Evening star., 1959-11-22
General Staff Plan
To Be Pushed on Hill

sentation on the various teams
and committees, was scrapped.
Additionally, the staff was
brought into the military opera
tions business for the first time.
1t had previously been restricted
to strategic and logistic planning
for the unified combat commands.
Why wasn't this enough? Why
must the Joint Chiefs system be
discarded? Why should America
import an alien organization
which, according to Senator Hum
phrey, would lead to "Prussian-
ization" of our armed forces?
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
report Of 1858 gives the advocates
reply:
The jos operates too often as a
committee of partisan adverSaries
engaged in promoting individual
service strategic plans and COM
promising differences.
Joint Chiefs of Staff members
don't have enough time to think
about broad strategic plans and
problems. They are overworked.
The result is that our military
plans tend to be "a patchwork of
compromise between conflicting
strategic concepts or simply the
unco-ordinated war plans of the
several services"
More economy and efficiency
and an end to duplication and in
terService rivalry are also held out
as results to be expected.
Position of Opponents
Opponents of the single chief
idea assert that every move toward
further concentration of power
since the Defense Department was
set up in 1947 has actually meant
less efficiency and economy.
They point to the small staff
of about 125 persons assigned to
James v. Forrestal, the first Sec
retary of Defense, and compare it
with the 5000, including the
many assistant secretaries and
supergrade clerks, now serving
under Secretary Neil McElroy.
The Office of the Secretary of
Defense budget this year is $1.2
billion and so many people are
crowding the Pentagon that plans
are going ahead to build a second,
albeit little" Pentagon.
The burgeoning is not only on
the civilian side. Last years law
allowed an expansion of the Joint
Staff from 210 to 400 officers. In
addition to the staff the jos has
a secretariat. Taking the two
units together. these are the "be-
fore" and after" figures:
Officers, 236 and 434: enlisted
men, SO and 1854; civilians, l78
and 326. Totaled, they are 483
and 9l4.
While more and more men are
fed into the overhead staff organ
izations, the number in combat
units has been steadily cut down.
Single chief opponents ask: How
much more of this kind of "econ-
omy and efficiency" can the Ma
tion's military stand?
On the matter of interservice
pickering. supporters of the jos
system observe wryly: THE Su-
preme Court deliberates, the SEN
ate debates, but the armed forces
bicker."
Makes the Job Eosier
1t is probably true that the
short time officeholders who
come in to serve as Defense Sec
retary, tend to like unanimously
approved solutions and recon-
mendations to come to their desks.
This saves them from agonizing
decision-making. 1t is perhaps
understandable that, given their
brief exposure to the Pentagon.
they find decision agoniZ-
ing.
Mr.. McElroy, who quits the
Pentagon after a shade over two
years service next month, told re-
porters last week that he wished
the individual chiefs of staff could
take as broad a view of things as
their chairman. Presumably if
they did they would all come up
with the same solution and there
would be no controversies. But
would this guarantee the best or
correct recommendations?
Opponents of concentrated au-
thority say this McElroy reaction
is a perfect illustration of how
short-time civilian head of the
Pentagon, even though he has vast
powers under the law, would be
dominated by a single military
chief who might be dedicated to a
single, rigid strategic concept.