EXCLUSIVE - The Jericho Report
The Colonels' Revolt Against Eisenhower
“In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

President Truman most likely knew that, with General MacArthur's widespread popularity, the act of firing him would cost Truman the presidency in the 1952 elections. Adlai Stevenson became the Democratic nominee and lost the election to General Eisenhower, who was nearly as popular as MacArthur. Eisenhower could hardly be called "hostile" to the military; he had helped shape it and guide it to victory in World War II.

Eisenhower had been appointed Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, December 1943. Commanded forces of Normandy invasion, June 6, 1944. December 20, 1944, promoted to General of the Army (5 stars). Shortly after the German surrender, May 8, 1945, appointed Military Governor, U.S. Occupied Zone, Frankfurt, Germany. On April 11, 1946, wartime rank of General of the Army converted to permanent rank.

Designated as Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, November 19, 1945. Inaugurated as President, Columbia University, New York City, June 7, 1948. Named Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Europe, and given operational command of Treaty Organization, Europe and given operational command of U.S. Forces, Europe, December 16, 1950. Retired from active service, May 31, 1952 and resigned his commission July 1952.

Announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President on June 4, 1952 in Abilene. Was nominated at the Republican convention and elected on November 4, 1952.

"Eisenhower Biography", from the Eisenhower Library

Those who had followed military history knew that Eisenhower had opposed the route of the Bonus Army in 1932 and that he was more "troop-friendly" than MacArthur - and yet, he had been close enough to the "military-industrial complex" (not a phrase he coined, by the way) that he was aware of its dangers

MacArthur himself was reported to have sought the Vice Presidency under another candidate, who failed to get the Republican nomination.

The first thing Eisenhower did upon taking office was to seek an end to the Korean War and a cease-fire was reached in July of '53. Meanwhile, except for a mild slowdown in '54, the U.S. economy was thriving. When Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated as our country's 34th president on January 20, 1953, the Dow Jones industrial average stood at 288. By September 23, 1955, the key index had risen 69% to 487.

"Eisenhower's Heart Attack" by Brian Trumbore, President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

One of the first shocks to hit Eisenhower upon taking office was the MJ-12 operation, created by President Truman. One of his first acts during the transition was to provide Eisenhower with an extremely sensitive briefing on what had transpired regarding the suspected "extraterrestrial" aircraft, retrieved craft and bodies and the super-advanced technology which, if made public, would create a worldwide panic that would dwarf that that followed the "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. That broadcast had been fiction; this was clearly not.

Eisenhower had been in Europe for years, tending to the war effort, but was probably aware that something mysterious was going on, from reports he was getting - mostly rumors, but not all - from others in the high ranks of the military network. He also had personal knowledge of the strange circular craft the Germans had built, captured by Allied forces and now scattered among the Americans, British and Soviets. Intelligence reports hinted that Hitler had somehow contacted these unearthly beings and had tapped into their technologies, building anti-gravity power plants to propel their "flying saucers." Eisenhower also most likely knew about the retrieval of some 17 alien bodies from Spitzbergen, verified by British and Danish governments - not to mention the "Foo Fighters" that ran circles around U.S. fighters in Korea.

He was faced with the difficult task of completely rebuilding a new, more advanced U.S. defense that hopefully could, if necessary, stand up to a feared alien invasion. Even Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whom he knew well and had served under, emphatically said the next war would be interplanetary - and he knew MacArthur well enough to know he was no "conspiracy nut." Hardest of all, Eisenhower would have to revamp the military strategy without letting his underlings know why, with the exception of those specifically involved and cleared for MJ-12 access to the nation's highest secrets - more secret even than the Manhattan Project.

Eisenhower nominated the diplomatic General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff, to be the Army Chief of Staff, following Gen. Maxwell Taylor. Lemnitzer was an old Army man himself, and told the Senate Armed Services Committee his modern version of an old Army land doctrine: "To protect people on this earth you need to hold the land with forces on the ground. The addition of nuclear or thermonuclear types of weapons does not in any way replace the requirements for good manpower."

Lemnitzer was an unknown outside the miltary but inside as soldiers everywhere learned that the Army that Lem Lemnitzer would take over had already plunged into a period of basic changes.

"It's a damned revolution,'' said a head-shaking first sergeant on San Francisco's Angel Island.

Heavy-set (5 ft. 11 in.. 190 Ibs.). "Lem" Lemnitzer. 59, son of a Pennsylvania shoemaker, has spent his 39 years since West Point getting jobs done and going away before anybody noticed he was there. Never the dramatic sort to pack pistols like Patton or a hand grenade like Ridgway, he was the workhorse officer who planned Allied landings in North Africa in 1942, negotiated the German surrender in Italy in 1945, organized Defense Department's NATO rearmament program (1948-50), commanded U.N. forces in the Far East (1955-57), was marked for the top job years ago. Yet his name was always widely met with a standard response: "Who's he?"

