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SECTION 101 OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947

[50 U.S.C. 402]

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL

SEC. 101. (a) There is hereby established a council to be known as the National Security Council (hereinafter in this section referred to as the "Council").

The President of the United States shall preside over meetings of the Council: Provided, That in his absence he may designate a member of the Council to preside in his place.

The function of the Council shall be to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the Government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security.

The Council shall be composed of

(1) the President;

(2) the Vice President;

(3) the Secretary of State;

(4) the Secretary of Defense;

(5) the Director for Mutual Security;

(6) the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board; and

(7) The Secretaries and Under Secretaries of other executive departments and the military departments, the Chairman of the Munitions Board, and the Chairman of the Research and Development Board, when appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to serve at his pleasure.

(b) In addition to performing such other functions as the President may direct, for the purpose of more effectively coordinating the policies and functions of the departments and agencies of the Government relating to the national security, it shall, subject to the direction of the President, be the duty of the Council

(c)

(1) to assess and appraise the objectives, commitments, and risks of the United States in relation to our actual and potential military power, in the interest of national security, for the purpose of making recommendations to the President in connection therewith; and

(2) to consider policies on matters of common interest to the departments and agencies of the Government concerned with the national security, and to make recommendations to the President in connection therewith.

(d) The Council shall, from time to time, make such recommendations, and such other reports to the President as it deems appropriate or as the President may require.

(e) The Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall attend all meetings of the Council and shall participate fully in its deliberations.

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STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY J. HOPKINS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM KENTUCKY, RANKING MINORITY MEMBER, INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. HOPKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to assure my colleagues that I won't take too long. But I do want to say a little about Joint Chiefs of Staff reform and support the remarks of my chairman.

First of all, I want to talk about the chairman, Bill Nichols. It is typical of him to compliment our former colleague, Dick White, for the work he had done in this area. But the praise today should go to Bill Nichols because, since 1983, he has been the steady, unbiased guiding hand behind this legislation, as well as many other subcommittee efforts. Joint Chiefs of Staff reform is not a very glamorous issue, but it is very important, and the credit goes to Bill Nichols for this well crafted bill we have here today.

The chairman has made detailed remarks on the bill, and I won't repeat those. Let me, however, summarize and put this effort into perspective as I see it.

The effort is not new. As noted, this committee and the House have supported Joint Chiefs of Staff reform in two previous Congresses. The bill we bring before you today is supported by over 1,300 pages of testimony. We have not rushed to judgment. This work is thoughtful and reflective. We have done our homework.

It is interesting to note, as I believe the chairman did, that the original call for reform came from within the Joint Chiefs of Staff itself. Yet it is the natural tendency of any bureaucracy to resist change. But that is OK. In the case of structural reform, I think it is a matter of us saving the Pentagon senior staff from themselves. We-and I mean this committee-are often viewed by the public as failing to take meaningful corrective action on problems we, and the public, know exist. We have the satisfaction, on this issue, of knowing that we are well in front of public opinon and public perception of what needs to be done. I think that is important.

In short, our subcommittee felt very strongly that we should retain the current basic organization, that it was fundamentally sound, but that some inadequacies had evolved over time.

Primarily, the JCS is a committee of equals with a chairman of no significant authority.

There is an inability to deal with major policy decisions which inevitably are left completely and totally to civilians.

The chairman has documented some examples for us. To me, the most damaging is the instance in 1983 when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to comment on budget cuts because the responsibility for recommending cuts fell to the service chiefs. What kind of system do we have when the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman can't or won't give the Congress his perspective on how we should shape the defense budget?

With this legislation, we are recommending five very basic and important improvements in the way the Joint Chiefs of Staff function.

1. Strengthening the chairman in his role of providing unbiased military advice to the civilian authorities of government.

2. Broadening the source of advice coming into the Joint Chiefs of Staff structure by bringing the commanders of the specified and unified commands into the loop.

3. Ensuring that appropriate military advice is heard by policymakers by having the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman attend National Security Council meetings.

4. Authorizing some necessary personnel and staff changes.

5. We have tried to get the chairman more into the chain of command without setting anything in law that is inflexible.

I think it is important to take an extra minute to reassure my colleagues that it is not our intent to cut the service chiefs off and substitute the judgment of only one man as regards military advice to the President and Secretary of Defense. We do want the chairman, a strengthened chairman, to deal with the majority of joint issues and to give our civilian authorities more timely and thoughtful advice on strategic and multiservice policy issues. We have created in the bill ample opportunity for policymakers to get the advice of the collective body when needed, and for the service chiefs to offer their individual advice when they feel strongly about an issue.

One final thought. I suspect many of my colleagues are wondering how this proposal stands up against the Senate staff study that recommends the complete abolition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replacing it with a military advisory panel. Let me remind you that the Senate report is a staff study. It has not been endorsed by anyone. That doesn't mean it is bad. But to adopt that recommendation is to take a leap into the unknown. We have chosen rather to take the product we have and improve it—and improve it substantially.

It is our judgment, literally after years of work, that we should retain the basic Joint Chiefs of Staff structure but that these reforms will go a long way toward improving its efficiency and serving the best interests of our national defense.

I ask for your support.

The CHAIRMAN. Ike Skelton.

Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, not a great deal can be said in addition to what Chairman Nichols and the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Hopkins have already said. So I want to reiterate what this bill is and what it does. Of course, everyone on the committee knows of my longstanding interest in this. We are today doing something that should have been done in 1947. We are correcting the lack of jointness in the top command that President Harry Truman addressed to the nation in 1946.

The bill in 1947 was a compromise that had some of the worst of all results. Although there have been some minor changes since that time, the same 1947 law still exists. Jim Schlesinger, Harold Brown, and Melvin Laird all said there were problems. David Jones, General Scowcroft, and Maxwell Taylor were active in attempting to do something about the problem.

That is where we are today. Rather than have watered down pablum type advice to the President, and to the Secretary of Defense, we will have clear, concise, timely advice that a President and Secretary can rely on. In the past there have been Presidents

that have either chosen to ignore, or only listen to part of, the advice. They sought their advice elsewhere. We will end that.

I urge the adoption of this bill. It represents a great deal of work, a lot of time, on behalf of the gentleman from Alabama and those on the subcommittee, and I think it is a great step in the right direction.

The CHAIRMAN. As the gentleman points out to everybody, the gentleman from Missouri is a coauthor of the bill with the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Nichols.

I would like now to call on the ranking minority member, who has been very interested in the whole reform issue in general, and is of course the person who originated the Packard Commission. The Packard Commission is looking into this issue, I guess, and a number of other issues. They started out looking into procurement reform and everytime we turn around their mandate grows. So let me call on Bill Dickinson.

Mr. DICKINSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me commend the subcommittee for its product, and whether I am signed on now as a sponsor or not, I do support and will sponsor this piece of legislation. Obviously, the varying amounts of criticism directed at the organization of the Joint Chiefs made it necessary that we all devote considerable attention to whether or not the system was broken or whether it remained in one piece, but required fine tuning. I tend to take the latter view and am not at all convinced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be disestablished and replaced by some notion of a substitute, as has been suggested in some quarters.

Parenthetically, I am pleased at this time we have the Packard Commission in place. I am confident that with the experience the commission represents, objective and reliable recommendations concerning the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be forthcoming. Nonetheless, we in the House must examine the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization as we have done in the committee, and I would urge all of our colleagues to give this legislation favorable consideration.

As I understand it, the basic framework of the organization would remain in place. But alterations are recommended, pointed at creating a more streamlined chain of command, and obviously sharper, more responsive advice to the Secretary of Defense and to the Commander in Chief.

Let me say, Mr. Chairman, I think we all need to recognize that the Senate has come up with a proposal. They invited the chairman and me and a couple of the staffers over to meet with the Packard Commission, and with Chairman Goldwater and Senator Nunn, and other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They are going to come forward with a piece of legislation to restructure the Joint Chiefs of Staff and perhaps the entire Pentagon. That is the feeling I get. Theirs goes much further afield than what we propose.

The Packard Commission has indicated its interest in dealing with the problem of streamlining the Pentagon and especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So I think that it is inevitable that we are going to have some major legislation dealing with the restructuring of the Department of Defense in some regard.

I think it is probable that what we are recommending in this piece of legislation is the least we can expect. I think that it is sensible, I think it is supportable. I think the testimony of those who have served in this capacity and have had jurisdiction over the Joint Chiefs of Staff have made a very compelling argument in their testimony to the subcommittee. We can justify what is in this bill and maybe we want to go further afield sometime in the future, but even if that should be the case, that is no reason to not go forward now with this legislation that has been hanging fire for so long, much too long. We tried to get Senator Tower to accept it and work in conference while he was chairman 2 years ago, and we tried to get this last conference, but to no avail.

So I hope we go forward with it. Only by going forward and approving it now, will we have a vehicle that we can at least meet in the other body and come to some resolution of a very serious problem. So I strongly support the legislation and I thank the chair. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Whitehurst.

Mr. WHITEHURST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I, too, want to salute the membership of the subcommittee who drew up this legislation and in particular, Chairman Nichols, and the ranking minority member of that subcommittee, Congressman Hopkins. I think the statement Bill Nichols read this morning was one of the most persuasive he has ever uttered. I was very impressed by it. I hope that all of us will take the time to go back and read it over again, because parts of it he skipped for purposes of time.

A couple of observations this morning. The past 150 years of warfare has been marked by some spectacular successes and some spectacular failures. Anyone who knows the history of this period has seen that those bodies that are responsible for warmaking policy, who were earmarked on the success side did so because they had great dynamism in those bodies.

As I listened to Bill Nichols' work this morning and thought about the comments of the witnesses, who appeared before this subcommittee, I thought about the reforms the Prussian Army made in the mid-19th century, reforms which led to the incredible successes of the armies of that country against their adversaries at that time.

I also thought of the spectacular failures, not only at the hands of Prussia during that period, but in a more modern time, in our own century, the collapse of France in 1940, which was preceded by 20 years of ossification, if you will, of the French General Staff.

If there is one point that I think has been made by the testimony that has been offered by the statement rendered by Mr. Nichols, it is this: There is no dynamism in the Joint Chiefs of Staff over in the Pentagon. There is, if you will, a corporate mentality that exists there and it does not serve the Nation so well. I think one of the things about this that distresses me the most is the fact that there is no real military policy. The structure is such that it does not really spawn thinkers. If there is one thing that is really vital, I think, in any military success that we might have down the road against our present adversary, it is the need for it to be preceded, if you will, by an environment that encourages thinking, the creation of policies that will lead to our success.