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palace where the Governor General was, because there was a radio in the palace that the Seals had that temporarily went out. They used the telephone. We encourage our people to be very resourceful, and they used the telephone until the radio came back on. So, I do not think it was a means of stumbling around because we did not have the communications. The Chiefs did not get into that in any detail, as you suggested, and we should not.

Mr. STRATTON. Well, my understanding of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from experience in World War II, is that you are the strategists, you are the wise men of military activity and you are not concerned with whether somebody has a telephone or the right telephone or whether he has got his mess-kit. This is handled at a lower level. And, I think the attacks that were made in this debate in the past, and what I judge is even a more severe misunderstanding in the Senate, is that somehow the Joint Chiefs are supposed to nurse every G.I. along to make sure that he gets everything he needs.

The JCS should be a body of wise men who are determining what our strategy should be. One of the problems, incidentally, that I discovered in the Philippines is that they have got a crisis because they have got an Army that is superannuated of generals and they do not have anybody there that can fight the MPA. Mr. Marcos, supposedly the commander in chief, has no strategy whatsoever, and the Communists are moving gradually up from the south. The people who would develop the strategy are missing, and they do not have a very good JCS over there.

General WICKHAM. Thank you, sir. I would say, amen, to that. I think the burden of everything that these four gentlemen have been saying before this committee and before the Senate Committee in writing and orally, is: "Do not denigrate the role of the JCS in providing corporate advice in the strategic areas that you talk about".

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Kasich.

Mr. KASICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time to come up today. I know we spent a little bit of time plowing the CINC side of this reform. It is one area that I am concerned about, and asked questions about yesterday.

I understand the concern about not wanting to lay additional layers of bureaucracy on our commanders in the field, with responsibility for massive budget justifications-things that would require an awful lot of bureaucracy out there in the field. I wonder how you feel about establishing separate accounts for the CINC's in the area of, for example, command and control, joint training, joint exercises. I know there is a growing realization, that was obvious yesterday from the Secretaries' testimony and from your testimony today that the CINC's are being taken more into account in making budget decisions. Somebody said that the four appearances before the Defense Resources Board and those kinds of things are bringing them more into the action. But, as you know, six former Secretaries have recommended dramatic changes in the ways in which CINC's are brought into resource management decisions, along with some of the present or former CINC's themselves-General Rogers, and Admiral Crowe, for example.

And, I wonder how you feel about the establishment of a separate budget in these areas that are clearly related to their responsibilities.

General WICKHAM. I have been a CINC. I would not want it. I have been, also

Mr. KASICH. You have been waiting for that question. [Laughter.] General WICKHAM. I have been a military assistant to two Secretaries of Defense and neither of them found problems with the current system. I have been Director of the Joint Staff with one chairman, and I have served another chairman as his assistant in the Joint Staff. They never raised that issue. So, I do not understand what is at work here. Yes, the Congress can legislate that, and I think what you would do is give yourself a very difficult job of trying to pull together a coherent justification for what it is you are spending your money on. I do not know how we, in the Department of Defense, would allocate joint training moneys among CINC's. There is not enough of it. For example, I do not know how we would allocate enough steaming hours for naval bases to each CINC to meet their needs. By giving the CINC the budget to control it you would have to have the CINC's up here justifying the stewardship of resources that you had legislated they have in the way of separate budgets.

What you have now is the best of all possible worlds, Mr. Kasich. You have the service Chiefs, that must come to you accountable by law for justifying a coherent budget and programs that are globally-balanced and that are balanced in terms of near-term and longterm interests of the Nation. We are the "crew chief”, and if you break that up and give parts of it to the unified commanders you blur our obligation, and you blur our ability to manage those resources in an efficient, coherent way. I think the Nation is illserved by that kind of a procedure and you are then going to require the CINC's to have a substantial budget program and analysis staff to prepare them to come before the Congress. They are going to spend more and more time back here in the bureaucracy and less and less time in learning how to fight.

Mr. KASICH. General, I appreciate that strong statement. The Secretary told me yesterday, "Well, we now are starting to get the CINC's more involved in the budget process. Three guys come down here every year and spend time working with the staff in putting a budget together." And, I said, If you mean the CINC's send three in, then that means you have about 600 budget people here within the beltway." He winked at me, and said, "We probably have more than 600 budget people."

General WICKHAM. That's a cute observation, Mr. Kasich, and it is not true.

Mr. KASICH. OK.

General WICKHAM. When the CINC's are involved and come up with their own priority list I get involved in it personally. All of the Chiefs do when the CINC's come in with their own priority lists. For example, for General Rogers, the CINCEUR, we send teams over there telling him what we are doing about his priority list. My staff has to justify to me where we have met them, and where not. That is justified also to the Secretary of the Army, whether he has 3 people versus our 30, and that is about the ratio

on the Army staff. The fact is that the mismatches have to be brought to the Secretary and to the Chiefs' vision and we have to justify them.

Mr. KASICH. I recognize he may have made a wrong statement, but could you explain to me then why it is that you have six former Secretaries, both sides of the aisle, different philosophies, some of the finest thinkers we have in Government, Goldwater, and Nunn-Goldwater around since, you know, forever-Sam Nunn, also revered on both sides of the aisle as good thinkers. And you have General Rogers and Admiral Crowe and General Nutting, all of whom have said that there is a general imbalance between their CINC's ability to affect decisions in Washington on resources on one hand, and their ability to carry out those responsibilities on the other.

Why is everybody saying that, when it seems as though from what you are saying, that it is really not very accurate?

General WICKHAM. I think there are several reasons. One, is the memory of those who now have a different perspective, and who have forgotten how it used to be. I thought we had made it abundantly clear that there has been enormous progress in the past couple of years in Defense Resources Board procedures. I have watched this process now for 12 years. This is the most comprehensive involvement of the CINC's I have ever seen. The CINC's are involved, and those who are offering criticisms now do not understand the current system. I humbly observe that Members of the Congress who think they know how the process works and have not given 30 to 35 years the way each of us have, to living in it. I think we understand it. Maybe we come across too strong. Maybe we have been in the woods too long to understand the forest, but, I do not think that is true. I have been a CINC. I sympathize with the needs and desires of the CINC's, but if we had resourced the CINC's entirely as they wished, you would not have a coherent defense budget.

Mr. KASICH. But, the executive department, the President, has commissioned studies on JCS effectiveness over a period of three decades now. I think there have been about six, seven, perhaps maybe eight studies on the effectiveness of JCS in this overall reorganization discussion and each of those executive commissions has come back and recommended essentially what we are discussing today: changes in the relationships between the CINC's and resource management, changes in the way in which JCS renders decision and advice to the civilian leaders. I mean, these are not some isolated studies.

General WICKHAM. Agreed. I was involved in those studies. When I was Director of the Joint Staff, substantive studies took place during my watch there. The fact is, things have happened in the past 2 years as a derivative of those studies. The improvements that have been made are substantial and some of them are not even visible. As an illustration-the old idea of the bureaucratic building of papers, where we went through flimsy, buff, and green color paper to get a committee solution out of the JCS, were a labyrinthe. The common denominator is that is now all done away with. There is only one draft now and this is top-down guidance. The five of us get together on key issues where there is some con

siderable debate. We talk about it among ourselves, and then we give the guidance to the joint action officers and they build the papers that way, top-down, not bottom-up. Those are very important changes. When I was Director of the Joint Staff, we had none of that kind of activity going on but it is going on now as a substantial way of doing our business.

Again, the fact is that the CINC's are heavily involved now in the Defense Resources Board process. They were not when I was the Director of the Joint Staff and military assistant to two Secretaries of Defense, 6 and 7 years ago. They are now. So, while there have been studies and testimony by people who served earlier, they need to take into account the substantial progress that has been made. While the Congress is looking at history, I would urge you to get current so that you do not really do some major surgery that the patient does not need.

Mr. KASICH. Final question, Mr. Chairman, if I may. And that is, in the bill that passed the House, which I think you probably all feel uncomfortable with, what now is being discussed in the Senate. Senator Stratton, I mean, Congressman Stratton-I wish it had been Senator Stratton-Congressman Stratton and Congressman Bennett had concerns about you being able to operate and express. your opinions whenever there is disagreement.

