Charlie's Hurricane

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The troops marched smartly down Washington's Constitution Avenue, the jets streaked overhead, and on the reviewing stand Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson held himself bulkily erect. Unknown to Wilson, the telephone even then was buzzing in his Sheraton-Park apartment 700G. Capital newsmen wanted to speak to him. The review over, the pleased and proud Defense Secretary drove to the plane that would take him to Virginia's Hot Springs for the weekend. But at the National Airport newsmen swarmed over him with stinging questions. Wilson turned to an aide, said reproachfully: "I thought you told me there wasn't anything hot going on." It was a brilliant, cloudless Armed Forces Day 1956--a day set aside for the services to parade their unity across the U.S.--and around Charlie Wilson's shaggy head had broken a storm of military disunity.

The U.S. Army, long bubbling with discontent, had boiled over with scalding anti-Air Force documents slipped to friendly reporters (TIME, May 28). The Air Force struck back with its own propaganda bombs, and some of them indiscriminately clobbered the Navy as well as the Army. Back from Hot Springs, a few days too late, Charlie Wilson labored mightily to bring peace to the Pentagon, but by this week the battle had qualities of nightmare. On one occasion, for example, Air Force officers disguised themselves in their old Army uniforms and strolled innocently through the Pentagon's Army sections to see what they could spy out. In his home near the Pentagon, an Army colonel denied with outraged innocence the suggestion that he had passed out any of the hot documents--and promptly proceeded to hand a reporter two of them (including one titled The Facts Versus Billy Mitchell).

Unthinkable War. Behind such pot-shooting lay the basis for a deadly serious war between the services. In the years since World War II, the growing potential of the atom has brought new importance to air power because air power is the prime delivery means for A-bombs and H-bombs. The atom knocked askew the comfortable old U.S. military idea of balanced forces. President Eisenhower wrenched the Air Force, Navy, Army roles and missions even more sharply by ruling that the atomic bomb should be the primary weapon both for retaliation in case of a big war, or for retaliation (on enemy supply bases, training areas, etc.) in a small war. Next, the guided missile whistled into the everyday language and planning of warfare; with it came the prospect of technological unemployment--and reduced funds--for the parts of the armed services functionally tied up with the old concepts.

In this new world of hydrogen bomb plus missile, the President had come to a further basic and revolutionary conclusion: modern war is unthinkable and must not be allowed to happen. The way to prevent it is to shape the U.S. armed forces so that they can clearly strike back instantly and devastatingly at any aggressor, thus make him realize that if he begins a war, it will be concluded--as Air-Power Man Curtis LeMay says--without "profit" to himself. Therefore, for the first time in military annals, the primary mission of the U.S. armed forces is not to prepare and plan for long war, but to array themselves as a powerfully armed, well-deployed ready instrument of deterrence.

The new thinking places principal responsibilities for today's peace on the Air Force, both with its long-range B-52s and B-36s at home, and its B-47s deployed overseas. The Navy and its carriers, mobile bases already cruising within Navy bomber reach of enemy targets (TIME, May 21), play an important auxiliary role. For the Army, there is clearly less and less to do even today. Faced by these staggering facts, the Army struck out for its own place under the nuclear sun of tomorrow, planning and arguing strenuously in these areas:

STRATEGIC BOMBING. Under the mission assigned it by the Key West agreement of 1948,*the Air Force has exclusive rights to the intercontinental (5,000 miles) ballistics missile, is pushing its Atlas ICBM development program. But the Army argues that the ballistics missile is actually a sort of artillery shell, points to its own service mission of destroying enemy ground forces wherever they may be found--presumably including a Soviet garrison. On that basis the Army won authorization to work on Redstone, a 200-mile range missile, and with the Navy on Jupiter, an intermediate-range (1,500 miles) ballistics missile. The Army hopes that Jupiter, the IRBM, or Redstone can eventually be extended to ICBM range--a fact that the Air Force realizes and resents.

CONTINENTAL DEFENSE. Key West gave the air defense of the U.S. to the Air Force, limited the Army to an antiaircraft role. But, using "antiaircraft" as its entering wedge, the Army developed the radar-controlled, ground-to-air Nike (rhymes with psyche), which it now touts as the backbone of U.S. air defense.*Nike has several glaring deficiencies: it is not a homing missile and must be guided electronically from the ground; its range is less than 60 miles, even in an improved model; it does not fit into the Air Force SAGE system of early radar warning against attack (the Army has its own "Missile Master" warning system). But Nike has one great virtue: it is the best now available in operational quantities to the U.S. The Air Force is adopting the Navy-developed Talos, still undergoing tests, with which it hopes to drive Nike--and the Army--out of the air defense business.

