General MCNAMARA. By the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. HARDY. So then the Secretary-you would wait until the Secretary of Defense changed his categories and said, "You take over the procurement of rifles, small arms"?

General MCNAMARA. I think more is being read into it than I see in my charter. I am not that

Mr. HARDY. Let's take a different item, to get into your class of items.

Would you put electronic equipment all in one category and say that falls within your jurisdiction?

General MCNAMARA. NO.

Mr. HARDY. Why not?

General MCNAMARA. Because there are referred to me only two classes in electronics, if you will. The breakout of the classes are the things that guide me.

Mr. HARDY. What kind of things

General MCNAMARA. I get assigned

Mr. HARDY. What kinds of classes on electronics?

General MCNAMARA. I think it is group 59. Group 59-electronic parts.

Mr. HARDY. Who referred that one to you?

General MCNAMARA. I think the answer is that the electronic items are referred to me by the Secretary of Defense after being coded by the services. The services enter into this in great detail.

Mr. HARDY. Do they do it voluntarily?

General MCNAMARA. As far as I know, everything is volunteered, Mr. Hardy, toward making this an effective team. In this particular thing I would think that the services would voluntarily code the items that

Mr. HARDY. It is your

General MCNAMARA. Lend themselves toward integrated management.

Mr. HARDY. It is your view that the services said, "DSA, you come along and take over the procurement of electronic parts for us, because we haven't the capacity to do it efficiently."

General MCNAMARA. I don't remember hearing those words. If they have any idea of referring things to an effective and an efficient organization, I would think that we could take it over.

Mr. BATES. Let's take a look at that.

Are you telling us now that the Chief of Supply of the Bureau of Accounts is saying "General, we can't do a good job on this. We are sending up a list of things. You handle these."

Are you telling us that that is the way this thing operates?

General MCNAMARA. I am telling you that I have a charter that defines the scope of the activities in which I participate, and there are outlined in there boundaries, if you will, of where we are going in the future that is visible to us.

Mr. BATES. We would like to see those boundaries. That is another issue.

We would like to see that very much. We are trying at the moment to find out whose idea is it to make a certain change. These are referred to you. It is by somebody in OSD or it is someone in the in

dividual departments. Who gets the show on the road when something is to be done? Who does it?

General MCNAMARA. I can't answer that clearly.

Mr. BATES. Let's get a little more specific

Mr. SHORT. May I answer that, sir?

Mr. BATES. Yes.

Mr. SHORT. The suggestion may come from anyplace, Mr. Bates, as I will indicate later here.

The military departments did, in Project 100, which I will explain, suggest some areas that might be looked into for integrated manage

ment.

Sometimes the suggestion comes from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The suggestion comes from anyplace.

However, then it is carefully looked at, whether and how it is going to be done; studies are made, and these are all coordinated with the military departments.

Mr. BATES. Who does this?

Mr. SHORT. Makes the studies? Teams. The studies furthering integrated management, most of them, to my knowledge all of them, have been made by teams composed of representatives of the military services, OSD, the Armed Forces Supply Support Center

Mr. BATES. Is that Project 100?

Mr. SHORT. Partly, and I will explain that.

To be more specific, the Armed Forces Supply Support Center analysis staff composed of officers from each of the military departments and civilians, made the studies which resulted in the general. industrial, automotive, and construction single manager assignments. These recommendations were then coordinated, with the military departments. And finally the assignments were made.

Some of them are still being implemented. The controls, sir, over the items put under integrated management, I think come from the words in the DS charter; "DOD approved criteria.”

In other words, the criteria are developed, they are worked over, they are coordinated with the military departments, and finally they are "approved criteria" by which you select the items which come under integrated management.

This is the control, sir. Weapons systems major combat type items, are excluded even from the coding.

The Secretary of Defense recently made a statement in which he said, "Weapons systems and equipment do not lend themselves to management by a single agency and will continue to be developed, procured, and distributed by the military department concerned.*

Mr. BATES. How does that fit into the consideration that is now taking place in respect to the technical files?

Mr. SHORT. I am not familiar with the subject. You mean files of papers?

Mr. BATES. Technical files, yes.

Mr. SHORT. I am not familiar with that study, sir.

Mr. HARDY. In that connection, if the weapons systems are not susceptible to integrated procurement, your parts of those systems, at least electronic parts of them, would be?

Mr. SHORT. Yes sir; some of them, if they become standardized or stable items not subject to modification in the production phase, some of them might come under integrated management.

Mr. BATES. Who makes that final decision as to whether they will or will not?

Mr. SHORT. The services make the decision. They have the criteria and code their items against these criteria, sending their codings to a central point indicating whether they will keep them for management or whether they will come under integrated management.

Mr. BATES. We understand now if an individual service says "Well, we will keep this one here, we won't give this one to DSA." That is the way it goes? They keep it?

Mr. SHORT. Yes, sir.

Mr. BATES. There are no circumstances where an individual department thought they would keep-thought they ought to keep control of a particular item and it has been taken away from them by DSA?

Mr. SHORT. I cannot say that is true. There may have been some cases-it would not be taken away by DSA. DSA has no authority to take it away

Mr. HARDY. Who does?

Mr. SHORT. The Secretary of Defense.

Mr. BATES. You know he doesn't make an individual judgment on each item. If he did that, he couldn't do anything else.

Who does it?

Mr. SHORT. I don't know of any cases where this has happened. Mr. BATES. Do I understand the Secretary of Defense, Secretary McNamara, sits down and makes this determination?