"Forces on the Ground", Time Magazine, May 11, 1959

Eisenhower's daunting task would lead to all-out war among the services most affected - the Navy and the Army - and it would come to be known as "The Revolt of the Colonels," despite the best efforts of Lemnitzer to keep them in the fold.

Lemnitzer will also inherit the problems caused by one of the strangest episodes in the Army's long history: the Army's ill-starred attempt to leap beyond its earthbound mission and become a guardian of strategic missile warfare. Long on ballistics, the artillery-conscious Army early realized the vast possibilities of the V-2 missiles developed by the Germans at the Peenemünde rocket base. At World War II's end, the Army hustled V-2 Developer Wernher von Braun (TIME Cover, Feb. 17, 1958) and 120 other key German scientists to the U.S., put them to work.

"Forces on the Ground", Time Magazine, May 11, 1959

Revolt of the Colonels Begins

As Armed Forces Day programs across the country sought to give public evidence of harmony within the U.S. military last week, an ancient and hardy feud again reached the leaked-memo stage. The Army, Navy and Air Force were all involved, and the tactics were familiar: staff papers with ugly criticisms of other services were passed furtively to newsmen in Pentagon corridors, soon boiled into bulletins and headlines.

In one under-the-table document, the Army bitterly charged that overemphasis on airpower has left the U.S. "grossly unprepared to deal with the Communist threat." The outraged Air Force lashed back in a paper holding that land forces will play only minor roles in future wars. To make the circle complete, the Air Force dismissed Navy claims that its supercarriers can carry atomic warfare into "the enemy's front yard" by describing the big ships as among the most vulnerable of all A-bomb targets.

Although all this sounded unhappily like the beginning of 1949's "Revolt of the Admirals" (TIME, Oct. 17, 1949 et seq.), no revolt of the generals seemed brewing. One reason: at the top of any U.S. military argument stands a man with a considerable reputation on the subject, Old Soldier Dwight Eisenhower. Another reason: blunt old Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, who greeted the battle of the press leaks with the promise of a personal investigation, and rasped: "They don't have to practice psychological warfare on each other."

"Psychological Warfare", Time Magazine, May. 28, 1956

Forces on the Ground

Long on ballistics, the artillery-conscious Army early realized the vast possibilities of the V-2 missiles developed by the Germans at the Peenemünde rocket base. At World War II's end, the Army hustled V-2 Developer Wernher von Braun (TIME Cover, Feb. 17, 1958) and 120 other key German scientists to the U.S., put them to work.

But when in 1955 the intercontinental missile was awarded to the Air Force as part of its strategic deterrent role, the Army poured far too much of its brightest energy and money into a bureaucratic war in defense of its strategic missile program. Brigadier General Lyal Metheny's "inner general staff" of roles-and-missions thinkers started a skirmish with the Air Force that became the headlined 1956 "Revolt of the Colonels."

Nothing more plainly measured the intense concern inside the Army than the number of brilliant soldiers who left it and turned around for angry sniping at policies they had "lived with.'' Among them: former Eighth Army Commander James Van Fleet, former Chief of Staff Matthew B. Ridgway, former Research Chief Lieut. General James M. (War and Peace in the Space Age) Gavin. Next up: Maxwell Taylor, who is already working on the criticism he will publish of current defense policy.

But the high cost of shooting minds and money on Big Space worried Army thinkers who were certain that hard ground-war planning and weaponry had been neglected in the process. The Army has yet to replace the heavy, obsolete M-1 rifle with the officially approved, fast-firing M-14, to replace the World War I .30-cal. machine gun with the new M60, or to come up with a tank to match the Russian T-54 now in the field. "For $5 billion worth of troop equipment," cracked one division commander last month, "I'd trade Huntsville away in a minute."

"Forces on the Ground", Time Magazine, May 11, 1959

On Sept. 24, 1955, Eisenhower had a massive heart attack, one of seven he would have. Even though the attack happened on a Colorado golf course, one has to wonder if the ongoing inter-service conflict might have been a contributing factor. Despite his lifelong loyalty to the Army, Eisenhower was aware enough to know that the waging of war was quickly becoming more sophisticated.

