National Affairs: Man from Detroit

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Last January the Eisenhower Administration dawned with a muttering of thunder which no prophet had foretold. Charles Erwin Wilson, the 62-year-old president of the General Motors Corp., flew into Washington to accept the job as Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, and promptly got into a free-for-all headline row with his colleagues and the U.S. Senate. With a stubbornness new to Washington, Wilson fought the law which unequivocally required that he get rid of his 39,470 shares of General Motors stock before taking office. Cartoonists had a field day with his unruly grey thatch and his round, heavy-jowled face—which, at the time, generally bore an expression of outrage. From a public relations point of view, no U.S. Cabinet officer ever got off to a worse start. When Wilson, under an Eisenhower ultimatum, agreed to dispose of his stock, the Senate confirmed his nomination as the fifth U.S. Secretary of Defense, and the public turned its mind to other things. For Engine Charlie Wilson, however, the story had only begun.

"Nulle Bastardo Carborundum." Less than half an hour after his brief swearing-in ceremony, Wilson walked with assurance into his vast, flag-draped Pentagon office looking out over the Potomac River. Sitting down behind a walnut desk that once belonged to General "Black Jack" Pershing, he stared around at the pale blue walls and deep blue leather furniture selected by the first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal. Behind his special, direct-line White House telephone, the man from Detroit propped a framed motto which read, "Nulle Bastardo Carborundum"—assembly-line Latin for "Don't let the bastards wear you down." Then, draping a cigarette out of the corner of his mouth, he rang a buzzer twice and an aide, Marine Colonel Carey Randall, appeared in the office doorway. Said Charlie Wilson, looking up over the plastic rims of his glasses: "Let's get to work."

By last week it was clearer than ever, in the flashes of congressional lightning over the defense budget, that Charlie Wilson and his staff had got a lot of work done. In their first 17 weeks, they were responsible for:

¶Cutting nearly 40,000 civilian employees from the staff of the Defense Department (partly by the simple device of not hiring replacements for the normal retirements, etc.), with more cuts to come.

¶Canceling or holding up most U.S. military building programs, pending a re-evaluation of the necessity for each major item.

¶Radically changing the overall approach to mobilization of U.S. defense plants from ex-Secretary Robert Lovett's "broad base" (widespread sources of supply, including many small manufacturers) to Wilson's cherished concept of a "narrow base" (restricted sources of supply, mainly to big, highly skilled corporations).

¶Sending to Congress a Defense Department reorganization plan which, barring a congressional veto, will become law July 1. The plan straightens out the chain of command within the Defense Department, increases the authority of the civilian directors of the Department, and gives added power to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.