When Reorganization Plan 6 for the Department of Defense was presented last year, it was received with diametrically opposed opinion by men eminently qualified to speak, particularly concerning the controversial proposals relating to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff. To Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, Chairman of the Committee on Defense Department Organization, these proposals were “purely administrative procedures and not any fundamental change in the structure.”* Quite to the contrary, Mr. Ferdinand Eberstadt, Chairman of the first Hoover Commission Task Force on the National Security Organization, felt “that their trend is clearly toward the creation of a supreme military chief of staff with a general staff.”†
These outstanding students of Defense Department administration were joined by many others in taking a strong stand on the evaluation of this portion of Plan 6. Other proposals of the Plan also met with a mixed reaction. What caused such a diversity of view? What were the origins of Plan 6? What are its provisions and intent? How has it worked out in the year in which it has been in effect? And what did this reorganization really do insofar as the basic principles of organization embodied in our Defense Department are concerned?
The answers to these questions spell out the details of the latest or third phase in the metamorphosis of our defense establishment which began with the National Security Act of 1947. It is almost certainly not the last. It has been, however, a significant stage. There have been marked changes in the Department of Defense in the last year. No doubt others, outgrowths of the Plan and widespread in their effects, are in store. For the answers to these salient questions let us turn first to the proposals of Plan 6 and the President’s message which accompanied it when it was submitted to Congress.
The Proposals of Reorganization Plan 6
Practically all of the specific provisions of Plan 6 dealt with the immediate Office of the Secretary of Defense. This constitutes the .primary staff of the Secretary, designed to assist him in carrying out his great responsibilities. It comprises all those agencies and positions within the Department of Defense except the military or Service departments.
The first proposal of Plan 6 was the transfer of all functions of the Munitions Board, the Research and Development Board, the Defense Supply Management Agency, and the Office of Director of Installations to the Secretary of Defense. It then provided for the abolition of these boards and agencies together with the offices of Chairman or Director of each. The two boards, with their chairmanships, had been established by the National Security Act of 1947. The Defense Supply Management Agency and the Office of Director of Installations had been created by legislation of the 82nd Congress (1951- 52), the former to “develop a single catalog system and related supply standardization program,” and the latter to “maintain direct surveillance over the planning and construction by the military departments of all public works projects.”
In the second change proposed in the Plan, the President requested the addition to the staff of the Secretary of six Assistant Secretaries of Defense, and also a General Counsel, who was to rank as an Assistant Secretary. In order to provide for an efficient distribution of his many functions within his staff thus enlarged to nine Assistant Secretaries and the General Counsel, plus the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Plan also proposed that the Secretary be permitted to authorize the performance of any of his assigned functions by “any other officer, or by any agency or employee, of the Department of Defense.”
The Plan, in its third and last proposal involving modification of existing legislation, advanced a series of very controversial changes in connection with the Joint Staff including:
1. That the selection and tenure of the Director of the Joint Staff, formerly determined solely by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should now be subject to the approval of the Secretary of Defense.
2. That the selection of members of the Joint Staff by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and their tenure, shall be subject to the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
3. That the functions of managing the Joint Staff and Director, formerly belonging to the Joint Chiefs collectively, should be transferred to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While the Plan itself contained other provisions, these were the principal changes included. There were, however, two additional changes of significance for the Department of Defense included in the President’s message accompanying the Plan. These were changes by “administrative action,” since existing legislation did not preclude their adoption by the Department of Defense simply by administrative order of the Secretary acting under Presidential direction. Although these changes did not require the approval of Congress, they were included in the President’s message out of a desire to prevent Congressional suspicion by acquainting Congress with their exact nature and the reasons for them.
The first of these administrative changes involved a revision of that part of the Key West Agreement concerning unified commands. The Key West Agreement had provided that the Joint Chiefs would designate directly one of their number as an executive agent for each unified command. In his message the President stated that, with the revision of the Key West Agreement, the Secretary of Defense would designate, in each case, a military department to serve as executive agent for a unified command. However, in “the strategic direction and operational control of forces and for the conduct of combat operations, the military chief of the designated military department will be authorized by the Secretary of Defense to receive and transmit reports and orders and to act for that department in its executive agency capacity.”
