Washington-U.S.A.:
COFFIN, TRISTRAM
WASHiNGTON-U.S.A. By Tristram Coffin Military Colossus Fights President A few days ago, a deeply smoldering American crisis flared suddenly and briefly—and then died from view. To an...
...It would also bring the United States into the missile age by having Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and submarine-based Polaris missiles provide retaliatory power...
...In addition, a whispering campaign began in both Washington and Maine against the Senator...
...The Administration proposes to scrap the policy of "massive retaliation" as both out-moded and dangerous...
...military contractors, which now include many universities with whopping research grants...
...In cold political terms, the military has more swag to dispense than any U.S...
...A Republican, Kenneth Keating of New York, said, "I agree entirely...
...For example, a switch from manned bombers to long-range guided missiles strikes dismay in many areas...
...W. W. Rostow, his deputy security coordinator...
...Notably independent, she did not back down...
...A year ago, the late Representative B. Carroll Reece (R.-Tenn...
...Still another attack by the military on the scientists, which is particularly shocking because it strikes directly at the heart of independent research, has just recently come to light...
...It has become clear that some members of the military do not intend to give up to civilian authority any of the prerogatives of excess power they have been allowed to build up over the years at the expense of civilian control...
...captive Congressmen...
...renew its testing of new nuclear weapons...
...to praise the "courageous statement" and add, "We have seen too much of the role of the military in world affairs...
...The director, Dr...
...In addition, in this modern world where nations are destroyed by guerrilla operations and internal subversion, the U.S...
...Up jumped Senator Hubert Humphrey (D.-Minn...
...In fact, there now appears to· be an organized effort on the part of some of the military to attack their civilian superiors under the vicious cloak of anonymity...
...The Associated Press, whose reporters are taught never to quote anonymous sources, also quoted an anonymous "Navy officer" as chewing up the Administration for blaming the Cuban fiasco on the military...
...Smith...
...A syndicated columnist, a popular radio commentator and even a newspaper comic strip were used in the attack upon Mrs...
...She objected to making movie actor James Stewart a Reserve General, since, she pointed out, he had not fulfilled the requirements...
...of its massive nuclear power and stress limited war preparation...
...The Air Force and Navy, principally, are trying to hold back the hands of the clock...
...This not only includes the Secretary of Defense and some of his civilian assistants, but in some cases the President himself...
...Significantly, the glamor boy of the Right wing, Barry Goldwater (R.Ariz...
...and Paul H. Nitze, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs...
...The aircraft manufacturers, the unions in their plants, the Congressmen in their districts and the banks that finance them are immediately concerned...
...favorites in the press corps...
...ACTUALLY, the present revolt is over an attempt by the Kennedy Administration to modernize our defenses...
...Yet the struggle is so bitter that one Pentagon civilian remarked wistfully that he hoped the President would return from Europe with tips from President de Gaulle and Premier Khrushchev on handling the military...
...It is difficult to decide just who controls whom...
...The new concept seeks to cut down the danger of an accidental nuclear holocaust by placing less reliance on huge nuclear strikes...
...said, "The Army has become the captive of industrial forces of great power, particularly Bell Laboratories and Douglas Aircraft...
...It is a troublesome business...
...It has no head other than the theoretical direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...Mrs...
...Jerome B. Wiesner, his pipe-smoking science adviser...
...institution: more than $23.5 billion in contracts not hampered by competitive bidding or the analytical control of the Government Accounting Office...
...captive professors and scientists...
...The magazine quoted anonymous military leaders as contemptuously referring to "woolyheaded scientists, State Department idealists, and White House intellectuals going off half-cocked," who "want to disarm the U.S...
...She is a member of two powerful committees riding herd on the military, the Armed Services Committee and the Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee...
...They are being joined by the forces in and out of the Pentagon who demand that the U.S...
...Smith is one lawmaker whose integrity and intelligence have never been questioned...
...camps and bases (the Defense Department controls 31,303,577 acres...
...properties, business, jobs, employment, votes, opportunities for promotion and advancement, bigger salaries for scientists, and all that...
...In the academic community, all three are considered conservatives in the raging debate between arms control and disarmament...
