Shaping the Amorphous Lump

When President Nixon last year appointed his special "Blue Ribbon Panel" to study organization and operations of the Defense Department, he asked the members to be unsparing in their criticism. He has no reason now to be disappointed. The group, chaired by Gilbert Fitzhugh, the cruelly candid board chairman of Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., came out last week with one of the most sweeping --and critical--studies of a U.S. Government department ever undertaken. The result of a full year's work, the three-pound, 237-page report contains 113 recommendations and forms a blueprint for the total administrative reorganization of the nation's military establishment.

Organizational Nightmare. Covering every phase of Defense Department operations, the panel found the Pentagon an organizational nightmare in which conflicting loyalties, vaguely defined responsibilities and excessive centralization of authority hamper civilian control and prevent efficient operation. "It's just an amorphous lump with nobody in charge of anything," said Fitzhugh at a news conference. "There is nobody you can point your finger at if anything goes wrong, and there is nobody you can pin a medal on if it goes right, because everything is everybody's business. What is everybody's business is nobody's business."

The report's recommendations are as significant as its findings, because they would completely overhaul the command structure. Under the proposed plan, the 27 separate subdivisions that now report directly to the Secretary of Defense would be realigned into three functional groups: one for military operations, one for handling personnel and material resources, and one for managing finances and performing evaluation and testing of weapons systems. Each would be headed by a Deputy Secretary of Defense reporting directly to the Secretary. The Secretary's office staff, now 3,000 persons, would be cut by at least 40%.

The panel also opted for partial disarmament of the powerful Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chiefs now function in a triple role, serving not only as commanders of their respective services and as military advisers to the President but also as military staff in the chain of operational command between the Secretary of Defense and forces in the field. The Fitzhugh panel would relieve the chiefs of their operational responsibilities, reassign the job to a single senior military officer with a separate staff of his own.

The Chiefs are already overburdened by their functions as service commanders and military advisers. They are inhibited in the decision-making process by the very nature of their organization, and now spend much of their time arguing over the interests of the individual services. The results of these arguments can be delays in carrying out presidential orders, which could be damaging when speed is essential. A single senior officer with overall operational responsibility could act on his own, have U.S. forces on the move in hours.

Eliminating Overlap. The panel's proposed reorganization goes even farther. U.S. combat forces and their direct support components are now assigned to two functional or "specified" commands (SAC and the Continental Air Defense Command) and six commands that combine functional and area responsibilities. Fitzhugh found some commands so lacking in coordination that he glumly predicted: "Our own defensive weapons could shoot down our own offensive weapons." To avoid such a calamity, the panel proposed creation of three new commands instead of the present lineup: a single strategic command, composed of SAC, CONAD and the Fleet Ballistic Missile Operations; a tactical command composed of all general-purpose combatant units, and a logistics command to support all combat forces.

The realignment would attempt to eliminate much of the overlap between existing commands and fill many of the gaps. It would also prevent the kind of confusion between two commands that developed when the Pentagon was ordered to evacuate Americans from the Middle East during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Strike Command (STRICOM), assuming that it was to manage the operation, sent a command aircraft to Europe. But in the confusion over who was actually to take charge, the plane was stopped at the Azores, then allowed to proceed on to Greece. Only then was the decision made to place the European Command (EUCOM) in charge of the evacuation and to direct it to execute STRICOM's operational plans.

No phase of the Defense Department's operations escaped the Fitzhugh panel's scrutiny. Items:

PROCUREMENT POLICIES that have until now permitted concurrent development and production of weapons systems are to be scrapped. Just before the report was released, the Defense Department adopted Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's "fly before you buy" plan, under which production decisions will be deferred pending thorough testing and evaluation. The panel would also break up mammoth weapons contracts where possible, thereby involving more suppliers. The aim is to avoid cost overruns that occur when a single large corporation underbids initially, then fails to stay with the initial estimates.

INTELLIGENCE EVALUATION, now a significant organizational deficiency," would be improved. Finding that both the Defense Intelligence Agency and individual military intelligence services gather too much information and profitably use too little, the Fitzhugh panel recommended that all such functions be directed by the proposed Deputy Secretary of Defense for Operations. It also proposed creation of a Net Assessment Group reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense and responsible for the evaluation of both U.S. and enemy military capabilities, a vital function now performed by no one.

PERSONNEL would be made more efficient through improvement of promotion procedures and better utilization of civilians. Citing a study showing that generals and admirals on the way up hold specific assignments for an average of only 14 months, the panel proposed longer assignments and greater promotion opportunities for senior officers in specialized positions.

Reaction to the Fitzhugh report was mixed. Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, an outspoken Pentagon critic, supported some of the panel's recommendations, but branded the sections dealing with defense contractors "self-serving." The Joint Chiefs of Staff made no secret of their displeasure over the recommendation to strip them of some of their power, though publicly they were silent. Fitzhugh, who briefed the Chiefs before releasing the report, described them as "less than enthusiastic." The same description applies to at least two panel members. Robert Jackson, board chairman of Ryan Aeronautical Co., and Wilfred McNeil, a director of Fairchild Hiller Corp., both filed dissenting opinions and recommended retention of the Chiefs' triple role.

Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, however, seemed generally receptive to the panel's recommendations. Though he declined to comment on the proposal to trim the role of the Joint Chiefs, he assumes that a majority of the panel's recommendations would be adopted. The report's fate depends less on Congress than it does on Laird and the President. According to Fitzhugh, some 90% of the panel's recommendations can be achieved through presidential executive orders, subject only to an outright congressional veto.

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