Army Air Power. At the time of the Key West agreement, the Army had about 200 aircraft, used mostly for liaison and artillery spotting. Today it has about 4,000 (helicopters, light planes, transports) and is grasping avidly for more, which it says it needs to provide airlift and close support for its divisions. Lieut. General James Gavin, farseeing chief of Army Research and Development, says that "20,000 planes for the Army might not be enough." Last week the Army officially demanded long-range, high-speed aircraft to track its missiles. The Army grab for air power is seen by the Air Force as a clear threat to its independent existence.

Diluted Zeal. The Army began heading full tilt toward a blowoff last winter. It was provoked when it learned that Air Force commanders (dressed in Bermuda shorts that the Air Force is introducing as its summer uniform) had staged a remarkable public-relations session in Puerto Rico. Among those on hand was Brigadier General Robert Lee (God Is My Co-Pilot) Scott, fired with zeal in his new job as information director for the Air Force. Scott had prepared a slambang, let-out-all-stops press campaign, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Strategic Air Command and aimed at proving to the U.S. public once and for all that, with its "spectacular mobility" and its "complete arsenal of destructive weapons," the U.S. Air Force "outmodes the most modern surface forces."

Scott's idea won enthusiastic applause from all the air generals but one: General Lauris Norstad, soon to be named to succeed retiring General Al Gruenther as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Norstad argued convincingly that the Air Force was already getting more than twice the appropriations of the other services and that it was no time to stir up trouble. Norstad won few Air Force converts with his appeal, but he did have a sobering effect on the conference. Bob Scott's campaign was drastically watered down.

The Army, unaware that there had been any dilution, somehow got its hand on a copy of Scott's original plan, set forth in detail in a paper called A Decade of Security Through Global Air Power. In the lower-ranking Pentagon "C" ring of offices, the bright young colonels began to worry--and to prepare for a real fight.

The Battle Planners. Girding for battle, the Army seized upon its "Policy Coordinating Group" as an equivalent to the Navy's famed Op-23, which masterminded the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals. Already moved directly under Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor from its place as a semidetached study unit, the group was soon well staffed with young colonels under Brigadier General L. C. Metheny, 49, a cool, sharp planner. Metheny & Co. began setting up the Army line with a long series of staff studies, transmitted first to the Army general staff and later to the field commanders. Liaison was established with sympathetic Democratic Senators, e.g., Washington's Henry ("Scoop") Jackson. One of Metheny's planners answered General Scott's Air Force paper with A Decade of Insecurity Through Global Air Power. Not yet, however, could the . Army break into the open. Still ahead was another conference in Puerto Rico--this time a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been ordered by Dwight Eisenhower to get away from the Pentagon for a full-scale review of U.S. military policy, with special reference to the question of whether the service roles assigned by Key West needed overall revision. The Army planners hoped desperately that Max Taylor could use the Puerto Rico sessions to gain new prestige and position for his service.

The conference began last March 3, continued for seven days, with Charlie Wilson sitting in on its final deliberations. In the eyes of the colonels, Taylor failed in his mission. The Joint Chiefs decided that Key West needed no sweeping revision, i.e., that technological developments could take their course. The Army did not gain an inch.

Launching the Attack. Troubles piled upon troubles. In what appeared to Army eyes as the beginning of Bob Scott's knockout publicity campaign, the magazine Air Force devoted its entire April issue to celebrating SAC's tenth anniversary. Air Enthusiast Arthur Godfrey plugged the magazine on radio and television for a month, generated requests of 160,000 reprints. In its next issue, Air Force virtually wrote off the Army as a combat service; e.g.', "The civil defense mission, particularly, is currently suffering from malnutrition, and this would appear to be a logical place to soak up the manpower being fed into the Army's Reserve program." On Capitol Hill Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington, onetime (1947-50) Air Force Secretary, began subcommittee hearings aimed at showing that the U.S. needs more, not less, air power. The House of Representatives passed the new military appropriations bill, heavily loaded in favor of the Air Force, almost without quibble. The Army saw its future closing in. It attacked.

One of Metheny's colonels sought out a handful of newsmen known to be sympathetic to the Army, notably the New York Times's able Tony Leviero, himself an Army Reserve officer. The reporters got the classified papers written by the Army planners. The documents blasted at the entire doctrine of atom-armed air power. Said one: "The air-power concept, unless modified, can only lead the U.S. to disaster. It is bigoted and unsound." The Army argued (even as it struggled for more air and atomic power of its own) that the world faces an atomic stalemate on all levels, that future wars will be won with gunpowder by land-massed armies. The Army clutched for the missile. Said a paper: "A general premise is that the use and control of all land-launched missiles is the responsibility of the Army commander at every echelon."

