Under Control

At the closing gavel of the hearings of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, Chairman Lyndon Johnson last week had two prime items to lay before the public. One was the appearance of General Lucius Dubignon Clay, veteran Army engineer, onetime (1947-49) military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany, and longtime close friend of Dwight Eisenhower. The other was a lengthy interim statement written by Senator Johnson and approved by his colleagues that carefully summed up the U.S. defense picture as the committee had found it in 110 days of study.

From West Pointer Clay, 60, now board chairman of Continental Can Co., came an old soldier's plea for a more unified military command, rooted in a strong Defense Secretary and bolstered by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with sole military authority for decisions. Today's Joint Chiefs setup, said Clay, is "just another committee." Clay also added his vote to those (notably members of the Rockefeller Report panel) who have been demanding a setup whereby senior officers would belong to the same service, wear the same uniform and stand above interservice rivalries.

Simple Questions. As the committee gathered in closed session, Texan Johnson pulled out of his pocket his proposed interim statement, already drafted. There he argued not with Republican members, but with Missouri's presidency-bound Democrat Stuart Symington, who nagged insistently for a hard-swinging attack on the Administration for its defense shortcomings. At length, Johnson (well aware that his own committee was no more anxious than the Administration for defense spending in the last "economy" session of Congress) carried the day--and happily so, for his report was both accurate and constructive.

"The facts which we have been investigating," it said, "are the facts of the future. And while the future is very close --extremely close--it is still under our control. There is no point in arguing that things might have been different had things been done differently in the past. The past is already for historians. Let us seek solutions so that the future may be written by free-world historians."

Effective Answers. Some of the solutions (e.g., step-up of missile research and development, development of antisubmarine warfare programs, steps toward dispersal of the Strategic Air Command) have already taken hold, Johnson wrote--not without an oblique reference to the fact that much of this action began only after the committee's inquiry started. But overall, the committee urged strict attention to the kind of progress that would put the U.S. once more into high gear. Among the proposals: stronger advances in modernizing and developing the conventional Army and Navy forces, reorganization of the Defense Department, greater efforts in anti-missile missiles, and more imaginative technological achievements (such as manned missiles, a rocket motor with 1,000,000 Ibs. of thrust), as well as some head-knocking on the question of civil-defense shelters.

The interim report was notably shy on hard specifics (e.g., what kind of Pentagon reorganization?), but Johnson expects to remedy this shortcoming in a final recommendation to Congress a month hence. The report was nonetheless an effective reminder that the committee had done the nation a distinct service by providing a well-run forum for debating and exposing defense weaknesses at a critical time.

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