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to make sure that their activities really fit into the overall defense plan and that it is the overall defense needs that dominate. Their preoccupation should be, not service prerogatives, but rather to protect Defense activities from service parochialism. (page 165)

...This is not to say that a service secretary should never argue for his service's favorite programs. It does not deny that each service has perspectives that ought to be brought to the secretary of defense's attention. It is, though, to suggest that the service secretary ought to use far more selectivity, and support his service staff when he knows that its position really fits into the larger defense needs. "They ought to be filters," one secretary of defense complained. "Instead, they're amplifiers." The service secretary's reason for being is not to provide yet another voice for parochialism in a department that is far less effectively centralized, and far less capable of joint military activities, than many people imagine. (page 166)

The Departmental Headquarters Study also noted a lack of balance in the roles played by Service Secretaries:

...The time has passed when the Service Secretary's role can be confined to advocacy alone. The Department of Defense, after all, is a single department with its component elements constituting a Defense team. As such, the Service Secretary must be both an advocate for his Service as well as a representative at the Service level of the Secretary of Defense. If the job is to be carried out properly, it must be regarded by both the Service Secretary and the Secretary of Defense as consisting of two parts the proponent head of a major operating element, and an official of the DoD as a whole, subject to the authority and direction of the Secretary of Defense. (page 42) Secretaries of Defense apparently are also confused about the roles of the Service Secretaries. Consistently, Secretaries of Defense have failed to understand the important roles that Service Secretaries can play and have increasingly paid less attention to them. Too often the Secretary of Defense and OSD have dealt directly with Service Chiefs on issues that should be taken up with the Service Secretaries. The Secretary of Defense has also permitted Service Chiefs to end-run their Secretaries by raising issues through the JCS system that should not be addressed in that forum. Both of these actions undercut the Service Secretaries.

Secretaries of Defense have also failed to ensure that highly qualified and skilled personnel are appointed as Service Secretaries. John Kester cites this fact:

There has always been a temptation, for presidents and secretaries of defense, to assume that the services run themselves well enough, so that the service secretary positions can safely be distributed as political patronage or to satisfy particular constituencies. (page 156)

Captain Paul R. Schratz, USN (Retired) believes that there may also be a desire by Secretaries of Defense to avoid the appointment of powerful Service Secretaries who could challenge the authority of the Secretary of Defense and be "divisive obstacles to progress."

This could be especially troubling if they were heavily focused on advocating Service interests. Captain Schratz cites this as the initial view of Secretary McNamara (who later changed his position and sought strong Service Secretaries):

...McNamara initially saw a strong, analytical type of service secretary as a rallying point for service loyalties and hence a divisive threat to his own full exercise of authority. ("The Role of the Service Secretary in the National Security Organization," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 1975, page 23)

As a result of these tendencies by Secretaries of Defense and Presidents, the capabilities of Service Secretaries have varied greatly. Colonel Daleski, USAF comments as follows on the capabilities of Service Secretaries:

...it has been argued convincingly that the Service Secretaries' actual contributions...have been minimal because of the personal characteristics of many who have served in those positions. More often than not, secretarial positions have been seen as ways of satisfying political debts with the result that incumbents typically have suffered from little or no relevant experience in defense management. (Defense Management in the 1980s: The Role of the Service Secretaries, page 12)

b. Efforts to Provide Independence for the Service Secretaries from the Secretary of Defense

Since enactment of the National Security Act of 1947, there has been a concerted effort to ensure that the Military Departments and their civilian Secretaries retained sufficient influence to protect Service interests and to voice Service points of view. At issue is whether such efforts have gone too far and have given the Services too much power to pursue their narrow interests. The evidence suggests that the degree of Service independence hinders unified direction and control of the Department of Defense.

Specifically, efforts to provide independence for the Services and their Secretaries have led to a lack of assurance that decisions by higher authority will be faithfully executed by the Military Departments. While seeking to ensure that the Military Departments have the ability to forcefully present divergent views in the DoD decision-making process, the independence provided to them and their Secretaries from various sources has given them the ability to impede the execution of major decisions.

