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff. Secretary Alexander also concurred with the recommendation 

about the Armed Forces Policy Council but mentioned that it should also be 

used by the service secretaries and Joint Chiefs to present service issues to the 

secretary of defense for discussion and decision. Alexander believed that this 

suggestion was worthy of immediate implementation. He did not agree with 

134 
further Army Staff reductions and requested that the subject be dropped.4 

The first two recommendations were significant because they represented 

an attempt to increase the participation of the military departments in defense 

poJicy making, an effort to reverse a trend that dated back to Secretary of 

Defense Wilson in the 1950s. They remained, however, only attempts. 

Secretary Brown took no action on the three recommendations. 

The Steadman Study Group (See Chart 19) completed its report, "The 

National Military Command Structure Study," at the same time as the Ignatius 

group finished its report. The group saw its goal as "improving the professional 

military advice to the National Command Authority and insuring that their 

voice is more adequately heard in decisions of important national security 

issues." The report grouped recommendations into two categories: 

"Organization for War Fighting" and "Policy, Plans, and Advice." The first area 

divided naturally into three components: the relation between the unified and 

specified commands and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint 

Chiefs, and the secretary of defense; command and control; and rearranging the 

existing unified and specified commands.5 

In the first subcategory, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of 

defense, argued the study group, should review the Unified Command Plan--the 

plan setting forth the boundaries and missions of the unified commands--every 

two years. The Joint Chiefs should recommend and the secretary of defense 

should select commanders for the unified commands from the best qualified 

officers considering the missions and forces assigned the commands rather than 

solely on the basis of service affiliation of the officer. In particular the group 

urged that the secretary and Joint Chiefs take into account the "politicaldiplomatic" role of the unified commanders when making the selections to fill 

these positions. The unified commanders needed to have a greater voice in 

determining the requirements of the forces under their commands. The 

secretary of defense should deSignate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to serve 

as his agent for supervising the activities of the unified and specified 

commanders and transmit all orders to them through the chairman, who would 

consult with the Joint Chiefs if time permitted. (The Joint Chiefs would still 

continue to act as the immediate military staff for the secretary). At the same 

time, the Steadman group recommended that the secretary give the chairman, 

135 
as the representative of the unified commanders within the Department of 

Defense headquarters, a formal role in resource allocation planning and 

decisions. It called attention to the need for an improved readiness reporting 

procedure. It advocated that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, working 

in conjunction with the Joint Chiefs and the services, conduct a review of the 

current system and design a new one that would provide the secretary "with 

detailed, thorough, and well articulated information on readiness and force 

deficiency correction." 

Turning to the second section--command and control--the Steadman group 

concentrated on wartime crisis management. It argued that the chain of 

command "should be clearly enunciated at the outset" without indicating 

whether the secretary of defense or the president should do the "enunciating." 

All bypassed elements should be kept informed of the si tuation. "There should 

be no confusion as to the proper flow of communications and the locus of 

responsibility.1I Concurrently, National Command Authority decisions, opined 

the group, should always be followed up in writing. (The group's fondness for 

the passive voice obscured to whom the responsibility would fall.) It 

recommended, in addition, the establishment of a feedback mechanism to 

ensure that decision makers knew the implementation status. It further 

advocated a series of command post exercises to test the ability of the National 

Military Command System to function during crises. Senior-level policymakers, 

it thought, should be encouraged to attend. 

The group addressed the existing unified and specified commands in the 

third subcomponent of the "organization for war fighting" section of its report. 

It accepted the general efficacy of the system and concentrated mainly on 

details, although it made the general observation that there was no need for 

unified commands to cover all the areas of the world. It urged that the 

Department of Defense conduct a special study to identify redundancies in the 

functions and personnel of the component commands in unified commands. 

Excesses should be eliminated. The Steadman group believed that the Middle 

East should remain a responsibili ty of the European Command. It should 

continue to plan for and be prepared to execute contingency operations in that 

region or to support a unified command especially set up for a crisis that would 

report either directly to Washington or to the European Command. Further, the 

136 
Joint Staff 

Chain of Command 

---....;)~ Channel of Command 

- ~ 

Chart 19 - Steadman's Proposal, 197 8 

President 

- Secretary of Defense 

Chairman 

Joint C

JOint Chiefs of Staff 

~ 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 
Chiefs should consider the advantages of establishing a permanent subunified 

command for the Middle East. Subsahara Africa, however, should not be 

assigned to the European Command. 

The group recommended no changes in the presently assigned areas and 

responsibilities of the U.S. A tlantic Command, the U.S. Pacific Command, and 

the U.S. Southern Command, but did recommend that the Joint Chiefs review 

the command arrangements of U.S. maritime forces in the Atlantic and the 

Mediterranean to determine if they were adequate. It did not believe that the 

Army component command for the U.S. Pacific Command should be revived (it 

had been disestablished in the reduction of the Arm y following the Vietnam 

War) "unless a convincing argument is made that this would be demonstrably 

more effective than present arrangements." The group also called for a review 

of "planning, practices, and attitudes regarding crisis/wartime command 

arrangements" with respect to U.S. Forces, Korea. It espoused the principle of 

flexibility--that nothing should be done with respect to command arrangements 

that would prevent either continuation of the current system in a crisis or 

direct control from Washington. 

The group recommended the most striking changes with regard to the U.S. 

Readiness Command. It proposed that the secretary of defense designate the 

Readiness Command as the focal point for day-to-day coordination of mobilization and deployment planning for all the unified and specified commands. 

The command should have greater Navy and Marine participation on its staff 

and in joint exercises. The Department of Defense, in the jUdgment of the 

group, should give the command a greater role in the development of joint 

doctrine. 

Next, the report turned to the recommendations that it collected under 

the heading "policy, plans, and advice." Whereas the previous section had dealt-

-in broad terms--with policy implementation through the chain of command, 

this section considered policy formu lation in Washington. As in "Organizing for 

War Fighting," the recommendations in this section fell into three 

subcategories: policy direction; the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff; 

and the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The study group attached a 

discussion of National Military Advisers at the end of the report. 

Policy direction focused on the interaction between the secretariat in the 

138 
-

Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Steadman group--

stili maintaining the imprecision inherent in the passive voice--proposed that 

"specific national security policy guidance, which sets objectives our forces 

should be capable of attaining, should be provided the Joint Chiefs of Staff but 

without undue detail about how they are to be attained." It called for the 

secretary of defense, his deputy, and a few key assistants to review current 

military plans on a regular basis. Like the Ignatius group, Steadman and his 

associates addressed the relationship between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 

under secretary for policy. They sought the same end by making the under 

secretary re sponsible for "ensuring" that contingency plans prepared by the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff reflected "national security policy and 

objectives." 

The second subcategory focused on the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Staff. 

The study group urged that the Joint Chiefs revise the procedures by which 

contingency plans were prepared "to make the Joint Staff a lone responsible for 

the authorship of JCS papers." Studies by the Joint Staff should present, when 

appropriate, a "comprehensive analysis" of alternatives. The g roup wanted to 

encourage the "expression of differing views" inside the Department of 

Defense. The Joint Chiefs should provide high-level guidance to the Joint Staff 

at the beginning of the planning process. Given the importance of the work of 

the Joint Staff, the group recommended that the service chiefs select for it 

"their most outstanding and highly qualified officers." It further recommended 

that the secretary should give the chairman the power to obtain the aSSignment 

to the Joint Staff of any desired officer. 

The third subsection focused on the powers of the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, which the study group wanted to increase. It called upon the 

secretary of defense to make the chairman "responsible for providing military 

advice from a national viewpoint on program and budget issues" and a voting 

membe r of the Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council. The chairman, 

with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the under secretary for poliCY, should manage 

"an annual study, analysis, and gaming program II to clarif y and resolve major 

issues, in the areas of joint military strategy, force planning, and resource 

allocation. The study g roup called for the chairman to receive sufficient Joint 

Staff support "to make broad program and budget judgments." 

139 
Finally, the study group considered the establishment of a group of 

national military advisers. It recommended that the president "consider" 

establishment of such an entity if either the Department of Defense failed to 

implement the recommendations or, once implemented, the recommendations 

proved inadequate in improving the quality of military advice or increasing the 

military's role in decision making. 

The Army followed the same procedure in replying to the Steadman report 

as it used in responding to the Ignatius report. In fact, Secretary of the Army 

Alexander used the same memorandum to Secretary of Defense Brown to 

present the Army position on both. Most of his substantive comments dealt 

with the Ignatius group's reportj the accompanying digest of Army views 

prepared by Connell's office carried the argument on the Steadman report.6 

The Connell digest recorded considerable agreement between the Army 

and the Steadman Study Group on the relations between the unified and 

specified commands and the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Disagreements and qualified agreements centered on three of the group's seven 

recommendations in the subsection: the selection of the best qualified officers 

to command unified commands, the role of the commanders in determining the 

requirement for their commands, and the pa rt played by the chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff in resource allocation planning. The Army argued that 

flexibiUty already existed in selecting the most qualified commanders for 

unified commands and that, when the Department of Defense gave 

consideration to the mission and force structure of the commands as the 

Steadman group recommended, the same individuals would be selected. 

Consequently, the Arm y, while agreeing with the group's objective, saw no need 

to alter the existing system. The Connell digest argued that the commanders of 

the unified and specified commands had "a voice" in determining their 

requirements through their quarte rl y reports to the secretary of defense. The 

only area in which the Army supported an expanded role for the commanders 

was in decisions that affected the readiness of their forces. As a consequence 

the Army envisioned no role for the commanders in long range planning or 

research and development. Reflecting the Army's attitude on the role of the 

cornmanders, its position on the chairman's "formal role in resource allocation 

and planning" stressed the limitations on that role while agreeing "in principle" 

140 
with the study groups. The Army argued that his role should consist of 

identifying "key areas of risk" in the ability of current and projected forces to 

carry out national military strategy; determining "the degree and relative 

importance of those key areas of risk"; and recommending a distribution of 

resources in the Ught of this analysis. The Army emphasized that it did not 

want to enhance the role of the chairman at the expense of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff. "Any formalization of the Chairman's role should ensure the preservation 

of the ability of the JCS (including the Chairman) to carry out their statutory 

responsibility for providing military advice--responsible but unfettered." 

