Trouble at the Top

Above all others, there are two Government agencies which just must run well: the State and Defense Departments. State must try to save the peace. If it fails, Defense must be ready to fight and win the war. Last week, the U.S. public was told that these departments, using more men and money than the whole U.S. Government did 20 years ago, are like sleeping giants wound up in their own red tape.

The report came from a bipartisan commission, headed by 74-year-old Herbert Hoover, which has spent 16 months creeping in & out of the ponderous machinery of the U.S. Government. The commission's latest findings, which it discussed in the dull, insistent prose of a political science professor, boiled down to this:

State. The Secretary of State and his top assistants are enmeshed in administrative detail, robbed of time to think out tactics and strategy in the cold war. The Secretary should have two Deputy Under Secretaries, one for policy matters, one to worry about the housekeeping. State should concentrate on policymaking, and dump such chores as visas and munitions-export controls on to other departments.

The glamor boys of the clubby Foreign Service should gradually be merged with other personnel in the Department to eliminate rivalry and jealousy. Everybody then should be subjected to tours of home and overseas duty. One of the major obstacles to effective foreign policy--"the traditionally suspicious" attitude of Congress toward State--must be broken down by a better public relations policy. No longer are U.S. diplomats "primarily concerned with tea parties and striped pants," the report said, but "the memory lingers on and will persist for at least another generation."

Defense. In the Pentagon, too, the chief trouble is at the top. Service rivalries have frustrated the great ambition of the unification of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The reason: Secretary of Defense James Forrestal never got the authority to get the job done. The Secretaries of the three services should be knocked down in rank to Under Secretaries. They should be stripped of their authority to bypass the Defense Secretary and carry their special pleading to the President and Congress. The Defense Secretary should be given direct statutory control over the service budgets and all their personnel.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, now "virtually a law unto themselves," reflected service competition instead of unification, said the Hoover Commission. They must be brought under stronger civilian control. How? The commission was a little vague. It recommended that the Secretary of Defense be empowered to appoint a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, directly responsible to the Defense Secretary. The commission's majority outvoted four members (including Vice Chairman Dean Acheson), who wanted a single Chief of Staff.

At State, Dean Acheson already was trying to put some of the commission's proposals into effect. In both State and Defense, however, opposition was rising from people who might get hurt. Said Hoover calmly: "If nobody is hurt you can take it that this is not a reorganization of the Federal Government."

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