Word: gavin
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...still working against McElroy-or his three subordinate service secretaries, or the 30 assistant and deputy secretaries-achieving the required knowledge and understanding. Never has that fact been more bluntly put than last week, when the Army's tough, brainy research and development chief, Lieut. General James M. Gavin, appeared before the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee...
Neil McElroy, said Paratrooper Gavin pointedly, is "the most able man who has come to that office [Secretary of Defense]." But McElroy needs more and better "professional military advice" than he has been able to get under the Pentagon system from the Joint Chiefs of Staff -or from assistant secretaries whose regimes, said Gavin, have lasted "somewhat on the order of a year and a half...
...Joint Chiefs of Staff is a sort of command-by-committee system (Gavin later emphasized that he was not talking about the individual competence of the present chiefs) and is not enough. Said Jim Gavin: "He [McElroy] needs more advice than the Joint Chiefs of Staff give him. I think really what is needed now is a competent military staff of senior military people working directly for the Secretary of Defense. I would have them take over the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I would have the military staff organized to handle operations, plans, intelligence, and in fact...
Such a career staff, said General Gavin, should be drawn from all services, but should be "completely integrated across the board." Said Gavin: "The thing that disturbs a number of people, and I am included, is that there is no operational staff within the Department of Defense, and in the event of war it would have to be reorganized...
First Things First. At no point did Gavin actually advocate a "general staff system"-which conjures up images of Prussianism to many a skittish Congressman-and to all devout Navymen. But that was precisely what he was urging, just as retired Air Force General James Doolittle had urged a fortnight before when appearing before the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. In the minds of Jim Gavin and Jimmy Doolittle, and in the opinion of others among the nation's best military thinkers, Neil McElroy cannot even begin to solve the Pentagon's problems until he has a general staff, whatever...