et cetera. That means generally subject. It does not mean that the respective Secretaries could change this set-up in a manner that might suit their desires, or does it?

Mr. EBERSTADT. It depends on how your committee responds to the suggestions of the gentlemen from the Bureau of the Budget. That is the point I make. I do not think that this very basic organizational structure ought to be subject to change.

I think that the Secretary's authority ought not to be lessened. The Secretary ought to have the authority to do that, but I think the general lines of the structure ought to be established, or we will be no further along than we are today.

Senator BALDWIN. I might say I am in complete agreement with you on that. I think if this language were to be construed to give the respective Secretaries authority to change the basic structure, we would not be accomplishing a whole lot, or as much as we would like to with this legislation.

Mr. EBERSTADT. There is another point. One of the difficulties in this whole thing is that the three departments carry their accounts differently and that fiscal organizations and procedures are greatly at variance. That makes the central or integrating job very difficult, if not impossible. Those three subsidiaries, so to speak, should not necessarily follow slavishly the pattern in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, but they should be similar enough so that the present difficulties of integrating are reduced substantially.

Senator BALDWIN. Similar enough and reasonably permanent in their basic structure?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Yes, sir.

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Before we have more questioning, I would like to submit this to the committee. We already know that the Office of the Comptroller and the Treasury Department are in substantial agreement with Mr. Eberstadt's testimony. They have written to that effect and have orally stated it to various members of the committee.

It seems, therefore, idle to put men on the stand whose testimony will at best be repetitious; so, without objection on the part of the committee, there is no disposition on my part to call these men as witnesses, but to have the budget witnesses remain because they have got a contrary point of view, and I do not think we want to tie up these Government employees longer than is absolutely necessary.

So, without objection, the Treasury representatives and the Comptroller's representatives are excused, if they desire to be excused. We will ask the budget representatives and, of course, Mr. McNeil from the Department of Defense, to remain.

Go ahead.

Mr. EBERSTADT. May I make a suggestion? We thought that it might be clarifying to the members of the committee if Mr. McNeil would run over the bill briefly, section by section. We have accompanied the bill by a formidable statement. It is not our intention

The CHAIRMAN. It was my intention to call on him just as soon as I can make sure we have not been peremptory with the other members of the committee.

Mr. EBERSTADT. Perhaps you might want to hear the Comptroller General?

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The CHAIRMAN. How about it, gentlemen? Could you dispense with the questioning of Mr. Eberstadt? I think Mr. Johnson has a question.

Senator JOHNSON. I have two things, Mr. Eberstadt.

Did you support Public Law 253 of the Eightieth Congress as drawn, the Unification Act, so-called?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Not in all respects. I recommended to this committee, at the time I was called upon to testify, certain changes with respect to that law. For one thing, I thought the powers proposed to be conferred upon the Secretary were dangerously vague, and I recommended to the committee at that time-I took the liberty of recommending to your committee at that time as I have again, that the powers of the Secretary ought to be clarified.

Senator JOHNSON. Do you think experience intervening has justified your original position?

Mr. EBERSTADT. If it would not be lacking in modesty, Senator, I would say "Yes."

Senator JOHNSON. I am sorry I did not get here for the first part of your statement. As I understand you, you suggest that we write into the legislation a provision for a comptroller responsible to the Secretary of Defense, and that we have a comptroller in each of the military departments responsible to the Secretary of that Department.

Mr. EBERSTADT. That is right. It might be an Assistant Secretary, but responsible to the civilian head.

Senator JOHNSON. You also recommend that provision be made for a joint committee of the Congress to work with these comptrollers and the Bureau of the Budget and the Secretary of Defense and have a year-round scrutiny of their plans and operations and expenditures and budget estimates, and so forth.

Mr. EBERSTADT. That was not part of the draft title IV, Senator, but I think it would be a good thing.

Senator JOHNSON. I understood you suggested it in your statement. Why is it not in the draft?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Well, in the first place, I made the suggestion with a good deal of reserve because that was not really within my frame of reference, but I thought I might presume a bit and deal with the budget as a whole.

