Nation: Battle in the Pentagon

The generals cross swords with the Army Secretary

His credentials shine like the medals on a war hero's chest. He graduated from Harvard with honors and from Yale Law School. Before he was 30 he became an assistant to McGeorge Bundy, who was National Security Adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and then was named chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thus when Jimmy Carter in 1977 appointed Clifford L. Alexander, now 47, the Army's first black Secretary, he seemed well suited for the job, even though his only previous military experience was six months as a private in 1958.

But almost from his first day in the Pentagon, Alexander has been embroiled in arguments with his generals. Most of the disagreements stem from Alexander's insistence that the nation's seven-year-old all-volunteer force (AVF) is "as good or better" than the old Army, which filled its ranks mostly with draftees. The generals echo the official line in public. But in private they claim that the AVF is failing because it has had to lower standards to meet recruiting goals. Says one general of his peers: "All of them are lying when they say, 'We don't need a draft.' Get any one of them in the evening, with a martini in his hand, and he will say, 'Of course we need a draft.' "

Critics accuse Alexander of ignoring or explaining away data that suggest the AVF is not working. All inductees, for example, must take a battery of tests that group them by mental ability, from the brightest (Category I) to the dullest (Category V). A study this summer showed that a disturbingly high 46% of the 1979 recruits ranked in Category IV. Those in Category V are automatically rejected as unfit. Alexander sided with consultants who concluded that the real problem was the Army's use of a test that was designed to measure aptitudes rather than intelligence. He ordered all scores removed from personal records, to keep them from being misused. Says Alexander: "What is relevant is how well these individuals perform as soldiers." Yet, on a test that evaluated on-the-job performance, 89% of the motor vehicle drivers and 85% of the Huey helicopter repairmen failed.

Many generals fear that the Army's fighting ability will be eroded by favoritism showed by Alexander toward women. Recruiting of women was made easier by Alexander last year when he eliminated the requirement that all female enlistees be high school graduates; there had been no such requirement for men, though Congress has directed that 65% of all recruits, male or female, have high school diplomas. Some 65,000 women now serve in the Army, compared with 45,000 in 1976. Alexander also believes that the last barriers prohibiting women from being put in combat units should be eliminated. The brass disagrees. Says Army Chief of Staff Edward C. Meyer, in a rare public rejoinder: "I don't think women should be assigned a direct combat role. I don't believe the Army should try that experiment."