While the Services employ numerous methods for impeding execution of major decisions, a frequent tactic is delay. During a period of delay, a Service will seek to develop new considerations that will force a formal reexamination of the issue. While these new considerations may sometimes lead to a better decision, this period of delay may frequently result in the loss of important opportunities. Given their remoteness from actual implementation, the Secretary of Defense and his staff are not likely to be aware for an extended period that implementation is being delayed. The Secretary of Defense needs the forceful support of the Service Secretaries to protect the integrity of his decisions. The support that the

Secretary of Defense has traditionally received has been inadequate.

There is, however, another point of view on this issue: the capacity of the Military Departments to impede the execution of major decisions is a necessary check upon the centralized power_of the Secretary of Defense. That is, the ability of the Military Departments to exercise this type of veto power on some apparently final decisions is really a part of the decision-making process, because it assures the fullest consideration of the military's point of view. This view, however, appears to contradict the underlying principles of a unified Department of Defense and of a Secretary of Defense with "authority, direction, and control of the Department of Defense."

It also is said that leadership, not organization, is at the heart of this problem. Some observers doubt that any organizational change will alter this practice. Rather, they believe this type of practice exists in any large organization and that the leadership qualities of the Secretary of Defense and his relationship to his Service Secretaries are far more important in getting decisions executed than are organizational arrangements. For example, Martin Hoffman, a former Secretary of the Army, former General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and former Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, holds this view. In his opinion, the present organizational structure in the Department of Defense is capable of making optimal decisions and obtaining effective execution if, but probably only if, the Secretary of Defense and the Service Secretaries are each good leaders and the Secretary of Defense uses the Service Secretaries as a "kitchen-cabinet." Hoffman believes that this type of organizational relationship was the one intended by the National Security Act of 1947 and its amendments. In line with this view, observers believe that the Secretary of Defense presently has the legal authority to ensure that decisions are properly executed by the Military Departments, and it is only because the Secretary of Defense fails or chooses not to exercise that power that the Military Departments can hinder apparently final DoD decisions. While it is clear that the Secretary of Defense has the necessary legal authority, there are many obstacles to his use of that authority and to his efforts to exert stronger leadership.

Independence for the Service Secretaries and the Military Departments results from: (1) statutory authority for independent recommendations by the Service Secretaries to the Congress; (2) independent political bases of Service Secretaries and other senior civilian officials in the Military Departments; and (3) the sheer size of the top management headquarters of the Military Departments. (1) Statutory Authority for Independent Recommendations

When the position of Secretary of Defense was created in 1947, opponents of unification and those who desired to check the power of this new official sought to preserve a degree of independence for the three Service Secretaries. One of the means that the Congress chose in 1947 to provide independence was to give statutory authority to each Service Secretary, after first informing the Secretary of Defense, to make any recommendation to the President or to the Director of the Budget relating to his department as that Servic

Secretary deemed appropriate. In 1949, the Congress changed this authority to permit the Service Secretaries (and JCS members), after first informing the Secretary of Defense, to make any recommendation to the Congress relating to the Department of Defense. This latter statutory authority which still exists-contributes to confusion about the authority, responsibility, and role of the Service Secretaries. The history of this authority is traced in more detail in the following paragraphs.