The second administrative change provided that the Secretary of Defense would direct the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to bring about the fullest cooperation between the subcommittees of the Joint Chiefs, the Joint Staff, and the other parts of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the early stages of staff work on any major problem. Also stated as a future policy was a decision to include civilian scientists and engineers within the “substructure of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
This, then, was the substance of Plan 6. The reaction of governmental personnel and the general public was mixed, as it had been to previous proposals for defense reorganization. What follows is an attempt to state as clearly and objectively as possible the cases advanced by the supporters and opponents of the Plan.
The Case for Reorganization Plan 6
In his message to Congress on the Plan, President Eisenhower enumerated three objectives to be achieved:
1. To clarify lines of authority so as to strengthen civilian responsibility.
2. Effectiveness with economy.
3. To improve our machinery for strategic planning.
In the first major proposal of the Plan, the abolition of the Research and Development Hoard and the Munitions Board, the Defense Supply Management Agency, and the Office of the Director of Installations together with the posts of their Chairmen and Directors, the Administration, according to the President’s message, was seeking to provide sound management through flexible machinery at the top for a Defense Department based upon a decentralization of operations. Unwieldy boards performing functions rigidly assigned by law were “organizational arrangements too slow and too clumsy to serve as effective management tools for the Secretary.” Nor were other staff agencies in the Office of the Secretary possessing functions prescribed by law consistent with the requirements of the Secretary that he be able “to adjust his staff arrangements to new problems as they arise, or provide for flexible cooperation among the several staff agencies.”
By proposing the transfer to the Secretary of the functions of the agencies to be abolished, and proposing concurrently that he be empowered to distribute these and his other assigned functions at will, within the Department, the Administration contended it was eliminating the obstacles to good management. It was vesting functions for which the Secretary was responsible in him rather than subordinates. He could thereby distribute them in such a way as to ensure their efficient performance. Hence the Plan in this proposal was fostering “effectiveness with economy.”
But this, the President’s second objective of the Reorganization Plan, was to be accomplished by other means also. The Plan’s proposal that six additional Assistant Secretaries of Defense and a General Counsel be allotted the Department was equally important in the attainment of this aim. A major purpose of the Plan was “to provide the Secretary of Defense with a more efficient staff organization.” The abolition of boards and other agencies with functions assigned by law and the transfer of these functions to the Secretary logically required replacement staff of a more flexible type, directly accountable to the Secretary, to which he could delegate, as he chose, portions of his tremendous responsibilities. The rank of Assistant Secretary for each of the seven new staff positions created was necessary, according to the President’s message, “in order to make it possible to bring executives of the highest type to the Government service and to permit them to operate effectively and with less personnel than at present.”
The Administration was explicit on the role the Assistant Secretaries were to play in the Department of Defense. They “will be staff advisers to the Secretary of Defense. They will not sit in the chain of command. That chain runs directly from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretaries of the military departments without any intervening obstacles,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Roger M. Keys while testifying on the Plan before the House Committee on Government Operations. They will, said the President in his message accompanying the Plan, “provide the Secretary with a continuing review of the programs of the Defense Establishment and help him institute major improvements in their execution. They will be charged with establishing systems, within their assigned fields, for obtaining complete and accurate information to support recommendations to the Secretary . . . [and] will make frequent inspection visits to our far-flung installations and check for the Secretary the effectiveness and efficiency of operations in their assigned fields.”
The Administration felt constrained to be precise on the nature of the job of the Assistant Secretaries, because, as the President stated, it proposed to administer the Department of Defense “by decentralization of operations, under flexible and effective direction and control from the center.” Mr. Kyes described the Secretaries of the military departments as “the chief operating officers, the operating vice presidents, so to speak.” The Assistant Secretaries of Defense were to be the eyes and ears of the Secretary, his advisers, and were not to be assigned functional areas over which they would have operating authority and responsibility.
