Mr. DAWSON. You believe this is the first step and if they keep up the pattern, they are bound to come back later and say that the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are no longer needed and that they can well do without them, since the Chairman has charge of the working staff the selection of the working staff and the matters to be handled by the working staff. It seems to me and I certainly agree with the picture you paint that in the light of the past desire of the military to get legislation pointing in that direction and in the light of actions on the floor from the Congress, that they have been taking it by piecemeal.

They say now that this is necessary, yet I have not heard one of them say that the same thing could not have been done or that this will cause anything to be done now that could not have been done beforehand.

General EDSON. That is correct.

Mr. DAWSON. And that the President, as Commander in Chief of our forces, certainly gets no new powers under this. All we have done here is to take powers from the representatives of the different services and place them in the hands of one man who does not represent any one of the services necessarily and give him veto power of members of the Joint Staff from the different services over the Joint Chiefs from those services.

It seems to me that we as Members of Congress ought to hesitate a long time and study with infinite care in the light of the voice crying in the wilderness of men like you and other members of the Military Establishment who have represented this Nation in its darkest hours and who through the past wars have brought us success and who are not now subject to military discipline. You and a few others have the courage to speak out, even though you were in the Military Establishment, but many men have tried to do that and their opportunities for promotion have been cut off. Any man who has been in the Army 10 minutes, the one thing he will appreciate is the power of military discipline, the power of rank. We heard one of the directors sit here yesterday and say that at one time he had under him a man he did not want because of a frailty and he had no trouble in changing that man-even the Director had no trouble. Certainly if the Director had no trouble then the members of the Joint Chiefs would have no trouble. But no, in order to obtain whom they want on the Joint Staff that they want to take it from the representatives of the different departments and put it in one man, the chairman.

To my mind I cannot see how we can sit here and read the history of Germany and read the history of revolutions within other nations and see this trend, as has so ably been outlined by so many Army men who have come before us, and put in operation this plan No. 6 which grants so much power to a single person. Those who advocate it must have some basic reason to set up the military power in one man or in a small group of men.

As I have seen this thing unfold and as brought to us from those who have served their Nation in a military way I cannot see why we should have at this time the insistence that seems to come from the Military Establishment for (c) and (d) under section 1 of this plan. It seems to me that the Members of the Congress and this Nation ought to wake up at what seems to be another effort to establish e overall military control.

I think this Nation will remain great just as long as control of the military is finally in the hands of civilians, but the day we give control of the Military Establishment solely, or of the defensive effort, solely to the military that is the day we are laying the foundation for a change in our form of government. As you say, Congress has strings on the purse.

I have a little notation here from a distinguished member on my side who is for the plan, and for it as written, saying that is a good question that I am asking.

Mr. BROOKS. Perhaps he could answer it for you.

Mr. DAWSON. He is permitted to.

I am going to ask you a question, General, and I say this in all seriousness. Here sits a man before us who has demonstrated in every manner his devotion to this country in time of war, and who has shown that he is willing to lay down his life and to give everything for this country, but he never performed an act on the battlefield more essential to the welfare of this country than he is performing here today in expressing his views against those two provisions of this plan, (c) and (d) in doing that obviously it would not be done if there was not some basic reason for it. You will find it is just as they have portrayed it, as others have portrayed it, the efforts of the military to set up a super military organization in our Military Establishment with a view to controlling it and the vast sums of money handled by the military, $60 billion, or $80 billion a year. Give this military group the handling of that amount of money, and you have created the most powerful ministry that this Nation has ever seen, and when you put it in the hands of the military that is the danger we have.

I will ask you, sir, if you think I have correctly stated some of your views on the matter?

General EDSON. You have done it much more ably than I could have.

The CHAIRMAN. There ought to be another meeting, but if there is no objection on the part of the committee we will proceed. Mr. Judd, you had some questions.

Mr. JUDD. I will not ask them now.

The CHAIRMAN. Let them go until later?

Mr. JUDD. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Harden, do you have any questions?

Mrs. HARDEN. No, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Holifield.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Yes, I have some questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Holifield, I suggest you take an amount of time equal to that which Mr. Dawson had.

Mr. BROWN. Are we going to sit on Sunday?

Mr. DAWSON. I think it is important enough to do it, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. General Edson, you have indicated by affirmative answer to Mr. Dawson that the President could do by directive anything that is contemplated in this plan, I believe.

General EDSON. That has been so testified by other witnesses.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. You have stated no doubt. Is it your thought that he can?

General EDSON. I question whether that section relating to direct control, and so forth, of the Department extends to the point of

actually doing something which I think the intent of the law is to specifically prohibit, which is that of the chairman managing as such and directing.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Then your answer indicates you were in error when you made the affirmative answer to Mr. Dawson?

General EDSON. What I was indicating was that it has been so testified by other people.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. And it is your belief that the Unification Act did set up the control of the 210 members of the Joint Staff in the complete Joint Chiefs of Staff, and not in the Chairman?

General EDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. So, you were in error on that point?

General EDSON. Yes.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. You have described to us the German General Staff.

Mr. DAWSON. Pardon me, would you yield for a question?

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Yes.

Mr. DAWSON. That is the very thing we have been talking about keeping them from doing, because by law the power was given to them up to now, and this is taking that power from them.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Then your question of him that the President could adjust this by directive, could have done this anyway was not germane. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Did the German setup have a civilian Secretary of Defense, a civilian Secretary of the Army, a civilian Secretary of the Navy, and a civilian Secretary of the Air Force?

