Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Ask that he intercede in the JCS discussions? Admiral TRAIN. No, sir. It is now the same 7 years later. Mr. NICHOLS. The argument we hear is, "sure the CINC commander wants a better radar in Iceland, that is his ball park, sure he wants to upgrade the Air Force to F-15's, that is his command, but up here at the higher authority, we have to look at the broad picture." I am telling you that is what the committee hears, and I appreciate very much your discussion on that particular issue. Let me get into what you talk about as tensions between the JCS and the CINC's. Would you elaborate on that a little bit? I don't see why there should be any tensions. I mean, we all fight for the same purposes, as you said at the beginning of your testimony. Admiral TRAIN. I described these as natural tensions. I think they are tensions that result from the burden of accountability felt and carried by the resource authority--the service chiefs and service Secretaries on the one hand-and the unified commanders on the other. This is primarily a result for the unified commander being in a mode of dealing with today's problems. He isn't really interested in what is downstream for him because he is accountable for what happens today, whether that be a Pearl Harbor, Grenada, a Falkland Islands conflict or a Vietnam. He is responsible for today. He does have to plan ahead, but the bottom line is that if he fails today, he has failed his country. So the challenge that the service chief has to confront is in doing his task, carrying out his accountability, which he must, for looking ahead, involves sometimes sacrificing such things as force structure in order to gain enough money to buy things and buy the modernization that is required to do the job tomorrow. The commander who is penalized when he does that is the unified commander. So there develops this "I have this job to do and you have that job to do, and I don't really understand what you are doing" type of tension, not conflict, just tension, that I think could be alleviated were there to be a natural progression of our top and most talented officers from unified command to service chief or service chief to unified command. It doesn't matter which direction they go. One way to stimulate that natural flow is to make that a prerequisite for nomination to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. NICHOLS. I believe that was-was that in the Georgetown study? Admiral TRAIN. No, it was not. I was unsuccessful in getting my colleagues to accept it. They thought it was not sufficiently achievable to embrace. Mr. NICHOLS. I couldn't agree more with what you said about any additional training that we give to junior officers to prepare them for Joint Staff, that Joint Staff duty should not create a home for these people. It is absolutely essential that we not make it a professional staff, per se-that they continue to be rotated. You use the word "intimidation" of Joint Staff. And I have never heard the argument-we have heard a lot of reasons that this service couldn't assign their best officers to the staff, but nowhere have I heard from the services that there is any fear of assigning the best officers because it would come back to haunt them sometime. That is the new dimension that you have mentioned. But talk about intimidation of the joint staff. Admiral TRAIN. When I testified before the White Investigations Subcommittee in 1982, I made the point that prior to the time I served as Director of the Joint Staff, I served a tour of duty as the Deputy Director for the Strategic Plans and Policy on the Navy staff. Although I had at that time served two tours of duty on the Joint Staff, myself, and thought I understood it pretty well, I was in the business of having to intimidate Naval officers on the Joint Staff in order to accomplish what I had to do at the time. I am not one who thrives in intimidation. But the joint action process does lend itself to people in the services who feel that their own officers are obstructing that service goal or that service position. They succumb to the temptation to attempt to intimidate by saying such things as, "Don't you know what color uniform you are wearing and what service you are going to come back to when you finish your tour on the Joint Staff?" But the retribution that has been suggested in the course of these deliberations-I have not seen that occur. I honestly cannot say I have ever seen retribution. The intimidation is there, but I never have seen it backed up with retribution, and that is an important point. Mr. NICHOLS. Let me talk about the Deputy Chairman. We have heard that is a good idea, we need a Deputy Chairman. The Chairman needs some help, but be sure you don't rank him higher than anybody sitting around this table here, keep that rank below other members of the JCS. Also they don't want to lose their time to sit in the chair as a chairman. They make a very telling point, I thought, in that sitting in the chair