16 October 2010
 
First In Defense



(First Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal. DoD photo.)

Mac settled in for a second ginger ale at Willow. Peter was attentive as always, his tall lithe frame gliding along and Jim from Pittsburgh manning the bar. He has been joined by Sabrina, the new dark beauty who replaced the striking Sara-with-no-H after the regrettable breakdown in relations between her and middle management.
 
It is a great team, always affable and always attentive. Peter topped me up with a wink as he worked the intimate tall tables across from the regulars, Ray and the Mikes and Old Jim, cowling in his friendly way, drinking his Budweiser. Jon adjusted his bow tie and gave me a wink.
 
He ties his own, and they have that raffish sort of good look. Mine are all clip-ons from the vintage section of eBay. It started as a statement on my part, but I have forgotten what it was.
 
I took a sip of wine and looked at my notes. “So by 1948 you were working at ONI’s Y-Branch, concentrating on analysis Russian Navy intercepts, progressing from the Old Main Navy, to Nebraska Avenue, to the consolidation of Service Cryptologic resources under the Armed Forces Security Agency at Arlington Hall Station.”
 
Mac nodded. “Correct. The only thing that stayed at Nebraska Avenue was the communications security mission of NAVSECGRU. All the rest of us, maybe thirty or forty analysts by that time, moved into the temporary buildings in back of the old girl’s school.”
 
“It blows my mind about the scope of change that occurred so swiftly after the war. It is like there was one speed before Pearl Harbor and then another, much faster one that hasn’t stopped yet.”
 
“It was quite a dynamo.” Mac replied. “But you can look at it through a couple of parallel stories. One is the way Harry Truman approached the budget, and the other is the opposition of the Navy to consolidation of the services that led to the Revolt of the Admirals in 1949, when I was getting ready to go to London.”
 
“OK,” I said. “Put it in context for me. We all are still suffering through the pain of dealing with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. They cannot seem to get their act together. Sometimes Coast Guard intelligence shows up in the interagency meetings along with the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis rep, and the FBI and DEA are always running around like they are independent.”
 
Mac smiled thinly. “It took DoD sixty years to get as far as it has, so don’t look for anything efficient to happen at DHS for a while.”
 
“My old boss Caryn Wagner just took over there,” I said contemplatively. “It is like déjà vu all over again,” I said. “The smart guys in the Washington Post are saying that there is no need for an Air Force or a Navy, since it is all about boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Secretary Gates seemed to question the need for a Marine Corps a month or two ago, since there will never be another amphibious landing.”
 
“I recall this argument happening when I was at Y-1. Secretary Louis Johnson had just taken over from Jim Forrestal, who was fired by Harry Truman.
 
“I deployed on USS Forrestal,” I said. “We called her “FID,” from her motto “First in Defense.”
 
“There is where the story is,” Mac said, warming to the task. “Johnson was quoted as saying there was no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me that amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We'll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do nowadays, so that does away with the Navy. That would have been in late 1949.”
 
“I know Forrestal was crazy at the end, and killed himself at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.”

(Bethesda Naval Hospital. Official Navy Photo.)

“Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn’t,” said Mac, shaking his head. “And maybe he did and maybe he was pushed out that window. You know that British classified records were just released a couple years ago that indicate Menachem Begin's Irgun Gang in Palestine had a serious plot to assassinate Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. He was a fierce anti-Zionist, and so was Forrestal”
 
“I had heard that Forrestal claimed he was being followed during the height of the struggle in the Trans-Jordan to establish Israel.”
 
“The Navy kept the report of Forestall’s death a secret for nearly fifty years, and I don’t think we will ever know for sure. But he was a gifted man, and he loved his Navy. He came through Pearl in 1942 when I was there. I don’t think LBJ had anything to do with his death, though.”
 
I had to laugh at that. “I heard that LBJ wangled a commission in the Naval Reserves, and made a fact-finding junket to the Pacific. Someone scheduled a “combat” mission-” I made air quotes with my fingers over my glass of wine- “to qualify for a Silver Star before returning to the safety of Washington.”
 
Mac smiled. “Johnson was something else, but his sights were set on being Senate Majority Leader, and he was willing to support unification if it could benefit his friends in Texas. General of the Army George Marshall had been pushing for unification of the services starting in 1943. He became Secretary in 1944, after Frank Knox died of a hart attack, and he supported the Naval Affairs Committee in Congress to scuttle the first attempt to unify the services by Congress in mid-1946.”
 
“But he still accepted the post of SECDEF when the legislation finally was passed in 1947.”
 
“He felt that unification was inevitable, and he wanted to put the best face on it. He was one of the earliest Cold Warriors, and thought that the Russians could not be trusted. He took over what we briefly called the National Military Establishment, and the new structure looked a lot like what we have today: Defense, the National Security Council, CIA, and an independent Air Force. The prototype for NSA was about to be created, too, which is where I was working in the Navy component at Main Navy. The Air Force is where the trouble was going to come from.”
 
“Didn’t the Blue-suiters claim that with the Bomb and the B-36 bomber there was no need for any other military capability?”
 
“Yes they did, and managed to kill the Navy’s first super aircraft carrier in the budget wars. Naturally, Forrestal opposed all that but he was handcuffed by Harry Truman’s approach to funding defense.”
 
I nodded in sympathy. Mac and I suffered the same fates late in our careers, falling from the fast-paced world of OPINTEL into the arcane and painful world of the intelligence budget process.
 
“How did the Truman administration approach it?” I asked with curiosity.
 
“Well, Forrestal believed in a prototype of the process we have now. The needs of the Services are stated by them, validated by the Combatant Commands, racked and ranked by priority for funding. The defense budget is built from the ground up.”
 
“Requirements-based budgeting,” I said by rote, nodding in agreement. “And Harry Truman?”
 
“Top down.” I copied the words in my notebook and underlined them. “They did not budget for needs,” said Mac. “They began by subtracting from total revenue receipts the amount needed for domestic needs and recurrent operating costs, with any surplus going to the defense budget for that year. Completely ass-backward to what was required. Remember, in addition to the consolidation, Forrestal was dealing with Communist takeovers in Czechoslovakia and China, the Berlin Blockade, the war in the Trans-Jordan and negotiations to establish NATO.”
 
“All without the resources to do it.”
 
Mac nodded gravely. “It was a pretty exciting time to get orders to Europe, right on the eve of the craziness in Korea. But it was pretty crazy here in Washington. The battle over money was about to erupt in open rebellion. Remember, Governor Dewey was supposed to beat Harry Truman in the election in 1948.”

(President Truman exults in victory, 1948. AP Photo.)

“No one will ever forget the picture of Truman holding up the headline of his defeat that morning.”
 
“Well, when the Truman people found out Forrestal had been meeting with Dewey and had agreed to stay on as SECDEF, that tore it, and Truman fired him and appointed Louis Johnson, who would do what he was told.”
 
“No wonder Forrestal was depressed.” I looked down. My glass was empty. Must have been defective, I thought, and waved my hand to see if I could get Peter’s attention and a re-fill.
 
“And no wonder the Admiral’s revolted,” said Mac.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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