military departments) financed from appropriations for military functions of the Department of Defense and any construction of real property facilities authorized herein for such activities and agencies will be accomplished by or through military departments designated by the Secretary of Defense. (b) Real property facilities under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense utilized by activities and agencies of the Department of Defense (other than the military departments) shall be under the jurisdiction of a military department designated by the Secretary of Defense. THE NUMBER AND TYPE OF SUCH ADDITIONAL AGENCIES CONTEMPLATED OR PLANNED FOR THE FUTURE AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE ACTIVITIES OF PRESENT AGENCIES MAY OR ARE PLANNED TO BE EXPANDED The testimony revealed that no new agencies are contemplated by the Secretary of Defense at this time. The former General Counsel testified: To the best of my knowledge there are no new defense agencies being created at this time. The Defense Supply Agency will probably assume three additional functions: chemical supplies, aeronautical supplies (or spare parts), and the management of industrial production equipment. There remains, therefore, the last and most significant point to be discussed by the subcommittee under the directions received from the chairman; namely: The effect these agencies have upon the overall efficiency and combat effectiveness of the three military departments and the four separate services. THE EFFECT THESE AGENCIES HAVE UPON THE OVERALL EFFICIENCY AND COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS OF THE THREE MILITARY DEPARTMENTS AND THE FOUR SEPARATE SERVICES This question cannot be discussed without an overall appraisal of the organization of the Department of Defense and the functioning of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense, in his first appearance before the subcommittee, stated that he operates on the principle that an organization as vast as the Department of Defense can be effectively managed only by the centralization of policy formulation and the decentralization of operation. The Secretary of Defense further stated: My own philosophy is one that is directed toward pushing down into an organization to the maximum extent possible the responsibility for decisions so that you have a true pyramid in the decisionmaking process with only a small number of decisions and small percentage of decisions coming to the top In addition, the Secretary of Defense stated: I think it is quite clear, as I say, in the House report associated with the 1958 legislation it was intended that the Secretary of Defense would not engage in detailed operating functions. The former General Counsel, Mr. Vance, stated that in his opinion the Defense Supply Agency does not put the Secretary of Defense in operations. Mr. Vance stated: Не referring to the Secretary of Defense has a Defense supply agency headed by General McNamara who is running the day-to-day operations of that agency. It is true that he reports to Secretary McNamara, but that does not place Secretary McNamara in day-to-day operations. On May 2, 1962, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric, spoke to an organization in Monterey, Calif. His remarks were released by the Department of Defense Office of Public Affairs. The Deputy Secretary of Defense is reported by the Department of Defense to have said: The items which I shall discuss are those in the field of Defense management which we think should be of interest to the aerospace industry, affecting its own operations and plans. Generally speaking, these steps have had a common design, namely, to bring together and establish more centralized control over functionally alike activities in the military establishment. While a number of such steps are related to military operations, my remarks tonight will dwell more on those which have to do with logistics and support * * *. Mr. Gilpatric is further reported to have stated: I have tried to sum up in this cursory fashion where we have been and where we are going. The effect of most of the changes and the other steps that I have outlined will leave you with one impression, and that is that there has been a tendency, a very pronounced tendency, to centralize more authority in the Office of the Secretary of Defense-a trend that has given rise to considerable skepticism and criticism in a number of quarters. Ten years ago, I myself, would have shared those doubts. Now, I see no alternative to this centralization. Indeed, in the procurement area, a number of you here, or your associates, have told me that they feel that the power of decision within the Defense Department has been too widely diffused, with the decisionmaking process flowing through a bueaucratized system that is difficult for industry to understand and for us to work with. The only alternative that I see to measures of the character that we have taken or are being contemplated in defense management could well be another reorganization of the Defense Department. This would be controversial and time-consuming, and it would divert the efforts of the all too few capable people that we have in the defense management organization today. Whether ultimately a major restructuring of the Defense Department must take place remains to be seen. I thought so once and I favored such an approach but as of now, the more gradual evolutionary process of change makes more sense to me and that is the approach we are going to take in the coming year. Thank you. It is difficult for the subcommittee to accept the theory that the removal of functions and responsibilities from the military departments and placing them in the hands of independent agencies carries out the intent of the Committee on Armed Services and the Congress that there will continue to be three military departments, that each military department will be separately organized