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of the Key West conference. In masterly understatement he told the army secretary that "the Key West conference agreements do not in themselves end all controversy between the services." 18 This was especially true of the air force and navy departments. In fact, one major misunderstanding-involving the construction of a prototype flush-deck aircraft carrieremerged from the Key West meeting: General Bradley would testify, some time after the fact, that in this conference Forrestal announced that he, the Bureau of the Budget, and President Truman had all approved construction of the supercarrier. It was Bradley's understanding that his acquiescence then and in a subsequent joint chiefs of staff vote in May 1948 merely recognized an accomplished fact. He would argue, though not convincingly, that the supercarrier did not come before the joint chiefs for a formal decision until April 1949, at which time they rejected the concept, over Admiral Denfeld's vigorous dissent. Forrestal's successor, Louis Johnson, armed with this vote by the joint chiefs and his determination to cut costs, ordered the carrier's construction to halt April 23, 1949, five days after the keel had been laid. 19 The army had again sided with the air force against the navy.

Soon after sinking the supercarrier, Secretary of Defense Johnson, who openly favored air power, permitted the air force to order seventyfive additional B-36 bombers. This precipitated a rebellion within the Navy Department, referred to at the time as the "revolt of the admirals." The principal arena for this dispute was the hearing room of the House Armed Services Committee, which was investigating charges by Rep. James E. VanZandt that there was corruption and favoritism in the awarding of the B-36 contract. The hearings broadened into an examination of the nation's military posture. The navy presented a host of witnesses, led by Admiral Denfeld, who attacked prevailing Defense Department policies, strategic concepts, the cancellation of the supercarrier, and the alleged deficiencies of the B-36. The chief rebuttal witnesses were Secretary of

18 W. J. Verbeck, "Memorandum for Record on Briefing of the Secretary of the Army on the Results of the Key West Conference," July 28, 1948, CSUSA-320, RG 319, NA.

19 Hammond, "Super Carriers," pp. 475, 481, 533-534.

the Air Force Stuart Symington and Gen. Omar Bradley, 20

Although Bradley spoke in his capacity as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, he was still a general of the army. His views were taken to represent those of the army establishment. Bradley testified that he believed the navy's primary role lay in antisubmarine warfare. He sternly denounced the navy for its consistent failure to support unification.21 His attack on the navy was ill-tempered, not entirely fair, and certainly ill-advised. Like the contentious testimony of the naval officers who preceded him, Bradley's remarks clearly showed that a service-integrated strategic viewpoint had not yet been achieved.

The fundamental approach of the army to unification that emerged during this period was advocacy of a single defense budget and a balanced military force. This was well demonstrated in the seventy air groups controversy. Since late 1945 the air force had argued for seventy air groups as the irreducible minimum. Considering the rapid technological changes underway at the time, the persistent advocacy of this number had less of a specific than a symbolic meaning. It was a lodestar for those who sought to concentrate American military might in air power. 22

The army found a staunch supporter of the balanced-force concept in Forrestal, and when the issue came to a head in 1948 the defense secretary opposed the seventy air groups then being championed by the air force, the Finletter commission, and most of the Congress. He contended that any increase in the size of the air force should be balanced against comparable increases in the size and budget of the other services. 23 It was also the Defense Department's position that pending administration proposals for universal military training, resumption of selective service, and a $3 billion supplemental budget request constituted a feasible application of the balanced-force concept. To favor through legislation a single service (as the Congress was doing in increas

20 Haynes, Awesome Power, p. 126.

21 Hammond, "Super Carriers," pp. 533, 539.

22 Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study of American Military History (New York, 1956), pp. 276-277.