"Brainwashed!" Pulitzer Prizewinner-Leviero knew just what to do with the papers to set off a full-scale controversy. He took them to the Air Force public-relations division, displayed them and asked for "answers." He got his answers. The Air Force was ready with its own documents, slamming back at the Army and downgrading (with arguments along the lines prepared for the Air Force by Harvard Law Professor Walter Barton Leach, an Air Reserve brigadier general and a longtime carrier critic) the Navy's claims that its supercarriers pack a significant strategic-bombing punch. Cried an Air Force spokesman: "The Air Force would be derelict in its duty to the American people if it allowed citizens to be brainwashed by the claims of the other services that they, not the Air Force, are the true path to peace and security."

Man of Persistence. Next morning the Battle of the Pentagon blazed into print --but the Pentagon's boss remained comfortably unaware of the outburst. Charles Wilson arose early to dress for the Armed Forces Day review, glanced hastily at the Washington Post but saw nothing to upset him (he had skipped too fast over the Post's account of the Pentagon conflict). Only when nabbed at the airport by the horde of clamoring newsmen did Wilson learn what had happened. And by the time he got back from Hot Springs, he knew that all eyes were turned toward Charles Erwin Wilson, the man who rarely bobs up in headlines except when there is trouble.

When Wilson first took over as Secretary of Defense, he was the despair of political Washington. He was shocked to learn that the conflict-of-interests law applied even to a man who had given up the presidency of General Motors for public service, and only after extensive wrangling was persuaded to sell his own stock. He aggravated the touchy, jealous committees of Congress, addressing members as "you men," and answering questions with the air of a man whose time is being wasted.

Poor Relations. His relations with Congress have since improved; now, as one Capitol Hill professional puts it, they are merely poor. He calls Senators "gentlemen," although he doggedly resists "sir." His answers to committee questions no longer land him in hot water; they are simply uninformative. The Capitol Hill attitude toward Wilson is one of frustration. Early this year, while Wilson was testifying, Georgia's Senator Richard Russell--normally the calmest and most courteous of men--stalked out of a committee room to avoid bursting with exasperation at Wilson's clipped answers.

But Charlie Wilson has stayed on at his post longer than any previous Secretary of Defense, has managed to win a certain place in the public's affection as a man who can laugh at his own bobbles and stick to his job. Well schooled in technical matters, he has presided over the armed forces during their greatest period of technological progress. He has pressed hard, with an expert thumb, for the economy that makes for true administrative efficiency (although he has surrounded himself with a sprawling Defense Department bureaucracy that violates the whole theory of a streamlined Defense Department). Most of all, he has been a valued lieutenant to Dwight Eisenhower, from whom Wilson derives his strength both with Congress and the armed forces. He repays Ike's support with loyal, tireless service.

Meet the Press. Once Wilson had caught the full furor of the Army's revolt, he moved swiftly last week to make one principal point: the battle was a low-level affair and (unlike the Revolt of the Admirals) did not represent the thinking of the responsible service chiefs. To make his point, he ordered the military chiefs and the service Secretaries to join him that afternoon and prepare to face the press.

They were in Wilson's office on the dot, Admiral Arthur Radford, J.C.S. chairman, and the Army's Max Taylor fresh from a White House garden party in their dazzling dress whites, the other military men in suntans. For the next hour, the group hashed over the line to follow. For one thing, Wilson was persuaded not to say that the Army papers had been leaked by "irresponsible persons," was left with the simple statement that the leaks were "staff papers . . . and not necessarily the approved policies of the services." At 5 o'clock the group moved upstairs to an auditorium for one of the most extraordinary performances in the Pentagon's extraordinary history.

A Little Latitude. Behind a long, mike-clustered table were the nation's military leaders, shoulder to "shoulder in deceptive solidarity. They were mostly glum. The civilian Secretaries folded their hands tightly in front of them. Air Chief Nate Twining sat under a no-smoking sign and puffed impatiently on his cigar. Max Taylor was tight-lipped and ramrod-stiff. And right in the middle, a wrought-gold "Ike" pin gleaming from his lapel, cigarette ashes dribbling down his shirt front, bobbing and weaving and even seeming to enjoy the questions, was the Secretary of Defense.

Charlie Wilson was in full command, answering some questions himself, assigning others to the representatives of the specific services. He attributed the Pentagon's dissension to the fact that "the eager beavers are gnawing down some of the wrong trees." As to the many arguments about which service should develop what weapon, Wilson offered the only practical solution under present circumstances. Said he: "I have been taking what I think is a sound, realistic position, and that is: develop the missiles, and then let's see how we ought to use them and who ought to be responsible for using them."