The discussion of command and control resulted in virtually complete 

agreement. In one case, the Army amplified rather than qualified a Steadman 

group proposal. The Army not only accepted the need for a clear chain of 

command in a crisis but requested that, in particular, any reform "clearly 

define" the role of the U.S. ambassador to the country at the center of the 

crisis. 

The group's long and detailed discussion of existing unified and specified 

commands also met with general approbation from the Army. It qualified its 

agreement or deferred taking a position on five of fifteen recommendations in 

this area. The Army agreed with the need to eliminate redundancy at 

component command headquarters but steadfastly opposed any changes that 

would cause "a loss of operational capability for planning, command and 

control, equipping, supporting, or transitioning forces (rom peace to war." With 

respect to specific commands, the Army regarded making the Middle East an 

area of responsibility for the European Command as an acceptable solution, not 

an optimal one, as the Steadman group did. The Army preferred to restrict the 

European Command's area of responsibility to the territory o( the North 

A t1antic Treaty Organization, the same limits that applied to the Supreme 

Allied Commander Europe. The group's insistence on "flexibility" for wartime 

command arrangements for both the Middle East and Korea worried the Army. 

While not opposed to flexibility in principle, it wanted command arrangements 

planned for and exercised in peacetime, not developed on the spur of the 

moment once war began. On the remaining two proposals the Army remained 

publicly noncommittal. The Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations 

and Plans proposed that the Army oppose the recommendation to not 

141 
reestablish the U.S. Army Pacific, but the position developed within the Army 

secretariat prevailed: "The re-establlshment of the Army Component 

Command is being intensively studied and will be commented upon separately.1f 

The Army also called for "a full review of current joint doctrine 

responsibilities" before giving the Readiness Command "a broader, more active 

role" in deveJoping joint doctrine. 

In the policy direction portion of "Policy, Plans, and Advice,t' the Army 

agreed that the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary, and "selected key 

assistantslt should regularly review current military operational planning, but 

only in broad terms. They would have to exercise care to avoid becoming 

involved "in detailed planning and execution." To maintain operational security, 

the Army wanted to limit the review to the minimum number with the "need to 

know." The Army wanted the phrase "key assistants" deHned precisely before 

the Department of Defense acted on the recommendation. The Army also 

agreed with the study group that there was a "potential for positive interaction" 

between the under secretary for policy and the Joint Staff but called for a more 

detailed study of the issue than the group had conducted. The Army took the 

same position with regard to the under secretary's role in intelligence matters. 

Regarding the Steadman group's proposals concerning relations of the 

Joint Chiefs and the Joint Staff, the Army took a more negative view. It 

argued that the current system of preparing Joint Staff papers made the Joint 

Staff responsible for authorship and saw no need for changes to encourage 

greater diversity of views. "Alternatives can be prepared under the current 

system .... " The Army strongly opposed the idea that the Joint Staff alone 

should prepare joint papers or, in any manner, decrease service participation in 

the development of papers: "The Services must retain a strong voice in the 

joint decision process." The Army, while supporting the objective of securing 

highly qualified officers for the Joint Staff, disagreed with the method proposed 

by the study group: the service chiefs should send their most highly qualified 

staff officers to the Joint Staff. The Army thought the chairman should discuss 

the problem informally with the service chiefs and, if possible, secure their 

agreement to move outstanding officers from the service staffs to the Joint 

Staff. The Army did not want the chairman to get involved with "the business 

of the assignment of individual officers" and disagreed that the secretary of 

142 
defense should empower the chairman to obtain the assignment of any officer 

to the Joint Staff. In the Army's view, the assignment of staff officers to the 

Joint Staff should remain the exclusive prerogative of the service chiefs. 

The recommendations in the final subsection on "Policy, Plans, and 

Advice"--the role of the chairman--received more qualified approval from the 

Army than the subsection on the Joint Chiefs and Joint Staff. The Army 

approved making the chairman more influential in high-level decisions "that 

affect the readiness and fighting capabilities of the armed forces" but not in 

other program and budget issues. In particular it did not want the chairman 

engaged "in routine program and budget management.1I For this reason it 

opposed making the chairman a voting member of the Defense Systems 

Acquisition Review Council. Over involvement in issues below the level of the 

secretary of defense, thought the Army, would diminish rather than expand the 

chairman's influence . Besides, the individual programs were "Service oriented." 

Given two provisions, the Army supported the idea that the Joint Staff should 

give the chairman "appropriate" support to enable him "to make broad program 

and budget judgments." First, the Joint Staff should provide this support out of 

its existing resources. Second, "continuing detailed input from the servicesll 

would remain "an essential part" in the growth of "a national viewpoint" on 

these issues. The same concern about service privileges cropped up in the 

recommendations about "an annual study, analysis, and gaming program." The 

chairman in conjunction with the under secretary for policy could provide "a 

loosely structured coordination of current study programs" provided that "care" 

was taken "to not inhibit Service oriented inquiry." 

The Army quite agreed with the Steadman group about national military 

advisers. The Department of Defense should not even consider such an 

organization until it had carefully evaluated all the suggestions of the Ignatius 

and Steadman Study Groups. Secretary of the Army Alexander cautioned 

Secretary of Defense Brown that he should await the Rice report before 

implementing any of the recommendations in the two reports already finished. 

The Rice Study Group completed its report in the spring of 1979. The 

only Significant Joint Chiefs of Staff-related suggestion in the report was that 

the chairman become an "ex officio" member of a defense resources board that 

the group wanted established. The intent was to increase the chairman's and 

143 
perhaps the Joint Chiefs of Staff's participation in the resource allocation 

process. The Joint Chiefs of Staff responded formally to the Rice report, the 

Army apparently did not. It had already stated that the chairman should not be 

involved with routine programs and budget management} 

General David C. Jones, the chief of staff of the Air Force from July 

1974 until June 1978, had only recently become the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff at the time that the Ignatius and Steadman Study Groups made 

their reports. In a cover letter forwarding the Joint Chiefs' reaction, presented 

separately from the service position papers, Jones observed that there was 

nothing revolutionary in the reports: "As Dick Steadman points out, there are a 

number of things we can do to improve the institutional product of the joint 

system. I firmly believe, however, that the fundamental organizational 

structure is sound. I agree with Dick that there is no present need for dramatic 

change .... " 

Whereas Jones saw no need for dramatic change, Secretary Brown saw no 

need for almost any change. The secretary, reported the Armed Forces Journal 

International, regarded the three studies as demonstrating "that the 

Department works well ... and that sufficient changes occurred in the Department prior to the commencement of the formal reorganization studies, and the 

Administration should take credit for these changes." While the White House 

was less than enthusiastic about the Ignatius and Rice reports, considerable 

support did exist for the Steadman report. White House Staff members 

regarded it as realistic and straight-forward; it identified genuine problems in 

their view and proposed practical solutions. In the end, however, the secretary 

of defense's attitude prevailed.8 

Secretary Brown did agree with the recommendation to place the 

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the Defense Systems Acquisition 

Review Council and tried to draw him into more resource allocation decisions. 

On 7 April 1979 Secretary Brown created the Defense Resources Board 

recommended by the Rice group. The board, chaired by the deputy secretary of 

defense, would "direct and supervise" the review in the Office of the Secretary 

of Defense of the service budget submissions and their Program Objective 

Memoranda, statements prepared by the services of their requirements and 

priorities for equipping, manning, training, and maintaining their respective 

144 
forces. (Program Objective Memoranda had been key documents in the 

Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System since its establishment by 

Secretary McNamara in the early 1960s.) The. board was to examine "major 

issues raised in those reviews" and make its recommendations to the secretary 

of defense. The chairman or his designated representative, as in the 

recommendations of the Rice group, would serve as an ex officio member of the 

board. The secretary also followed the Steadman group's suggestions 

concerning the role of the under secretary for policy.9 In the main, however, 

very few changes resulted from the three studies. The seven million dollar 

Department of Defense reorganization effort directed by President Carter 

produced no legislative changes in the Joint Chiefs of Staff system. 

General Jones' characterization of the Steadman report was more 

accurate than Secretary Brown's. The number of detailed proposals made by 

Steadman and his associates indicates that they accepted in broad terms the 

existing system. That their reforms were not revolutionary does not also 

indicate that they were trivial. The sections on the chairman and the Joint 

Staff, in particular, would have made Significant changes in that pOSition's 

power with regard to the services and how the staff operated. Steadman took 

seriously the charge that his group received to study ways in which to increase 

the influence of the military in decision making, although he clearly favored a 

certain kind of military perspective over others--joint opposed to service. 

Ignatius and Rice, to the extent that they touched on organizational issues, 

reinforced this tendency in the Steadman report. Three products of the 

McNamara Pentagon thus repudiated one of the major manageria l innovations 

of their fonner leader. Unfortunately for the advocates of reform, a fourth 

alumnus of those years--the secretary of defense--did not. 

The Army position in 1978 is interesting both in terms of how it was 

formulated and its content. Previously, the Army chief of staff and vice chief 

of staff played major roles in defining the Army position. The existing 

evidence--and this conclusion cannot be considered definitive because so much 

of the historical record did not survive--suggests that neither General Rogers 

nor the vice chief of staff, General Walter T. Kerwin, was much involved. 

Secretary of the Army Alexander played a much more important role than they, 

perhaps in part because the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a separate institution 

145 
developed its own posi tion on reform. 

