Psychological Warfare

As Armed Forces Day programs across the country sought to give public evidence of harmony within the U.S. military last week, an ancient and hardy feud again reached the leaked-memo stage. The Army, Navy and Air Force were all involved, and the tactics were familiar: staff papers with ugly criticisms of other services were passed furtively to newsmen in Pentagon corridors, soon boiled into bulletins and headlines.

In one under-the-table document, the Army bitterly charged that overemphasis on airpower has left the U.S. "grossly unprepared to deal with the Communist threat." The outraged Air Force lashed back in a paper holding that land forces will play only minor roles in future wars. To make the circle complete, the Air Force dismissed Navy claims that its supercarriers can carry atomic warfare into "the enemy's front yard" by describing the big ships as among the most vulnerable of all A-bomb targets.

Although all this sounded unhappily like the beginning of 1949's "Revolt of the Admirals" (TIME, Oct. 17, 1949 et seq.), no revolt of the generals seemed brewing. One reason: at the top of any U.S. military argument stands a man with a considerable reputation on the subject, Old Soldier Dwight Eisenhower. Another reason: blunt old Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, who greeted the battle of the press leaks with the promise of a personal investigation, and rasped: "They don't have to practice psychological warfare on each other."