Besides reestablishing and maintaining the prestige and authority of the Service Secretaries, another purpose of the Administration, in running the Department, was to make extensive use of the facilities of the military departments to keep down the size of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary’s staff would burgeon if it were to become extensively engaged in operations, and the Service Secretaries would become comparative nonentities in a vast operations hierarchy. All this would come to pass if it were not made very clear, the Administration realized, that there was not to be a vast shift of operational authority from the Service Secretaries to the staff of the Secretary of Defense.
The third objective of the Plan, according to the President’s message—that is, the improvement of the machinery for strategic planning—was to be accomplished both by provisions of the Plan proper, and by administrative actions. The latter, included in the President’s message, provided for: (1) greater participation in the planning process— within the Joint Chiefs of Staff substructure— of the remainder of the Office of the Secretary, and (2) inclusion of civilian scientists and engineers in strategic planning.
Concerning the changes in the management of the Joint Staff included in the Plan, the President stated the Administration’s aim was “to improve the organization and procedures, of the supporting staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so that the Chiefs, acting as a body, will be better able to perform their roles as strategic planners and military advisers.” Elaborating upon this, Deputy Secretary Kyes stated:
They [referring specifically to those sections of the Plan giving the Joint Chiefs Chairman added powers with respect to the Joint Staff] do permit the Chairman to manage the work of the Joint Staff, thus permitting him to present to the Joint Chiefs of Staff the agenda items they have decided to study in a workmanlike and proper manner, and to relieve the Joint Chiefs of Staff of administrative detail, and they permit him final approval of nominations to the Joint Staff and the right to remove those who fail to work effectively in this- assignment or who are considered inappropriate for such duties. Only these results were sought by the Rockefeller committee and by the Secretary of Defense. Only these things are intended by the President, [and] in view of the numerous safeguards so painstakingly written into the law in 1947 and again in 1949 as regards the Joint Staff, the Joint Chiefs, and the Chairman thereof, only these results can eventuate from the plan.
The “numerous safeguards,” later enumerated by Mr. Kyes, included: denial of power of command and of vote to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, civilian supremacy over him, joint responsibility of all four Joint Chiefs for the statutory functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, limitation of the Joint Staff to 210 members, prohibitions on change of combatant functions of the Armed Services, and provision that the three military departments be separately administered.
In his testimony before the House Committee on Government Operations on the Joint Staff portions of the Plan, Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, whose Committee on Defense Department Organization, after hearings and discussion, drafted a report on which Plan 6 and the President’s message were based, pointed out the importance of having the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs manage the Joint Staff so that the flow of work of the staff to the Joint Chiefs could be “facilitated.” He set forth the belief that the Chairman would greatly reduce the workload of the Joint Chiefs, for he could decide which of the many problems brought in should or should not be considered. He could sort out the important from the unimportant—something which no one then possessed the power to do. Of course, as Mr. Kyes explained earlier, this would not act as a bar to the introduction of any subject by one of the Joint Chiefs, since the Chairman’s power to fix the agenda did not extend to banning an item from it, if proposed by a Joint Chief.
Finally, the first objective of the Plan according of the President—clarification of the lines of authority within the Department of Defense so as to strengthen civilian responsibility—was to be achieved by an administrative action, not included in the text of the Plan. As stated earlier in this article, this action, in substance, would have the Secretary of Defense appoint one of the military departments as executive agent for a unified command. “This arrangement,” said the President, “will fix responsibility along a definite channel of accountable civilian officials as intended by the National Security Act.” No longer would the Service Secretaries be omitted from the channel of authority for the control of the unified commands. “Through it [this administrative change],” said Deputy Secretary Kyes, “we expect to accomplish a clarification of command responsibility and more clearly to emphasize the fact that our Joint Chiefs of Staff are going to be what the Congress intended them to be, our principal strategic planning body.”
Lest this channel of authority prove too long for prompt action, however, the Administration provided for an abbreviation of it. In times of emergency, the Secretary of Defense would authorize the military chief of the designated military department to act for him, “in the name and by the direction of the Secretary of Defense,” in the words of the President.
