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leave them as they are. That's a major decision that I think we made back in 1947, that we reiterated again in 1949, and that has served us well. I would not change it.

Mr. HOPKINS. Do you mean to imply that we have a perfect system?

Mr. TAFT. No, I should have said that we should leave them as they are and improve them from what they are, but the organizational entities, the titles, I would keep and have three military departments for the military services. This seems to me to be a sound starting point, and I would not propose that for review.

Mr. HOPKINS. It's time to yield to one of my colleagues.

Mr. Skelton.

Mr. SKELTON. Yes. Regarding the defense agencies, and particularly the DLA, the Defense Logistics Agency, Mr. Secretary, you said that their management is of common items. Is that right? Mr. TAFT. That is how they are justified, yes, sir.

Mr. SKELTON. That's how they are justified. That's their initial charter when they first came into being, back I-guess it was in 1958. Is that not correct?

Mr. TAFT. Yes. Well, they came in at different times.

Mr. SKELTON. Well, the DLA came into being around there.

Mr. TAFT. Yes, 1962, I think.

Mr. SKELTON. Would it surprise you to know that this administration has gone beyond the charter with the DLA, beyond giving them management of common items, and that this administration has given them over 500,000 service peculiar items to manage? Does that surprise you?

Mr. TAFT. No, this does not.

Mr. SKELTON. But you didn't mention that to us, did you?

Mr. TAFT. Well, once you have an agency that is in existence to buy common items, it may well be that that is the most efficient way of

Mr. SKELTON. We're not talking about common items, but about service peculiar items.

Mr. TAFT. Like I say, once you have the agency in existence to buy common items, it may well be that it is in the best position to buy service peculiar items as well, in some instances.

Mr. SKELTON. That's the syndrome that gets a blow to bureaucracy. The "let them do it", just give them the whole load of hay and let them go at it. And I just wonder if the Navy can do a better job, the Air Force can do a better job, the Army, et cetera, couldn't do a better job in purchasing those service-peculiar items.

Mr. TAFT. În a particular item, one can always discuss it. I know that the Secretaries of the services are frequently proposing items and we do make changes.

Mr. SKELTON. There are some that want to eliminate all those agencies. You know that.

Mr. TAFT. I haven't heard all of them, but I certainly heard of one who wants to eliminate the Defense Logistics Agency. I gather you'll be hearing more from him today.

Mr. SKELTON. And if you don't like Mr. Courter's bill, wait until you see the one I'm working on, which hopefully we'll be introducing soon, which, of course, talks about DLA at length.

Thank you very much.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Kasich.

Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, just one area.

I think, Mr. Taft, we're concerned that we have over a million people now who are nonuniform folks who are working in the Pentagon-are connected with the Fentagon, I should say. And Mr. Rudman had a proposal that I was interested in, and floated the last time, and I think things like that are going to continue to gather steam.

But I just wanted to share one experience with you. I want to commend you for your work in terms of the special forces, for your kind of head banging. In fact, without your head banging I think you would have had a perfect illustration of our inability to carry out succinct, clear direction, strategically, in terms of special forces. I think you'd have to agree with that; fortunately, you were there to do some head banging. But I had a gentleman come to see me who was in the room one day during our special forces hearing-I asked him to come. He didn't volunteer. I kind of pinned him in a corner and said "would you come by?" And we were talking about one of the functions, one of the critical functions of special forces. He said, "I prepared a report that was very clear in its assessment of a particular capability that we need to have in order to have effective special forces." And he submitted that report. He works on the Joint Staff. He said "I submitted that report and by the time the report got out of there the report was completely different than what I had written and it was such a completely different assessment of capability within special forces." He said he didn't even recognize the report anymore, and the reason that it got that way was because of all the compromises that occurred as the report traveled through the bureaucracy.

I was really upset by that for the simple reason that-you know how critical that kind of capability is, to have special forces.

