Fighting Bob

For a man with a computer's correctness. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara certainly kicks up a lot of controversy. The Air Force, the Navy, the Joint Chiefs. Great Britain, Charles de Gaulle, many U.S. Governors and the Congress--he has fought them all. Last week Fighting Bob was at it again.

First he got mad at Arkansas Democrat John McClellan's Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. The group was looking into McNamara's choice of General Dynamics Corp. for a $6 billion-plus contract to build a new fighter aircraft, the TFX, for the Air Force and the Navy. Washington's Democratic Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson had called Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric to explain that the voters back home--who will get a crack at Jackson next year--expected an investigation, since Seattle-based Boeing Airplane had lost the contract. But Jackson said the probe would be brief and friendly.

Undermining Integrity. Then the subcommittee began releasing testimony which claimed that McNamara had overruled his military evaluation experts in awarding the contract to G.D. Witnesses said that Boeing had bid lower to produce a plane that would perform better. Before submitting a 32-page statement to the subcommittee, McNamara protested in a public letter to McClellan. Wrote McNamara: "The fragmentary releases of portions of the testimony of witnesses who themselves are only familiar with part of the considerations underlying the decision have needlessly undermined public confidence in the integrity and judgment of the highest officials of the Department of Defense." Moreover, Mc Namara's foot-in-mouth press secretary, Arthur Sylvester, told newsmen: "Obviously you will hardly get a judicial rendering by a committee in which there are various Senators with state self-interest in where the contract goes." Sylvester later apologized, submitted to a grilling behind the committee's closed doors.

Civilian Dictation. About the same time, another McNamara decision--his refusal to speed production of the RS-70 supersonic reconnaissance bomber--came under fire on the House floor. Declared Illinois' Leslie Arends, ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee: "We have in fact, if not in name, a single chief of staff in Secretary of Defense McNamara. While we provided in the Unification Act for civilian control of our armed forces--and it is essential to our form of government that we have such control--we never for a moment thought that civilian control would become civilian dictation of military planning."

Aroused, McNamara fired back in an appearance before the Advertising Council, meeting in Washington. Said he: "It is true that out of the military budget submitted to me. formally recommended by the chiefs of the services and the service Secretaries, of the $67 billion recommended, I took out $14 billion, and I have no apology for it. If I did not do it, who is going to do it? The man who made the attack in the Congress--who stated I was a dictator--is the ranking minority member of the committee that is adding $1.1 billion to this budget."

On that, McNamara was about right. The House last week voted to authorize an extra $364 million for the RS-70, even though it has no way to force McNamara to spend the" money. It added $134 million for two nuclear-powered attack submarines beyond the six McNamara had requested.* And the Armed Services Committee has recommended adding $600 million to the military pay bill.

At week's end McNamara flew to the Boeing plant in Seattle. Greeted by Boeing President William M. Allen, he looked over the Air Force's space-glider project, Dyna-Soar, amid rumors that it was having technical difficulties and might be scrapped. McNamara also inspected the Gemini two-man space project of NASA in Houston, which seems to overlap Dyna-Soar in some respects. But he apparently had had enough fusses for one week. Pentagon officials said that McNamara will make no final decision on whether to kill Dyna-Soar or merge the two projects--either of which would deeply wound both Boeing and the Air Force --for another six months.

*In a curious voting ritual, a $15.8 billion authorization (only a fraction of the overall defense budget) for military hardware for 1964 was voted upon twice in the House. First, the additional funds for the RS-7O were approved, 226-179. Then an across-the-board cut of $800 million was rejected, 258-149. In the overlap, 69 Congressmen availed themselves of the opportunity to vote both for increased defense and decreased spending.

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