Word: mcnamara
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Since taking command of the Pentagon last year. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara has vigorously goaded the sacred cows of the armed forces, to bellows of dismay from affronted admirals, generals and Congressmen. Last week it was the state Governors' turn to yowl as McNamara took steps to put a halter on the most sacred cow of all: the Army National Guard. At their conference in Hershey, Pa., the Governors met with McNamara to protest his plan to reform and cut back the Guard, a traditional source of political power, prestige and pay in their home states...
...Governors had been fretting about McNamara since last spring, when word got out that he considered the Guard oversized, undertrained and largely outmoded in the age of nuclear deterrence and guerrilla warfare. McNamara had his reasons. When two National Guard divisions were federalized during the Berlin buildup-the 49th Armored of Texas and the 32nd Infantry of Wisconsin-McNamara was shocked to find that these supposedly crack units needed nearly five months to reach combat status. He discovered that the Guard had 95 antiaircraft companies armed with old-line 90-mm. guns that were useless against supersonic jet aircraft...
Confused Case. To get the Guard ready to fight in the nuclear age, McNamara proposed maintaining its $400 million annual budget, but cutting allotted manpower from 400,000 to 367,000, weeding out obsolete units, and adding up-to-date components. Most important of all, McNamara planned to build up six divisions to 10,800 men and four brigades to 3,300 men-80% to 85% of their authorized strength, and the highest level ever attained by major Guard forces in peacetime. Well equipped and well trained, the units would be ready to fight within two months of federalization...
Shoveling Snowflakes. Gilpatric regularly shows up in his office adjoining McNamara's suite at 7:30 a.m.-half an hour behind his boss. While McNamara, with an eye on the clock, slashes away at his paper work, Gilpatric sits suavely behind an unlittered desk, almost always has time for some casual talk with a visitor. When McNamara begins to whirl out a blizzard of "snowflakes"-Pentagonese for his single-page directives that often demand prompt action-Gilpatric may help dig out a snowed-under officer by getting an impossible deadline date extended...
Gilpatric has played a major role in shaping such key military decisions of the Kennedy Administration as the Berlin buildup and the new emphasis on conventional and guerrilla warfare. In fact, Gilpatric, not McNamara, is the Pentagon's man on a little-known but influential group set up by the National Security Council to plan Government-wide programs to counter Khrushchev's threatened national "wars of liberation." Dry Toast. Away from the Pentagon, Gilpatric can more than hold his own in the in-group badinage of the New Frontier. At a recent party on his Maryland farm, Gilpatric...