Nation: McNamara's Many Wars

In power-jealous Washington, it was inevitable that an official as dynamic, aggressive and determined as Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara would eventually face full-scale congressional scrutiny. Last week South Carolina's L. Mendel Rivers, a McNamara critic who became chairman of the House Armed Services Committee a year ago, announced that he will soon launch not one but four parallel investigations of McNamara's policies.

McNamara has had his jousts with congressional committees before. But never have so many lances been pointed at him at once, and never by such aroused antagonists. Separate subcommittees will investigate 1) McNamara's decision to defer construction projects that he had requested earlier; 2) his plan to phase out two-thirds of the present heavy-bomber force by 1971; 3) all McNamara's research and development projects, present and pending; and 4) his policy of closing or reducing military installations that he regards as surplus. All this will be in addition to the normal annual series of hearings on the budget, which this year will certainly concentrate on Viet Nam. Said one member of the Armed Services Committee: "We're going to work him over."

The Secretary has already promised to cooperate with the special investigations—and well he might. The committee, backing Rivers almost to a man, has decided not to consider any new Pentagon requests until the four subcommittees have completed their work. This will mean a delay for the $12.5 billion supplemental appropriation that the President will request to finance the war in Viet Nam. Rivers, a Democrat and member of military committees for 25 years, says: "I think there are times when the Department of Defense forgets that the Congress exists for reasons other than to provide a blank check. I think the American people will always be willing to pay the price for having too much defense rather than risk the inestimable cost of having too little."

Giant Bottleneck. The case against McNamara is easy enough to make on purely emotional grounds. He has angered many senior military officers and legislators in a variety of ways. He strikes his critics as arrogant. He has brought proud service chiefs to heel, smashed old customs and prerogatives, scrapped weapons projects that had many champions, reduced Congress' influence in military affairs and eliminated or cut back 852 military installations.

In recent months, McNamara's critics feel that they have picked up fresh ammunition against him. McNamara attempted, for instance, to reduce by half the $1 billion military-pay increase voted by Congress. From the greenest recruit to the most bemedaled general, from the swampy boondocks of Viet Nam to the carpeted offices of the Pentagon, this stand brought the complaint among servicemen that their boss was not behind them. In 1963 and 1964, for economy reasons, McNamara also held down the Army's program to strengthen its helicopter force; now there is a crash drive on to form new helicopter units. Most serious of all—considering McNamara's reputation as an administrator and planner—is the giant logistics bottleneck in Viet Nam that is backing up ships and their precious military cargoes as far as Japan and slowing the U.S. war effort (TIME, Dec. 24). If McNamara knows anything, say his critics, he should know about logistics.