Man Behind the Power

(See Cover)

Within the guarded inner labyrinth of the Pentagon, five men sit at a brightly polished table in soundproofed Room 2C923. Around them the walls are covered with maps: a relief map of Europe, flat blue maps of the Pacific and the Atlantic, brown-and-gold maps of the land masses of Asia and Africa. Spotted strategically across the grey wall-to-wall carpeting are wastebaskets stenciled SECRET.* Four of the five men are doing most of the talking; the fifth is listening, chain-smoking Parliaments, working intricately filigreed doodles on a white notepad with the preoccupation of a man in search of an answer to a complicated problem. "A decision," the fifth man once explained, "is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself."

Before the five men lie bulging portfolios in colored leather: khaki for the Army's General Maxwell Taylor, blue for the Air Force's General Nathan Twining, navy blue for the Navy's Admiral Arleigh Burke, brown for the Marine Corps' General Randolph Pate, and a nonsymbolic black for the fifth man—the quiet man —four-star Admiral Arthur William Radford, 60, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior military adviser to the President. Before these five military officers also lies an awesome agenda. It can sweep across the types and size of next year's H-bomb production, this year's first test flight of an experimental intercontinental ballistic missile, every year's ceaseless, questing reappraisal of the three-inch-thick strategic war plan that is the blueprint for U.S. survival before an atomic-age equation: one plane plus one bomb equals one city.

Nine times out of ten the Joint Chiefs reach agreement and pass their recommendations upward to civilian authority for the final decisions, a red line slashed across the bottom of each of the white policy papers to signify J.C.S. agreement. When the Chiefs disagree, it is the job of the chairman, Admiral Radford, to press them, gently or not gently, or to report the disagreement to his civilian boss, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. "What do you think, Raddy?" Wilson will then invariably ask. Invariably, Radford will produce a written reply, saying, "Here are a few thoughts of my own." And, more often than not, what Arthur Radford thinks will be accepted as the best-reasoned military opinion of the U.S.