of not exceeding 210 officers to be composed of approximately equal numbers appointed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is neither secretarial appointment nor Presidential appointment nor secretarial confirmation necessary.

Mr. McCORMACK. But you still think that the President would not be consulted in connection with such an important matter?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I would be very much surprised if the President had ever been consulted with regard to appointment to the Joint Staff and I would be greatly surprised if this program involved discussion of that subject with him.

Mr. McCORMACK. My question was to point out that no matter under what human setup exists, that that would occur because it has occurred.

Now, let us take the case of the present situation where General Twining will be one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and already he has taken the position contrary to thea dministration on the 143 Air Group, hasn't he?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I understand so.

Mr. McCORMACK. Definitely, when he was up for confirmation. He specifically said that a 143 Air Force Group was of vital importance. I have his testimony right here.

Mr. EBERSTADT. I do not question it, Mr. McCormack.

Mr. McCORMACK. This was the hearing before the Committee on Armed Services on May 28, 1953, when General Twining was before the committee and Senator Symington asked this question:

Do you believe that the recent fiscal manipulations in the Department of Defense-I put it that way because in the testimony given by the Secretary of Defense he said that he was very surprised to see what the statistics did to the Air Force when the final figures turned up; and his deputy said, "Secretary Talbott pointed out to us what we had done to the Air Force"-do you believe that these fiscal decisions were made in the Department of Defense recently, are going to hurt the further development of the Air Force?

General Twining answered:

Well, I can say that it is going to delay the building of 143 wings.

Then Senator Symington asked:

Do you think that 143-wing Air Force is necessary for the security of the United States?

And to that, General Twining said: "I do."

Mr. EBERSTADT. That is a right which I would like to see protected. Mr. McCORMACK. Yes, I would under any human setup, but unfortunately, no matter what the human setup is you cannot go to that extent.

Mr. EBERSTADT. You can modify it and mitigate it and influence it. Mr. McCORMACK. It does not exist now.

Mr. EBERSTADT. As the law exists today, a Joint Chief of Staff can tell you what he thinks.

Mr. McCORMACK. Was Admiral Denfeld a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Yes.

Mr. McCORMACK. He was let go.

Mr. EBERSTADT. Yes, but he had his say. Mr. McCormack, you asked me a question about the General Staff, when the present act was under consideration a good many people had reservations with

regard to the present position of the chairman. They said it was a good deal like a Chief of Staff and General Bradley said:

I do not look upon this man as a Chief of Staff. The term Chief of Staff implies that he is the head of some staff. This man has no staff.

The proposals, if put into effect, would give this man, in substance, a staff and therefore, according to you, Bradley's own definition would make him tantamount to a Chief of Staff. In this I concur.

is what he would be.

Mr. McCORMACK. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bender?

That

Mr. BENDER. Mr. Eberstadt, were you ever a proponent of certain views along this line in 1947?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I have expressed a good many views today.
Mr. BENDER. I am referring to this today.

Mr. EBERSTADT. You mean did I express views along the lines of these proposals?

Mr. BENDER. Yes.

Mr. EBERSTADT. No, I do not think so.

Mr. BENDER. My impression was that you had. I might say here I have always had a high opinion of you.

Mr. EBERSTADT. I would be rather surprised. I do not think so. Mr. BENDER. You made certain statements to Congress and some of your views were accepted, were they not, at that time?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I think a good many were accepted but I do not remember any along these lines, Mr. Bender.

Mr. BENDER. My impression was that you had expressed certain views along these lines in 1949.

Mr. EBERSTADT. Well, the views which I expressed in 1949 are contained in this document and I have read from this document. Mr. BENDER. Congress did not accept your views?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Congress accepted practically all the recommendations that the Hoover Commission made and substantially all the recommendations that we made, except with regard to the Chairman. You see, we recommended a chief military staff officer. We wanted to stay away from this domination, from the risk of a Chief of Staff and we recognized that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were overworked and we wanted to give them real staff assistants and not deprive them of it but to give them more real staff assistance.