Given the same qualifications about the evidence, a second generalization 

emerges. Previously, because of the timely guidance of its uniformed leaders, 

the Army Staff almost always went into reform debates with a logically 

consistent and well-developed Army position. The Army position in 1978 

represented a compendium of the opinions of the Army Staff agencies and the 

Office of the Secretary of the Army, prepared as a reaction to an existing 

proposal--with all the strengths and weaknesses inherent in such a document. It 

lacked the broad view. The major thrust of the paper was a concern for 

preserving the prerogatives of the services, and particularly the Army, within 

the existing organizational frameworks. It was not true of ali Army positions, 

only most of them. As such, it constituted the most clear-cut reversal by the 

Army of its position on unification since 1941. It did not seek to dismantle 

what had already been achieved; it simply declined to go forward. 

As the Carter administration entered into its second 

consume 

half, 

the 

inflation, fuel 

rationing, Afghanistan, and Iran came to attention of 

policymakers. Joint Chiefs of Staff reform became less than an urgent 

interest. Only the arrival of a new administration revived its potency. 

146 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER IX 

1. For the Carter administration, see Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs 

of a President (New York: Bantam,1982). Harold Brown's Thinking About 

National Security: Defense and Foreign Policy in a Dangerous World 

(Boulder: Westview, 1983) is an analysis of current defense policy with 

scattered retrospective comments about his service as secretary of 

defense. For the establishment of the study groups, see Memo, C.W. 

Duncan, Jr. (or Secretaries of the Military Departments et al., 12 Dec 77, 

sub: Department of Defense Organization Studies, JCS Reform project 

file, CMH; and F. Clifton Berry, Jr., "Carter's Defense Reorganization 

Focuses on Three IS5ues,1I Armed Forces Journal, 115 (Dec 1977): 11. 

2. Who's Who in America, 1978-1979, 2 vols., 40th ed. (Chicago: Marquis 

Who's Who, 1978), 1: 1068,2: 2703,3098. 

3. U.S. Department of Defense, Departmental Headquarters Study: A 

Report to the Secretary of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Department of 

Defense, 1978). 

4. Memo, R. M. Yingling for Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) 

et al., 29 Aug 78, sub: Request for Comments on Departmental 

Headquarters and National Military Command Structure Studies; Memo, 

Alexander for C. W. Duncan, undated, CS 30-31 Aug 78, Chief of Staff, 

Army Records, 1978, Accession No. 319-81-0083, Records Center, 

Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Md, (hereinafter cited as 

RC, WNRC). 

5. U.S. Department of Defense, The National Military Command Structure: 

A Report of a Study Request by the President and Conducted in the 

Department of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 

1978). 

6. Memo, Alexander for C. W. Duncan, undated. 

147 
7. U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Resource Management Study 

(Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 1979); Memo, "Detailed 

Comments Relating to the Report to the Secretary of Defense on the 

National Military Command Structure," CS 30-31 Aug 1978, Chief of Staff 

Army Records, 1978, Accession No. 319-81-0083, RC, WNRC. 

8. Memo, Jones for Brown, 1 Sep 78, sub: National Military Command 

Structure and Departmental Headquarters Studies, JCS Reform project 

file, CMHj Brown, Thinking About National Security, pp. 199-214; 

Benjamin F. Schemmer, "White House, Pentagon, Now Weigh More FarReaching Defense Reorganization," Armed Forces Journal International, 

117 (Nov. 1978): 34-36. 

9. DOD Directive 5111.1, 27 Oct 78, sub: Under Secretary of Defense for 

Policy, JCS Reform project file, CMHj John G. Kester, "The Future of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff," AEI Foreign Policy and Defense Review, 2 (1980): 

15; Memo, Brown for Alexander et al., 7 Apr 79, sub: Establishment of 

Defense Resources Board, DOD H/O; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee 

on Armed Services, Defense Organization: The Need For Change, 99th 

Cong., 1st sess., 1985, pp. 483-493, provides a brief discussion of the 

current Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System. This report is 

sometimes referred to as the Locher report after the name of the study 

director, James R. Locher III. 

148 
CHAPTER X 

J oint Chiefs of Staff Reform in the 1980s 

Joint Chiefs of Staff reform proposals in the early 1980s came from two 

prominent military leaders. General Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff from 1978 until 1982, and Genera l Edward C. Meyer, the chief of staff of 

the Army from 1979 until 1983, became the first active duty officers to initiate 

Joint Chiefs of Staff reform since General Collins introduced the War 

Department plan in 1945. In 1982 the two gene ra ls saw the moment as 

propitious to reconsider American command and control arrangements. The 

Reagan administration had entered into office the preceding year committed to 

rebuilding the nation's defenses. Reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appea red 

to them as but another facet of a more general reform movement'! 

General Jones became convinced du ring 1980 that the joint system was 

"badly flawed" a nd in need of substantial reform. He took his concerns to 

Secretary of Defense Brown, who was "very supportive." After the e lection 

Gene ral Jones talked to the secretary of defense designate, Caspar W. 

Weinberger, who expressed interest in Jones' views and said that he looked 

forward to receiving his recommendations. Jones commissioned a study group 

headed by Gene ra l Kerwin, now re tired , to examine the joint organization and 

recommend any needed changes.2 

The Chairma n's Special Study Group reported back to Gene ral Jones in 

April 1982. Numerous c ritics, observed the group, had identified the sarne basic 

problems in the joint system throughout its existence, but no one had succeeded 

in producing any fundamental changes since 1947. "It is evident that the JCS 

organization must be improved. The real questions are: How will it be 

changed? And by whom?" Generally, the study group recommended changes 

that the Joint Chiefs of Staff could implement, provided the chiefs had the 

complete support of the president and the secre tary of defense, without any 

additional legislation.) 

The Kerwin group's first proposal , to establish the pOSition of vice 

chairman, did require congressional action. The vice chairman would chair the 

meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attend meetings of the Defense 

Resources Board, and act for the chairman "in all other ways" during his 

absence . Heretofore the acting chairmanship had fa llen to the senior member 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff present in Washington (or in the absence of the 

service chiefs their vice chiefs or operations deputies in that order). During 

one of General Jones' trips to Korea, as many as eleven officers served as 

acting chairman.4 The study group envisioned that either the chairman or the 

vice chairman would remain in Washington at all times.5 

The study group argued that the service chiefs lacked the time to 

adequately perform their service and their joint responsibilities. It proposed to 

lessen the service chiefs' involvement in joint issues by eliminating from 

corporate consideration those that were of less importance--routine matters, 

questions that involved tlintense conflict of interest problems for the Service 

Chiefs" (allocation issues), and problems of concern to only one or two services. 

The Joint Chiefs should permit the chairman to decide routine matters and 

those on which there was majority agreement within the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

When only one or two services were involved, the chairman should work directly 

with the chiefs of the services involved rather than bringing the issue up in a 

general rneeting. In order to facilitate the candid exchange of views, the 

chairman should call more meetings in which only the principals, the service 

chiefs, or in their absence the service vice chiefs, were involved. Such an 

atmosphere would be more conducive to eventual compromise than the sorts of 

semipublic confronta tions that characterized Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings in 

which action officers were present. The chairman and the service chiefs should 

report independently to the secretary of defense on all matters involving 

resource distribution. The Joint Chiefs should propose to the secretary of 

defense for his approval a method of identifying issues requiring the attention 

of the corporate body. The chairman would tlthen restrict JCS agendas to 

priority topics ...... General Kerwin and his associates saw two benefits flowing 

from their proposal: Service chiefs could devote more time to service matters, 

and, when they did address joint issues, they would have the time to focus on 

them and make a substantial contribution. 

Traditionally, the service chiefs relied on the service staffs when they 

dealt with joint issues. The service staffs even briefed their chiefs on joint 

issues prior to meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The study group proposed 

to "require the Joint Staff to brief, interact with, and prepare the Service 

Chiefs for JCS meetings, and to support the Chiefs generally in the resolution 

150 
of the Joint issues they address." To further this goal the group wanted the 

Joint Staff to author all joint papers rather than allowing service staffs to do 

so. The present procedure allowed service representatives to frame an issue 

under discussion in such a manner as to give their own service a decided 

advantage in the ensuing joint decision-making process. "Joint papers should be 

organized to present alternatives, and as a general rule, Service staff 

involvement should be to provide information and advice on issues, at the 

request of the Joint Staff." The study group suggested that the Joint Chiefs, as 

a transitional step, might establish four Service Chief Support Groups in the 

Joint Staff and assign one to each service chief. A "flag-rank" officer would 

head each study group. The groups would brief the chiefs in their preparations 

for Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings. Kerwin and his associates envisioned that 

the support groups would decrease the number of officers needed on the service 

staffs. The total number of officers dealing with joint matters would not 

increase, but their distribution would change. The service staffs would lose 

officers to the Joint Staff. 

In a closely related issue, the study group proposed that the Joint Chiefs 

radically change the "practices and policies" of the Joint Staff that led to an 

overemphasis on building consensus and an underemphasis on sharply delineating 

the questions at issue and the differences between the services. "Concurrence 

as an overriding goal, particularly when applied to the multiple levels of staff in 

a large bureaucracy, more often than not will stifle good ideas." The chiefs 

should strive for unanimity only on exceptional issues. 

While the Kerwin group acknowledged that many exceptional individuals 

served on the Joint Staff, the study group found that most members were not 

well prepared for their assignment. Consequently, it proposed to "improve the 

preparation and experience levels of Service officers assigned to the Joint Staff 

and other Joint activities such as the Unified Command headquarters" by 

creating a joint-duty career specialty open to officers with the rank of major in 

the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps and lieutenant commander in the Navy. 