Senator JOHNSON. Do you think it would be conducive to economy? Mr. EBERSTADT. I do indeed, Senator.

Senator JOHNSON. Now, I notice in the recommendations of the Hoover Commission here you say, recommendation No. 3 on page 18, that:

In line with our recommendation below for an integrated system of military personnel and administration, that military education, training, recruiting, promotion, and transfer among the services be put under the central direction and control of the Secretary of Defense.

You bring in here a suggested new section to the bill that has for its general purpose effecting economies and in the proposed draft of the bill that we now have, the committee has tentatively considered. we vest great power in the Secretary of Defense, and we clear up a lot of this vagueness that you talk about, and we say that you have got to learn to swin, but you cannot go near the water.

Here on page 4, after we direct him to coordinate and consolidate and avoid unnecessary duplication and stop overlapping, and a lot of

fine and beautiful phrases, then we say, "But don't get in that water”; we say:

This shall not be construed to authorize the Secretary of Defense to make transfers of military personnel from one military department to another.

Now, is that consistent with your general objective; and if we leave that language in the bill, what effect will that have along the line of your recommendation here that the Secretary be given authority not only to stop this overlapping, this duplication, and effect consolidations, but when he actually gets there, where you have got your military personnel and you are running three or four public information bureaus and conducting three or four recruiting operations, and you have got three different educational and training programs and three different academies, and what not, you say, "But thou shalt not"? Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Senator, I will comment generally upon that, if I may, and then specifically.

Of course, the questions which I raised with respect to the bill are not because it creates too great clarity, but because it does exactly the opposite because the bill creates these certain establishments and then leaves entirely within the discretion of the Secretary as to whether he wishes to use them for the purposes for which they are created.

I have no reserve in my mind as to giving the Secretary full authority to deal with all these questions and the final authority, but I think that a measure of confusion will result from creating these agencies and then saying that the Secretary is at liberty to use them for any or no purpose. I wonder why they are created unless they are created for certain purposes, under the Secretary, subject to the Secretary.

That would be my first general answer to your question.

Senator JOHNSON. This paragraph prohibits him from touching them. It says that this shall not be construed to give you the authority to make any transfer. Maybe he wants to have one central information agency and he wants to get a sergeant from the Air Force and get a yoeman from the Navy, and he calls them in there and says, "I am going to put you in one unit here and avoid having these three establishments."

Maybe he wants to have one Air Force instead of three. However, we say the Marine Corps shall perform these functions, and they shall also have these air functions; we say the Navy shall do this and they shall have their aviation; and then this legislation says that, now, our primary objective is efficiency and economy, and we are going to set up these comptrollers and they are going to search through everything and go over it with a fine-tooth comb, but when you get so far down the road, if you run into a fellow in a uniform, you have to stop, because Congress said, "No."

Now, do you think that kind of language ought to be in this kind of a bill?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Senator, I think that maybe I answered your first question at cross purposes. I was referring to the language in the bill which made the Munitions Board, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Research and Development Board what might be called optional staff agencies. I think that was rather a minor question in your mind. rather than a major question. I think that is a mistake.

I think the authority should be vested in the Secretary, to be sure, but I think he should use these agencies for certain purposes.

Coming now to your question as to whether the Secretary should have complete organizational control and the right to shift personnel and the right to redistribute functions—I think that is your question, Senator; is it not?

Senator JOHNSON. That is right.

Mr. EBERSTADT. Of course, one runs at once into the congressional duty to provide for the common defense. The question, therefore, becomes one of: To what extent is Congress constitutionally in a posiition to delegate that function and in what measure does it desire to delegate that function?

It is some time since I practiced law, and I do not know whether this is correct, but I think it would be impossible for Congress to divest itself of either the authority or the responsibility.

Whether Congress, for example, could go to the extreme and write a law saying that the organization and the purposes and the functions of the Department of Defense shall be such as the Secretary determines is a question that I could not pass upon. I have doubts on it.