We suggested that the Secretary be given a chief staff officer, a chief military assistant who would assist him in his relations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would actually assist the Joint Chiefs of Staff in carrying on their functions rather than depriving them of the implementation whereby they would carry on their functions. I don't think that I ever have said anything which could be construed as supporting these proposals.

Mr. BENDER. Irrespective of any plan that is recommended, there is always a degree of difference, fortunately, in our country we have different points of view.

Mr. EBERSTADT. That is what I want to preserve.

Mr. BENDER. Congress meets regularly. In fact, during the past 14 or 15 or 16 years we have been in almost continuous session, and sometimes we think we are perfectionists and we find from experience that we make grevious mistakes. In any event, you trust President Eisenhower, I am sure.

Mr.. EBERSTADT. Yes, and I trust Congress too.

Mr. BENDER. And you trust the Secretary of Defense?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I trust the Secretary of Defense, but I would like to see these matters very thoroughly examined by Congress.

Mr. BENDER. And you feel that an administration-and I happen to be a Republican-but through the Truman and Roosevelt administration, whenever they came up with a program we supported it because we felt we were implementing the administration and helping them in doing the kind of a job they promised to do.

Mr. EBERSTADT. You have many an advantage over me, but none in being a Republican.

Mr. BENDER. Well, good for you. Here we are enaeavoring to provide a plan or the manner in which the President feels that he can do the best job possible in providing a defense mechanism which will be effective and efficient and well prepared and will place responsibility where it belongs so that when we try to determine who is responsible for the mistakes or who deserves the credit, we can establish that.

Mr. EBERSTADT. You have in the Army a general-staff system and in the Senate Armed Services Committee, a subcommittee on munitions, has been working for months and months in order to establish that responsibility. I believe if you have a general-staff system, it will effectively block any power of Congress to establish responsibility. May I say that while I have always been a Republican, in this matter I have only one client, and that is Uncle Sam. So far as I am concerned, it has nothing to do with party.

Mr. BENDER. Of course, there isn't a member of this committee who is at all partisan.

Mr. EBERSTADT. I am only speaking for myself.

Mr. BENDER. We do not emphasize partisanship at all, but here is a proposal of the President of the United States, who has the confidence of the people and who is endeavoring to create an effective Defense Department and a military establishment that is effective.

It places responsibility where we think it belongs. The military isn't going to go hog wild with a plan like this, are they?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I have heard a good deal about that. I have never seen the military go hog wild. I cannot feel that we have at this moment, either under this plan or without the plan, any serious question of civilian control.

You have had numerous examples. Mr. McCormack_referred to Admiral Denfield. His term was terminated overnight. Louis Johnson cancelled the most vital item in the Navy program. Happily, I cannot be concerned about civilian control at this moment. We have it and I hope we always have it.

Mr. BENDER. There is nothing in this program that changes that. Mr. EBERSTADT. I don't think so. There are two things. The question of civilian control is a very complicated thing. It is a good deal like one's relation to his physician. Certainly you should have lay control over whether there is an operation or not, but to put 15 civilians, lay people, in an operating room to tell the physician how to cut might not be beneficial to the patient.

Of course, we want civilian control but one has to be a little bit careful not to get civilian interference. That is an entirely different thing. When one deals with a lawyer, the client makes the decision,

but the carrying out must be left to the technician. I do not approach these things dogmatically but I would appeal to this committee to look at these things very carefully because they are not so open and shut.

Mr. BENDER. My experience is not that of a lawyer but that of a businessman. For a long time I was manager of a number of department stores. Now, I never made a dress in my life but I had to organize that business so that merchandise would be sold and so that there would be a responsible person at the head of each store and so that we would have an efficient business and make money.

Now, I do not say that Mr. Wilson is a fellow who understands what to do on the field of battle, but certainly Mr. Wilson has a responsibility so that after he is in charge of an operation and after we find ourselves with several billion dollars worth of useless material that we should never have purchased in the first place, we want to create a position where responsibility is fixed and where the taxpayers' money is not squandered. Is that a desirable thing?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Very desirable.