The service chiefs would nominate and the chairman would approve officers for 

this specialty and their subsequent joint-duty assignments. They would attend 

joint schools--the Armed Forces Staff College, the National War College, and 

the Industrial College of the Armed Forces--and "serve primarily in Joint-duty 

151 
positions," returning to their service periodically "for field assignments to 

maintain currency." The study group suggested that about half of the positions 

on the Joint Staff and in other joint headquarters ought to be filled by officers 

with a joint-duty career specialty. Such a provision would allow a healthy mix 

of officers with a background in command to serve on joint staffs and ensure 

that no general staff on the Prussian model, isolated from conditions in the 

field, ever developed. Congress should remove the provisions of the United 

States Code that put limits on the number of times that an officer might serve 

on the Joint Staff and the duration of those tours. To prevent the services from 

discriminating against officers in a joint-duty career specialty, representatives 

of the Joint Staff and other major joint headquarters would sit on all service 

promotion boards selecting officers for promotion to lieutenant colonel in the 

Army, Air Force, and Marines and commander in the Navy and all higher 

grades. The boards would receive written guidance "that states explicitly that 

the selection process should 0) de-emphasize the advancement of the best 

officers in all specialties, including those in the Joint specialty, and (2) 

recognize the importance and value of Joint-duty experience and 

accomplishments." The study group recommended that the Joint Chiefs 

establish a program "for increasing the frequency of cross-Service assignments" 

so as to increase awareness in each service of "the characteristics, traditions, 

capabilities, and problems of the other Services." Finally, the Joint Chiefs 

ought to consider appointing a limited number of civilians to joint-duty 

positions "as a way to strengthen continuity and to provide expertise that may 

not be readily available within the career officer corps." 

Turning to the unified and specified commands, the study group proposed 

that the Joint Chiefs include the commanders of those commands and their 

staffs in Joint Staff activities. Specifically, the Joint Chiefs should "establish 

regular working meetings" between themselves and the commanders of the 

unified and specified commands lito review draft DoD guidance regarding the 

programming and budgeting process, to review draft OSD and JCS policy 

guidance concerning military operation plans, and to review and assess the 

military operation plans (and their underlying military assumptions)1t developed 

by the major combatant commands. The Kerwin group expected this greater 

interaction would enable the Joint Staff to better support the commanders of 

152 
the unified and specified commands. In the process the commanders would gain 

a clearer understanding of the intent and rationale for defense guidance. 

Informal give and take between the commanders and the members of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff would ensure "their thorough personal involvement" in the 

development of operational plans. Such meetings would also "forge a stronger 

link between the military planning process that identifies weaknesses in force 

capabilities and the DoD resource allocation process that should be aimed at 

correcting them." The study group noted parenthetically that one of the 

important advantages derived from creating the position of vice chairman was 

that it would allow the chairman or the vice chairman acting as his 

representative to visit the field often nand to participate extensivelytl with the 

commanders of the unified and specified commands tlin operational planning 

and exercise activities." 

Kerwin and his associates concluded that the Joint Staff itself needed "an 

organizational realignment" in order to better distribute the workload among 

the staff directorates and ensure that al1 functional areas received "proper 

coverage and integration." They identified the problem but did not propose any 

specific solutions. 

Finally, the study group strongly endorsed a proposal made by the Board 

of Visitors of the National Defense University. The university should establish 

a resident course on joint matters that the secretary of defense should require 

"all newly selected general and flag officers of the line" to attend. The course 

would "increase their sensitivity to and knowledge of Joint matters," an 

objective that the study group considered important "regardless of their future 

assignments." Furthermore, the course would help build "lasting personal 

relationships" across service Jines among a group of officers from whom would 

come future service chiefs and unified and specified commanders. 

Once Congress, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

adopted these reforms, the study group recommended that the Joint Chiefs 

commission two further studies: a review of the curricular objectives of the 

three colleges within the National Defense University to determine whether 

they were "consistent with the needs of the Joint community" and an analysis of 

the Unified Command concept to determine what changes were needed to 

strengthen the role of the commander "both in planning and operations.1I The 

153 
study group believed that the latter should focus on "the relationships between 

the Unified Command headquarters and the Component command headquarters, 

and between the Unified Command headquarters and the JCS, including 

particularly the Joint Staff." 

The recommendations of the Kerwin group were similar in approach, if 

not in content, to Hoelscher's proposal in 1961. Like Hoelscher, the study group 

accepted the framework established by the 1958 legislation. It concentrated on 

changing procedures rather than structure. Such an approach proved something 

of an anomaly in 1982. While General Jones accepted many of the study group's 

procedural reforms, he put more emphasis on structure. 

General Jones followed the deliberations of the study group closely. He 

made his ideas about Joint Chiefs of Staff reform public even before Kerwin 

and his associates submitted their final report to him. Jones first presented his 

views to the Joint Chiefs of Staff who, as he expected, could not agree on the 

subject. He then prepared an article, published in the March 1982 issue of the 

Armed Forces Journal International, setting forth his personal conclusions on 

the matter.6 

General Jones, quoting liberally from previous studies, argued that the 

most serious deficiencies in the joint system derived from four major problems. 

First, responsibility and authority were diffused both in Washington and the 

field.? In the field the commanders of the major commands, particularly the 

unified commands, had great authority in wartime, but in peacetime they had 

little authority or influence. tiThe MacArthurs and the Eisenhowers and the 

Nimitzs of tomorrow have little say as to what goes on.,,8 All the elements of 

influence for the component commands of the unified commands--men, 

machines, money, and promotions--f1owed from their service chiefs in 

Washington rather than from their unified commanders. In Washington the 

problem derived from the attempt to run things with committees, a task at 

which committees were "notoriously poor.1I 

Second, Jones argued that in contrast to the oral face-to-face advice that 

the Joint Chiefs provided to the president and the secretary of defense, their 

corporate written advice, the formal statements prepared by the Joint Staff, 

was "not crisp, timely, very useful, or very influential.,,9 This kind of advice 

was often crafted with the primary objective of obtaining unanimity so that 

Jj4 
recommendations were "watered down" and issues were "papered over.1I As a 

consequence, the president and the secretary of defense often looked elsewhere 

for recommendations that ought to have come from the military.1 0 

Third, "individual service interests" often oominated the recommendations 

and actions of the Joint Chiefs lIat the expense of broader national interests."ll 

This was "the spokesman-statesman" dilemma that faced service chiefs as a 

result of the "dual hatted" nature of their jobj they were the representatives of 

their services and at the same time charged with giving advice from a broad 

national perspective. While service chiefs did disregard their staffs on specific 

issues, to do so on a regular basis or on fundamental issues "was to risk losing 

the support essential for carrying out service responsibilities." Jones illustrated 

the problem with an anecdote: 

One former Chief relates that during a joint meeting, a 

Service action officer (a major) handed him a note which 

said, "General, under no condition can you agree to the 

third paragraph." This incident is representative of a 

phenomenon which has often been called lithe tyranny of 

the action officer." However, that phrase tends to 

obscure a significant point: The major was expressing 

the viewpoint of a large and unforgiving bureaucracy,12 

Distribution issues--whether of resources or missions--heightened the tendency 

of the chiefs to advocate service positions. The same tendency could be found 

at every level of the joint system and in the unified commands. 

Finally, Jones argued that the service chie;f, in addition to the built-in 

conflict of interest in his position, simply lacked the time to adequately 

perform his joint and service duties. While President Eisenhower in 1958 had 

intended that the chiefs would delegate most of the business involved in running 

the services to the vice chiefs, the plan had not worked in practice. "It is 

human nature that you are the leader of the service, that you are turned to by 

your people. You are expected to come before this committee and other 

committees and talk about that service primarily and to be its leader." 

Consequently, the service chiefs lacked the time to immerse themselves in joint 

issues. They entered meetings of the Joint Chiefs depending on oral briefings 

by subordinates to delineate the issues. 13 

General Jones recommended five reforms to meet these problems. (See 

Chart 20.) First, he proposed that the chairman, rather than the Joint Chiefs of 

155 
Staff as a corporate body, become the principal military adviser to the 

president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. The 

chairman would receive the views of the service chiefs and the commanders of 

the unified and specified commands, but the advice he gave would be his own 

based on his broad national perspective and responsibilities. In this manner 

Jones hoped to avoid the worst aspects of dual hatting. The chairman, 

operating from the joint perspective, would make the final recommendations. 

The Jones Plan gave the chairman "oversight" over the unified and specified 

commands. General Jones proposed to amend the National Security Act so that 

the channel of command would run from the president to the secretary of 

defense through the chairman (as opposed to the Joint Chiefs as a whole) to the 

unified and specified commands. This was the same channel of command that 

Secretary of Defense Laird had proposed to establish by Department of Defense 

directive in 1970.14 

Jones' second and third proposals flowed directly from the first: The 

president or the secretary of defense could request the views of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff on any issue and, conve rsely, a service chief could submit his 

views on any joint issue about which he felt strongly to the secretary of defense 

or, when appropriate, the president. These propositions would ensure that the 

chairman would not become too powerful. He would have to give the views of 

the service chiefs serious consideration before he forwarded his own to the 

secretary of defense, but the chairman would not be bound by them. 

The last two changes were organizational. General Jones proposed to 

create a deputy chairman with four-star rank who would serve as acting 

chairman in the absence of the chairman from Washington and generally assist 

him in the performance of his duties. (This was the Kerwin group's proposal for 

a vice chairman with only a change in terminology.) Finally, the Joint Staff 

would report to the chairman, as it did from 1953 until 1958, rather than to the 

Joint Chiefs as a body. Ancillary to this last point, Jones proposed to improve 

the quality of Joint Staff officers through several reforms that owed much to 

the Kerwin group: first, requiring all brigadier general selectees for the Joint 

Staff to attend a "capstone" course at the National Defense UniversitYi second, 

assigning more graduates of the senior service colleges to the Joint Staff; and, 

third, removing tenure and reassiGnment restrictions on Joint Staff officers 

156 
Joint Staff 

Chain of Command 

---->~ Channel of Command 

Chart 20 - General Jones' Proposal, 1982 

President 

,.... Secretary of Defense 

Chairman Deputy 

Joint Chiefs of Staff JOint Ch

, 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 
(then limited by statute to three years with reassignment possible only after 

another three-year tour in their respective services) while encouraging 

assignments to the staff through rewards and incentives. "An assignment to the 

Joint Staff or to a Unified Command headquarters should be part of an upward 

mobility pattern, rather than a diversion or end of a career, as has been the 

case so often in the past.,,15 General Jones wanted to lessen service 

parochialism by abolishing the current system of staffing issues which, he 

charged, allowed each service a veto at every stage of the routine staffing 

process. 