The Korean War had introduced us to Chinese brainwashing warfare. We also knew that the Soviets had exploded their own hydrogen bomb. We had solid intelligence that the Soviets were ahead of us in the development of extremely advanced weapons such as Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio beams that could cripple American tanks and planes, frying their circuitry. The top U.S. military echelons scornfully dismissed the Soviet research, believing no technology was worth fearing unless it were American technology.

The heart attack left Richard Nixon, whom Eisenhower felt was a mental lightweight, in charge and hindered Eisenhower's efforts to placate the outraged Army commanders, costing him valuable time. The heart attack combined with the enormous weight of his new knowledge, left him depressed and almost ready to give up, according to Nixon.

Eisenhower's Heart Attack

President Eisenhower, on vacation in Denver, Colorado, completed 27 holes of golf but went to bed that evening in some discomfort. He then had a massive heart attack in the wee hours of Saturday, September 24. As the president would later remark, "I had thrust upon me the unpleasant fact that I was indeed a sick man."

Times were different back then. Supplying details to the press on medical issues was not like it is today and the nation had no idea what the true extent of his illness was.

And so it was that on Monday, September 26, Wall Street panicked. The Dow Jones plunged 6.5%, 32 points, to 455. The total paper loss for the day was $14 billion, the largest ever, while volume on the exchange was 7,720,000 shares, the highest since July 1933.

It proved to be one of those classic "one-day" events. Two days later the turmoil had subsided some and the Dow recovered to 472.

Eisenhower didn't take his first steps until October 25. For its part, the Dow Jones slid back to 438 on October 11, the low for the crisis.

For the first few weeks, the president was incapable of any work. Vice President Nixon was running the show back in Washington, taking pains to make clear that he was just standing in for Ike during his absence.

When Ike finally took his first steps, he emerged in bright red pajamas bearing the legend "Much Better, Thanks" and he returned to the White House on November 11. By then the Dow Jones had recovered to the 476 level.

Republicans, while happy to have him back, were nonetheless worried. The party feared that Eisenhower would not be able to run for reelection in 1956 and everyone knew that his doctors wouldn't rule on the issue until February. That month he was ruled fit for office and the president went on to another landslide victory in the fall; but not before he had a second medical problem to deal with, a serious bout of ileitis (inflammation of the intestine) which required surgery that June, though this time market reaction was muted.

The nation was fortunate that Dwight Eisenhower's heart attack was in the fall of 1955 and not the following year. 1956 was the year of the Suez Canal Crisis as well as the Soviet Union's putdown of the Hungarian Revolution.

And this from Richard Nixon's "In the Arena," the best book on politics I've ever read.

"When Eisenhower had his heart attack, he went through a long period of deep depression. He talked like a man who felt his public career was finished. He did not even want to discuss the possibility of running the following year. The Republican national chairman, Len Hall, was naturally terrified. When reporters asked him about the election, his stock reply was that the ticket would be Ike and Dick. Finally, one reporter asked the dreaded question: 'What happens if Eisenhower decides not to run?' Hall blurted out, 'We will jump off that bridge when we come to it.' Fortunately, he did not have to make that fatal decision. Eisenhower finally recovered his health and his will to live and to win. He was reelected by a landslide in 1956."

"Eisenhower's Heart Attack" by Brian Trumbore, President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

It was against this backdrop that the "Revolt of the Admirals" under Truman was widened to include "The Colonels' Revolt" when the Army joined the Navy in its war against the Air Force.

Charlie's Hurricane

The troops marched smartly down Washington's Constitution Avenue, the jets streaked overhead, and on the reviewing stand Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson held himself bulkily erect. Unknown to Wilson, the telephone even then was buzzing in his Sheraton-Park apartment 700G. Capital newsmen wanted to speak to him. The review over, the pleased and proud Defense Secretary drove to the plane that would take him to Virginia's Hot Springs for the weekend. But at the National Airport newsmen swarmed over him with stinging questions. Wilson turned to an aide, said reproachfully: "I thought you told me there wasn't anything hot going on." It was a brilliant, cloudless Armed Forces Day 1956—a day set aside for the services to parade their unity across the U.S.—and around Charlie Wilson's shaggy head had broken a storm of military disunity.

The U.S. Army, long bubbling with discontent, had boiled over with scalding anti-Air Force documents slipped to friendly reporters (TIME, May 28). The Air Force struck back with its own propaganda bombs, and some of them indiscriminately clobbered the Navy as well as the Army. Back from Hot Springs, a few days too late, Charlie Wilson labored mightily to bring peace to the Pentagon, but by this week the battle had qualities of nightmare. On one occasion, for example, Air Force officers disguised themselves in their old Army uniforms and strolled innocently through the Pentagon's Army sections to see what they could spy out. In his home near the Pentagon, an Army colonel denied with outraged innocence the suggestion that he had passed out any of the hot documents—and promptly proceeded to hand a reporter two of them (including one titled The Facts Versus Billy Mitchell).