The Case Against Reorganization Plan 6
The principal forum for the opponents of Reorganization Plan 6 was Representative Clare E. Hoffman’s House Committee on Government Operations. Hearings on the Plan were held by the Committee in June of 1953. Simultaneously with the Plan, the President’s message supporting it, and the Rockefeller Committee report, which together provided for the reorganization, the Committee considered a proposed House Joint Resolution approving all of the Plan except the two provisions relative to the expanded authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the Joint Staff. Though some objections were raised to other portions of the reorganization, these two provisions were to be the focal point of the attack of the Plan’s opponents. Let us turn once more to the provisions of the Plan and the administrative actions proposed in connection with it in order to determine the substance of the case against its adoption.
The staff arrangements provided by the Plan as replacements for the Boards and agencies to be abolished by an early provision of it drew more adverse comment than their abolition. Mr. Hanson Baldwin, military analyst for the New York Times, commented in an article that a total of ten Assistant Secretaries of Defense would make of the Office of the Secretary “something of a Hydra-headed monster” with a decided tendency to proliferate as each of the Assistant Secretaries amassed a staff. Mr. Ferdinand Eberstadt, Chairman of the Hoover Commission Task Force on National Security Organization, former government official, and longtime student of Department of Defense organization, stated before the Committee that he held similar views on this aspect of the Plan. He could see little guarantee of greater economy in the revamped staff of ten Assistants and the possibility of considerable expansion of the Secretary’s Office. Agreeing that it “would certainly afford greater flexibility,” he qualified this with the statement that, “whether this is used to advantage or the reverse is a matter of men rather than systems.”
Mr. E. S. Duffield, former official in the Navy Department, writing in the September-October 1953 Harvard Business Review on “Organizing for Defense,” expressed considerable doubt as to the ability of the vertical line in the Department of Defense (the command line from Defense Secretary to Service Secretaries—see accompanying organizational chart) to sustain the “crushing load of administrative questions flowing up and administration orders flowing down.” As he saw it, the manner in which the ten Assistant Secretaries were to function, according to the President’s message and the statement of Mr. Kyes (previously quoted), would make for an impossible burden on this single channel of orders and directives between the Secretary and his operating heads, the Service Secretaries. Mr. Baldwin was expressing the same idea in different form when he pointed out the similarity, as far as duties were concerned, of the Assistant Secretaries and the Army’s General Staff. He went on to state that he felt that the ten Assistant Secretaries were likely to intervene in administration and operation as staff officers are wont to do.
Mr. Frank A. Hecht, President of the Navy League of the United States, carried this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. In a letter to Chairman Hoffman he said:
In order to get things accomplished expeditiously and in the interests of efficiency or economy, an Assistant Secretary of Defense will be prone to issue directives in the name of the Secretary of Defense that invade the areas of responsibility and authority of the Service Secretaries.
The solution, as he viewed the situation, was the restoration of Cabinet rank to the three Service Secretaries lest the growing power of the Assistant Secretaries of Defense subordinate the Service Secretaries and result in a functional realignment of the Department of Defense.
Turning to those portions of the Plan revamping the management of the Joint Staff, the approach of the Plan’s opponents centered about the belief that this was but another step in the gradual but continuing evolution of a Prussian-type general staff system in the United States. Brigadier General Robert W. Johnson, industrialist and former official of the War Production Board, stated before the House Committee:
It all fits together as intended. In 1947 the National Security Act created a Joint Staff. The 1949 Amendment created the position of Chairman. Therefore, you have the two prime ingredients for a national general staff. All that was necessary then was to bring them together by placing the Joint Staff under the Chairman. Once that is done the title of Chairman becomes a euphemism. To give the highest-ranking officer of the Armed Services an all-service staff would have the inescapable result of making the so-called Chairman a Chief of Staff.
