<--PREV Doc #630  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #632 Document #631; April 1, 1958 To Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series ; Category: Personal The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIX - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part IV: Recession and Reform; February 1958 to May 1958 Chapter 9: "The problems inherent in this job"   Dear Cabot: Thanks for your note of yesterday. I agree with every word you say and I am, if I may use the expression, "going to town" on the issue of Defense Reorganization.1 Over the weekend I spent a great deal of time on the final draft of the document; I am determined to make it, in all respects, "mine."2 With warm regard, As ever 1 Lodge had written on March 31 (AWF/A) to suggest that Eisenhower "vigorously (and both in private and in public) take the lead with Congress in favor of greater unity among the armed services." For background see the preceding document. Lodge said that Eisenhower's authority as Commander in Chief under the Constitution, as well as his personal experience, had given the President an "unparalleled right to speak." Presidential leadership in the campaign to reorganize the defense establishment would put the subject "on the front page where it belongs and would take the present politically-inspired anti-recession campaign off the front page" (for background see, for example, nos. 577 and 615). According to Lodge, congressional opposition to unification of the armed services was due to "Spokesmen for certain of the regular services [who] have worked with certain individual members to block and to obstruct." "But the point to remember," Lodge said, "is that these Members of Congress do not speak for any considerable body of opinion in the country and that opposition to unification is purely the work of a small congressional clique acting in response to certain professional military prompting. The weight of public opinion is all on the side of eliminating inter-service bickering and towards greater unity." 2 Eisenhower was referring to his "Special Message to Congress on Reorganization of the Defense Establishment," which he would deliver on April 3 (see Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1958, pp. 274 - 90; see also New York Times, Apr. 4, 1958). The President would ask that all operating forces be organized into "truly unified commands" that were separated from the military departments; that the traditional military departments be downgraded into administrative agencies of a strengthened and centralized Defense Department; that the Joint Chiefs of Staff be empowered to provide greater central direction for operations and strategic planning; that a Director of Defense Research and Engineering be appointed to "eliminate unpromising or unnecessarily duplicative programs; and that Congress appropriate all defense funds to the Secretary of Defense rather than to the military departments (see Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. XIV, 1958, pp. 133 - 39). For developments see no. 655. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., 1 April 1958. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 631. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/second-term/documents/631.cfm <--PREV Doc #630  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #632

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