Unthinkable War. Behind such pot-shooting lay the basis for a deadly serious war between the services. In the years since World War II, the growing potential of the atom has brought new importance to air power because air power is the prime delivery means for A-bombs and H-bombs. The atom knocked askew the comfortable old U.S. military idea of balanced forces. President Eisenhower wrenched the Air Force, Navy, Army roles and missions even more sharply by ruling that the atomic bomb should be the primary weapon both for retaliation in case of a big war, or for retaliation (on enemy supply bases, training areas, etc.) in a small war. Next, the guided missile whistled into the everyday language and planning of warfare; with it came the prospect of technological unemployment—and reduced funds—for the parts of the armed services functionally tied up with the old concepts.

In this new world of hydrogen bomb plus missile, the President had come to a further basic and revolutionary conclusion: modern war is unthinkable and must not be allowed to happen. The way to prevent it is to shape the U.S. armed forces so that they can clearly strike back instantly and devastatingly at any aggressor, thus make him realize that if he begins a war, it will be concluded—as Air-Power Man Curtis LeMay says—without "profit" to himself. Therefore, for the first time in military annals, the primary mission of the U.S. armed forces is not to prepare and plan for long war, but to array themselves as a powerfully armed, well-deployed ready instrument of deterrence.

The new thinking places principal responsibilities for today's peace on the Air Force, both with its long-range B-52s and B-36s at home, and its B-47s deployed overseas. The Navy and its carriers, mobile bases already cruising within Navy bomber reach of enemy targets (TIME, May 21), play an important auxiliary role. For the Army, there is clearly less and less to do even today. Faced by these staggering facts, the Army struck out for its own place under the nuclear sun of tomorrow, planning and arguing strenuously in these areas:

STRATEGIC BOMBING. Under the mission assigned it by the Key West agreement of 1948,*the Air Force has exclusive rights to the intercontinental (5,000 miles) ballistics missile, is pushing its Atlas ICBM development program. But the Army argues that the ballistics missile is actually a sort of artillery shell, points to its own service mission of destroying enemy ground forces wherever they may be found—presumably including a Soviet garrison. On that basis the Army won authorization to work on Redstone, a 200-mile range missile, and with the Navy on Jupiter, an intermediate-range (1,500 miles) ballistics missile. The Army hopes that Jupiter, the IRBM, or Redstone can eventually be extended to ICBM range—a fact that the Air Force realizes and resents.

CONTINENTAL DEFENSE. Key West gave the air defense of the U.S. to the Air Force, limited the Army to an antiaircraft role. But, using "antiaircraft" as its entering wedge, the Army developed the radar-controlled, ground-to-air Nike (rhymes with psyche), which it now touts as the backbone of U.S. air defense.*Nike has several glaring deficiencies: it is not a homing missile and must be guided electronically from the ground; its range is less than 60 miles, even in an improved model; it does not fit into the Air Force SAGE system of early radar warning against attack (the Army has its own "Missile Master" warning system). But Nike has one great virtue: it is the best now available in operational quantities to the U.S. The Air Force is adopting the Navy-developed Talos, still undergoing tests, with which it hopes to drive Nike—and the Army—out of the air defense business.

Army Air Power. At the time of the Key West agreement, the Army had about 200 aircraft, used mostly for liaison and artillery spotting. Today it has about 4,000 (helicopters, light planes, transports) and is grasping avidly for more, which it says it needs to provide airlift and close support for its divisions. Lieut. General James Gavin, farseeing chief of Army Research and Development, says that "20,000 planes for the Army might not be enough." Last week the Army officially demanded long-range, high-speed aircraft to track its missiles. The Army grab for air power is seen by the Air Force as a clear threat to its independent existence.

Diluted Zeal. The Army began heading full tilt toward a blowoff last winter. It was provoked when it learned that Air Force commanders (dressed in Bermuda shorts that the Air Force is introducing as its summer uniform) had staged a remarkable public-relations session in Puerto Rico. Among those on hand was Brigadier General Robert Lee (God Is My Co-Pilot) Scott, fired with zeal in his new job as information director for the Air Force. Scott had prepared a slambang, let-out-all-stops press campaign, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Strategic Air Command and aimed at proving to the U.S. public once and for all that, with its "spectacular mobility" and its "complete arsenal of destructive weapons," the U.S. Air Force "outmodes the most modern surface forces."