...And it is not only protected by secrecy but surrounded by an aura of patriotism...
...It is unthinkable for any unit of the Government, except the Pentagon, to attack a member of the committee which governs it or passes on its funds...
...All those who would be adversely affected by this revolution in arms are crying out...
...President Kennedy was somberly warned by none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower of the "military-industrial complex...
...Ellis A. Johnson, accused the current Army leadership, which he termed "conservative" in contrast to Maxwell D. Taylor and James M. Gavin, of trying to maintain "strict control in detail" over the ORO...
...They all favor limited arms control...
...No one in the Administration has any illusions about this rebellion...
...And former Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson was so troubled by it that he told a House subcommittee: "I have said to a number of my friends that one of the serious things about this defense business is that so many Americans are getting a vested interest in it...
...This policy depends on huge bomber fleets loaded with nuclear weapons that can be dropped on an enemy at the first hostile act, and great fleets of ships surrounding aircraft carriers with planes that also carry atomic weapons...
...There is, in effect, an interlocking directorate between the defense contractors and the military establishment...
...professional groups, such as the Air Force Association...
...junkets to overseas bases and free transportation...
...The Air Force, primarily, is involved in this pressure, together with uranium mining interests...
...A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, E. L. (Bob) Bartlett (D.-Alaska), commented that this "sorely needed saying, and I am glad he said it...
...Much of the energy and power of the military is spent on preserving the status quo...
...research grants...
...This arrogance was revealed in a brutal attack upon Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R.-Me...
...The attack blew out into the open in an amazing "story" in Newsweek, which loaded its guns in favor of the military...
...veterans organizations...
...Last week, too, the Army dropped its chief research organization, the Operations Research Office (ORO) of Johns Hopkins University, because of what its director termed "ethical differences...
...Fellow Committee members were so shocked by the attack that they voted 11-2 to back her judgment...
...This sober criticism of what is now the greatest source of power in Washington was virtually ignored by the press, which has been markedly partial to the generals...
...The Pentagon subsidizes scientists and research facilities at many universities, and nervous college administrators are cautioning professors against criticizing the military or its policy for fear of driving the income away...
...This colossus is a strange monster...
...It is composed of many wriggling tentacles: regular military officers...
...and, in a limited way, Reserve officers...
...General Dynamics, the top-ranking defense contractor, had 186 retired officers on its payroll, including 1 general, 1 lieutenant general, 5 brigadier generals, 1 vice admiral and 19 rear admirals...
...He is a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve...
...The Army is setting up a captive research organization whose directors will include two retired generals, Omar N. Bradley and James McCormack, and a vice president of one of the companies Representative Reece had charged with capturing control of the Army...
...who was on the floor, said nothing...
...reserve commissions...
...exclusive stories on glamorous subjects...
...And the Pentagon politicians are upset because their lever on foreign policy, the foreign military bases, is knocked out of their hands...
...Smith's crime was to upset an Air Force public relations stunt...
...To an audience of touring school children resting in the Senate gallery after climbing the Washington Monument, and before a handful of his colleagues, Senator Stuart Symington, a former Air Force Secretary, gravely warned of a rebellion of military officers against civilian control...
...Retired officers can take off their uniforms and get good jobs with contractors...
...The press generally treated the episode as an amusing little quarrel between a whimsical woman and the brave boys of the bold blue yonder...
...by elements associated with the Air Force...
...would build up highly trained brushfire brigades...
...The chief targets of this combine are the intellectuals who advise the President on military strategy: Dr...
...The tall Missouri Democrat graphically described "a condition which is tragic and dangerous to the future security of our country...
...The big-bomber boys who dominate the Air Force are in the same boat as the battleship admirals they fought so violently little more than a decade ago...
...and, indirectly, advertising...
...It will be fought by forces both powerful and, at times, arrogant...
...A member of Congress warned her privately, "If you don't back down, the Air Force will blacken your name from coast to coast...
...The point to note is that military men of high rank, disgruntled at their slice of the pie, are now attacking the core of the American system in a disloyal operation...
Vol. 44 • June 1961 • No. 24
