"He's Gone, Mr. Secretary"

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has always had pretty much his own way on Capitol Hill. This is partly because he has had strong presidential backing, partly because he overwhelms Congressmen with his ability to reel off facts and figures in almost unanswerable argument. Not the least of McNamara's accomplishments was to win the support of Georgia's Democratic Representative Carl Vinson, until his retirement last year the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the sometime gadfly to previous Defense Secretaries.

Now, however, McNamara is having his troubles with Congress--mostly in the person of L. (for Lucius) Mendel Rivers, 59, new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, a tall, militarily erect (although he has no service record) lawyer from Gumville, S.C., who now lives in Charleston. Rivers admires McNamara's ability, but he has long been irritated at the way the Secretary favored Vinson with inside information, often leaving the other 37 committee members in the dark. The new chairman's view came through clearly at a recent McNamara briefing. Riled by McNamara's patronizing attitude, he said: "Mr. Secretary, Carl Vinson is gone. He's gone, Mr. Secretary. Carl Vinson has gone."

The Plaque. Rivers' chief complaint is that McNamara has, in many of his administrative decisions, usurped the rights of Congress. On the chairman's rostrum in his committee room he has placed a walnut plaque, inscribed in gilt lettering "U.S. Const.--Art. 1--Sec. 8. The Congress shall have Power . . . to raise and support Armies . . . provide and maintain a Navy . . . make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces."

Says Rivers: "I don't have any right or authority to delegate these powers under the Constitution. I do not subscribe to the philosophy that all legislation on the military should come from the Department of Defense." In more political terms, Rivers, a 13-term Congressman who supported Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond for President in 1948, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, and the national Democratic ticket since then, says: "I've got enough John C. Calhoun in me to believe that Congress has got a mission--and I'm not going to subvert it. John C. Calhoun was the greatest man in our history."

Where It Hurt. So far this year, Rivers and one of his senior committee members, F. Edward Hebert of Louisiana, have successfully held up McNamara's latest proposals for reorganizing the armed forces reserves. He is fighting McNamara's bill for a $447 million military pay raise. Rivers thinks the hike ought to be nearly twice as much, and he scoffed at the Administration's claim that the Pentagon figure would be enough to "attract and retain adequate numbers and quality of personnel in the armed forces." Rivers said the statement was "ridiculous on its face"--and Bob McNamara is not accustomed to such talk.

Last week Rivers hit McNamara where it really hurt. In a major economy move, McNamara has marked 669 military installations for elimination or reduction. Since political points are scored by the amount of defense spending a politician can bring to his district, the order is unpopular with most Congressmen--including Mendel Rivers, in whose Charleston district the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard all have installations.

Rivers therefore sponsored an amendment to a military construction bill that would give either branch of Congress the right to veto a shutdown or curtailment of activity at any military installation.

The House, by a voice vote, whooped the Rivers amendment through. There was the clear threat of a presidential veto. But that would further impair the relationship between Rivers and McNamara, and McNamara is likely to be dealing with Rivers for a long while. "I don't intend to relinquish this gavel soon," says Rivers. "I'm in reasonably good health."

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