What do we do to get out the clear and concise military advice given to people like the Secretary of Defense and the President, but also to the Congress, when we have to try to make assessments on where we are in programs, and I've got somebody in there telling me that he can't make an assessment that gets to me that talks about the true capability of the services in this area? What are we going to try to do together to solve that kind of a problem?

Mr. TAFT. Well, let me first thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it. We have worked hard on the special operations forces. I don't know what type of a comment I can make on the instance that you allude to without knowing really what's involved. I would caution you that sometimes a staff person will work very hard on a paper and think that they have everything in there that needs to be in there, and want to forward it to the President of the United States, or the chairman of this committee, and get it enacted right away, and there are some other people who are in between him, in those authorities, who have some broader experience, broader responsibilities, who have a different view. Sometimes the man is right on, and has it exactly, and when you get a speechwriter like that, hold onto him, and just give the speech. But until you do, I think you'll be inclined to change drafts of speeches that are handed to you, and you'll think they're better when you do that, and the people who made changes in the report, I dare say,

thought that they were improving it, giving a more accurate view, whatever. That was their job to do, and I don't know whether they were right or wrong, not knowing the situation, but I do know that a lot of the time staff reports get changed, and they're not always changed for the worse, sometimes they're improved.

Mr. KASICH. Well, the problem in this case, Mr. Taft, is that the committee would happen to agree with his assessment. You happen to agree with his assessment, and everybody clearly agrees with his assessment. But the problem is not the specifics. The problem is the attitude, the head-down attitude that he had when he talked to me where he said, no, I've impounded this thing, or I've been working on this thing all this time and I could never get it out. There's this tremendous sense of frustration-why am I even wasting my time? And I'm not bothered about it from some political point of view. I'm upset about it because I'm concerned whether we have an effective military when we've got a system that encourages people to water things down to serve the best interests of an individual service.

And you've got to admit it, if it wasn't for your head-knocking here, and the period in the last couple of months, we still wouldn't know who was going to provide airlift for special forces. Am I not correct on that?

Mr. TAFT. We had to make that decision very clearly and very forcefully, as you say, but—

Mr. KASICH. But how can we begin assessments on one hand that say that we have capable airlift for example, and then you find out that there are people-when you talk to the constituents down there in the Pentagon and you ask them, well, what the heck is going on down there? You get a whole different story than the people that come up here and testify on the Hill. They give you a whole different story. What I'm worried about is, are we getting accurate assessment about our military capability because of the problem of the watered-down advice that comes out of the-out of something like JCS, and what are you going to do about this, or what can we do together about it? I don't ask that in a hostile way. I'm concerned

Mr. TAFT. Let me say two things. One is on the question that you raised about watered-down advice, the issue of logrolling as it has been referred to, and so on. I think that this is simply not an element of experience that I have had with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I know there are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the past who have said that that was the case when they were there. I'm sorry. It shouldn't have been. I don't know why they participated in it while they were there, but I don't see any reason why they should suggest that their successors are participating in it just because they may have.

You should-and you will have this opportunity to discuss with the Joint Chiefs of Staff what their approach is. My own view is that we get excellent advice from the Joint Chiefs; we sometimes get split advice; we meet with them very frequently; differences of view among them are known to us. They try to work them out because, after all, in the end we can only follow one policy at a time. They like to try and suggest what their view is as to the best

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policy. They might have individual differences. We are aware of them. We watch them and work with them as they work those out. The Secretary of Defense meets with the Chairman every day. The fact that the chief of this service and the chief of that service, at a particular point in time, need to get together to discuss a difference, does not mean that after they are done that they don't reach an agreement. But we're aware of how to go about that. It's a part of discussion and the formulation of advice.

The problem of staff and their views becoming available to the Congress, and so on, I think is more of an aspect of bureaucracy in general. I don't think it's peculiar to the Army, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of HEW, in which I used to work, or indeed a private corporation. Bureaucracies are big organizations. Individuals work within them. The skill is to manage the bureaucracy in a way that you can-because you can't do things on the scale that we do without a large number of people to do them-be sure that you mobilize those bureaucracies in a way that individual views are fairly considered, carefully considered, and so on.

