Are the Defense Reorganization Years of Turbulence 1947-50 Telling US Anything About the JFK Hit?

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Hello.

Are the Defense Reorganization Years Of Turbulence 1947-50 Telling US Anything About the JFK Hit? Who can translate the cacophaTHUDny? Where is Robert Howard?

Consider this from Roger Hilsman

"When Acheson was faced with a very ambitious Secretary of Defense who reached aggressively beyond the Pentagon for dominance over the whole spectrum of policy, he forced a showdown and before it was over, true to his "killer instinct," his opponent, Louis Johnson, had been fired."

Forrestal's death, however suicided, can be seen as a failure to end the interdepartmental strife in the new fief amalgam galled the Defense Department. Was Johnson's brief tenure another such failure?

What about the comparative weakness of Rusk, compared to Acheson? Was the factionalized State Department of 1961-63 the result of different branches the military, specifically the newly ascendent Air Force weaving into Foggy Bottom Wainscoting, which is either the name of my old band or a competitor to Depends undergarments?

Now what about the wacky relationship between Harriman and Forrestal Jr. both as it affected Vietnam in 1963 and in terms of the Factionalization of Forrestal The E:captain:lder's scull?

[Tracy Riddle]

The bigger the government gets, the more fiefdoms develop, and the more unaccountable they are. They were a lot of power struggles in the National Security State after WWII ended.

[David Josephs]

Trying to get a grip on your question - are we talking 1947-50 or after that?

Seems to me this period was designed to consolidate power in the Sec of Defense, Sec of State, the Director of CIA, the NSC and the President....
Removing the three branches from direct EXECUTIVE control and putting them under the Sec of Defense COULD be seen as the first step enabling "Defense" to having their own agenda and not changing that agenda with the change of presidents...

Without a full understanding of the Eberstadt Report... and the context it was delivered and morphed into the Natl Security Act... I'm not even sure what I'm looking for....
Yet since I feel strongly that the Military was at the apex of this thing... your question is very interesting.

DJ




The 1949 Amendment to the Act changed a few key things....:

The "National Military Establishment" becomes the Department of Defense with Army/Navy/Air Force as departments

DECLARATION OF POLICY (1947)
[size=12]Sec. 2. In enacting this legislation, it is the intent of Congress to provide a comprehensive program for the future security of the United States, to provide for the establishment of integrated policies and procedures for the departments, agencies, and functions of the Government relating to the national security; to provide three military departments for the operation and administration of the Army, the Navy (including naval aviation and the United States Marine Corps), and the Air Force, with their assigned combat and service components; to provide for their authoritative coordination and unified direction under civilian control but not to merge them; to provide for the effective strategic direction of the armed forces and for their operation under unified control and for their integration into an efficient team of land, naval, and air forces

1949 Amendments:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5057[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]5058[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]5059[/ATTACH]

[size=12]



NSC changes
In 1949, the National Security Act Amendments (63 Stat. 579; 50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.) were passed, reorganizing the structure of the NSC and placing it within the Executive Office of the President. The three service secretaries were eliminated as members of the Council and the Vice President and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs o Staff were added as permanent members. The NSC staff was divided into three groups: the Executive Secretary and his staff, personnel on detail and Consultants to the Executive Secretary. Standing committees were created to deal with sensitive issues. President Truman made further changes to the NSC in 1950 and 1951 when he directed the head of the Office of Defense Mobilization to attend NSC meetings and then made him a member of the senior staff. Both the personnel and Consultants were later eliminated in favor of Senior Staff.


[size=12][size=12]
Secretary of Defense
Sec. 202.
(a) There shall be a Secretary of Defense, whoshall be appointed from civilian life by the President, by and with the adviceand consent of the Senate: PROVIDED, That a person who has within ten yearsbeen on active duty as a commissioned officer in a Regular component of thearmed services shall not be eligible for appointment as Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense shall be theprincipal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the nationalsecurity.


http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mi...blonsk.pdf[size=12][size=12][size=12]
The Eberstadt Report became the framework for the National Security
Act of 1947. The legislation represented a series of compromises within the Executive
Branch and between that branch and Congress, all of which delayed the
full linkage of government form and function. Prior to the National Security Act,
the unification controversy had helped to stimulate the expression of an enlarged
concept of national security. After 1947, the controversy initially held back a
more forceful expression of America's immense power. Increasingly, debates by
the services took on the form of theologians' disputes concerning holy texts and
strengthened the tendency of each service to create its own defense policy. The
result was that the initial creation of grand strategy to meet evolving national security
needs afterWorldWar II took form much faster than US defense policy.

[/SIZE][/SIZE][size=12][size=12]As national security became increasingly defined in military terms,
there was a growing militarization of the American government and an increase
of presidential and Executive Branch power normally associated with wartime.
In the wake of the Korean conflict, the State Department shifted its focus more
and more to military security.

