Tribune for the Military

For five years Lucius Mendel Rivers presided over the powerful House Armed Services Committee as the military's best friend on Capitol Hill. Somehow, when he died last week at 65 of progressive heart failure, his rule seemed to have lasted longer, so forceful had it been. In a changing of the guard that will probably prove one more of style than of substance, F. Edward Hebert, 69, will assume the chairmanship when the 92nd Congress convenes. A 15-term Congressman from Louisiana, Hebert acquired his political savvy serving on the House Un-American Activities Committee and later on Armed Services. If anything, he is as obdurate a cold warrior as Rivers, as suspicious of civilian Pentagon officials and as opposed to the changing face of the military. "I'll be seeking the same goals Mendel did," he announced, offering a potpourri of his views on a range of topics (see box).

Rivers' goals were never ambiguous. Throughout his political life, he devoted himself to the problems and promotion of the U.S. military. During his stewardship of the House Armed Services Committee, he was an unabashed militarist; nowhere in Congress in recent years have the military services had a more dogged and effective tribune. As a result, Rivers held, at least according to his own reckoning, "the most powerful position in the U.S. Congress."

It's Gonna Sink. Rivers began the first of 15 consecutive terms in 1941 as the Congressman from South Carolina's First District. His initial congressional assignment was to the Naval Affairs Committee--later to become the Armed Services Committee. The focus of his legislative efforts was to get more for the military--more ships, more planes, more men, more pay, more everything.

Not coincidentally, Rivers' district came to reflect his legislative bent. One recent survey of his home district of nine counties, including Charleston, noted an Air Force base, naval base, Polaris missile submarine base, Coast Guard station, the Sixth Naval District Headquarters and the Parris Island Marine boot camp. While Carl Vinson was still chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he once remarked to Rivers: "You put anything else down there in your district, Mendel, it's gonna sink."

When Vinson retired in 1965, Rivers, as the committee's ranking Democrat, came into his own as chairman. Upon taking office, he doubled the Johnson Administration's request for a servicemen's pay raise and sponsored a bill requiring congressional review of any cutbacks in military facilities. In one of Rivers' first encounters with the former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, the Pentagon chief tried to patronize the committee, as he had under Vinson's chairmanship. Rivers finally breathed drowsily: "But Mr. Secretary, Carl Vinson's gone. He's gone . . ."

As early as the Korean War, Rivers had urged President Truman to use nuclear weapons. Following the Pueblo incident, he proposed that the U.S. give North Korea 24 hours to return the vessel, or "I'd make sure that at least one of her cities would disappear from the face of the earth." His response to Viet Nam: "Retaliation, retaliation, retaliation. They say, 'Quit the bombing.' I say, 'Bomb.'"

Rivers held a deep mistrust of the press, and with some reason. He was keelhauled by the Washington press corps for his marathon drinking bouts. When he became chairman of the Armed Services Committee, however, he swore off liquor and kept the pledge.

Coldly Furious. The son of a South Carolina dirt farmer, Rivers was eight when his father died, and he knew poverty in his childhood. Rivers and his wife Margaret, parents of a son and two daughters, lived simply, maintaining a small brick house in McLean, Va., and a modest home in Charleston. For all his love of arms, Rivers never served in uniform. As he admitted, "I don't know squads-left from squads-right."

In an era of military cutbacks and national soul searching over the horrors of war. Rivers was clearly out of tempo. His detractors were many, and their criticisms were often justified. In recent years. Rivers found his role of defending the military made more difficult by the military itself, and would get coldly furious at the blunders of admirals and generals. At a luncheon given by Rivers and attended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the entire civilian hierarchy of the Pentagon and major defense contractors, a guest observed half in awe, half in criticism: "I have beheld the military-industrial complex, and it sits on the right hand of L. Mendel Rivers." Rivers would not have considered that a bad epitaph at all.

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