Undoing the Mischief

Congress wreaked a lot of costly mischief when, out of solicitude for the individual armed services, it flawed 1947's defense unification act with service-independence safeguards that fostered disunity and snarled Defense Department lines of authority. Last week, with rumblings overseas sharply reminding the lawmakers of the nation's need for military efficiency, the Senate took a long step toward undoing the mischief. Texas' Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson called to the floor the President's defense reorganization bill (TIME, April 14), and the Senate unanimously passed it, heavily rephrased but scarcely damaged in substance. By imposing more command unity on the sprawling defense establishment, the measure will do more than save money: it will put the Defense Department in better organizational trim to function swiftly and effectively in case of big or little war. Main provisions:

Secretary of Defense. "We tried to make it very clear," said Georgia's Armed Services Committee Chairman Richard B. Russell, "that the Secretary of Defense is the supreme officer in the Department." He will have broader and more direct control over the man in uniform, bypassing the service secretaries in operational matters. The old requirement that the services must be "separately administered," now reads "separately organized," i.e., the Defense Secretary cannot abolish services, but the secretaries of Army, Navy and Air Force are no longer in the chain of operational command. The Defense Secretary now has explicit authority to assign weapons to services as he sees fit, a powerful weapon in itself for putting an end to service rivalries.

Joint Chiefs of Staff. The J.C.S., elevated to new operational status, in effect commands the armed forces under the President and the Defense Secretary. Recognizing this broadened role, the bill enlarges the J.C.S.'s Joint Staff from 210 officers to 400, and, while shying from any idea of a general staff, effectively makes the J.C.S. chairman more powerful than he had ever been by giving him power to assign duties to the Joint Staff. The bill also authorizes the three service chiefs who are J.C.S. members to delegate their service duties--but not responsibilities--to their vice chiefs.

Research & Development. A new Director of Research and Engineering, directly responsible to the Defense Secretary, will take charge of all R. & D.--another effective way of preventing individual services from going off on their own.

Though modifying them in detail, the Senate upheld in principle two Housewritten provisions that President Eisenhower bluntly and publicly blasted (TIME, June 9). These provisions 1) give Congress a veto over transfer or abolition of any "major combatant function" in peacetime, and 2) authorize any service chief to go up to Capitol Hill on his own and make any "recommendations." But the Senate deleted altogether a House provision that the President had rapped as a "legalized bottleneck": the requirement that the Defense Secretary's authority over the separate services must be exercised "through" the service secretaries.

Next step: a joint conference to smooth out the differences between the House and Senate versions.

On Capitol Hill:

P: The Middle East crisis brightened the prospects that the Senate this week will partly restore 1) the Senate Finance Committee's damage to the Administration's reciprocal trade bill (TIME, July 21), and 2) the House's deep cuts in foreign aid appropriations.

P: The House and the Senate passed and sent to the President a bill creating a new National Aeronautics and Space Administration to oversee the U.S.'s nonmilitary space projects.

P: The Senate passed and sent to the House a bill to set up a new, civilian-bossed Federal Aviation Agency that will take over air-control functions now scattered among half a dozen federal agencies and boards. Created to prevent collisions in the U.S.'s increasingly crowded airspace, the FAA will make and enforce traffic rules for all commercial, private and military aircraft.

P: The House Post Office and Civil Service Committee voted out a bill to provide lifetime pensions of $25,000 a year for ex-Presidents and $10,000 a year for Presidents' widows. Since the Senate passed a similar bill in early 1957, the pensions may shortly become the law of the land.

P: Oregon's one-of-a-kind Democratic Senator Wayne Morse roadblocked the Administration's passport bill designed to offset the Supreme Court's ruling that, under existing legislation, the State Department may not deny passports to U.S. citizens on the grounds of beliefs or associations (TIME, June 30). Denouncing it as an "inexcusable attack on constitutional guarantees," Morse stalled the bill in the Foreign Relations Committee under the rule requiring unanimous consent for a committee to meet while the Senate is in session.

P: The House passed, 241 to 155, another woolly bill, drafted to get around a Supreme Court decision: a 1956 ruling that, in effect, nullified state antisubversive laws on the grounds that federal legislation had pre-empted the field. Under the House measure, a federal law would not supersede a state law in the same area unless 1) Congress so specified, or 2) there was a "direct and specific conflict." Opponents warned that the bill would lead to endless jurisdictional tangles between federal and state laws in such fields as interstate commerce regulation, even civil rights. Senate prospects: very dim.

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