Our job in this respect is never done, in the Defense Department, in the Congress, or anywhere else, that I'm aware of. We are always working at it. We try to get these views up to try to be sure they're fairly considered. Sometimes it comes out that individuals are disappointed that their views didn't prevail. Sometimes there are good reasons for that; sometimes not.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Hopkins, do you have any further questions? Mr. Barrett? Mr. Lally.

Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You mentioned, or Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Skelton mentioned H.R. 4068, which would abolish the Defense Logistics Agency and Defense Contract Audit Agency, and transfer their functions to the military departments. This bill would also prohibit any increase in the civilian personnel authorizations of the military departments in order to carry out the transfer of these functions.

Do the military departments currently have the required numbers of experienced civilian personnel to assume the procurement and contract audit functions which they would be required to assume under this legislation?

Mr. TAFT. I very much doubt it. The Defense Contract Audit Agency has in it some 4,000 or 5,000 auditors, who have obviously very specially-developed skills. There are not people with those skills in that number in the military departments.

The Defense Logistics Agency is, I believe, around 60,000 personnel in all. They are specially trained in purchasing and the management of contracts, and there are not people in that degree trained in that way in the services at this time.

Mr. LALLY. In your opinion then, Mr. Secretary, would it be feasible to transfer these functions to the military departments, prohibit their increase in their civilian personnel levels, and expect them to carry out this?

Mr. TAFT. I do not believe that would be feasible.

Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Barrett.

Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

On page 5 of the statement, Mr. Taft, you catalog actions that demonstrate DOD commitments to improve the lot of joint officers. One of the statements is that the Department of Defense is increasing utilization of graduates of the National Defense University, and particularly the National War College.

Can you provide substantiation for us that this is taking place? I know you probably don't have it with you this morning. But is there trend data over the last 5 years to indicate that graduates of the various schools of the National Defense University are being utilized in joint assignments?

Mr. TAFT. Yes, we'll be glad to provide that.

Mr. BARRETT. All right, sir.

[The following information was received for the record:]

UTILIZATION OF THE GRADUATES OF NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

The new policy to increase utilization in joint assignments of all graduates of National Defense University was initiated by a Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum of Policy in August 1985. As a result, we do not have data yet from two of the three schools. However, the number of Armed Forces Staff College graduates being assigned to joint duty has increased from 36 percent in 1982 to 68 percent assigned to joint or joint interface duty in the latest class.

You also mentioned that there's a course for flag and general officers, and there's a second course being added. Could you indicate what percentage of your general officers are attending those courses?

Mr. TAFT. Let me get that for you.

Mr. BARRETT. OK. Do you have a feel? Is it a large percentage, or a small percentage?

Mr. TAFT. I think I'd rather just provide you the precise figure for your committee.

[The following information was received for the record:]

COURSE FOR Flag and GENERAL OFFICERS

Our present training (called Capstone) for newly promoted flag and general officers consists of an eight week course in joint activities designed to provide a better understanding of the major factors influencing joint and combined warfare. Though the focus of the course is for newly selected flag and general officers moving into joint assignments, it is open to all promotees to the grade of 0-7, not just the latest list. Two Capstone classes accommodate about 50 students per year. With approximately 110 0-7 joint billets, all new flag and general officers being assigned to a joint activity should have the opportunity to attend a Capstone course.

Mr. BARRETT. OK. You also indicate that you favor a special experience identifier for joint experience, which, I think, is a step in the direction of the concepts being considered by the subcommittee. But how would a special experience identifier improve the training of officers who will be assigned a joint duty? How would it insure the selection of outstanding officers to be assigned to joint duty? And how would it have any effect on protecting future promotions and career assignments if all we do is establish a joint identifier? Mr. TAFT. If this is all you do, it will not improve their training. What it will do is assure that their experience in that function is recognized, and when the next joint assignment, or assignment where a joint duty experience is relevant comes up, this will tag them with a bit of an edge for that assignment. And it would be considered by the people making that assignment as a plus that

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