Scott's idea won enthusiastic applause from all the air generals but one: General Lauris Norstad, soon to be named to succeed retiring General Al Gruenther as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Norstad argued convincingly that the Air Force was already getting more than twice the appropriations of the other services and that it was no time to stir up trouble. Norstad won few Air Force converts with his appeal, but he did have a sobering effect on the conference. Bob Scott's campaign was drastically watered down.

The Army, unaware that there had been any dilution, somehow got its hand on a copy of Scott's original plan, set forth in detail in a paper called A Decade of Security Through Global Air Power. In the lower-ranking Pentagon "C" ring of offices, the bright young colonels began to worry—and to prepare for a real fight.

The Battle Planners. Girding for battle, the Army seized upon its "Policy Coordinating Group" as an equivalent to the Navy's famed Op-23, which masterminded the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals. Already moved directly under Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor from its place as a semidetached study unit, the group was soon well staffed with young colonels under Brigadier General L. C. Metheny, 49, a cool, sharp planner. Metheny & Co. began setting up the Army line with a long series of staff studies, transmitted first to the Army general staff and later to the field commanders. Liaison was established with sympathetic Democratic Senators, e.g., Washington's Henry ("Scoop") Jackson. One of Metheny's planners answered General Scott's Air Force paper with A Decade of Insecurity Through Global Air Power. Not yet, however, could the . Army break into the open. Still ahead was another conference in Puerto Rico—this time a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been ordered by Dwight Eisenhower to get away from the Pentagon for a full-scale review of U.S. military policy, with special reference to the question of whether the service roles assigned by Key West needed overall revision. The Army planners hoped desperately that Max Taylor could use the Puerto Rico sessions to gain new prestige and position for his service.

The conference began last March 3, continued for seven days, with Charlie Wilson sitting in on its final deliberations. In the eyes of the colonels, Taylor failed in his mission. The Joint Chiefs decided that Key West needed no sweeping revision, i.e., that technological developments could take their course. The Army did not gain an inch.

Launching the Attack. Troubles piled upon troubles. In what appeared to Army eyes as the beginning of Bob Scott's knockout publicity campaign, the magazine Air Force devoted its entire April issue to celebrating SAC's tenth anniversary. Air Enthusiast Arthur Godfrey plugged the magazine on radio and television for a month, generated requests of 160,000 reprints. In its next issue, Air Force virtually wrote off the Army as a combat service; e.g.', "The civil defense mission, particularly, is currently suffering from malnutrition, and this would appear to be a logical place to soak up the manpower being fed into the Army's Reserve program." On Capitol Hill Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington, onetime (1947-50) Air Force Secretary, began subcommittee hearings aimed at showing that the U.S. needs more, not less, air power. The House of Representatives passed the new military appropriations bill, heavily loaded in favor of the Air Force, almost without quibble. The Army saw its future closing in. It attacked.

One of Metheny's colonels sought out a handful of newsmen known to be sympathetic to the Army, notably the New York Times's able Tony Leviero, himself an Army Reserve officer. The reporters got the classified papers written by the Army planners. The documents blasted at the entire doctrine of atom-armed air power. Said one: "The air-power concept, unless modified, can only lead the U.S. to disaster. It is bigoted and unsound." The Army argued (even as it struggled for more air and atomic power of its own) that the world faces an atomic stalemate on all levels, that future wars will be won with gunpowder by land-massed armies. The Army clutched for the missile. Said a paper: "A general premise is that the use and control of all land-launched missiles is the responsibility of the Army commander at every echelon."

"Brainwashed!" Pulitzer Prizewinner-Leviero knew just what to do with the papers to set off a full-scale controversy. He took them to the Air Force public-relations division, displayed them and asked for "answers." He got his answers. The Air Force was ready with its own documents, slamming back at the Army and downgrading (with arguments along the lines prepared for the Air Force by Harvard Law Professor Walter Barton Leach, an Air Reserve brigadier general and a longtime carrier critic) the Navy's claims that its supercarriers pack a significant strategic-bombing punch. Cried an Air Force spokesman: "The Air Force would be derelict in its duty to the American people if it allowed citizens to be brainwashed by the claims of the other services that they, not the Air Force, are the true path to peace and security."

Man of Persistence. Next morning the Battle of the Pentagon blazed into print —but the Pentagon's boss remained comfortably unaware of the outburst. Charles Wilson arose early to dress for the Armed Forces Day review, glanced hastily at the Washington Post but saw nothing to upset him (he had skipped too fast over the Post's account of the Pentagon conflict). Only when nabbed at the airport by the horde of clamoring newsmen did Wilson learn what had happened. And by the time he got back from Hot Springs, he knew that all eyes were turned toward Charles Erwin Wilson, the man who rarely bobs up in headlines except when there is trouble.