While Mr. Eberstadt would not go this far, he did maintain that the trend of the proposals (relating to the Joint Staff) “is clearly toward the creation of a supreme military Chief of Staff with a general staff.” Though this had its implications insofar as maintaining civilian supremacy, it was not fears in this direction which caused Mr. Eberstadt to inveigh against these proposals of the Plan. His reasoning took the line that our system of strategic planning, which is that of the British also and with which we successfully fought World War II, is characterized by a linking of planning and execution. The three responsible military commanders of Army, Navy, and Air Force jointly work out the strategic plans and then, under civilian authority, these same three are responsible for seeing that they are carried out. Since all three have an equal voice in the formulation of the plans, a military “line” is not likely to result. The present circumstances surrounding the maintenance of national security require that we explore and reexplore “every reasonable possible avenue of defense and protection, without prejudice against or predisposition toward any special weapon, military arm or system. ... If we set up an organization which is rigid, or might tend to become so, we may be sealing our own doom.” He contended that giving the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs the right to determine the tenure of Joint Staff members and control over the subjects with which the Joint Staff deals would put the Chairman in a position where he could have a dominating influence over the plans and operations of the Joint Chiefs. “His views and his convictions will tend to become controlling.” Acknowledging the benefits of unification in many areas, Mr. Eberstadt, in another place, summed it all up by saying “ . . . the burden of my song is, do not give any single military officer such power that he crystallizes our military planning and execution.”
The administrative action, mentioned in the President’s message, which provided for a method for selecting executive agents for unified commands was opposed not so much because of what it specifically did as for the rationale upon which it appeared to be based. In the words of the Rockefeller report, “the Joint Chiefs of Staff were established as a planning and advisory group, not to exercise command.” Admiral Charles M, Cooke (Ret.), former Chief of Staff to Admiral King, citing the provision of the National Security Act of 1947, still in effect, which assigns to the Joint Chiefs the duties of preparing strategic plans and providing for the strategic direction of the military forces, declared that these were both clearly command functions. “Better planning,” he said, “cannot be effected by divorcing plans from those who must execute them either in Washington or in the field. ...” To this can be added the objection of Mr. Duffield, also to a statement of the Rockefeller Committee Report: “The Secretaries of the military departments . . . should be the operating heads of their departments in all aspects, military and civilian alike.” Such a radical doctrine applied literally would, in Mr. Duffield’s opinion, give us the only military organization in the world in which civilians have actual responsibility for combat operations in the field. The situation calls for civilians and military convincing and persuading each other, and not the civilians using their admitted supremacy to arbitrarily enforce their will.
Such was the nature of the case against reorganization.
The Adoption and Implementation of Reorganization Plan 6
Reorganization Plan 6 became effective on June 30, 1953, under the provisions of the Reorganization Act of 1949, as amended. The Reorganization Act provided that Presidential plans should take effect sixty days after being submitted to Congress unless rejected by either House by a constitutional majority vote.
Secretary of Defense Wilson immediately took steps to implement the provisions of the Plan. The six Assistant Secretaries to be added to the staff were assigned the following areas of responsibility, as recommended in the Rockefeller Committee report: Research and Development, Applications Engineering, Supply and Logistics, Properties and Installations, Legislative Affairs, and Health .and Medical (see organizational chart). The additional positions created by the Plan were filled as quickly as men of the requisite caliber could be secured. When the staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense was finally complete, the entire top echelon of the Department of Defense, including the Secretaries of the military departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was manned, for the first time since the Department was established, entirely by selections of the incumbent Secretary.
The various parts of the staff of the Secretary of Defense now operate under charters issued by the Secretary which delineate, except as provided by law, responsibilities, authority, and procedures, Each contains an injunction to the Assistant Secretary involved to use to the greatest extent possible in the discharge of his responsibilities the advice, assistance, and appropriate facilities of the military departments. Each delegates to its holder the authority to obtain from the military departments such reports and information as are necessary to carry out his responsibilities. Where directives changing established policies or procedures of the Department are sought by the Assistant Secretary, they must be submitted to the Secretary or Deputy Secretary for signature.
The key to the relationships among the Secretary, his staff, and the military departments is clearly shown in the accompanying organizational chart of the Department of Defense. As depicted, the channel of command and communication between the Secretary of Defense and the Service Secretaries is direct. The Assistant Secretaries do not intervene. Nor are they included in the membership of the three important advisory groups in the Secretary’s office—the Armed Forces Policy Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Secretaries. They are staff personnel and, as such, are not to engage in operations.