But it seems to me to be a very salutary thing for the Congress to lay down certain general lines, Senator. These matters are in a great state of flux; they are tremendously important matters.

Let us take, for example, the question of the 70-group air force, which is a very important question. The opinion of the administration—by that I mean the President and the Secretary, a little over a year ago were opposed to that. They did not want it. I raise the question, without expressing my own views on it, as to whether our national interest would have been best served with the group that the administration desired.

If the Secretary had had the authority that you mention now, Senator, he could have settled that question and could have done it it once. Obviously, it would not have met with congressional approval, and I am not sure it would have met with public approval.

Senator JOHNSON. I am not suggesting that the Secretary have the right to create an air force of the size which in his judgment is necessary. Do you think we should direct the Secretary to do all these things in the field of civilian personnel and in the field of duplication, consolidation, overlapping, et cetera, but prohibit him from doing them when they apply to the military?

Is this language desirable or undesirable? Of course, he is going to have to operate within the congressional authorizations; of course, he cannot create a 70-group air force because he wans to; but we spend a full page here telling the Secretary what he must do and how to bring about economies and to establish policies and programs and exercise direction, authority, and control, and take steps, including coordination and transfers and consolidations, as may be necessary. Congress gives him that directive. But when he gets down to the point where he touches this other field, they say "No." Now, should we say "No"? That is what I am asking.

Mr. EBERSTADT. I think you should say "No," within reasonable limits.

The CHAIRMAN. This is a tremendously interesting thing, and I am glad Senator Johnson is pursuing it, and I want him to keep on.

Senator JOHNSON. I am through. He has answered my question. The CHAIRMAN. I do not think he answered it fully enough to satisfy me. Let us assume that there is a recruiting service and that hereafter the policy is to recruit through one agency for all three services. Take that as an abstract idea.

It is quite possible that under the language we have written here, strictly applied, the Secretary could not do that even if it was desirable. Now, my question goes to this: To what extent could we modify your answer of "No," and keep the services separate and at the same time permit enough elasticity so as to, without amalgamation, obtain a degree of economy and the elimination of overlapping that I know you want, without destroying the three separate agencies that we have under our National Military Establishment?

Now, if you will give me a little more of a direct answer on that, I think perhaps we can clear the weeds out and see what the ground looks like.

Mr. EBERSTADT. My answer to Senator Johnson was "No" not without limitation. I do not give an absolute "No" to that question, of

course.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you use the word "temporary" and say that he cannot make permanent transfers? Would you use the word "temporary" and say as to numbers, or in what way would you allow the exception to be applied?

Mr. EBERSTADT. You gentlemen know much more about the bill than I do, and have watched the Establishment much more carefully than I have, but I am not so concerned about the possibility of doing that as perhaps some might be. I have seen the Secretary of Defense, with commendable courage, reach a decision which went to the heart of this Military Establishment, and you gentlemen know what decision I am talking about, and while I have seen that decision criticized, for one reason or another reason, I have yet to see any question raised as to his authority.

Now, if the Secretary of Defense has the authority and the intestinal fortitude to make a decision of that character, I am not concerned about his power to avoid duplications.

The CHAIRMAN. We have gone pretty far, Mr. Eberstadt, in this in a desire to not merge but rather to unify the three services. I think we have and Senator Johnson has put his finger exactly on it-the weak point in our bill; that in our desire to prevent merger and to attain unification we have used such strong language to prevent merger that we really have prevented some unification.

Now, I have been tossing around in my own mind as to how we might overcome this and get the economy, which I think we can very easily get, if we do not meet ourselves coming back.

Now, the word "permanent", make permanent transfers, I cannot see why a man should not be transferred from one branch to another temporarily in the interest of economy and efficiency; but if it is to be a permanent situation, you might even put a year's limit on it.

Now, for instance, take the hospital services. I am advised that in the last war-of course, it was wartime and there was not time to think things out-but I am advised that in the last war there might be an Army hospital in town X over in Africa or Europe and a Navy hospital in town X over in Africa or Europe, the two being in the same place, one would be filled, the other would be reasonably empty.