General Meyer made his proposal one month after General Jones. (See 

Chart 21.) The Meyer Plan first appeared in the April 1982 issue of the Armed 

Forces Journal International. Meyer accepted Jones' diagnosis of the situation 

without reservation, but he argued that Jones' recommendations did not go far 

enough. If enacted, they would not solve three major problems: the divided 

loyalty of the service chiefs inherent in dual hattingj the transition from 

peacetime to wartime, when strategic planning was likely to consume all of the 

Joint Chiefs' timej and the need to involve the commanders of the unified and 

specified commands more fully in the defense decision-making process. Meyer 

thought that Jones' proposal, requiring the chairman to consult with them as 

well as with the service chiefs before making his recommendations to the 

secretary of defense, was a step in the right direction, but it was only one 

step.l6 

The centerpiece of Meyer's proposal was "the creation of a body of fulltime military 

dual hatting. 

adv isers to the President and the Secretary of Defense" to end 

Meyer called this group the National Military Advisory Council, 

borrowing the name from the Symington Committee. It would consist of fourstar officers, "who would never return to their respective Services." General 

Meyer envisioned these officers as men with thirty to thirty-five years' 

experience and extensive knowledge of joint issues. He mentioned former 

unified commanders and service chiefs and vice chiefs of staff as the kind of 

men who might sit as members of the council. They would function much like a 

judicial organ, "its members sitting as an experienced body of military 

professionals to decide matters of joint military importance." The atmosphere 

of interservice rivalry and contention which surrounded issues in the Joint 

158 
Joint Staff 

Chain of Command 

----:>~ Channel of Command 

< ) Communication 

Chart 21 - General Meyer's Proposal, 1982 

President 

- Secretary of Defense Recommend 

Chairman of the Member Na

National Military ; ... 

Advisory Council - Adv

) 

'1 

-.v -.v 

Unified Commands Specified Commands 

IJ' If' 
Chiefs of Staff would disappear: 

The authenticity and credibility of their judgements 

would be based not only on decades of firsthand 

experience, but also by the continuous opportunity to 

review requirements of the unified commands and their 

reported readiness. The Councilors would be able to 

arrive at recommendations in a reflective atmosphere, 

focused on how best to flesh out the means to achieve 

the national objectives. Opinions would be freely given 

by all members and presented as majority and minority 

views. The recommendations would be timely and 

objective, and as the developers of the prime military 

input to the President and the Secretary of Defense, 

their views would be hard to dismiss)7 

General Meyer argued that the primary benefit flowing from his 

recommendation was that civilian leaders would actively seek the opinions of 

the members of the National Military Advisory Council rather than turning to 

civilian agencies as they had in the past. The president and the secretary of 

defense would receive several logical, well-developed alternative strategies 

that would clearly delineate areas of disagreement. Because the members of 

the council would not have service responsibilities, they would not be under 

pressure to "Iogroll.it The elimination of the built-in conflict of interest present 

in the Joint Chiefs of Staff would result in crisper military advice, advice that 

civilian leaders would find both usable and timely. In this manner, argued 

General Meyer, the National Military Advisory Council would reverse the long 

decline since World War II in the value placed on military advice in the highest 

circles of the United States government. His argument implied that the chief 

danger in the national security decision-making process was not that one 

service's views would exert undue influence, but that ad hoc groups of civilian 

advisers would dominate discussions of and decisions about even questions of 

exclusive military concern. 

General Meyer, like General Jones, sought to strengthen the power and 

influence of the chairman. In the Meyer Plan the chairman presided over the 

council just as he presided over the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, the 

chairman would no longer be simply the first among equals. He, rather than the 

council, would direct planning and operations. At the same time, General 

Meyer proposed to relieve the chairman of the legal obligation to speak for the 

160 
corporate body. The chairman would need only to give his own views. The 

other members of the council could present their own views to the civilian 

leaders if their opinions differed from those of the chairman. In this manner, to 

use General Meyer's expressive phrase, the chairman would gain "his own 

voice." At the same time, Meyer expected these changes would end "the 

obsession with unanimity" in the joint system and its concomitant vices of 

obscuring differences through the deliberate use of vague language and the 

complete avoidance of certain issues, such as roles and missions, considered 

"too divisive." Meyer saw the council as a forum for discovering differences 

and examining the reasons for those differences rather than deliberately 

cove ring them up as, he argued, the Joint Chiefs of Staff tended to do. To 

provide institutional support for such a process, he proposed to have the 

director of the Joint Staff report to the chairman rather than to the National 

Military Advisory Council as a whole. The c hairman would determine what 

issues the Joint Staff would study and would initiate staff actions. His 

priorities would, of course, reflect his intimate relationship with the council 

and his obligation to respond to its needs. 

The council, led by the c hairman, would be responsible for translating 

policy decisions of the president and the sec retary of defense "into strategic 

and c ross-Service programming direction to the Services." General Meyer 

a rgued that the council would provide the most benefit to the secretary of 

defense if it provided cost and risk analyses of various strategies. The council 

would recommend budget a llocations for the services a nd the distribution of 

forces among the major commands. 

To operate effectively, the council would have to maintain close relations 

with the service chiefs and the service staffs. They would provide the closely 

reasoned "service perspective" on the issues before it. General Meyer even 

envisioned the service chiefs meeting periodically as "a board of directors" to 

comment upon and critique proposals by the council before their submission to 

the secretary of defense. To keep council membe rs fuJly informed about the 

latest developments, the se rvice chiefs would sponsor visits by the council to 

the unified and specified commands. The chiefs would also update the council 

on doctrinal changes, new weapons, and force readiness in each of the services. 

"Indeed," declared General Meyer, contrasting his situation as a member of the 

161 
Joint Chiefs o[ Sta[[ to that of a member of the National Military Advisory 

Council, "it ought to be easier [or a four-star to learn about the joint system 

and study in depth developments taking place in other Services once he is freed 

from the daily pressures of a high-level Service assignment." 

General Meyer envisioned many benefits flowing from this new 

organization. It would take the service chiefs out of the wrangling involved in 

allocation decisions and permit them to focus full-time on service issues. It 

would streamline the way the United States planned for war by permitting 

decentralized war planning at the level of the unified and specified commands 

and provide an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with Washington U so 

essential for solid contingency planning." Finally, the council would aid 

Congress by providing the strategic context in which to make funding decisions. 

Too often the current system compelled Congress to consider individual 

weapons systems in isolation with little regard for wider issues. 

While General Meyer did not minimize the problems involved in instituting 

a radical reform of the joint system, he clearly believed that the benefits far 

outweighed the risks: 

Reform of the mechanism which provides military 

advice and counsel to our civilian leadership is long 

overdue. Tinkering with the mechanisms will not 

suffice. Only by addressing the issues which have been 

considered to be too tough to cope wi th in the past do we 

have a chance of instituting the reforms necessary to 

develop the smooth-running machinery required to see 

our nation through to the 21st Century with our freedoms 

and national values intact. 18 

The Meyer proposal, while different from the Collins Plan of 1945 in 

detail, had the same broad objective: to develop a sound mechanism for 

providing military advice from a joint perspective to the civilian leaders of the 

government. The chief institutional difference lay in General Meyer's support 

for a National Military Advisory Council. Although Meyer discussed how it 

would relate to other agenCies in the Department of Defense at some length, 

and as a consequence provided the most sophisticated argument in its favor of 

all those who had advocated such a body, his proposal contained some problems. 

He argued quite rightly that the council would have to operate very closely with 

the services. Because its members would no longer hold service positions, the 

162 
council would have to depend on the service staffs for information to keep 

current on a ll matters of concern . The quality of that information would affect 

the quality of the advice that the council provided to the secretary of defense 

and the president. High quality, disinterested, professional advice on issues of 

contention between the services provided the ultimate rationale for creating 

the council. Lacking independent sources for most of the information that the 

services provided (information from the unified a nd specified commands would 

be useful only in certain areas), the council would place its fate in the hands of 

agencies with vital interests at stake in the council's deliberations. The 

assumption behind General Meyer's proposal was that the service staffs would 

cooperate out of a sha red sense of national interest. Service staffs (and 

bureaucracies generally), however, have enjoyed a reputation historically of not 

discerning any differences between the higher common good a nd their own 

institutional survival and self-aggrandi zement. The connection between the 

council and the se rvice staffs was thus a critical nexus in the Meyer proposal 

where information might be shared, partially shared, or withheld altogether. 

Another potential da nger lay in the impact of the council on interservice 

rivalries. For a ll its imperfections, the joint system as it existed in 1982 

provided a collective responsibility for recommendations and the translation of 

policy decisions into military orders. Removing the service chiefs from the 

joint arena freed them to concentrate on service probJems--and service 

interests. A conve rge nce of many factors would be required to produce in the 

future the bitte r riva lries that have sometimes characterized service relations 

in the past. The point is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been one of the 

institutional arrangements that mitigated against and dampened that rivalry, 

and General Meyer did not provide any means to do the same in his proposed 

reform. 