The Key West agreement was modified to provide that a military department, rather than one of the Joint Chiefs, should be designated as the executive agency for each of the unified commands. The channel of responsibility was declared to be from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of a military department, with the military chief of that department being authorized to act for such department in its executive agency capacity “for the strategic direction and for the conduct of combat operations in emergency and wartime situations. ...” Thus the Joint Chiefs are considered to have been removed from command and limited to planning.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acquired, through the adoption of Plan 6, the power to remove members of the 210- man Joint Staff. This power was formerly shared by all of the Joint Chiefs. In addition, management of the Joint Staff—seeing that it completed the studies and analyses assigned to it properly and on time—was given to him. Formerly the Joint Chiefs collectively were responsible for this task, through the Director of the Joint Staff, whom they appointed. The selection and tenure of the Director was now made subject by the Plan to the approval of the Secretary of Defense.
A definite attempt has been made to make more extensive use than formerly of the facilties of the military departments. This was consistent with one of the basic aims of the Plan—to decentralize operations. The charters of the individual staff sections, referred to previously, enjoined the applicable staff personnel to use the military departmental facilities wherever possible. The Plan’s proponents hoped that the size of the office of the Secretary could thus be reduced. It has been. The number of employees in the Secretary’s office had declined as of January, 1954, by about 500 from the 3100 employed in early 1953.
An Evaluation of Reorganization Plan 6
From the first preliminary discussions of unification, down through the history of the movement to the 1949 Amendments, one issue was predominant: How much federalism shall characterize our military establishment? The 1949 Amendments, however, removed the statutory basis for federalism from the National Security Act of 1947 by the following means: (1) striking out the clause reserving all powers not given to the Secretary of Defense to the Service Secretaries; (2) reclassifying the Service departments as “military” rather than executive departments; and (3) omitting from the phrase “general direction, authority and control” applying to the powers of the Secretary of Defense with regard to the Service departments, the word “general.” This action caused a corollary of the federalism issue, by no means new to the military establishment because of the great size and the general nature of the Secretary’s power under the original Act, to replace it in the forefront of the unification discussions, namely: How much centralization of administration shall characterize our military organization? Two schools of thought which had been in existence since 1947—i.e., those who favored centralized administration and those who favored decentralized administration—now quickly gained additional adherents and new lines of reasoning as the issue moved to the center of the stage.
Though there was much variation in substance as well as detail among them, the proponents of decentralized administration, in general, advocated separate military departments, separately administered. The Office of the Secretary of Defense should be small. There would be no Assistant Secretaries of Defense. A few staff agencies and boards were to be used to supply the Secretary with the machinery absolutely necessary to the minimum amount of administrative authority required by his great responsibility. The Secretary’s Office was to keep out of operations entirely and rely mainly upon the military departments’ mechanisms for administrative tasks. Its chief function was to be coordinating. Above all, there was to be no centralization in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The three responsible military heads of the Armed Services were to formulate strategy jointly for the approval of the Defense Secretary and the President.
The advantages claimed for decentralized administration were many. Only by such decentralization could the department possibly be properly administered. If it were completely administered from the top, the channel of communications would break down under the load of directives flowing down and information and requests flowing up. No man would be equal to the administrative task of the Secretary of Defense under great administrative centralization. Only by decentralization would innovation and experimentation, with the resulting development of a variety of weapons and techniques equal to any situation, be developed. All our military “eggs” would otherwise be “in one basket.” We would develop a static military “party line.” Great centralization of administration would prevent diversity of strategic and tactical concept. A monolithic defense structure would squelch the new and progressive ideas so indispensable to a well-rounded, flexible defense.
Furthermore, such decentralization, especially in the Joint Chiefs area, would permit split decisions (which are usually indicative of the presence of issues incapable of solution through the application of military science and knowledge alone) to be resolved by civilian authority, as they should be. A meeting of minds, which decentralization on the Joint Chiefs would provide for, is best in the development of grand strategy. Planning and execution would be accomplished by the same persons. This would assure realistic plans within the competence of the military forces.
