be established over all this type of activity and organization." This system was not "desirable in peace.'

"21

Armed with a copy of this letter General Wheeler and the other technical service chiefs confronted General Aurand on 13 April 1948 in Mr. Gray's office. Speaking for his colleagues, General Wheeler attacked the proposed logistics command. He cited the Patch-Simpson Board recommendation that ASF be abolished, General Eisenhower's letter, and the current organization of the Army staff outlined in Department of the Army Circular 64, 10 March 1948. He referred to the contributions made by the technical services in two world wars and emphasized the undesirability of introducing an additional staff layer between the technical services and the Chief of Staff which would require additional scarce technical specialists. He claimed that industry favored the Army's present "technical procedures."

Eliminating the technical services, he said, would require reorganization and re-education of all the armed forces and war industries. Further, the proposed logistics command did not deal with other important technical service problems like training and intelligence. In conclusion, General Wheeler stated that the chiefs of the technical services believed a logistics command would result in confusion and conflict in command and "in conspicuous extravagance in the utilization of critical personnel." In substance they opposed creating another ASF or logistics command whether in peace or in war.22

Faced with this opposition Assistant Secretary Gray sug gested continued planning for a wartime ASF but designated the project more euphemistically as a proposal rather than a plan since it had not yet been approved. General Aurand, concluding that the decision earlier agreed upon in favor of formal planning for a wartime ASF had been practically abandoned, asked that his office be relieved of responsibility in the matter. General Collins agreed and ordered responsibility

21 (1) Memo for Record, 31 Apr 48, concerning presentation in Mr. Gray's office, with copy of General Aurand's speech. Tab 15, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (2) Carbon copy, Ltr, Eisenhower to Bradley, 8 Apr 48. Tab 4, Left, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948.

22

' (1) Memo for Record, 14 Apr 48, sub: Briefing on Plan for a Wartime ASF. Tab 16, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (2) Ltr, General Wheeler for General Aurand, 12 Apr 48. The Pros and Cons of a Logistics Command.

for studying the issue of a logistics command transferred to the Management Division of the new Army Comptroller's Office.23

The Comptroller of the Army

Both the Advisory (or Cook) and Haislip Board reports had recommended establishment of a management planning or comptroller's office at the General Staff level. On 3 September 1947 Secretary of War Kenneth C. Royall, who had served under General Somervell in ASF headquarters during the war, appointed Edwin C. Pauley as his special assistant to study the Army's various logistics programs and "business practices" and to recommend improvements "in the interest of economy and efficiency as contemplated by unification legislation." 24

Mr. Pauley in investigating Army fiscal procedures found that no one from the Secretary on down, including the chiefs of the technical services, knew the real dollar costs of the operations for which they were responsible. The principal reason was that each technical service employed its own unique accounting system which did not cover all its functions and missions. Pauley recommended organizing an office of "Comptroller" for the Army to correct these deficiencies through the development of sound business management and cost accounting practices which would cover the total costs of the Army's major missions, programs, and activities, including the operating costs of each Army installation by major activity. These revolutionary proposals required a degree of control by the Secretary and the Chief of Staff over the Army's budget which traditional Congressional methods of appropriating funds would hardly permit.25

2 (1) Memo, Asst Secy Gray for General Collins, 15 Apr 48. Tab 17, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (2) Memo, General Aurand for CofS, 22 Apr 48, sub: Logistics (ASF Type) Command in War. Tab 18, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command-1948. (3) Memo for General Aurand, 1 May 48, re: Planning for a Logistics Command. Tab 19, Right, Planning for a Logistics Command–1948.

24 (1) Memo, Gen Haislip for the D/CS, 29 Dec 47, sub: Army Organization. Cook Report file. (2) Haislip Board Report. (3) Report of Edwin W. Pauley submitted to Secretary Royall, 5 Feb 48. Department of Army Press Release in ALP: Pauley ReportWork Measurement and Cost Accounting, May 1949 file, RG 117, NARS. Hereafter cited as Pauley Report.

25

(1) Draft Memo, Advisory Group for DCofS, 21 Oct 47, pp. 12-13. Cook Report file. (2) Pauley Report. (3) Mosher, Program Budgeting, pp. 19–46. (4) Elias Huzar, The Purse and the Sword, Control of the Army Through Military Appropriations, 1933-1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), pp. 393–407.

The Haislip Board had also criticized the Army's financial management in the context of its broad review of the Army's missions and the resources needed to fulfill them. Noting the inadequacy of the Army's current budget, it warned, “Either the War Department must revise its programs downward to come within the means which the country seems willing to furnish in men and dollars, or the country must revise upward its estimate of the imminence of the threat to its security and increase the means to meet the War Department's requirements."