Mr. BENDER. And there isn't any disposition on Mr. Wilson's part, I am sure, to go into the field of naval operations and operate a vessel, but it is his responsibility to see to it that the Department is operated efficiently and they are asking for this program on that basis and they are putting all their cards on the table. They say to us: "This is what we have in mind to do.”

There may be some bugs in it but certainly it is a desirable thing to do, that which will make the whole operation more efficient, isn't it?

Mr. EBERSTADT. The objectives are desirable.

My appearance relates to a question on my part as to whether subparagraphs (c) and (d) of section I would not handicap rather than advance the objectives. I think, myself, that the plan would be better without subparagraphs (c) and (d) than with subparagraphs (c) and (d).

Mr. BENDER. That is all. Thank you.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. I did not know that this was to be a discussion or endorsement of Secretary Wilson or President Eisenhower, and certainly we are not questioning you on the integrity of either the Secretary or the President, I thought this was a hearing on plan 6. I would like to go back for a moment to the discussion of Mr. McCormack with respect to the trends and fear. It is my understanding that the trend has existed for a considerable length of time, is that right?

Mr. EBERSTADT. That is my feeling.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. Do you feel then, that the plan we are considering will lay a foundation for the trend to become a fact?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I am convinced that it will and I am convinced that certain things will occur: The prestige and the power that this chairman has are so great as practically to make that Joint Staff subordinate to him with no positive measure on his part. I think you really have under this two staffs with perhaps the same duty. You have the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the statutory duties. Those they must perform. You have the Chairman with his staff, the Joint Staff, which has a clear field. He can tell them anything he wants to do.

So I think the next visit to Congress will come up as the result of the great confusion that has come about between the Chairman and the Joint Staff on the one hand and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the other hand. We all know what the answer to confusion is likely to be-give him more power and more power and more power.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. Did the Rockefeller committee confer with you and ask your advice with respect to this plan?

Mr. EBERSTADT. No. I testified before the Rockefeller committee early in the proceedings but the first time I saw the plan was when it was published in the New York Times on May 1, 1953.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. And you were chairman of the Task Force on National Security of the Hoover Commission?

Mr. EBERSTADT. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. You never saw this plan before it was submitted, is that correct?

Mr. EBERSTADT. No, I never saw it before it was published.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. You told us about a week or 10 days ago you had a conversation with ex-President Hoover, is that correct?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I am going to ask to be excused from quoting Mr. Hoover. It could only be embarrassing to me. He is one of our great American citizens, an ex-President, and I think it presumptuous on my part to quote him. So, with your permission, I would ask to be excused from quoting him.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. I will withdraw the question on that point.
Mr. EBERSTADT. Thank you.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. Would you say, from your conversation with Mr. Hoover and your general knowledge of this particular problem, that the Commission, the Task Force of the Hoover Commission, was opposed to provisions (c) and (d) of section I?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I think the Task Force of the Hoover Commission, without any question at all, would have disapproved subdivision (c) and (d) and I read you the Commission's recommendations on that subject and there is nothing in the report to indicate that the Commission would have approved it. There is a great deal to indicate that the minority group would have approved it, but not the Commission.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. How many days of testimony did your Commission have on this problem?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I think we must have had 150 days of testimony. Mr. HOLTZMAN. How many days did the Rockefeller Committee have?

Mr. EBERSTADT. I don't know that. Mr. Rockefeller can tell you that.

Mr. HOLTZMAN. I have no further questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hillelson?

Mr. HILLELSON. No questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Poff?

Mr. POFF. As I understand it, and understand the concept of the Prussian general staff, it envisions the chief of staff as the repository of first, final power of decision and secondly, the final power of command, is that correct?

Mr. EBERSTADT. No, I think not. There are, of course, a great many views expressed with regard to the Prussian staff and I can only