Airman Twining paid restrained tribute to the Army and its works. Soldier Taylor said flatly that "there is no mutiny or revolt in the Army." He said that some of the leaked documents did not represent official Army thinking, but added: "Let me make clear that I don't flatly disavow everything that has been published." Admiral Arleigh Burke, his Navy out of the main line of interservice fire, was judiciously restrained. At the end of the press conference, Charlie Wilson, pressed for an explanation of how much warning he had had of the brewing controversy, finally admitted: "A little hurricane blew up that I didn't know was in the making."

The press conference showed that the Joint Chiefs, at least, were not yet ready to throw their weight into open warfare, but it failed in its primary mission: that of smothering Wilson's "little hurricane." Next morning Wilson fell back on his main source of strength: Dwight D. Eisenhower (U.S. Army, resigned).

A Little Dangerous. Wilson and Arthur Radford drove to the White House, talked for an hour with the President, tried-and failed-to slip past waiting reporters. What did Ike think about the service squabble? Said Wilson: "He's a bit unhappy." What would happen next? Replied Charlie Wilson: "I'll see who sticks his neck up next. It might be a little dangerous."

Ike soon had a chance to say for himself what he thought: the Pentagon split was topic A at the President's news conference. The U.S., said President Eisenhower, is going through a period of vast technological change, and "if there weren't in this time a good, strong argument among the services, I would be frightened indeed." But argument was no license for revolt, and, snapped General Eisenhower: "The day that discipline disappears from our forces, we will have no forces, and we would be foolish to put a nickel into them."

A few moments later Ike pronounced his revolutionary dictum on the future course of the U.S. armed forces: "The sole use of armed forces, so far as war between two great countries possessing atom and hydrogen bombs, today is this: their deterrent value."

Dedicated Specialists. The President is satisfied that in their sum total the U.S. armed forces today are strong enough to deter. Not only does the U.S. have the airplanes and pilots to deliver its atomic weapons, but it holds the external lines of communication as well. For the Russians to mount a successful blitz on the North American continent, they would have to strike first at all the widely arrayed offensive power--the SAC continental bases, the NATO tactical air bases in Western Europe (which have "atomic capability"), the B-47 bases in Britain and North Africa, and at the carriers afloat in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific. In Ike's thinking, such a successful strike is theoretically out of the question--hence the U.S. has achieved adequate deterrence.

To the dedicated specialists who warn that the Soviet Union may well amass a greater number of airplanes than the U.S., Ike gives a reply that would once have been considered heretical: Does it really matter whether we have a second-best Air Force in quantity, so long as the second best is good enough in quality to devastate the enemy from around the compass within hours after he tries to attack? To Air Force men who argue that the Navy's carriers can easily be tracked and sunk, this doctrine replies: once carrier planes are in the air, they are as deadly to the enemy as any other aircraft. They are part of the deterrent force in being. If the objective is to retaliate--or threaten retaliation--it does not matter whether the planes ever return to the carriers, or whether the carriers are still afloat when the planes do get back.

Immaculate War. Army theorists, e.g., retired General Matthew B. Ridgway, have based their plea for more troops on atomic stalemate. Atomic war is too hor rible to contemplate, they say, so the U.S. must be prepared to fight "the immaculate war"--the gunpowder war. Ike ruled against this line three years ago, when he approved the "new look" and made the decision to use atomic bombs, as necessary, in little as well as big wars. He is convinced that any war means atomic war. The more clearly the point is made, the more likely--under the doctrine of deterrence--is peace.

Not even a battery of lawyers could make real sense out of the services' present scramble for missile power. For the time being, Charlie Wilson's ruling that any service may develop a missile, without thereby gaining the right to employ it. makes sense. But at best, the ruling is a holding action. It will do little to blow away Wilson's hurricane, or to guarantee that the nation will not be put upon by more service leaks, more public-relations displays, more martyred, parochial officers seeking out spokesmen in Congress or publishers of memoirs. As Ike Eisenhower is aware, it is high time for the U.S. to evolve a single military service that will match its missiles.

*Then, as now, the services were fighting, each of them trying to carve out a leading role in the postwar world. Defense Secretary James Forrestal corralled the joint chiefs at Key West, Fla., ordered them to forget about returning to Washington until they had settled their roles and missions. From these tense sessions came the agreement under which the armed forces operate--at least in theory--to this day. In an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, the Joint Chiefs were careful to specify that all words in their agreement would have the meaning "contained in Webster's New International Dictionary (Unabridged)." *To prove Nike's prowess, the Army last week fired a Nike battery for newsmen at White Sands, N. Mex. The results were--at best--debatable. In one shot at a 500-m.p.h. aerial drone target, Nike registered a direct hit. In six other shots the Army said Nike scored shrapnel hits, claimed "kills" in each case. One Nike suffered an electronic brain storm and blew itself up. * Won after Leviero was the recipient of some other leaked documents: the notes of the Wake Island conference between Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur.

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