When Wilson first took over as Secretary of Defense, he was the despair of political Washington. He was shocked to learn that the conflict-of-interests law applied even to a man who had given up the presidency of General Motors for public service, and only after extensive wrangling was persuaded to sell his own stock. He aggravated the touchy, jealous committees of Congress, addressing members as "you men," and answering questions with the air of a man whose time is being wasted.

Poor Relations. His relations with Congress have since improved; now, as one Capitol Hill professional puts it, they are merely poor. He calls Senators "gentlemen," although he doggedly resists "sir." His answers to committee questions no longer land him in hot water; they are simply uninformative. The Capitol Hill attitude toward Wilson is one of frustration. Early this year, while Wilson was testifying, Georgia's Senator Richard Russell—normally the calmest and most courteous of men—stalked out of a committee room to avoid bursting with exasperation at Wilson's clipped answers.

But Charlie Wilson has stayed on at his post longer than any previous Secretary of Defense, has managed to win a certain place in the public's affection as a man who can laugh at his own bobbles and stick to his job. Well schooled in technical matters, he has presided over the armed forces during their greatest period of technological progress. He has pressed hard, with an expert thumb, for the economy that makes for true administrative efficiency (although he has surrounded himself with a sprawling Defense Department bureaucracy that violates the whole theory of a streamlined Defense Department). Most of all, he has been a valued lieutenant to Dwight Eisenhower, from whom Wilson derives his strength both with Congress and the armed forces. He repays Ike's support with loyal, tireless service.

Meet the Press. Once Wilson had caught the full furor of the Army's revolt, he moved swiftly last week to make one principal point: the battle was a low-level affair and (unlike the Revolt of the Admirals) did not represent the thinking of the responsible service chiefs. To make his point, he ordered the military chiefs and the service Secretaries to join him that afternoon and prepare to face the press.

They were in Wilson's office on the dot, Admiral Arthur Radford, J.C.S. chairman, and the Army's Max Taylor fresh from a White House garden party in their dazzling dress whites, the other military men in suntans. For the next hour, the group hashed over the line to follow. For one thing, Wilson was persuaded not to say that the Army papers had been leaked by "irresponsible persons," was left with the simple statement that the leaks were "staff papers . . . and not necessarily the approved policies of the services." At 5 o'clock the group moved upstairs to an auditorium for one of the most extraordinary performances in the Pentagon's extraordinary history.

A Little Latitude. Behind a long, mike-clustered table were the nation's military leaders, shoulder to "shoulder in deceptive solidarity. They were mostly glum. The civilian Secretaries folded their hands tightly in front of them. Air Chief Nate Twining sat under a no-smoking sign and puffed impatiently on his cigar. Max Taylor was tight-lipped and ramrod-stiff. And right in the middle, a wrought-gold "Ike" pin gleaming from his lapel, cigarette ashes dribbling down his shirt front, bobbing and weaving and even seeming to enjoy the questions, was the Secretary of Defense.

Charlie Wilson was in full command, answering some questions himself, assigning others to the representatives of the specific services. He attributed the Pentagon's dissension to the fact that "the eager beavers are gnawing down some of the wrong trees." As to the many arguments about which service should develop what weapon, Wilson offered the only practical solution under present circumstances. Said he: "I have been taking what I think is a sound, realistic position, and that is: develop the missiles, and then let's see how we ought to use them and who ought to be responsible for using them."

Airman Twining paid restrained tribute to the Army and its works. Soldier Taylor said flatly that "there is no mutiny or revolt in the Army." He said that some of the leaked documents did not represent official Army thinking, but added: "Let me make clear that I don't flatly disavow everything that has been published." Admiral Arleigh Burke, his Navy out of the main line of interservice fire, was judiciously restrained. At the end of the press conference, Charlie Wilson, pressed for an explanation of how much warning he had had of the brewing controversy, finally admitted: "A little hurricane blew up that I didn't know was in the making."

The press conference showed that the Joint Chiefs, at least, were not yet ready to throw their weight into open warfare, but it failed in its primary mission: that of smothering Wilson's "little hurricane." Next morning Wilson fell back on his main source of strength: Dwight D. Eisenhower (U.S. Army, resigned).

A Little Dangerous. Wilson and Arthur Radford drove to the White House, talked for an hour with the President, tried-and failed-to slip past waiting reporters. What did Ike think about the service squabble? Said Wilson: "He's a bit unhappy." What would happen next? Replied Charlie Wilson: "I'll see who sticks his neck up next. It might be a little dangerous."