for these 3 months broadens the viewpoints of a given chief. Now, you come to us and you say that you really need a man who sits there all the time and is on board all the time, because you know how he is going to behave, you know generally his personality, and he doesn't need to be rotated. What value do you attach to the arguments that I believe each of the chiefs may have used, that when it comes my time to sit in the Chairman's chair and preside, it broadens my views of the JCS and I can be a better member? Admiral TRAIN. I find that there is merit in that point, but not sufficient merit to support on-the-job training of that type that would prompt me to say that that is a better system than a system that would provide full continuity and a completely known personality and predictable behavior that is so necessary in our leadership structure. On-the-job training is important, but I don't think it is so important that we should lose this opportunity to establish a Deputy Chairman as an alter ego to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs. Mr. NICHOLS. What is your view of the strong concern that seems to surface from members of the current JCS that this man-it would just be terrible for him to be ranking, ahead of the other chiefs there? Obviously the JCS has a strong viewpoint on this. see a tremendous amount of respect that the JCS have for the Chairman; it is Mr. Chairman this, Mr. Chairman that, and nobody has made any criticism of Admiral Crowe-he is the top cat, but in talking about the Vice Chairman, I sense a little animosity toward this guy, whomever he might be, that he is going to come in there and he is going to disrupt things. Is that warranted? Admiral TRAIN. It is a predictable position. I would be somewhat suspicious if the people who face the prospects of having someone put in the chain of command over them were happy about it. So it is a predictable reaction, but I think that establishing the Deputy Chairman or the Vice Chairman, whichever we decide to call him, as a No. 2 man in the Armed Forces of the United States is an extremely important aspect of this provision. If he is not No. 2, then he is not really the deputy. And what we are looking at is whether we are going to have a Deputy or Vice Chairman or whether we are not going to have one. If he is not No. 2 he is not the Deputy. Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Lally. Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral, you discussed the intimidation of the Joint Staff officer. Is there any way to overcome that intimidation? Admiral TRAIN. Quite frankly, the best way to overcome it is to put your best officers down there. It is normally the officer who is in over his head who is intimidatable, if there is such a word, that can be intimidated. In my own experience both as Director and as a CINC it was the less-than-top-quality officers that were subject to intimidation, people that had a lot of ambition but not too much skill. Mr. LALLY. On your recommendation that the chairmen havethat a prerequisite for nomination as Chairman be service as a CINC, I believe that the last, the present chairman and his two immediate predecesors all had such joint experience; is that correct, sir? Admiral TRAIN. No, sir. The only three chairmen who have ever served as a unified commander were Admiral Radford, Admiral Moorer, and Admiral Crowe. Mr. LALLY. Well, didn't General Vessey- Admiral TRAIN. General Vessey was not a unified commander. Mr. LALLY. Would your recommendation extend also to nominations as a service chief, they have prior experience as a- Admiral TRAIN. No, sir, it would not. Because I think the flow should go both ways. It is just as useful that a service chief go on to be a combatant commander. I think the flow should proceed in both directions. Otherwise you would have an impossible detailing or nominating structure. Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Admiral. Mr. NICHOLS. Admiral, you say of all the chairmen you can recall, only two have served in CINC slots- Admiral TRAIN. Three, sir. Admiral Radford, who had served as CINCPAC, Admiral Moorer who served as CINCLANT, and Admiral Crowe who served as CINCPAC. Mr. NICHOLS. Are you talking about the Navy's standpoint? Mr. NICHOLS. As desirable as that might be, wouldn't that place some pretty severe limitations on the President and his appointing authority? Admiral TRAIN. It would indeed place severe limitations on the President until the system were established and working. Then I think it would give him much more flexibility once that cadre of very senior officers who serve both as service chief and unified commander starts to grow, then the pool of highly qualified candidates for the chairman's job becomes larger, not smaller. Mr. NICHOLS. The subcommittee is considering a number of proposals to strengthen the CINC's in several areas. Let me go down two or three of these and ask your comments. Would you support increasing CINC authority in areas of hiring and firing subordinates and court-martial jurisdiction? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you allow the CINC's to organize their commands and streamline that chain of command? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you give the CINC's influence on subordinate force training and employment? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, sir. Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Barrett. Mr. BARRETT. Along that line, Admiral Train, as you know, the law at present restricts support and administration for the CINC's to the services. The subcommittee is also considering relaxing that absolute prohibition to some degree and allowing the Secretary of Defense to shift some aspects of support and administration, if the CINC makes a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense then agrees with that recommendation. Would you support that? Admiral TRAIN. Yes; I would. Mr. BARRETT. With regard to the joint subspecialty idea, the subcommittee is considering the question of how many joint officers, what percentage of joint officers should be in the joint specialty. Would you recommend that they all be joint specialists or Admiral TRAIN. No, they need not all be. Of course not. But you do need a cadre or nucleus that could represent the corporate memory, if you will, of the Joint Staff. That is what really is necessary-some form of corporate memory and some form of momentum that can be sustained. I served three tours in the JCS organization and I was much better off for having done so when I became Director than had I jumped into that job without any previous experience on the Joint Staff. Mr. BARRETT. That is another aspect that we are considering— how many tours. We are considering for example, requiring that roughly half of a joint specialist's tours would be in the joint arena and the other half, as you indicated, would be back in his own service. Does that sound right? Admiral TRAIN. That coincides with my own view. Mr. BARRETT. What type of military education should joint subspecialists be given? Admiral TRAIN. When you come in at the lower level, I can think of no finer education to prepare someone for a tour in a Joint Staff than the Armed Forces Staff College. I think it is optimized for that purpose. Mr. BARRETT. You have talked about the choice of CINC's. Do you think that the future CINC's should have been joint subspecialists in order to qualify for the CINC position? Admiral TRAIN. NO. Mr. BARRETT. With regard to protecting officers from intimidation, the subcommittee is looking at some proposals to give the joint arena service promotions-with as little disruption as possible with the current system. Do you think the joint side should have a voice in service promotions? Admiral TRAIN. Yes, I do. Mr. BARRETT. Should, for example, a joint representative sit on service promotion boards that are considering officers for promotion, who have had joint assignments? Admiral TRAIN. I think that is one option, probably an attractive option. Whether it is achievable or not I'm not prepared to say. Mr. BARRETT. Even more far-reaching is a proposal to allow the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review the results of promotion boards with the idea of ascertaining whether joint officers have gotten consideration by their service. What do you think about a proposal along those lines? Admiral TRAIN. I think it is entirely reasonable to give the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the same prerogatives that a service Secretary has when looking at officers that support his own joint organization. And if a service Secretary can review the results of boards, the Chairman should also be allowed to review the results of boards that affect people upon which he depends for his staff support. Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you, Admiral. We appreciate your testimony. Off the record. [Discussion off the record.] Mr. NICHOLS. Very good testimony. Thank you, sir. Our next witness is Vice Adm. Thor Hansen, U.S. Navy, former Director of the Joint Staff. Admiral, we are pleased to have you with us this morning, and we will hear your testimony at this time. Do you have a written copy of it, sir? Admiral HANSEN. I have it basically printed. I'm going to depart from it a bit. Mr. NICHOLS. Would you like it inserted in the record? Admiral HANSEN. Yes, I will do that. If he is going-if you will take the notes there, I'm going to say a few things not in the statement. Mr. NICHOLS. You may proceed. STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. THOR HANSEN, U.S. NAVY (RETIRED), FORMER DIRECTOR, JOINT STAFF Admiral HANSEN. I am pleased, as well, to have this opportunity to testify on defense reorganization. Actually, several of my assignments during my career, three in particular-Director of the Joint Staff, which you mentioned, and also Military Assistant to Secretary of Defense and Executive Assistant Naval Aide to the Secretary of the Navy-convinced me that the change in the organiza |