under its own Secretary and that these departments and the four miiltary services are not to be merged. If the Secretary of Defense is not delving into operational details on a daily basis as a result of the creation of defense agencies, then certainly it is apparent that these independent agencies are delving into daily operations, and the military departments and the separate services are losing their separate identity. The subcommittee cannot disregard the remarks reportedly made by the former Secretary of the Army, Elvis J. Stahr, in an interview with Jack Raymond printed in the New York Times of July 8, 1962, in which Mr. Stahr is alleged to have said: Decisionmaking at the Pentagon had become overly centralized under the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. Nor can the subcommittee disregard the statement reportedly made by Mr. Stahr that the leadership in the military services might become stultified and its identities and initiative sidetracked and lost to the Government. During this interview printed in the New York Times, Mr. Stahr is further reported to have said that one of the most important trends in the armed services during the last year and a half was the centralization of decisionmaking machinery in the hands of the Secretary of Defense and his aides. Mr. Stahr is also reported to have expressed the thought that "from the beginning of his tenure at the Pentagon, the Defense Secretary met frequently with the Secretaries of the services. The frequency of these contacts, however, led to continuous intrusion on his part in many small details of the administration of the services." Mr. Stahr is also reported to have said in the same interview that the Department of Defense is too big to be run by only a few people. He paid a high compliment to the Secretary of Defense by reportedly saying "and there just are not enough McNamaras." Finally, Mr. Stahr is reported to have said that The machinery of administration at the Pentagon must be left flexible There should be a halt to the present tendency in which more and more the decisions once made by the service Secretaries and the military chiefs, as individuals, are made by the Secretary of Defense and his staff. Nor can the subcommittee overlook the charges made by the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Thomas D. White, who wrote in Newsweek, on July 11, 1962: Our dynamic management-conscious Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, has established agencies responsible directly to himself and has partially bypassed the Joint Chiefs. In effect, paralleling the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it has been creating a new general staff largely civilian and backed up by military underlings. No responsible military man in any of the services objects to civilian control; all recognize and accept this without question as a wise and fundamental concept of our way of life and government. But there are many young and temporary functionaries in the various departments who encourage the downgrading of military influence on purely military matters and would welcome further steps in this direction. The subcommittee disclosed the issuance of the following memorandum from the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Dr. Harold Brown, dated July 11, 1962: Memorandum for Director, Weapons Systems Evaluation Group References: JULY 11, 1962. (a) Report on Government Contracting for Research and Development (Bell Report) (b) Memo to Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, 12 March 1962, "Preventing Conflicts of Interest on the part of Advisers and Consultants to the Government" The issuance of the Bell Report as approved by the President has served to clarify the policy of the government with respect to the use of non-profit organi zations to perform various kinds of research and development work. Although the desirability of this practice was strongly reaffirmed, the Report emphasized the importance of a proper relationship between such non-profit corporations and the agencies of the government which makes use of their services. For some years, the Institute for Defense Analyses has performed valuable services for the Department of Defense, and in so doing it has developed close working relationships with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the ODDR&E, and other offices. The purpose of this memorandum is to restate certain principles which should govern the relationship between IDA and the Department of Defense in order to meet both the standards defined in the Bell Report and the requirements of an effective working relationship. The Institute for Defense Analyses is engaged in operations and policy research, in the evaluation of weapons systems, and in technical analysis bearing on the purposes and direction of the Department of Defense's research and development programs. It does not itself conduct development work nor does it provide systems engineering or the technical direction of development programs. The Bell Report says of such organizations that "the principal advantages they have to offer are the detached quality and objectivity of their work", to which might be added their ability to assemble professional staffs of high quality. If the Department of Defense is to reap this advantage, the Institute as a corporate entity must be encouraged to maintain true independence, since "too close control by any government agency may tend to limit objectivity". It is therefore requested that, effective 1 August 1962, IDA be required to submit contractor reports on each task directly to the JCS and OSD. As appropriate, the senior military advisers should review the contractor report either in draft or after its completion, and supplement it with a critique or commentary of their own from the military viewpoint. These comments would be made available as inputs for decision on matters covered in the contractor report itself. In