[/SIZE][/SIZE][size=12][size=12]A similar structural and organizational reorientation[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[size=12][size=12]took place at the White House, primarily through the development of the
NSC. In the early Truman years, that organization was merely one part of the Executive
Office of the President, sparingly used by the Chief Executive. After
1950, the NSC became the government's principal steering mechanism, with real
decisionmaking invariably involving the Assistants to the President for National
Security Affairs. That post increased exponentially in importance during the
Kennedy Administration, reaching new peaks in the Nixon and Carter years
when the National Security Advisers often brushed aside the Secretaries of State.

By the end of the Cold War, the business hours of Presidents were occupied primarily
with the problems vetted and brought to them through the NSC system. In
fact, as Ernest May has pointed out, by that time "the main business of the United[/SIZE][/SIZE][size=12][size=12]States government had become the development, maintenance, positioning, exploitation,
and regulation of military forces."
[/SIZE][/SIZE][size=12][size=12]his militarization of the government meant that by the 1950s, with the
exception of the Secretary of the Treasury, the heads of domestic agencies had
become second-tier officials. The dominant positions in Washington included
the heads of the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence
Agency, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President's National
Security Adviser. At the same time, the 1949 amendment to the National
Security Act began a series of evolutionary changes that would culminate in the
1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act with an emphasis on centralized, accountable authority
and joint unified commands that was far removed from the original
Eberstadt structure.
[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

[David Josephs]

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.arm...pub299.pdf


The McNamara Reforms.
The era of the McNamara DoD reforms also stands out
as a significant period of change in defense management. By
the time that Robert McNamara came to the Office of
Secretary of Defense, the post World War II growth of
government agencies had created significant pressure for
the creation of a new system to rationally allocate federal
resources. Furthermore, information technology and
computers had significantly enhanced the government's
capability for quantitative data analysis. These are some of
the factors that convinced McNamara that it was both
necessary and possible to introduce a new
Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) within
the Department of Defense.

The political conditions also seemed to be in place by the
time that the Kennedy administration took office in 1961.
The National Security Act of 1947 had placed the Army,
Navy, and Air Force within a new National Military

103
Establishment (NME) under the titular control of a new
Secretary of Defense.9 Unfortunately, the NME system
precipitated intense rivalry between the services that took
time and effort to overcome. Congress enacted additional
legislation a decade later to try to resolve some of the initial
difficulties in establishing the new defense organization.

The DoD Reorganization Act of 1958 clarified the Secretary
of Defense's authority over the services in the areas of
budgeting, force structure, and research and
development.10 Reform to integrate planning,
programming, and budgeting was now possible.
Armed with this new legislative authority, it remained
for McNamara and his staff to implement Planning,
Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) reforms in
DoD. Their goal was to develop a process to coordinate
strategy and plans, force requirements and programs, and
resources and budgets. The intent was to centralize
decisionmaking and design explicit criteria for major
systems acquisitions.11 In keeping with the PPB concept,
they sought an analytical approach to assessing costs and
needs and developing alternatives to present to the
Secretary of Defense. They would develop multiyear
programs through the Five-Year Defense Plans. In their
view, an analytical, largely civilian staff would be free of the
influence of military parochialism and thus be independent
both intellectually and careerwise.12

Prior to PPB, under performance budgeting approaches,
budgets and military strategy were not related. McNamara
set out to fix the problems of the existing system, which to
that point had simply set DoD ceilings for each of the armed
services.13 PPB was designed to reverse the traditional
informational and decision flows within DoD. In the past,
estimates were sent upward in the organization to gain
approval in light of existing resources. By contrast, as Allen
Schick has observed, PPB established a "top policy"
approach in which the "critical decisional processthat of
deciding on purposes and planshas a downward and
disaggregative flow."14 Schick also correctly predicted that
104
this would in turn require the centralization of policy
making, and subsequent DoD reforms did aim to centralize
key budgeting and planning functions.
DoD operations research analysts Alain Enthoven and
Wayne Smith have provided an insiders' history of the
McNamara PPB reforms. In their book How Much Is
Enough?, Enthoven and Smith chronicle the roles that they
played in support of McNamara's efforts to shape the
defense program in a centralized, top down fashion.15 The
authors proposed that their systems analysis organization,
working directly for the Secretary of Defense, would provide
the analytical staff that would make the relevant data
available for making major program and spending decisions
within DoD.16 Enthoven and Smith's focus was on
developing a sophisticated approach to budgetary
integration that went well beyond the simple control or
bookkeeping function. In the Whiz Kids' view, the process
would optimize the national interest and minimize the
tradition of service budget compromises. To their credit,
their vision for linking planning, programming, and
budgeting is still in effect today within the Defense
Department.17

Enthoven and Smith also write about the myriad
problems that the McNamara team faced, and the many
mistakes that they made, starting in 1961.18 In summary,
they argue that: There was no centralized leadership over
the services; no centralized planning; no coordination of
research and development programs; no quantitative data
analysis; no analysis staff in DoD; and no adequate cost
accounting standards.