A lot of people shared that concern. What is wrong, General Wickham, with the House-passed legislation that says that we will, in fact, have one person as the principal military advisor, but if any of you should happen to disagree with any of the decisions that are made, you have clear options? In fact, you are mandated under that legislation now, according to the Bennett amendment, to express your concerns and your disagreements. Don't we have the best of both worlds? We, in fact, make some reform, but yet we still-and some head-knocking, which probably everybody would say is good-you are admitting that we are making changes this last couple of years, but we still preserve your ability to have access to the key civilian leaders, which I think is also critical.

General WICKHAM. The House bill is not bad. The House bill says that the Chairman is the principal military advisor. We all agree with that. He really is now, and the codification of that is no problem. As to the Aspin amendment, or maybe it is Mr. Bennett's, that amendment you put in your bill requires consultation, I think that takes care of it.

Mr. KASICH. How about the amendment that allows the Chairman to make some budget recommendations and proposals to the Secretary of Defense after

General WICKHAM. He does.

Mr. KASICH [continuing]. Consultation with the CINC's?

General WICKHAM. He does.

Mr. KASICH. I mean, formalize that.

General WICKHAM. Fine.

Mr. KASICH. Is that fine with you? That was the Kasich amendment, that was fine with you, too?

General WICKHAM. Yes. [Laughter.]

He does now, and I do not see any problem with codifying it. Admiral Watkins, do you want to comment?

Admiral WATKINS. Well, the only thing, Mr. Kasich, we did not talk about-you very nicely covered in the amended bill the issue of divergent views of the Chief. That it is not only desired, it is required. It is extremely important and should be retained in any negotiation with the Senate. We do not see that same protection over there. That is one of the most significant protective features and it is very important we retain that.

We talk about maintaining the corporate body of the Chiefs and while there is lip service given throughout your bill to that, you immediately emasculate that body's effectiveness when you make the deputy chairman rank No. 2, and you take the Service Chiefs out of the acting chairman role. You must understand that what you are doing there is negating the very good things contained in the rest of the bill.

We have all agreed that we can take seven provisions as they are and four others with minor modification. There is only one tragic flaw, and it is the fact that you have taken away our opportunities to interface directly with the Secretary of Defense on a daily basis when we are acting chairman, as well as with National Security Council involvement. If you do not bring a Service Chief into a decision to use and employ his force, you are making a terrible mistake. Charlie Gabriel knows what his Air Forces can do, I know what my naval forces can do in the Mediterranean today. I make sure the logistic supplies are moving. I am watching everything going on, making sure the equipment is on station. I have to do all that as I watch events play out. General Gabriel will do the same thing in such situations as occurred in Chad with his AWAC's with his F-15's. Similarly, John will do the same thing with his Divisions, when he is moving them. He makes sure they are moving right, and he knows their capacity to accomplish a mission.

So, when we are giving advice to the President and to the Secretary of Defense and somebody asks us, can you do this job, we'd better know our forces. Then we can say, yes, or no, Mr. President, you have got to it this way or you are asking too much of us. There is a time line into which all of these kinds of things have to be factored. If command and control has to be set up, it may take us several days, for example before a capability can actually be used. Who knows it better than those who are required by law to train, equip and outfit our forces properly? So, we must stay in that game, or you are going to lose some sound advice to the President at critical times, when he is trying to move forces quickly and in a responsible way.

Mr. KASICH. Two questions that stem from that immediately. One is, and let's take it head-on, the criticism in the Nunn-Goldwater Senate Report that talks about this gobbley-de-gook_that came when the Laos decision was supposed to be made, and President Kennedy said, go back to work and do something else. The criticism of the Iran mission-everybody trying to grab a piece of that. That is why I guess there was concern about having one person serve as principal military advisor so there was not everybody trying to grab a share of the action. I would like you to comment on that.

And, No. 2. Do you think that if the President was going to make a decision about going somewhere-for example, to Grenada-he is

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