Inadequate funds made economy of operations all the more essential, but in the board's opinion neither the organization, the procedures, nor the general attitude of the Army is conducive to maximum economy." It did not see how substantial economies could be made within the existing fiscal structure of the Army "which largely divides fiscal authority from command responsibility." It urged employment of improved management techniques in "organization, procedures, statistical reporting, budgeting, cost accounting," and similar activities. As a first step in this direction it recommended establishing in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff "an agency similar to the Navy's Management Engineer or the Air Force's Comptroller to attack this problem on a specialized and continuing basis." 26

Similarly General Cook had recommended that Congress enact legislation freeing the Army from an archaic budget structure where the tail wagged the dog. The existing appropriations structure recognized only the technical services. New legislation should provide that money be appropriated for the Department of the Army and not to individual technical services and that budget categories be related to the Army's missions. The Army itself needed an agency where organizational, management, and financial problems would be treated together as one problem. A staff division concerned with "organization and training" was not such an agency. The least the Army could do would be to set up a management planning branch within the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff. The Cook report recommended placing such functions under a Deputy Chief of

Staff for Zone of Interior Administration along with responsibility for Army logistics and personnel.27

After considering these reports, both Secretary Royall and General Eisenhower agreed on the need for an agency at the General Staff level which would be responsible for the Army's budget and fiscal programs as well as organization and management. Secretary Royall favored appointment of a civilian as comptroller who would work directly under the Secretary, while General Eisenhower preferred that the comptroller be part of his military staff.28

General Eisenhower's view prevailed. Department of the Army Circular 2 of 2 January 1948 provided for a military comptroller with a civilian as deputy within the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff. The directive transferred to this office the functions and personnel of those staff agencies principally concerned with the Army's financial management, the Budget Office, the War Department Manpower Board, the Central Statistical Office, and the Chief of Staff's Management Office. As the department's fiscal director the Comptroller was to supervise also the operations of the Office of the Chief of Finance. Department of the Army Circular 394 of 21 December 1948 additionally transferred supervision of the Army Audit Agency to his office from the Assistant Secretary of the Army. As the Army's management engineer the Comptroller would play a major role in the Army management and organization in the next decade.

The functions and responsibilities of the Army Comptroller lacked statutory authority until the passage of the National Security Act amendments of 10 August 1949, which emphasized the Comptroller's fiscal responsibilities.20

* Memo, Gen Haislip for the D/CS, 29 Dec 47, sub: Army Organization. Cook Report file, pp. 12-13.

(1) Memo, Mr. Cockrill, OCSA, for Mr. Jordan, OCSA, 12 Feb 58, sub: Background and Information on the Organization and Functions of COA. Hereafter cited as OCA History. OCMH files. (2) SR 10-80-1, 21 Mar 51, sub: Organization and Functions, Department of the Army, Office of the Comptroller of the Army. (3) Mosher, Program Budgeting, pp. 211-12.

2 (1) OCA History. (2) Mosher, Program Budgeting, pp. 211-12. (3) The title of this office was changed in Department of the Army Circular 109, 15 October 1949, to Comptroller of the Army to conform to the provisions of Title IV, Public Law 216, 10 August 1949, the National Security Act amendments of that year.

The Johnston Plan and War Department Circular 342

of 1 November 1948

Col. Kilbourne Johnston, the son of Brig. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson of World War I and NRA fame, was the first Chief of the Management Division of the Comptroller's Office. Like his father before him he was an aggressive promoter of the concept of a functionally organized Army staff. Like his father he also encountered bitter opposition from the chiefs of the technical

services.

Among his first assignments was the development of a plan for reorganizing the Army staff under a proposed "Army Bill of 1949," including a re-examination of the question of resurrecting Army Service Forces in some form or other. The result was a lengthy two-volume interim staff study on The Organization of the Department of the Army, submitted on 15 July 1948. Known as the Johnston plan, it was the first detailed analysis of Army organization in the postwar period and the predecessor of several more to come.30

In the Johnston plan the Management Division noted that previous studies by the Organization and Training Division, the Haislip and Cook Boards, and the Logistics Division had raised two basic questions: "Are the Technical Services to be functionalized?" and "Are Departmental functions to be decentralized to area commands through a single command channel?"

Echoing General Somervell's views, it asserted that in both world wars the Army had had to abandon its "permanent statutory structure" and create an emergency organization for two major reasons: the lack of a genuinely functional staff with single staff agencies responsible to the Chief of Staff for each of the department's major functions, and "an unwieldy span of control" with too many agencies responsible and reporting directly to the Chief of Staff.

After both wars the emergency organization had been abandoned because it had placed single-function operating agencies like ASF on top of permanent multifunction bureaus.

30 (1) The family's original name was Johnston. For an explanation of why General Johnson's father dropped the "t" in the family name, see Johnson, The Blue Eagle From Egg to Earth. (2) Management Division, OAC, Organization of the Department of the Army-A Staff Study, 15 Jul 48, vol. I, pp. 6-7. Hereafter cited as the Johnston Plan. Misc. 320.1, Army Reorganization, 1948, OCMH files.