General EDSON. The German Constitution was put into effect in 1848, I believe, and for the first three incumbents thereafter the head of the Military Department, the Minister of War, was a civilian. After those first three civilians it was customary from then on, until after the First World War, for the Ministry to be filled by a professional soldier.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. So, then, there is a difference between the General Staff as it developed in Germany and here because there they did not have the interposition of a Secretary of Defense who was a civilian and three Under Secretaries of the Services who were civilians? General EDSON. That is correct.

I would like to state, however, Mr. Holifield, that although the National Security Act of 1947 specifically prohibited the appointment of a professional military man as Secretary of Defense there has been one exception to that.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. By and with the consent of the Congress?
General EDSON. Yes, with the consent of Congress.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. That is right.

On page 2 of

your statement you say:

It has been said that the approval of these two subsections will not create a single military commander or the great National General Staff which Congress has specifically forbidden.

Then you go ahead and say, "This is true." So, this plan within itself does not do what you fear?

General EDSON. That is correct, within itself it does not.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. That is the answer that I wanted, and that is what you gave in your statement.

The CHAIRMAN. If you want to make a mark there you can come back to it.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I did not yield, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I did not ask you.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. This is what you said:

This is true, but what this committee should understand is that they do add another girder to the structure for which the foundation was laid in 1947.

Or course, that is your opinion.

General EDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We may come to a different opinion.

That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Meader.

Mr. MEADER. General Edson, I want to direct your attention to page 23 and page 24 of this document you referred to, being "Committee Print, Reorganization Plan No. 6".

On page 23, which is indicated, "before," I suppose that means before the adoption of Reorganization Plan 6, and it shows lines of command going from the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directly to the various armed services. On page 24 which is after the adoption of this plan it does not have any such lines of authority, but indicates that they come down through the civilian Secretaries of the Departments of the Army, the Air Force and the Navy. In your study of this plan do you see anything that would give rise to that change in the line of command?

General EDSON. I do not think that it makes a great deal of difference in the long run.

Mr. MEADER. The plan does not affect this line of command in the way indicated by those two charts, does it?

General EDSON. I do not think so.

Mr. MEADER. Are not these completely misleading?

General EDSON. I think the best answer to that, Mr. Meader, is that there are certain realms, as Admiral Leahy testified, which are purely military in nature, and the ordinary civilian Secretary does not know of his own knowledge. He, therefore, has to go to his military advisers for advice in that realm.

Mr. MEADER. My point is, this chart on page 23 leaves the 3 Secretaries of the armed services out in the cold, and they have not anything to do with it. The chart on page 24 indicates that they are directly in the line of command, and I wonder if there is anything in this plan that would effectuate that?

General EDSON. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. MEADER. Then are these charts not misleading?

General EDSON. I suppose that someone who prepared the charts could defend them.

if

I believe fully in civilian control of the military, as you well know. I think, referring to this chart on page 23, if it is a true picture, that any Chief of Staff of a service executed an order which came from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a service without telling his Secretary he probably would not be Chief of Staff very long.

Mr. MEADER. You remember Admiral Leahy testified that some of these Chiefs of the services did not bother to tell the Secretaries;

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they did not like them very well, and they just did not pay any attention to them.

General EDSON. Yes, I remember.

Mr. MEADER. And do you see anything in this plan that would change that if that is the existing condition?

General EDSON. Not to my knowledge; no, sir.
Mr. MEADER. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Condon?

Mr. CONDON. I have no questions.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Judd?

Mr. JUDD. No, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brown.

Mr. BROWN. General Edson, we are happy to have you back here again, because I remember the days you were here before this committee when we had before us the national security legislation.

I would like to draw your attention, if I may, General, to the charts on pages 23 and 24 of the Committee Print, Reorganization Plan No. 6. They now show a representative of the Marine Corps staff sitting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which should be of some pleasure to you, sir, and I think that came about as a result of the interest of Congress in that particular matter.

General EDSON. Yes.

Mr. BROWN. You, of course, agree that we should have civilian control of the armed services?

General EDSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. BROWN. I think you would agree that, as a matter of fact, the President, especially in time of war, usually does all of these things, or has all of these things done. We had here this morning Admiral Leahy who testified very ably on this matter, and it will be recalled that Admiral Leahy was named, as he said here this morning, by President Roosevelt to serve as his personal Chief of Staff.

Of course, whatever Admiral Leahy said was what went with all of the services, which was, of course, a great deal more power being exercised by one military man than is proposed by this legislation which is before us.

If I understand this legislation correctly, General, and I want you to tell me if I am wrong, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would remain in the same position he is today, as far as appointment is concerned. He would be appointed for 2 years under the law, and could be reappointed for 2 more years. He could not serve more than 4 years. Therefore, a single man would not have control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff very long if he does have this authority.

General EDSON. The law also provides in case of an emergency that the tenure of office may be set aside. It says he shall be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate from among the Regular officers of the armed services and serve at the pleasure of the President for a term of 2 years and shall be eligible for one reappointment by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, except in time of war hereafter declared by the Congress when there shall be no limitation.

Mr. BROWN. That is the exception, of course. In other words, that is the reason why President Roosevelt did what he did in putting Admiral Leahy in as top man.