When the National Military Establishment was created in 1947, the three Military Departments were executive level departments and the Service Secretaries were permanent members of the National Security Council along with the Secretary of Defense. During that organizational era, the Congress gave the three Secretaries the right, after first informing the Secretary of Defense, to present any report to the President or the Director of the Budget. President Truman, in his Message to Congress on March 7, 1949, recommended that the Secretaries lose that right of appeal as part of the reorganization of the U.S. military establishment and the redesignation of the three executive departments as Military Departments. (The Department of Defense 1944-1978, page 79)

In considering the legislation encompassing the President's recommendations, the Senate supported the abolition of the Service Secretaries' right to appeal directly to the President. The Senate Committee on Armed Services said in its report on the bill:

This proviso as set forth in the 1947 act specifically continued to the Secretaries of the military departments their authority as heads of executive departments to present recommendations and reports directly to the President or the Director of the Budget, after first informing the Secretary of Defense. The elimination of this wording is considered essential by the committee in view of the fact that under the proposed legislation the three military departments no longer have status as executive departments, as they did under the 1947 act. This change reflects the evidence presented to this effect by the overwhelming majority of witnesses which testified before the Committee. It is, of course, quite obvious that nothing in the 1947 act or the amendments proposed herein limits in any way the power or the propriety of the Congress calling upon the Secretaries of the military departments, or anyone else in the Military Establishment, for such reports or recommendations as the Congress may desire. (Senate Report No. 366, 81st Congress, 1st Session, to accompany S. 1843, page 7). The House of Representatives did not, however, agree with the Senate position. As a result, the conference committee adopted language permitting the Service Secretaries and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present to the Congress (vice the President or the Director of the Budget) any recommendation on national defense, after first informing the Secretary of Defense.

Despite the objections of President Truman to the statutory independence provided the Service Secretaries, the net effect of congressional action on the 1949 amendment was to strengthen this independence. While the earlier authority of the Service Secretaries permitted them to circumvent the Secretary of Defense, after 1949,

they were also authorized to end-run the President. In addition, while the earlier authority was restricted to addressing Executive Branch relations, the 1949 amendment authorized direct appeal outside the Executive Branch. The Congress essentially transformed the Service Secretaries and JCS members into quasi-agents of the Legislative Branch.

In 1958, this issue again arose after President Eisenhower sent a Message to the Congress suggesting certain reorganizations of the Department of Defense. In that message, President Eisenhower had emphasized that, "(We) must remove all doubt as to the full authority of the Secretary of Defense," and that "we be done with prescribing controversy by law." He further recommended "eliminating from the National Security Act...the other needless and injurious restraints on the authority of the Secretary of Defense." Shortly thereafter, the President transmitted proposed legislation to the Congress which would have abolished the right of the Service Secretaries and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make recommendations to the Congress on their own initiative, after first informing the Secretary of Defense. The resulting bill, as reported by the Senate Committee on Armed Services and passed by the Senate, would have abolished the Service Secretaries' right to make recommendations to the Congress on their own initiative, but would have permitted the Joint Chiefs of Staff, either individually or as a group, to make such recommendations to committees of the Congress.

However, the bill reported by the House Committee on Armed Services continued the existing authorities. When the President objected in writing to this provision, which he viewed as an invitation to "legalized insubordination", an amendment in support of the President's objection failed on the House floor by a vote of 192 to 211. In conference, the House position once again prevailed and was explained in the conference report as a "simple repetition" of the "law which has been in existence for the past 9 years."

This right of Service Secretaries to present recommendations to the Congress, still in law 36 years after the Military Departments lost their executive department status and 38 years after the Service Secretaries became subordinates of the Secretary of Defense, continues to contribute to the confusion surrounding the role of the Service Secretaries. By continuing the authority of the Service Secretaries to present independent recommendations to the Congress, the Congress has encouraged Service Secretaries and their staffs to take the case for their point of view outside of DoD.

A contemporary example of this capacity is the Navy's successful blockage of the Secretary of Defense's decision to consolidate the Army's Military Traffic Management Command and the Navy's Military Sealift Command. In that situation, discussed fully in Chapter 9, the Secretary of the Navy directly sought support from Members of the Congress to legislatively block this consolidation even though the Secretary of Defense, supported unanimously by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had decided and directed that the consolidation occur. This situation provides clear evidence of the lack of a clearly defined superior-subordinate relationship between a Secretary of Defense and a Secretary of a Military Department. The source of this particular problem again is the historical status of

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