Ike soon had a chance to say for himself what he thought: the Pentagon split was topic A at the President's news conference. The U.S., said President Eisenhower, is going through a period of vast technological change, and "if there weren't in this time a good, strong argument among the services, I would be frightened indeed." But argument was no license for revolt, and, snapped General Eisenhower: "The day that discipline disappears from our forces, we will have no forces, and we would be foolish to put a nickel into them."

A few moments later Ike pronounced his revolutionary dictum on the future course of the U.S. armed forces: "The sole use of armed forces, so far as war between two great countries possessing atom and hydrogen bombs, today is this: their deterrent value."

Dedicated Specialists. The President is satisfied that in their sum total the U.S. armed forces today are strong enough to deter. Not only does the U.S. have the airplanes and pilots to deliver its atomic weapons, but it holds the external lines of communication as well. For the Russians to mount a successful blitz on the North American continent, they would have to strike first at all the widely arrayed offensive power—the SAC continental bases, the NATO tactical air bases in Western Europe (which have "atomic capability"), the B-47 bases in Britain and North Africa, and at the carriers afloat in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Pacific. In Ike's thinking, such a successful strike is theoretically out of the question—hence the U.S. has achieved adequate deterrence.

To the dedicated specialists who warn that the Soviet Union may well amass a greater number of airplanes than the U.S., Ike gives a reply that would once have been considered heretical: Does it really matter whether we have a second-best Air Force in quantity, so long as the second best is good enough in quality to devastate the enemy from around the compass within hours after he tries to attack? To Air Force men who argue that the Navy's carriers can easily be tracked and sunk, this doctrine replies: once carrier planes are in the air, they are as deadly to the enemy as any other aircraft. They are part of the deterrent force in being. If the objective is to retaliate—or threaten retaliation—it does not matter whether the planes ever return to the carriers, or whether the carriers are still afloat when the planes do get back.

Immaculate War. Army theorists, e.g., retired General Matthew B. Ridgway, have based their plea for more troops on atomic stalemate. Atomic war is too hor rible to contemplate, they say, so the U.S. must be prepared to fight "the immaculate war"—the gunpowder war. Ike ruled against this line three years ago, when he approved the "new look" and made the decision to use atomic bombs, as necessary, in little as well as big wars. He is convinced that any war means atomic war. The more clearly the point is made, the more likely—under the doctrine of deterrence—is peace.

Not even a battery of lawyers could make real sense out of the services' present scramble for missile power. For the time being, Charlie Wilson's ruling that any service may develop a missile, without thereby gaining the right to employ it. makes sense. But at best, the ruling is a holding action. It will do little to blow away Wilson's hurricane, or to guarantee that the nation will not be put upon by more service leaks, more public-relations displays, more martyred, parochial officers seeking out spokesmen in Congress or publishers of memoirs. As Ike Eisenhower is aware, it is high time for the U.S. to evolve a single military service that will match its missiles.

*Then, as now, the services were fighting, each of them trying to carve out a leading role in the postwar world. Defense Secretary James Forrestal corralled the joint chiefs at Key West, Fla., ordered them to forget about returning to Washington until they had settled their roles and missions. From these tense sessions came the agreement under which the armed forces operate—at least in theory—to this day. In an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, the Joint Chiefs were careful to specify that all words in their agreement would have the meaning "contained in Webster's New International Dictionary (Unabridged)." *To prove Nike's prowess, the Army last week fired a Nike battery for newsmen at White Sands, N. Mex. The results were—at best—debatable. In one shot at a 500-m.p.h. aerial drone target, Nike registered a direct hit. In six other shots the Army said Nike scored shrapnel hits, claimed "kills" in each case. One Nike suffered an electronic brain storm and blew itself up. * Won after Leviero was the recipient of some other leaked documents: the notes of the Wake Island conference between Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur.

"Charlie's Hurricane", Time magazine, June 4, 1956

In December 1952 President-elect Eisenhower and Defense Secretary Designate Charles E. Wilson made their trip to Korea. At Iwo Jima, in Korea, aboard the cruiser Helena (where Ike gathered prospective members of his Cabinet) and at Honolulu, Admiral William Radford—as the Navy's Commander in Chief, Pacific—expounded his theories on military diplomacy and on the problems of Asia. Radford so impressed Eisenhower that he made him his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

His choices of Lemnitzer and Radford underscored his purpose to try to win the Army over, through diplomacy rather than force, to the necessary changes he saw for the future.