Furthermore, in the existing joint system the chiefs we re not only 

advisers to the secretar y of defense but a lso advisers to their service 

secretaries. As such, the chiefs formed a vita l connecting link between the 

logistics chain and the operations chain. General Reeder--who had supported 

the c reation of a National Military Advisory Council in 1961--had pointed out 

the danger of having the operational and logistic chains widely separated during 

war. The Meyer proposal, by removing the chiefs from c lose contact with joint 

163 
affairs, increased the distance between the chains. 

The Jones and Meyer proposals sparked congressional interest and ignited 

a debate about Joint Chiefs of Staff reform between 1982 and 1984 that 

culminated in the passage of the first Joint Chiefs of Staff legislation in 

twenty-six years. Secretary Weinberger asked General John W. Vessey, Jr., 

General Jones' successor as chairman and previously the vice chief of staff of 

the Army, to work with the chiefs and make all the improvernents that they 

could in the joint system without changing the existing law. The secretary also 

asked General Vessey to act as the spokesman for the unified and specified 

commands, not only for operations but also in any boards that addressed 

resource allocations, in particular, the Defense Resources Board. (Since March 

1981 the chairman had served as a permanent rather than an ex officio member 

of the board.) General Vessey, in the hope of strengthening the joint 

perspective of all the chiefs, asked them to incorporate visits to joint exercises 

and joint commands when they traveled outside of Washington on service 

business. He and the chiefs agreed that they would rotate the acting 

chairmanship among the chiefs for three-month periods in order to provide 

continuity when the chairman was out of town. In addition, Vessey initiated 

several studies to improve the quality of the Joint Staff's work. Both President 

Reagan and Secretary Weinberger told Vessey that they expected "good military 

advice which is timely." They did not expect unanimity among the chiefs.l 9 

General Vessey convinced the chiefs, including General Meyer, to support 

limited reforms during the course of considering the Jones and Meyer proposals. 

The Army thus retreated from the position that General Meyer advocated in 

1982 and returned once more to a policy of gradualism. General John A. 

Wickham, Jr., Meyer's successor as chief of staff, continued this incremental 

approach. By 1984 the Army favored three changes to existing law: first, an 

amendment to the National Security Act that would place the chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff in the chain of commandj second, a provision removing the 

existing 400 officer limit on the size of the Joint Staffj and third, an increase in 

the current three-year limit on Joint Staff service to four years and permission 

to reassign an officer to the Joint Staff after two years instead of three.20 

The "Department of Defense Authorization Bill, Fiscal Year 1985" that 

became Ijlw on 19 October 1984 contained a rider dealing with the organization 

164 
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It provided for six changes. The act made the 

chairman the spokesman for the commanders of the unified and specified 

commands. Second, it allowed the chairman to establish the agenda for Joint 

Chiefs meetings. Third, it provided that the. chairman would select Joint Staff 

officers from among the most outstanding service officers. Fourth, the law 

removed the existing limitation that a director of the Joint Staff could only 

serve three years and not be reappointed to the Joint Staff in peacetime. Fifth, 

it required the secretary of defense to ensure that the military promotion, 

assignment, and retention policies of the services gave appropriate 

consideration to the performance of an officer as a member of the Joint Staff. 

Finally, it increased the current three-year limit on Joint Staff service to four 

years and allowed the reassignment of officers to the Joint Staff after two 

years instead of three. The Army favored this proposal alone among the six 

enacted into law. On the other five its official pOSition was nno comment." 

The effect of these changes was to increase the power of the chairman 

incrementally and to lessen the ties between the services and the Joint Staff in 

about the same degree.21 

The changes enacted in October 1984 did not exhaust congressional 

interest in the subject of Joint Chiefs of Staff reform, although whether the 

proponents of reform will make a major effort to obtain additional legislation 

this session remained problematic as of July 1985. The policy of the Reagan 

administration was to oppose any major legislative changes in the existing 

system.22 

165 
ENDNOTES TO CHAPTER X 

I. Scholarly analysis of the Reagan administration has hardly begun. Lou 

Cannon, Reagan (New York: Putnam, 1982), written by a journalist who 

has followed the president's career for years, provides a good starting 

point. 

2. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on 

Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals (or the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

Hearings ... , 97th Cong., 2d sess. 1982, pp. 76-7& (hereafter cited as 

Reorganization Proposals). The members of the study group in addition to 

General Kerwin were: General Walter V. McBride, USAF Retired, a 

former vice chief of staff, U.S. Air Forcej General Samuel Jaskilka, U.S. 

Marine Corps, Retired, a former assistant commandant, U.S. Marine 

Corps; Admiral Frederick H. Michaelis, U.S. Navy, Retired, a former 

chief of Naval Mate rialj Lt. Gen. Charles A. Corcoran, U.S. Army, 

Retired, a former chief of staff, U.S. Pacific Command; and Mr. William 

K. Brehm, a former assistant secretary of defense. 

3. Rpt, Kerwin et at. to Jones, Apr 82, "The Organization and Functions of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff," JCS Reform project file, CMH. 

4. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on 

Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals, p. 77. 

5. Rpt, Kerwin et al. to Jones, Apr 82, "The Organization and Functions of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff," JCS Reform projec t file, CMH. 

6. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82; Testimony, McBride, Michaelis, Jaskilka, 

Corcoran, Brehm before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 17 Jun 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on 

166 
Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals, pp. 76-78, 770. 

7. Four sources provide the basis of the discussion of Jones' views: David C. 

Jones, UWhy the Joint Chiefs of Staff Must Change," Armed Forces 

Journal International 119 (March 1982): 63-69j Testimony, Jones before 

Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, 21 Apr 

82, and Statement, Jones to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82j Bill, Revisions to Title 10, U.S. Code, 22 

Jul 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, 

Reorganization Proposals, pp. 46-105. 

8. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on 

Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals, p. 47. 

9. Statement, Jones to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services 

Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, Reorganization Proposals, p. 54. 

10. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on 

Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals, pp. 47-48j Jones, "Why the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff Must Change," pp. 65-68. 

11. Statement, Jones to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services 

Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, Reorganization Proposals, p. 55. 

12. Jones, "Why the Joint Chiefs of Staff Must Change," p. 68. 

13. Statement, Jones to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services 

Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, Reorganization Proposals, pp. 48-49. 

167 
14. Testimony, Jones before Investigations Subcommit tee, House Armed 

Services Committee, 21 Apr 82; Statement, Jones to Investigations 

Subcommittee , House Armed Services Committee, 21 Apr 82, U.S. 

Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Reorganization 

Proposals, pp. 49-50, 58-59; Jones, "Why the Joint Chiefs of Staff Must 

Change," pp. 68-69. 

15. Jones, "Why the Joint Chiefs of Staff Must Change," p. 69. See a lso 

Statement, Jones to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services 

Committee , 21 Apr 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, Reorganization Proposals, p. 59. 

16. The re are three major sou rces for Meye r's views: Edward C. Meyer, l1The 

JCS--How Much Reform Is Needed?" Armed Forces Journal International 

119 (Apr 1982): 82-90; Testimony, Meyer before Investiga t ions 

Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, 21 Apr 82; Statement, 

Meyer to House Armed Services Committee , 21 Apr 82, U. S. Congress, 

House, Committee on Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals, pp. 3-

42. Of these, the a rtic le is by far the most important. 

17. Meyer, liThe J CS--How Much Reform Is Needed?11 p.89. 

18. Ibid., p. 90. 

19. Statement, Vessey to Investigations Subcommittee, House Armed Services 

Committee, 28 Jul 82, U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Armed 

Services, Reo rganization Proposals, pp. 955-958; Memo, F.C. Carlucci for 

J. O. Ma rsh , 27 Mar 81, DOD Hlo Iiles. 

20. The debate over Joint Chiefs of Staff reform and the attendant 

congressional maneuvering is involved. The following a rticles provide a 

good introduction to the issue : David C. Martin and Michael A. Lerner, 

IIWh y the Genera ls Can't Command ,l1 Newsweek 101 04 Feb 83): 22-24; 

Deborah M. Kyle, I1H ouse OK's Defense Spending Bill: '83 Budget Not 

168 
Passed as Session Ends," Armed Forces Journal International 120 (Jan 83): 

10-11; Deborah M. Kyle, "JCS Reform Still a Hill Issue: Skelton Proposes 

Drastic Changes," Armed Forces Journal International 120 (May 83): 14; 

Deborah M. Kyle, "JCS Message to Congress: People Key to JCS Reform, 

Not Changes," Armed Forces Journal International 120 (July 83): 6; 

Deborah M. Kyle, "Senate Panel Launches Major Review of DoD 

Organization and Budget Process," Armed Forces Journal International 

121 (Aug 83): 5, 46; Deborah M. Kyle, "Stronger Chairman/JCS System 

Sought By House Investigations Subcommittee Bill," Armed Forces Journal 

International 121 (Sep 83): 14, 116-117; Deborah M. Kyle, "House 

Committee Strengthens JCS Chairman/System; DoD Protests," Armed 

Forces Journal International 121 (Nov 83): 8; Clinton H. Schemmer, 

"Legislative Gridlock Hamstrings FY85 Defense Appropriations BUI,t! 

Armed Forces Journal International 122 (Aug 84): 10; Clinton H. 

Schemmer, "House, Senate Pursuing Separate Initiatives on JCS Reform," 

Armed Forces Journal International 122 (Aug 84): II, 15i Clinton H. 

Schemmer, "House JCS Reform Stalled; Tower Promises Separate Senate 

Bill," Armed Forces Journal International 122 (Sep 84): 9-10. For the 

shift in the attitude toward reform on the JCS, see Int, John W. Vessey, 

Jr. by LuAnne K. Levens and Benjamin F. Schemmer, Armed Forces 

Journal International 121 (May 83): 45-46, 48, 51-53; and Testimony, John 

W. Vessey, Jr., Robert H. Barrow, James D. Watkins, Edward C. Meyer, 

and Charles A. Gabriel before the Investigations Subcommittee of the 

House Armed Services Committee, 14 Jun 83, U.S. Congress, House, 

Committee on Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals for the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, 98th Cong., 1st sess., 1983, pp. 60-86. See also DAMOSSP action officer files, JCS Reform project file, CMH. 

