DEFENSE: The Organization Man

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Moreover, Charlie Wilson's idea of improving Pentagon organization was to bring in more civilian officials, some plain incompetent, few with much real military knowledge. While the professional military men, with all their parochial bickering, are far from blameless, it is nonetheless true that the major mistakes of Wilson's day were made by civilians. It was civilian mismanagement of funds last year that forced procurement cutbacks and threatened to wreck the nation's airframe industry. It was a civilian decision that left the Strategic Air Command with a majority of its force grounded for lack of gasoline last summer. It was a civilian decision to slap overtime restrictions on ballistic missile programs. And it was civilian indecision that left both the Army and the Air Force spending hundreds of millions for rival intermediate-range missiles.

Free Hand, Sure Touch. Neil McElroy's great advantage is that he has clear and specific authority for cleaning up the Pentagon mess. A few weeks ago President Eisenhower called him in and told him to get the job done—no matter how. Said the President of the U.S.: "You have a free hand."

So far the free hand has been used with an encouragingly sure touch. Hardly had McElroy taken office than he removed the freeze on overtime work—an economy measure—in the ballistic missile program. He restored $170 million for research and development, released $400 million, mostly for Air Force procurement (another $300 million is to be released in the second half of fiscal 1958). It seemed unbelievable to McElroy that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the civilian secretaries were so split that the U.S. has no overall war plan under which service roles and missions are definitely parceled out. He made it perfectly clear that they had better get together or some changes would be made.

McElroy jumped the Army's Jupiter C into the satellite race as a backstop to the

Navy's lagging Vanguard. He figured that the IRBM rivalry between the Air Force Thor and the Army Jupiter had gone so far, taken so long and cost so much that both should be put into production. McElroy upgraded Deputy Assistant Secretary William Holaday to the post of missile boss. To those who doubted Holaday's ability, McElroy also let it be known that the Pentagon's real missile boss was Neil McElroy.

Diplomacy's Shortcomings. Finally, McElroy announced his intention to take outer-space research and development out of the hands of the separate services. He would, he said, set up an Advanced Research Projects Agency, staffed by the top scientific talent of all three services, to develop space projects to the point where they can be turned back to the services for operational use. At this infringement on their autonomy the services began grumbling, and Neil McElroy, going slow for once, has not yet named an ARPA head. "I am taking my time on this one." says he. "I consider this to be one of the key appointments I will ever make, and I don't want to be rushed into it."