National Security Act of 1947

From 1921 to 1945, Congress considered approximately 50 bills to reorganize the armed forces. Mostly due to opposition by both the Department of the Navy and the War Department, all but one failed to reach the floor of the House, and even this one was defeated by a vote of 153 to 135 in 1932. However, by the end of World War II, several factors forced leaders to more seriously consider restructuring the military to improve unity. Pearl Harbor By 1945, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had already been investigated several times, for example by the Roberts Commission, and would continue to be investigated through almost the end of the century. One of the findings that emerged was the probable role of intelligence failures linked to interservice bickering between Pearl Harbor's Army and Navy commanders, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel. Though not a court martial, the Roberts Commission explicitly accused the two of dereliction of duty for not conferring to coordinate in light of the warnings. Joint operations in World War II During World War II, interservice cooperation remained voluntary, requiring complex interchanges of liaisons for planning and operations. Additionally, the Army and Navy often competed for resources, for example industrial production and new recruits. Enabling operations under these conditions had required the creation of numerous joint agencies and interdepartmental committees. World War II had also given the US military two case studies of joint operations between Europe and the Pacific. In the Pacific, the Army and Navy had experienced constant friction from command and logistics problems. In Europe, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), created based on the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, had smoothed over these coordination problems and became President Roosevelt's principal military advisors. During this time, the president had a level of authority over the departments. During World War II, then-chief of staff of the Army George Marshall brought the idea of unification of the armed services to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but "he was routinely rebuffed on the grounds that a substantive discussion of this option while the country was at war might undermine the war effort." On August 26, 1944, future president Harry S. Truman, who was a senator at the time, wrote that "under such a set-up [of unification] another Pearl Harbor will not have to be feared" in his article "Our Armed Forces Must Be United". In the years following the war, President Truman had been pushing for the unification of the armed services until the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, having research conducted on the topic since 1944 President Truman had worked closely with the Army and the Navy to establish a consensus, but the departments struggled to come to an agreement until 1947. == Drafting legislation ==

However, even if everyone could admit that a military reorganization was necessary, they could not agree on how it should be done. The process of obtaining even tentative consensus would take nearly four years. The Woodrum Committee On March 28, 1944, the House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. James W. Wadsworth (R-NY) to create a Select Committee On Postwar Military Policy, and this began the debate. The committee chair was Rep. Clifton A. Woodrum (D-VA), and the committee itself was made up of seven members of the Naval Affairs Committee, seven members of the Military Affairs Committee, and nine other members. • Making the Joint Chiefs of Staff permanent. • Creating an independent air force, but also letting the Army and Navy retain air forces. • Reorganizing the military into three departments: War, Navy, and Air. Each would be led by a cabinet-rank secretary. • Changing the administrative structures of the departments to mirror each other as much as possible. • Creating a National Security Council. • Creating a National Security Resources Board. • Creating a Joint Munitions Board. • Creating a Central Intelligence Agency. • Creating a Joint Military Education and Training Board. • Creating a civilian scientific research and development agency, and creating assistant secretaries for research and development in each of the services. • Reviewing the many other joint boards and committees from World War II to determine which should be continued, combined, or dissolved. • Maintaining close working relations with Congress. • Appointing a commission to conduct analysis of the overall national security situation before making further changes. 1945 Senate military affairs hearings On January 3, 1945, the first day of the 79th Congress, Rep. Jennings Randolph (D-WV) submitted unification bill H.R. 550 to the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department. Two days later, Sen. Lister Hill (D-AL) introduced a similar bill, S. 84, in the Senate. From October 7 to December 17, 1945, the Senate Military Affairs Committee conducted hearings to consider unification bills. These included not only S. 84, but also S. 1482, introduced in the middle of the hearings by senators Edwin C. Johnson (D-CO) and Harley M. Kilgore (D-WV). However, the hearings mostly became a venue for the two departments, increasingly at odds, to give their official positions on different unification plans. The same month, Forrestal asked Sen. David Walsh, the chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, to hold hearings of his own so that the Navy would have a chance to properly present their counterargument to the War Department Proposal. • Replacing the Navy and War Departments with a single "Department of Common Defense" led by a civilian secretary with one undersecretary and four assistant secretaries. • Creating an independent air force under the new department. • Creating a "Joint Staff of the Armed Forces" made up of the three service chiefs plus a chief of staff to submit recommendations and non-concurrences once a year to the president through the secretary of defense. • Creating a "Council of Common Defense" based on Eberstadt's concept for a National Security Council. • Creating a National Security Resources Board. • Creating a Central Intelligence Agency. JCS 1478 On March 15 and 16, Army Air Corps Commanding General Carl Spaatz and Army Chief of Staff Dwight Eisenhower wrote two papers regarding unification JCS 1478/10 and 1478/11, that dealt with Army objectives for postwar unification. Marked "TOP SECRET", the two papers were blunt in their statement of their intent to marginalize the Marine Corps. The Eisenhower-Spaatz proposal's key points were the following: On May 31, Patterson and Forrestal reported to him that of the twelve points in S. 2044 they agreed on eight and disagreed on four. The points of agreement were as follows: The Patterson-Forrestal Compromise On November 7, 1946, Forrestal called a meeting at his home with Army and Navy representatives to attempt to find a way forward. The attendees included the two departments' primary negotiators Norstad and Radford, Assistant Secretary of War for Air Stuart Symington, and Forrestal's friend Admiral Forrest Sherman. The main outcome of the meeting was the replacement of Admiral Radford as the Navy's primary negotiator with Forrestal's friend Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman. According to Marine Corps Brigadier General Gerald Thomas, this was due to Patterson's suggestion since the Army found Radford difficult to work with. On January 16, 1947, Norstad, Sherman, and Symington forwarded a letter to the White House with an outline of a joint Army-Navy agreement. Second Marine Corps Board Vandegrift and the other Marines involved with unification believed they had been betrayed. Admiral Radford had been a close ally of the Marine Corps, and Admiral Sherman was not. There had been no Marine Corps input into the Patterson-Forrestal Compromise, and many Marines, Vandegrift included, believed Sherman had cut a deal with Norstad to preserve Navy aviation in exchange for abandoning demands for statutory protections of the Marine Corps. The same month the Patterson-Forrestal Compromise went to the White House, Vandegrift appointed a second Marine Corps board to "Conduct Research and Prepare Material in Connection with Pending Legislation" led by Merritt Edson and Gerald C. Thomas. Other members formally appointed to the board in writing included Col Merrill Twining, Col Edward Dyer, LtCol Victor Krulak, LtCol Samuel Shaw, LtCol DeWolf Schatzel, LtCol James C. Murray, LtCol James Hittle, LtCol Edward Hurst, LtCol Robert Heinl, and Maj Jonas Platt. == Legislative history ==

When Congress convened, it had preemptively restructured in favor of unification. Due to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, in the 80th Congress the Military and Naval Affairs Committees had been combined into unified Armed Services Committees in both the House and Senate. Representative Clare E. Hoffman (R-MI) introduced the bill as H.R. 2319 to the House of Representatives on February 28, 1947; it was then referred to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments. Senator Chan Gurney (R-SD) introduced the bill to the Senate as S. 758 on March 3, 1947. Part 2 hearings were held on April 8, April 9, April 15, April 18, April 22, April 24, and April 25, 1947; and Part 3 hearings were held on April 30, May 2, May 6, May 7, and May 9, 1947. The witnesses at the hearings largely spoke in support of the bill, either overall or with adjustments. Major witnesses of the bill who spoke in support were United States Army chief of staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, The next day, at the invitation of a member of the committee, Merritt Edson testified in opposition to the bill. He was the only active duty military officer to do so. Debates On July 7, 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 was debated for the first time in the Senate, two days after the Senate Committee on Armed Services reported the bill to the Senate. On July 15, 1947, having already been passed in the Senate, the National Security Act of 1947 was debated in the House of Representatives. Senator Robertson (R-WY) was a staunch opponent of the bill, arguing that the bill would cost the country too much considering it would not be able to make the armed services any more efficient, and that the secretary of defense would have too much power. The president was traveling to be at the bedside of his dying mother and delayed his departure until the bill was signed. The majority of the provisions of the act took effect on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first secretary of defense. His power was initially limited and it was difficult for him to exercise the authority to make his office effective. This was later changed in the amendment to the act in 1949, creating what was to be the Department of Defense. Provisions The legislation's definition of covert action was vague, limiting oversight over the CIA's activities. It was only in the 1990s that Congress attempted to regulate covert action by prohibiting certain forms of it and enacting substantive and procedural rules for covert action. Title I – Coordination for National Security Title I worked to establish the National Security Council, an advisory council to the president for matters relating to national security in the realm of "domestic, foreign, and military policies" with the intent of allowing for the military departments to communicate with more efficiency. It also established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the National Security Council, led by the Director of Central Intelligence. to remove "Secretary of the Navy" and to replace "Secretary of War" with "Secretary of Defense". == Results ==

The act produced mixed results, and both sides of the unification fight would see their positions partly vindicated and partly tested over the next few years. Cost savings The promised cost savings were fleeting and arguable. Even before the act was passed, the military's total budget ceiling had been cut by two thirds. The first year after the act, Truman cut the budget again by several billion dollars, however the defense budget had returned to its previous level by the next year. If the act saved money, it was obscured by an immediate return to high defense budgets following the Soviet development of nuclear weapons and the beginning of the Korean War. In 1984, Victor Krulak published an account of it in the book First to Fight, which has remained on the Commandant's Professional Reading List since it was first published. == Amendments ==

leans over the desk. Behind him is Admiral Louis Denfeld, General Omar N. Bradley, and General Hoyt Vandenberg. On August 10, 1949, the act was amended. The amendments' key changes included the following: • The National Military Establishment was converted into a Cabinet-level department and renamed the Department of Defense. • The three military departments were placed under the authority of the secretary of defense. • The secretaries of the three military departments lost their statutory access to the president, but gained statutory access to Congress. • The secretaries of the three military departments lost their statutory membership in the National Security Council. • The chief of staff to the commander in chief was replaced with a full-time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff senior in rank to all other military officers. • The War Council was renamed the Armed Forces Policy Council. == See also ==