In conclusion, the decentralizers contended that a single chief of staff would be so powerful that excessive demands of the military Services would be likely to prevail in many instances over the recommendations of a civilian President and Secretary of Defense. There would be danger of dictatorship, since centralized military power, even though no military man seize power, would be a ready tool for a would-be civilian tyrant. Decentralized administration would make the military area more nearly like our political system with its separation of powers. The military power of the nation should be divided among the Services like the political power among the branches of government. The ultimate repository of military power— the people and their representatives, the President and Secretary of Defense—could resolve differences as the people do in the political arena. But since neither President nor Secretary of Defense could be omniscient nor omnipresent for administrative purposes, decentralization of administration was the only solution.
Differing as much among themselves and as frequently lacking in details as were the supporters of decentralized administration, the advocates of centralized administration were in substantial agreement that there should be a complete concentration of statutory authority over the entire Department of Defense in the Secretary of Defense, with the power granted to him to delegate it as he chose. They also argued that the Secretary’s Office should be of sufficient size to enable him to exercise properly his great responsibilities. But since they, unlike the supporters of decentralized administration, were not concerned with keeping that office small, this constituted for them a sizeable staff structure. They visualized sufficient administrative power in the Secretary’s Office to enable him to implement policy, to review, and to control and supervise substantially the entire military establishment. Lastly, they favored the establishment of a single chief of staff without command but with the deciding vote on the Joint Chiefs and the position of principal military adviser to the Secretary and the President. He was to have the assistance of a general staff drawn from the three Services.
The centralized administration people claimed the following advantages would accrue:
Sufficient staff would enable the Secretary’s decisions to be carried into effect throughout the department with resulting elimination of duplication and waste, and, with clear lines of command established in the military structure, would end the harmful cleavages on strategy. Expeditious decisions, for the Secretary’s guidance, would be forthcoming with the end of veto rule and the system of committees and as a result of the establishment of a single chief of staff and a general staff. A true staff and chief of staff would be objective, rising above Service ambitions and taking the broad view rather than advancing a weapon for one particular Service’s sake. They would recognize “padding,” duplication, and inefficiency more readily than any civilian authority, and could better recommend measures to deal with it safely. They would, in addition, prevent the espousing by the Department of Defense of several strategies simultaneously, with resulting excessive strain on the economy and inadequate preparation along any line. A compromise defense program, ill-suited to actual defense needs, would be avoided. Finally, the argument that a single chief of staff would constitute a threat to democracy was countered by previously slated advantages in economy and civilian control, and by the contention that history has shown as many usurpations of power by civilians as by military men.
Reorganization Plan 6 appears to provide for a Department of Defense lying, insofar as its organizational principles are concerned, somewhere between the positions of these two schools of thought. In the eyes of the Administration, and apparently also of the Congress, the answer to the problem of organizing the Department is neither black nor white, neither administrative centralization nor decentralization. It is gray, as the true picture so often is. The problem is to find the right blend, as the Report of the Task Force on National Security Organization of the Hoover Commission illustrated when it stated: “The National Security Act sought to combine in the National Military Establishment the advantages of administrative decentralization and autonomy with those of unified central direction. It is not easy to strike such a balance accurately in advance.” The necessity of coordinated action must be balanced against the admitted dangers and disadvantages of centralization. As a practical matter, the question to be answered is this; To what extent shall the Secretary of Defense rely on his Service Secretaries and their departments for “unified central direction,” and to what extent shall he rely upon a superstructure in his own office for this? The present Department of Defense is organized and functions in such a way as to rely on both means.