21. PL 98-525, 98th Cong., 19 Oct 811; Position Paper, "JCS Reorganization 

19811," DAMO-SSP action officer files, JCS Reform project fUe, CMH. 

22. As of July 1985 four different reform bills were pending in the House: 

H.R. 2165, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 22 Apr 85; H.R. 2265, 99th Cong., 1st 

sess., 29 Apr 85; H.R. 23111, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1 May 85; H.R. 2710, 

169 
99th Cong., 1st sess., 11 Jun 85. Michael Ganley, "000 Leaders Defend 

Command Structure, But Joint Commanders Ask for More Say," Armed 

Forces Journal International 122 (June 1985): 26, 28, 32, gives the 

administration's position. See also: Bri~fing Slides, presentation to John 

O. Marsh, Jr. and John A. Wickham, Jr., 1 Feb 85, "000 Reorganization 

Update," DAMO-SSP action officer files, JCS Reform project file, CMH. 

170 
CHAPTER XI 

Conclusion 

Four questions concerning the development of the Army's position on 

Joint Chiefs of Staff reform between 1942 and 1985 commend themselves for 

further reflection and analysis. The first concerns the initiation of reform: 

Why did the Army take the lead in proposing reforms at certain periods and not 

at others? A related issue concerns the Army's objectives: How did they 

change? The third issue, the budget, is a component of the previous question, 

but the topic is so complex that it deserves separate treatment: What 

continuities and discontinuities exist and why? Finally, the stated aim of the 

Army reformers during World War II--centralized command and control of the 

armed forces and its recurrence as a theme in Army positions on unification 

since 1945--merits extended discussion: Why the persistence? 

The impetus for reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has gone through a 

cyclical pattern and is now in its second cycle. The first cycle began with the 

military taking the lead in advocating reform between 194) and 1947. First, 

action officers such as Colonel Bessell and, later I senior soldiers such as 

General Marshall urged unification, although their views were supported, often 

eloquently, by the civilian leaders of the War Department after 1944. By late 

1947, civilians dominated the reform process, and they continued to do so until 

1982 when, with the Jones and Meyer proposals, the military once more took 

the initiative. Since 198) the pattern of civilian initiative and service reaction 

has reasserted itself. Several factors are involved. 

The action officers who first proposed Joint Chiefs of Staff reform had a 

very clear goal in mind--to win the war more quickly. By late 194) the goal had 

shifted to planning for the postwar defense establishment. Once Joint Chiefs of 

Staff reform moved from the cloiste r of staff discussions into the public arena 

of the congressional committee hearing room and the front page, it proved 

terribly divisive . The Army found itself accused of making a grab for power 

and advocating a "man on horseback" during the period 1945 to 1947. In these 

circumstances it made a great deal of sense for military officers to leave 

future initiatives to civilians, particularly if the civilians intended to advocate 

reforms that the Army supported. Many of the civilians who figured 

prominently in the debates over unification through J960--such as Lovett and 
Symington--had served in the War Department during or immediately afte r 

World War ll. Their shared experience gave them some shared assumptions, in 

many cases similar to those held by Army officers. Informal contacts and 

exchanges of information between some civilian reformers and the senior 

soldiers in the Department of the Army also helped orchestrate reform efforts. 

Four other factors were also operating to keep Army leaders reacting to 

reform proposals rather than introducing them: problems internal to the Army, 

interservice rivalry, the calculation by Army leaders of the receptiveness of 

Congress and the president to reform, and the international situation. These 

e lements were probably present to some degree in all the instances since 1947 

when the initiative for reform came from civilians, but sometimes one element 

predominated. In 1949 General Bradley was preoccupied with trying to rebuild 

the Army as an effective fighting force, although the perceptions of political 

realities also greatly influenced his conduct and that of the Secretary of the 

Army on this issue. Political realities and the possible divisive consequences of 

an interservice fight over Joint Chiefs of Staff organization during the Korean 

War affected General Collins' proposals in 1953. General Taylor feared the 

possibility of the Air Force using the creation of the post of armed forces chief 

of staff to consolidate a position of dominance within the Department of 

Defense and with it the doctrine of massive retaliation. General Decker 

entered office in 1960 with a full agenda of internal reforms he hoped to 

achieve. By 1970 the idea that the Army reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff 

reform proposals had became traditional, although by that date the civjJians 

who had dominated the policy-initiating process had largely disappeared from 

the political scene. The continuing war in Vietnam and the need for 

interservice cooperation probably played a role in the Army's position in 1970, 

although the second assertion must remain speculative in the absence of most 

of the records. What evidence remains pertaining to the 1978 Army position 

provides no insight into motivation. It is clear, however, that the Army 

required a chief of staff like Gene ral Meyer who regarded Joint Chie fs of Staff 

reform as uniquely important to break the mold and begin the cycle over again. 

As the sources of the reform impulse shifted so did the Army's agenda for 

reform. How its goals shifted is the second major subject requiring 

examination. The Collins Plan of 1945 was the product of ove r two years of 

172 
debate within the War Department and represented the General Staff's efforts 

to institutionalize the lessons learned from World War II about command and 

control at the highest levels, that is, the relations between the president, the 

service sec retaries, the service chiefs and their staffs, and the forces in the 

fie ld. Ove r the next thirteen years the War Department and its successor 

agency , the Department of the Arm y, achieved some goals completely, some 

pa rti ally, and some not at all. 

Perhaps their c rowning achievement lay in c reating a strong military 

department under a strong civilian sec re tary. It was a success achieved in 

stages. The first step lay in the c reation in 1947 of a single umbre lla entity, 

the Nationa l Military Establishment, to encompass the three services. It was 

headed by a civ ilian secre ta ry of cabinet rank, a lthough his powe r was much 

less than the Army desired. Two years later the Nationa l Military 

Establishment became the Department of Defense, a cabinet-leve l department 

much like the one that Collins had a rgued for in 1945. The civ ilia n secretary 

received substantial enhancements to his power in 1949, 1953, a nd 1958. In the 

end the Army obtained the strong sec retary and , with the addition of a deputy 

and assistant secretaries, the strong secretariat that Collins had also 

advocated. 

The Army was less successful in other a reas. In 1945 Collins proposed the 

c re a tion of a chief of staff of the armed forces. The Arm y neve r obta ined such 

a degree of unity of command , settling in 1949 for a chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff. Subsequent legislation , however, inc reased his authority. 

Army proposals to c reate joint agencies in intelligence and logistiCS in place of 

se rvice agencies fared the worst. In most instances such joint agencies, when 

c reated , became simply another layer of bureauc racy while the service agencies 

remained. 

As the Army a ttained some of its goals, or expe rience caused it to 

reevaluate a position, its priorities shifted. In the fa ll of 1945 General Marshall 

discerned a unique opportunity for major reform. The war had ended, but the 

president, Congress, and the publi c a t large remained sensitive to the 

importance of military issues. The effort fell fa r short of achieving what 

Ma rshall advocated, and in 1949 a nd J 9.53 Gene ra ls Bradley a nd Collins sought 

the politically possible . In 1957 the Arm y adopted a more visionary stance , 

173 
while both strains, the tendency to accommodate the needs of the moment and 

the tendency to pursue long term goals, were present in the internal discussion 

of the Symington Committee report in 1960. In 1970, and particularly in 1978, 

the Army reverted to a pronounced incrementalism. 

The change between 1960 and the 1970s is most striking, but very difficult 

to evaluate because of the absence of supporting staff papers for 1970 and 

1978. The Army had advocated minimal change before the 1970s, most notably 

in J 953, but as the rationale for the course of action adopted in 1953 made 

clear, this was not the optimal solution in the view of the Army leaders, only 

the most feasible one under the circumstances. Similar considerations appear 

to have motivated the Army in 1970. The war and the conviction that the kind 

of centralization proposed by the Blue Ribbon Panel was inappropriate--rather 

than the idea of centralization itself--accounted for the Army's position. Lack 

of evidence makes it impossible to determine whether the public position taken 

by the Army leaders in 1978 similarly represented what they thought feasible or 

was what they actually desired. 

General Meyer's proposals in 1982 represented a reversion to the Marshall 

tradition, but the step-by-step approach adopted in 1983 and 1984 had 

impeccable antecedents too in Bradley and Collins. The Army thus pursued 

changing objectives between 1943 and 1985 using at least two different 

strategies, one emphasizing the rapid attainment of all objectives, the other 

focusing on intermediate steps. 

The third major area concerns the Army's position on the budget. 

Included in all the discussions on Joint Chiefs of Staff reform was some 

calculation about the division of funds between the services. Budget 

considerations, while always important, were not always the most important 

factor in determining the Army's stance. Thus, General Marshall in 1945 held a 

strong commitment to the budget procedure that Collins advocated. But in 

1947, in order to obtain a single secretary of defense, the Army was willing to 

sacrifice the procedure. 

The Army's positions on budget reform have passed through the same 

cyclical pattern as its views on the larger question of Joint Chiefs reform, 

although there has been much variation in detail. Between 1945 and 1960 Army 

positions were united by two themes: the need for objective (actors rather than 

174 
political influence to shape the budget and an emphasis on the joint nature of 

the budget process--the idea that service budgets had to be considered 

together, not in isolation. Marshall in 1945, Bradley in 1949, and Collins in 1953 

emphasized a joint process that, in the end, produced service budgets. General 

Taylor in 1957, by way of contrast, called for a functional budget--itself a joint 

document. 

During Secretary of Defense McNamara's incumbency, functional budgets 

became synonymous with the pervasive civilian control that extended into areas 

traditionally considered inside the sphere of professional military competence . 