9. For a recent examination of the National Security Act of 1947, see
David Jablonsky, et al., "U.S. National Security: Beyond the Cold War,"
Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, and
The Clarke Center, Dickinson College, July 26, 1997.
10. Enthoven and Smith, p. 2. See also Schick, p. 274.
11. Ibid., pp. 33-47.
12. Enthoven and Smith devote considerable attention to the
problems of interservice rivalry and military analysts. They believed
greater objectivity was possible with civilian defense intellectuals.
Chapter 3 focuses on "Why Independent Analysts," pp. 73-116.
128
13. Enthoven and Smith, p. 13.
14. Schick, 276.
15. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough,
Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint, p. 6.
16. Enthoven and Smith, p. 80.
17. For a detailed description of DoD and Army PPBS, see How the
Army Runs: A Senior Leader Reference Handbook, 1999-2000, Carlisle,
PA: U.S. Army War College, April 1999.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

David, generally, i think that the Defense Authorization Act of 47 was SUPPOSED to unify the quarelling branches under the Sec Def but it failed to do so, and in this light the description of Johnson is interesting. Was he perceived as over reaching because the other branches still were resisting centralization as they were Forestal, who came from Navy and ran the problem of trying to nominally seem balanced re the main rival the New extremely ascendant Air Force?

Was Acheson's apparent triumph over Johnson accomplished with some degree of cooperation from the independent services, resisting cental control?

Later in the 1967-published book Hilsman is quite frank about CIA secretive influence in the State Department. It is pretty clear that he blames CIA for the weak role of the Department at least as represented by Rusk.

Of course the rivalry between the services were nearly as strong as they were in 1947, when MacNamera assumed the Sec. Def. position. He formed the DIA because he could not get good Soviet estimates from the different services, as each sevices' estimate was very different, and based on its self interest vis a vis the other services.

[David Josephs]

David, generally, i think that the Defense Authorization Act of 47 was SUPPOSED to unify the quarelling branches under the Sec Def but it failed to do so, and in this light the description of Johnson is interesting. Was he perceived as over reaching because the other branches still were resisting centralization as they were Forestal, who came from Navy and ran the problem of trying to nominally seem balanced re the main rival the New extremely ascendant Air Force?

Was Acheson's apparent triumph over Johnson accomplished with some degree of cooperation from the independent services, resisting cental control?

Later in the 1967-published book Hilsman is quite frank about CIA secretive influence in the State Department. It is pretty clear that he blames CIA for the weak role of the Department at least as represented by Rusk.

Of course the rivalry between the services were nearly as strong as they were in 1947, when MacNamera assumed the Sec. Def. position. He formed the DIA because he could not get good Soviet estimates from the different services, as each sevices' estimate was very different, and based on its self interest vis a vis the other services.

You see Nathaniel I get the opposite from my reading....

To put the matter simply, Eberstadt felt that the record
of interservice coordination during the war was
commendable, and that the wartime experience did not
demonstrate the need for full unification. He also worried
about the establishment of any "General Staff"
arrangement, or the creation of a powerful Chief of Staff in
peacetime, as potential threats to the tradition of civilian
control of the military.


https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-t...201947.pdf

and I found this that deals more with the effects on the CIA.

[size=12]
While "the
basic framework for a sound intelligence organization
now exists," the report declared, "[t]hat
framework must be fleshed out by proper personnel
and sound administrative measures." 3

[size=12][size=12]
3
[/SIZE][size=12]The unclassified Eberstadt Report's findings and conclusions were largely based on the more extended classified report[/SIZE]
[size=12]
drafted by John Bross, an OSS veteran and later a senior CIA official. Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith
as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950February 1953 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1992), 124. This report (hereinafter cited as "Classified Eberstadt Report") formed the chapter, "The Central Intelligence
Agency: National and Service Intelligence," in the classified Volume II of the commission's national security organization
report. Its pages are numbered 2560, and the best CIA copy is in Executive Registry Job 86B00269R, box 14, folder 132.
For the "framework" quote, see pages 4041.
[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"Forestal and Eberstadt had become friends at Princeton and then worked together in the 1920s for the investment firm of Dillon, Read and Company. Eberstadt subsequently became a vociferous critic of Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and an advisor to Tom Dewey in his 1940 presidential campaign, ...by helping Forestal with the Army Navy Munitions Board project 'Eberstadt served a Democratic administration... that he despised. Personal loyalty to his fiend outweighed politics'(97)
Eberstadt submitted his final report to Forrestal and Patterson just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It envisioned a more powerful ANMB, which would make it easier for the Army and Navy to coordinate their wartime procurement activities with representatives o f key civilian industries. In spite of the fact that his final report stressed the importance of civilian control over the ANMB, it was heavily criticized by many of Roosevelt's advisers, who saw it as a first step toward military domination of the economy" --CREATING THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE, DOUGLAS T. STUART p. 39 FDR rejected plan but strongly influenced 1947 Military Reorg. Act.

[David Josephs]

Interesting - thanks

DJ