Phase Three of the unification movement finds the Defense establishment with an undisputed boss in fact as well as law—the Secretary of Defense. He does not have a military general staff, but in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, as presently established, he does have a civilian general staff. It clearly functions as such, but in carefully prescribed ways. It exercises staff control to insure effective implementation of departmental policies. This control is to be exercised through established command channels only, however, and does not set policy, since all directives of staff members recommending new policy or changing that already in effect must be signed by the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of Defense. Furthermore, the staff is enjoined to utilize the military departments to the greatest extent possible in the performance of their functions. Such staff procedures, if followed, should accomplish the necessary coordination without the assumption of operating or extensive administrative functions which would lead to excessive centralization, inefficiency, and collapse of the system. That the Assistant Secretaries must pursue their functions with care if they are not to encroach upon prerogatives of the Service Secretaries—an admonition of Mr. Baldwin, cited earlier—was recently illustrated when the report of an advisory commission on Army organization charged them with infringement upon the area of responsibility of the Secretary of the Army.
At the summit of the military, Phase Three has not produced a single chief of staff. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the only one of the Joint Chiefs in a position to manage the Joint Staff, has been given that responsibility, plus power to approve the selection and tenure of the Joint Staff. The Joint Staff thus comes under his control; but he still has no command powers, no vote, no ability to control the agenda of the Joint Chiefs, and he cannot gag one of the Joint Chiefs, for by law any one of the Joint Chiefs may take his case directly to Congress. Nor is the Chairman’s control over the Joint Staff unlimited, since the Director is appointed and retains his position subject to the approval of the Secretary. At any rate, it must be remembered that all the Joint Chiefs including the Chairman as well as the Director of the Joint Staff, secure and hold their positions with the approval of the Secretary of Defense.
In summary, then, the Department of Defense has become, with Reorganization Plan 6, more like the other executive departments. The Secretary’s staff has been expanded insofar as the number of Assistant Secretaries is concerned, and authority and responsibility has been more precisely located in it so that it can more effectively assist him in controlling the colossus for which he is responsible. At the same time, operations and much administration have remained decentralized under the Service Secretaries. Though the very controversial transfer of management functions over the Joint Staff to the Chairman has reduced the power of the other members of the Joint Chiefs, they have not been submerged or subordinated. The Secretary’s staff agency for strategic planning remains a collegiate body with joint formulation of plans for the Secretary’s approval. And there is still a definite provision for appeal by an individual member of the Joint Chiefs to Congress from any decision by the Joint Chiefs.
Reorganization Plan 6 definitely laters Defense Department organization in such a way as to enable the Secretary of Defense and the President, and through them the Congress, to secure more readily advisory decisions on important military matters from those closest to them. It is the third step in a movement which has been characterized throughout by successive reductions in the level at which major military policy matters were initially, though tentatively, resolved. Prior to the National Security Act of 1947, during the pre-World War II period, the President, by the nature of the national defense organization, which was relatively small and inexpensive, with comparatively simple problems, resolved those few basic differences in military policy which had to be settled within the Defense establishment. The fact that the pressures of other business were then decidedly less helped him to do this. And he did not do it unaided, of course, because he had the services of the Bureau of the Budget and other staff assistance. However, he had no cabinet officer with operating responsibility to guide him by his preliminary decisions. The Secretary of Defense, by the Amendments of 1949 and this Plan, has now been given more organizational means for securing advisory decisions of his own. But there the trend has stopped, for the time being at least. Plan 6 has not established a single chief of staff and general staff, which would have been the next logical step. If the present system works, this may very well be the end of the trend. A single chief of staff and general staff might entail relegation of the Secretary of Defense to the position where he would simply ratify decisions referred to him. It might mean also that administration would centralize in a military organization (the general staff), and that non-military decisions of basic importance would frequently be made by the military. Because it is fraught with such possibilities, the single military chief-of-staff-Armed-Forces general staff concept has been, quite properly, viewed with distrust by Congress since early in the unification movement. This fact is attested to by the 1949 amendment to the Declaration of Policy of the National Security Act, which states that it is not the intent of Congress by the amended Act “to establish a single Chief of Staff over the armed forces nor an armed forces general staff.”
It is imperative that this organizational pitfall be kept clearly marked for what it is, so that the military establishment of the United States may avoid it as it changes in the future to meet ever-changing defense responsibilities.
* Before the House Committee on Government Operations, Friday, June 19, 1953.
† Same, Thursday, June 18, 1953. Reorganization Plan 6 became law on June 30, 1953.