Thus the Army associated functional budgets with the sense of impotence that 

afflicted all three services during the 1960s. It is hardly surprising that when 

the budget issue surfaced again in 1978 the Army supported the service budget 

approach . General Meyer's proposal, while not confronting the question 

directly, returned to the earlier Army stance by calling for an increase in the 

size of the Joint Staff to provide programming and budgeting support for the 

chairman and the National Military Advisory Council. The recent Georgetown 

University study has also called for a joint approach to the budget. As yet , the 

Army has not taken a position on the study. 

The idea undergirding General Marshall's thought on the budget process--

that all components of the military establishment should have their budget 

requests reviewed by the same authorities at the same time -appeared almost 

revolutionary in its implication to his critics in 1945. By 1985 the notion was so 

well accepted as to be a cliche. In the 1970s the Army showed some 

repugnance for its other major bUdget proposal, the functional budget. While 

the Army often failed to secure the specific budget procedures that it 

advoca ted, it enjoyed remarkable success in achieving the bUdget philosophy it 

espoused. The sober second thoughts of the 1970s indicated that some Army 

leaders thought that their predecessors had been altogether too successful. 

The most dominant and consistent Army pOSition on Joint Chiefs of Staff 

reform has been support for centra li zed command and control. Again. the 

degree of centralization the Army advocated has varied greatly, from a chief of 

staff of the armed forces in 1945 to placing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff in the chain of command in 1984. Still, the posi tions demonstrated a 

remarkable degree of consistency despite the fact that many officers perceived 

175 
T 

that unified command and control might have a negative impact on the Army's 

interests as a service. This was particularly true in 1945 and again in 1957. 

Simply put, General Marshall and his successors have placed a higher value on 

the national interest in military efficiency than a narrow service self-interest. 

Altruism might explain the motivation of a single remarkable man, and 

General Marshall was certainly remarkable, but it hardly accounts for the 

advocacy of centralized command and control by Army leaders through 1961 

and, in a less striking fashion, until today. The solution to this conundrum lies 

in the shared ideas of the men who rose to high command during World War II 

and continued to dominate the Army until 1962. Perhaps the single most salient 

feature of their thought was the need to concentrate combat power to obtain 

victory. In their view, success in battle came not through the action of a single 

arm acting in isolation but through the coordinated interaction of all arms. 

The combined arms movement has an ancient heritage in the United 

States Army and can be traced back at least as far as the combined arms 

brigades of the Continental Army. Its modern phase began in 1881 with the 

establishment of the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort leavenworth, Kansas, 

the forerunner of the modern Command and General Staff College . By the 

early twentieth century the concept was a vital part of the intellectual baggage 

of Army officers, because it underlay the Army's doctrinal manuals. World 

War I validated the concept, and World War II expanded it even further. 

Victory in World War II demanded more than simply the concentration of 

the power of infantry, artillery, and armor on the battle front. It required the 

intimate cooperation of all three services. The Navy needed to win command 

of the seas, to launch and supply an invasion force against a hostile shore, and 

to maintain a supply line across thousands of miles of ocean. The proto-service, 

the Army Air Forces, needed to attack the enemy's sources of supply, to 

interdict his lines of communication, and to provide close air support using 

tactical air or, on occasion, heavy strategic bombers. The Army, of course, 

needed to do what its combined arms doctrine dictated: coordinate the actions 

of all three arms on the battle line. The Army entered World War II with 

combined arms doctrine and emerged with a joint service concept. (The joint 

doctrine the Army sought has proven elusive.) It was this vision that influenced 

176 
the Army's position on Joint Chiefs of Staff reform until 1961 and continues to 

do so today in attenuated form. 

The attenuation re sults in large part because of the shared experiences of 

another generation of Army officers--the war in Vietnam. Vietnam was, in the 

jargon of the time, a "low intensity conflict." Tactical victory on the 

battlefield did not require the same degree of massed combat power needed in 

World War II. A regular North Vietnamese infantry division, for all its 

sometimes excellent attributes, was not to be compared as an adversary with a 

German infantry division, let alone a panzer division. Moreover, armed and 

transport helicopters gave the Army forces in Vietnam an organic mobility and 

close air support capability that the World War II triangular divisions simply 

lacked. Greater self-sufficiency in combat and a weaker adversary influenced 

the context of Joint Chiefs of Staff reform, causing a greater willingness during 

the 1970s to approach the issue (rom the perspective o( narrow service selfinterest. Vietnam greatly increased the Army's parochialism, but the effect 

was to mute , but not destroy, the older strain, as both the Meyer proposal in 

1982 and the 1984 Army positions demonstrate. Because of its own expe riences 

in the past, the Army still places high value on unity of command. 

In some ways the situation facing the U.S. military establishment today is 

analogous to the position that the U.S. Army faced in the nineteenth centu ry 

and the first years of the twentieth. Then a collection of technical bureaus, 

often isolated from and uninterested in the realities that faced the troops in the 

field, dominated the War Department. The Commanding General of the Army, 

the representative of the combat arms in Washington, occupied a position that 

possessed a resounding title but no real power. Today the services dominate the 

joint decision-making process. Until very recently the commanders of the 

unified commands have had little voice in those decisions about force structure 

and resource allocation that determine whether their commands can accomplish 

their missions. The nineteenth century dilemma, at least, provided the impetus 

for the U.S. Army's most important contribution to the development of military 

staffs. In J903 Secretary of War Elihu Root created the War Department 

General Staff. In advancing the cause of Joint Chiefs of Staff reform since 

1943, the Army has but followed the dictates of its own history. 

177 
1 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The manuscript sources listed below in the National Archives and the 

Records Center portion of the Washington National Records Center at Suitland, 

Maryland were absolutely essential to determine the Army's position on various 

Joint Chiefs of Staff reform proposals. Generally, the earliest records are the 

most complete in the period co .... ered by this study . Certain materials are most 

accessible in the JCS Reform project file collected by the authors. Currently 

located at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the file will be retired in 

due course to the National Archives. Researchers wishing to use these 

materials should call the Historical Records Branch, U.S. Army Center of 

Military History to determine their exact location. 

Primary Sources 

1. Manuscripts and Official Records 

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RG 165, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs. 

Chief of Staff, Army . Decimal File, 1942-1943. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, 1944-1945. 

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Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, 1947. 

RG 218, Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

Combined Chiefs of Staff. Decimal File, 1942-1945. 

Central Decimal File, 1948-1950. 

Central Decimal File, 1951-1953. 

Central Decimal File, 1958. 

RG 319, Records of the Army Staff. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, 1948. 

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Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, 1950. 

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Classified,1955-1962. 

Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations. General 

Correspondence, Security Classified, 1958. 

Deputy Chief of Staff for Milltary Operations. General 

Correspondence, Security Classified, 1959. 

Operations Division, Strategy and Policy Group. ABC Decimal 

File, 1942-1948. 

RG 335, Office of the Secretary of Army . 

General Correspondence, Security Classified, Jan 1957-Dec 1960. 

178 
b. Records Center, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, 

Maryland. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, Undated. 

Accession No. 319-75-082. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, Index, 1970. 

Accession No. 319-73-082. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Decimal File, 1970. 

Accession No. 319-73-081. 

Chief of ~taff, Army. File, 1977. 

Accession No. 319-80-0083. 

Chief of Staff, Army. File, 1978. 

Accession No. 319-81-0082. 

Chief of Staff, Army. File, 1978. 

Accession No. 319-81-0089. 

Chief of Staff, Army. File, Undated. 

Accession No. 319-81-0083. 

Chief of Staff, Army. Organization Planning File, 1973-1978. 

Accession No. 319- 81-0090. 

Chief of Staff, Army, Vice Chief of Staff, Army, Secretary of the 

General Staff, and Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, Army. Official 

Files, 1968-1969. 

Accession No. 319-72A-3489. 

Chief of Staff, Arm y, Vice Chief of Staff, Army, Secretary of the 

General Staff, and Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, Army. Officia l 

Files, 1969. 

Accession No. 319-72A-3488. 

c. U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C. 

JCS Reform project file. 

William C. Westmoreland Papers. 

d. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. 

Harold K. Johnson Papers. 

Bruce Palmer, Jr. Papers. 

2. Interviews 

Barrett, Archie . Interviewed by Major David R. Campbell and Edgar F. Raines, 

Jr., 25 Mar 85. JCS Reform project file, U.S. Army Center of Military 

179 
T 

History, Washington, D.C. 

Decker, General George H. Interviewed by Lt. Col. Dan H. Ra lls, 3 Nov 72, 9 

Nov 72, 8 Dec 72, 18 Dec 72. Senior Oncers Debriefing Program , U.S. 

Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsy lvania. 

Eddleman, General Clyde D. Interviewed by Lt. Col . L. G. Smith and Lt. Col. 

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Program, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, 

Pennsylvania. 

Hamleth, General Barksdale . Interviewed by Lt. Col. Paul Walke r and Col. Jack 

Ridgeway , 3 Nov 72. Senior Officers Debriefing Program, U.S. Army 

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McNamara, Robert S. Interviewed by Edga r F. Raines, Jr., 5 Dec 85. JCS 

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Washington, D.C. 

Palmer, General Bruce, Jr. Interviewed by Edgar F. Raines, Jr., 20 Sep 85. 

JCS Reform project file, U.S. Army Center of Military History, 

Washington, D.C. 

Scales, Lt. Col. Robert. Inte rviewed by Edgar F. Raines, Jr., 23 Apr 85. JCS 

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Washington, D.C. 

Vessey, General John W., Jr. Interviewed by LuAnne K. Levens and Benjamin F. 

Schemmer. Armed Forces Journal International 121 (May 83): 45-46, 

48,51-53. 

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Reform Calls Mount." 

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Journal International 119 (Mar 1982): 63-69. 

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