DEFENSE: The Organization Man

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At 9:15 on the fifth morning after Sputnik I changed military policy and practice for all time, a brand new U.S. Secretary of Defense, fresh from a world where Cheer is a product instead of an attitude, took over the cavernous office on Ring E, River Side, Third Floor, of the Pentagon.

Neil Hosier McElroy, 53, for nine years president of Procter & Gamble, sat down at Washington's largest desk (9 ft. by 4 ft. 11 in., with 20 drawers), which had been used by General John J. Pershing in World War I and by General George Marshall in World War II. Near by was William Tecumseh Sherman's ornate library table, and on it a model of the Oozlefinch bird, a frog-eyed, missile-toting creature, the insigne of Army missilemen at Fort Bliss, Texas. Also on the Sherman table were the three telephones whose rings, over the coming months, could only have deep meaning for Neil McElroy; the shrilling command phone over which word might come of war (its number is classified), the White House phone (NAtional 8-1414, ext. 72) and the regular Pentagon phone (Lberty 5-6700, ext. 55261).

Aboard & Working. For the first two hours that day, the red light outside McElroy's door signaled that the Secretary of Defense was aboard and working alone (red and white lights together mean that he is busy with visitors and not to be disturbed). He buzzed for the first of the dozen cups of black coffee he drinks daily, got it from one of the eleven mess attendants attached to his office (all security-cleared because they are in a position to overhear top-secret conversations). Then McElroy began the breakneck round of business that has not since let up: he held a brief press conference, discussed the fiscal 1959 defense budget with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Nate Twining, was briefed by Defense Department Comptroller Wilfred McNeil on the National Security Council meeting scheduled for the next morning.

Defense Secretary McElroy had just come from the U.S.'s 29th largest corporation to the world's largest public business—and Procter & Gamble seemed small by comparison. P. & G.'s 1957 net sales of $1,156,000,000 amounted to the operating costs of the Defense Department for ten days. Its $67 million net earnings would buy little more than a fully equipped nuclear submarine. Moreover, the rush of military technology had made the job of Defense Secretary bigger and tougher than ever before. The Soviet satellite revised all military parameters, and it was up to Neil McElroy to track the course for the U.S.

McElroy moved fast and surely. Even before he took office, he had toured U.S. military bases, poking into every niche of his new land, sea and air empire. Once installed, he drove up to Capitol Hill, appeared before Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, answered questions with a candor that made senatorial friends, and in detail that showed he had done his homework. He stepped confidently into the high society of international diplomacy, went to London and Bonn and wound up at the NATO conference in Paris beside—if slightly to the rear of—President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles.