Word: pentagons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Pentagon was so unaccustomed to common effort that early in his career McNamara was called on to personally, preside over an assay of butchers' smocks to select one design for all services. He soon established the Defense Supply Agency for such activities. He also created the Defense Intelligence Agency to coordinate previously scattered intelligence efforts, and centralized other key functions. Under McNamara, the concept and practice of systems analysis were introduced. The goal: scientific evaluation of major weapons developments and other expensive projects to determine as objectively as possible the return for a proposed investment compared with that...
...establishing civilian control of the Pentagon as a fact of life as well as a theory, McNamara perhaps went too far in alienating service officers. He not only outthought and outmaneuvered such potentates as General Curtis LeMay, but he sometimes humiliated them as well. Within the Pentagon his information policies throttled internal dissent. Even Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover, himself a rebel against traditional military procedure, protested: "Independence of expression has now become almost unthinkable...
...balance, nonetheless, McNamara's accomplishments must rank as historic, while his mistakes seem ephemeral by comparison. The generals themselves recognize that nothing like McNamara has ever happened to the Pentagon, or is likely to again very soon. "He is the only one," says Army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson, "who has ever...
Around Vance swirls a galaxy of other potential successors. Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, 40, a latter-day McNamara "whiz kid," headed Pentagon research and engineering during such McNamaran renovations as the MBT battle tank, the C5A air transport, and the Minuteman II ballistic missile. The current Deputy Secretary, Paul Nitze, 60, is a capable aide but perhaps too old. Johnson might also reach far afield for a successor, tapping such a respected private-sector servant as Charles ("Tex") Thornton, 54, board chairman of Litton Industries and one of the original World War II whiz kids...
...DEFENSE. Without slackening the Viet Nam war effort, now costing $30 billion a year, the U.S. can substantially reduce its $74.5 billion defense budget. Much of the $2 billion in military construction budgeted for 1968 can safely be postponed. The Pentagon can save another $500 million to $1 billion by bringing home many of the 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and many of the 200,000 in Europe. Foreign military aid, now $510 million, also could be chopped by half...