effect, this change requires the reorientation of the Review Board from its present position in the chain of operations to an advisory position. Under the concepts contained in the references, it is also believed that the practice of assigning the contractor's chief of the IDA Weapons Systems Evaluation Division as the Research Director of the governmental Weapons Systems Evaluation Group should be discontinued. The contractor's chief of IDA Weapons Systems Evaluation Division and other senior officers of the contractor will, under the contract, be available for scientific advice to the Director of the Group and also under the contract will supervise and direct for the contractor work on the tasks formally agreed to under the contract. Thus, these individuals will be available for the functions ascribed to the government Research Director without the necessity of giving one of the contractor's officers a dual appointment. Separate action will be taken to delete paragraph V (2) from DOD Instruction 5128.8. It is requested that the WSEG Handbook be revised to reflect this change. I will take separate action with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to obtain a government evaluation by representatives of appropriate OSD offices and the Joint Staff, of each completed study, to assist me in the further supervision and direction of these activities. I am also requesting the contractor to undertake and submit to me by 1 September 1962 a self-evaluation study with recommendations for improvement, including arrangements for rotating personnel among IDA divisions. (S) Harold Brown, HAROLD BROWN. Here are the comments of the Director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Lt. Gen. William P. Ennis, USA, who, when the memorandum was issued, recommended that his position be abolished and that the military and civil service participation in the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group be limited to not more than two officers from each service, in the grade of major or equivalent, to act in a liaison capacity only. OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF DEFENSE RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING WEAPONS SYSTEMS EVALUATION GROUP Washington 25, D.C. 16 JULY 1962. Memorandum for Director of Defense Research and Engineering 1. Attention is invited to your 11 July 1962 directive to the Director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (copy attached). 2. With the implementation of this directive, the effective civilian scientistmilitary relationship ceases to exist in WSEG and the Director of WSEG loses all responsibility for, and direction and supervision of, work now done by the Group. Since his principal remaining responsibility is that of both physical and document control security, I do not believe an officer in the grade of lieutenant general is required or desirable. 3. At present, the Review Board of WSEG consists of the Director of Research, the two Assistant Directors of Research, the senior military officer from each service and the military Executive Secretary. The military members of this review board at present review the plans or outline of how each project will be attacked, furnish to the project leader military personnel as may be required for military input during the project study, maintain constant knowledge of how the project is progressing, advise and consult with the project leader when necessary, and review the completed draft report as a member of the review board prior to the report being submitted in final form to the Director of WSEG for approval by him. Under the terms of this directive, these duties of the senior service representatives cease to exist. 4. The duties of the military members of the review board are relegated "to an advisory position." Since under the new proposed contract between DOD and IDA, WSED of IDA is to be responsive to requests for studies from all agencies of OSD, the function of advising by WSEG military members as ap propriate on contractor studies usurps the functions of the JCS as advisors on military matters to OSD. 5. The last sentence in the enclosure pertaining to rotation of personnel among IDA divisions is, in my opinion, a most dangerous security risk from the point of view of control of sensitive JCS information. 6. Under the old, and new proposed, OSD-IDA contract the Director of WSEG is responsible for security. This security is accomplished by use of military personnel for physical security and civil service personnel for document security. However, the new contract, as a result of the Bell Report, states that contractor personnel will not work under the supervision or direction of government personnel. IDA should be made responsible for all security matters, since the Director of WSEG should not be placed in a position of not being able to direct compliance with his security regulations. Also, at the present time, the Director of WSEG can determine "need to know" and direct what may be seen or said. Under the new proposed contract the Director of WSEG has no such powers. Further, since it is directed that effective 1 August 1962 IDA will be "required to submit contractor reports on each task direct to JCS and OSD," it is implied that reports containing sensitive information will pass through IDA management, where a valid need to know has not been established. 7. Since contractor personnel can neither be supervised nor directed by gov ernment employees, it is not believed to be equitable that a government employee be supervised by contractor personnel. Under the proposed contract and the enclosed directive, the military and civil service personnel are placed in a position of being free labor for a civilian contractor, with the resulting further downgrading of the military and civil service personnel of DOD. 8. In summation of the foregoing, the following actions are recommended: a. The position of Director of WSEG be abolished. |