Mr. SHORT. I would say if anybody short of him tried to do it and the services did not agree, the service secretary would go to the Secretary of Defense. I can't give you any specific instances. I know of none.

Mr. BATES. Is that the way you understand it, General McNamara ? General MCNAMARA. The service secretaries are represented on the Defense Supply Council, Mr. Bates, and this is one means by which they have an opportunity to pass on the things that we are doing. This also is in the charter. There is no reaching out nor unilateral type action.

This thing is really looked at by responsible people.

Mr. BATES. Does this Defense Council come directly under the Secretary of Defense, and the judgments exercised by them prevail upon DSA?

General MCNAMARA. There is a very clear definition of what they do here in the charter.

Actually, what they do, Mr. Bates, is: they advise the Secretary of Defense on the actions that the Defense Supply Agency is taking. Mr. BATES. What authority do they have directly to DSA?

General MCNAMARA. First of all, they advise and assist the Secretary. There is another paragraph where they help me quite a bit. Mr. BATES. On that Organizational Charter

General MCNAMARA. Excuse me. This is the other relationship that is outlined in my charter.

It says under the heading "Relationship":

In the performance of his functions, the Director of DSA shall consult with the Defense Supply Council to assure a full interchange of plans and programs between DSA and the Military Departments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and OSD, and to provide the DSC with adequate information to evaluate the effectiveness of DSA's performance.

Mr. BATES. That is what you might do if and when you feel like it. General MCNAMARA. It also says back in this same charter that they have to meet at least once a quarter.

Mr. BATES. Who meets?

General MCNAMARA. The Defense Supply Council.

Mr. BATES. What I am trying to determine, General, is what authority, if any, does the Defense Council exercise over DSA?

General MCNAMARA. None.

Mr. HARDY. They are nothing but window dressing?

General MCNAMARA. NO. They are a Council to advise the Secretary.

Mr. BATES. They don't exercise any control over DSA? We are trying to establish that.

General MCNAMARA. Not directly. Not as such.

Mr. BATES. As representatives of the individual services, they can't tell you what to do? They can merely send advisory comments to the Secretary of Defense?

General MCNAMARA. Well, they tell him in such words that I am sure it will be very plain, in case I am stepping over the bounds of their intent.

Mr. BATES. They meet once a quarter?

General MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. SHORT. Or oftener if necessary.
General MCNAMARA. On call, if desired.
Mr. BATES. How often have they met?
General MCNAMARA. Twice.

Mr. BATES. During what period?

General MCNAMARA. We have only been organized since the first of January.

Mr. HARDY. They don't have much authority. I don't know what good they are. You have got more advisers stuck around in various corners over there than you have people doing the work.

I think sometimes that is what they are doing. They are advising along with other duties. They are advising the Secretary and they have no responsibility with respect to DSA at all, involving the items that fall under their jurisdiction and of which they are essentially concerned. They can only advise the Secretary of Defense. It bothers me a little. I don't know why you have them at all.

Mr. BATES. What we are trying to establish is who is going to monitor DSA. It has been indicated here that the Defense Council certainly doesn't do it.

You indicated the individual services can express a preference and judgment, which is usually honored by DSA.

What was the story about the black belt buckles? Who made the decision on that one?

General MCNAMARA. I did.

Mr. BATES. Did the individual services give concurrence on that? General MCNAMARA. I didn't ask them for any concurrence.

Mr. BATES. Isn't that a little bit contrary to what we said a while ago, that you consult with them and you couldn't think of any particular instances where they expressed a preference and that was overridden? Isn't that the way I understood it a while ago?

Mr. SHORT. I was talking about the selection of items for integrated management.

General MCNAMARA. I am talking about the black belt buckles. This item was an item that was submitted to me for decision through the normal process of the steps outlined in the standardization field. I only get those items that are referred to me when the services cannot reach any agreement.

The item that came up for me to decide was whether a belt buckle, brass in color, satisfactory to the Army and to the Navy, stamped, costing 12 cents, should be adopted for all of the services.

The Air Force said "We want one stamped, also costing 12 cents, but silver."

The Marines wanted a cast and open-faced buckle and they wanted it in a color I think might be classified as bronze or something of that nature, a little different from the others. It cost 29 cents, since it was a cast item.

I asked myself if these were items that were such that they would become restrictive on the services, would affect their combat effectiveness, and the answer was "No." So I said, and I must hasten to add, Mr. Hardy, I agree with the importance of keeping pants up, but nonetheless I did have to

Mr. HARDY. It might be a big morale factor.
General MCNAMARA. It certainly would.

At any rate, when it came to the decision part, I said we will take the stamped one because it costs 12 cents. And because of the fact you can reach no agreement and there is no basic reason to favor either color with respect to contrast or effectiveness, I said "make it black."

The purpose of this, though, Mr. Bates, was to see that these kinds of items would be decided at the level where there is the competency of Uniform Boards to work on them. This was the purpose of the black belt buckle decision; not to decide on a particular color or certain type.

Mr. BATES. I am not questioning your wisdom in respect to this decision. What I am asking about is your authority to make it. The individual services did not get together, but you feel and you exercised the authority to force them to get together. That is what I am trying to determine here. You believe you have that authority.

General MCNAMARA. Yes, I do have it on the items that I manage. I think this is clear. I don't know if I can find it here, but it is in writing. I think we have it-there is a statement here on standardization authority. On November 17, 1961, the Secretary of Defense stated in a memorandum to the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Director of DSA:

I am directing the Director of the Defense Supply Agency to make standardization decisions on all items which are managed by the Defense Supply Agency, Any appeals from such decisions may be made to me.