Man Behind the Power

Within the guarded inner labyrinth of the Pentagon, five men sit at a brightly polished table in soundproofed Room 2C923. Around them the walls are covered with maps: a relief map of Europe, flat blue maps of the Pacific and the Atlantic, brown-and-gold maps of the land masses of Asia and Africa.

Spotted strategically across the grey wall-to-wall carpeting are wastebaskets stenciled SECRET.* Four of the five men are doing most of the talking; the fifth is listening, chain-smoking Parliaments, working intricately filigreed doodles on a white notepad with the preoccupation of a man in search of an answer to a complicated problem.

"A decision," the fifth man once explained, "is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself."

Before the five men lie bulging portfolios in colored leather: khaki for the Army's General Maxwell Taylor, blue for the Air Force's General Nathan Twining, navy blue for the Navy's Admiral Arleigh Burke, brown for the Marine Corps' General Randolph Pate, and a non-symbolic black for the fifth man—the quiet man —four-star Admiral Arthur William Radford, 60, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior military adviser to the President.

Before these five military officers also lies an awesome agenda. It can sweep across the types and size of next year's H-bomb production, this year's first test flight of an experimental intercontinental ballistic missile, every year's ceaseless, questing reappraisal of the three-inch-thick strategic war plan that is the blueprint for U.S. survival before an atomic-age equation: one plane plus one bomb equals one city. ...

When Radford took over, he found that J.C.S. procedures were so tangled that only Korean war decisions could find their way out of the J.C.S. to the Defense Secretary, and many an important paper, e.g., a policy for guided missiles, was lost in the backlog.

On his first day, Radford got the new team of Chiefs to work in his own office, without staffs, without secretaries, shirtsleeves rolled up; with pencils and paper that they had brought along, they began writing out memoranda on post-Korean force levels and budget needs.

All through the Federal Government there was a new ferment, as everybody from Eisenhower on down headed the same way: toward a long-term concept of force-in-being that soon came to be known as the New Look. The key to the New Look was atomic warfare—tactical as well as strategic—whereby U.S. power could be strengthened while manpower levels held steady.

The inevitable implication of the New Look was a re-emphasis on air-sea power (Air Force, Navy) and de-emphasis of ground power (Army) that led eventually to the Army's ill-fated "Revolt of the Colonels" (TIME, June 4, 1956).

"Our New Look prepares for the long pull and not just for a year of crisis," said Radford, soon after the Korean armistice. "The New Look can be supported not just one year, nor two years, but for ten years, or even 20 years, if necessary."

While the U.S. was generally grasping the logic of the New Look, Admiral Radford was often out in front urging a firm military-diplomatic line against Communism. In 1953 Radford advised Eisenhower to revise Harry Truman's two-way U.S. blockade of the Formosa Strait.

His points: Why guarantee the Chinese Reds against attack from the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa? Eisenhower weighed the risks, took the decision, forced Red China to deploy hundreds of thousands of defense troops along the South China coast.

Two years later Radford and Dulles not only endorsed Ike's public promise—backed by congressional resolution—to defend Formosa by force, but wanted the U.S. to declare its specific intent to defend the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu as well. The President, sensing Britain's opposition as well as the military value of being indefinite, in effect overruled his two strategic advisers.

In the far more complex crisis of Indo-China, where the great forces of Communism, colonialism and nationalism met, tangled and interacted in violence, Radford again advocated a stronger stand against the Communists than Eisenhower was ready to accept.

Radford wanted the U.S. to launch carrier strikes to help the defenders of Dienbienphu; Eisenhower and Dulles believed that such a course would amount to too little and too late, and settled for the partition of IndoChina at the first Geneva Conference.

When Radford and Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield argued that strong U.S. support for a little-known anti-Communist leader named Ngo Dinh Diem might save South Viet Nam and check the Reds in Southeast Asia, Ike and Dulles were with them. After a few forlorn weeks the U.S. got all the way behind Diem, and then and there checked the Communist advance. "The diabolical forces of Communism," Radford warned consistently, "are committed irrevocably . . ."

The Suez crisis was the first real test of the New Look and the whole theory of military diplomacy. When the Russians talked of sending "volunteers" into the Middle East, the Pentagon was ready. Eisenhower, talking softly, sent word to the Kremlin through Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen that the U.S. would oppose with force the movement of any Soviet volunteers.

Radford and his Chiefs met daily, and a small task force of J.C.S. staff officers kept 24-hour vigil in the Pentagon's underground command post. Off the Levant, the U.S. Sixth Fleet was deployed to fight. So, with all leaves cancelled, was General Curtis LeMay's Strategic Air Command. The result: the Russians forgot about volunteers.

 

"Man Behind the Power", Time Magazine, Feb. 25, 1957