23 Forrestal to Chan Gurney, Apr. 2, 1948, CSUSA-320.2, RG 319, NA; NME press release no. 37-48, Mar. 25, 1948, copy in OSAF, Special File 48, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, RG 340, NA.

ing the air force budget) would destroy a major advantage of unification.24 Eventually, it took impoundment by President Truman to prevent a major imbalance. But even in this controversy it would not be unreasonable to say that the army did not actually oppose a dramatic increase in the size of the air force as long as it was accompanied by a corresponding increase for the army.25

The effort to maintain budgetary parity with the other services was the really important battle that the army fought during this period. 26 This fight was temporarily lost under Secretary of Defense Johnson, but U. S. involvement in the Korean conflict brought new appreciation of the importance of ground forces. Korea, and Vietnam to an even greater extent, served to demonstrate that control of the seas and the air are secondary to ground control in a limited

war.

In the midst of the interservice battles over unification, one of the combatants, Omar Bradley, had the insight to recognize what was happening. Late in 1948 he told an audience that unification was being hampered by generals and admirals who blindly and stubbornly clung to tradition. "For the services, unfortunately, are not immune to the quirks and frailties of average men. Yet in spite of all this ..," he concluded, "a worthwhile start has been made in unification." 27

Another worthwhile start in the direction of unification was also made with the 1949 revisions of the National Security Act. These changes need not be enumerated here. 28 Their

24 Karl Bendetsen to Clark Clifford, Apr. 8, 1948, Clifford Papers, NME, Air Force, HSTL.

25 Royall to Forrestal (memorandum), Apr. 9, 1948, CSUSA320.2, RG 319, NA; Royall to Johnson, Apr. 25, 1949, OSA320.2, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Army, RG 335, NA.

26 The budget struggles are ably detailed in Elias Huzar, The Purse and the Sword: Control of the Army by Congress Through Military Appropriations, 1933-1950 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1950).

27 Bradley, Navy Day address, Oct. 27, 1948, CSUSA-320, RG 319, NA.

28 See John C. Ries, The Management of Defense: Organization and Control of the United States Armed Services (Baltimore, 1964), pp. 125-150, and William R. Kintner, Forging a New Sword: A Study of the Department of Defense (New York, 1958).

long-range effect was to subordinate the individual services and their civilian secretaries within the Defense Department. The new authority of the secretary of defense, coupled with the exigencies of the war in Korea, ended most of the public bickering among the services. At the same time, by a process Professor Samuel Huntington has termed political castellation, the army and the other services were annealed in this struggle and developed survival mechanisms. As Huntington explains:

Building out from its inner keep, each service slowly constructed political, institutional and legal defenses, after the fashion of an elaborate medieval castle with inner and outer walls, ramparts and barbicans, watchtowers and moats. The services, in short, entrenched themselves on the American political scene, as countless other interest groups, private and public, had done before them.29

What price did the army pay for unification? It became larger in size and smaller in prestige. Compared with the pre-unification Department of War, which controlled all non-naval military matters, the Department of the Army now appears to be little more than an administrative subdivision of the Defense Department.

The behavior of the army's leaders in the period between passage of the unification act and the onset of the Korean War was no worse than the conduct of the other service leaders, but it was seldom better. However acrimonious and unworthy the interservice struggle was, it may have been a necessary process. Much as a disruption in environment compels animals to redefine their territories the unification act forced the military services to justify their existence and to fit themselves into a new framework.

Perhaps a line from the final report of the House Armed Services Committee on the unification and strategy hearings states it best: "All services," the report concludes, "have been at fault at one time or another in the unification effort. There are no unification Puritans in the Pentagon."30

29 Samuel P. Huntington, "Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services," American Political Science Review 55 (1961), p. 44.

30 Hammond, "Super Carriers," p. 550.

WHO SHOULD OWN THE DOCUMENTS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS?

JAMES B. RHOADS

A major preoccupation of the nation over re

cent months has been with problems arising from the question of what constitutes the public record of the nation. What documents and other forms of historical material-particularly those relating to the presidency-fall within the public domain, and what records are the personal property of those who hold our highest elective and appointive offices?

On September 30, 1974, Dr. Rhoads appeared before the Subcommittee on Printing of the Committee on House Administration to express support for the creation of a commission to study the status of papers of federal officials, including those of the president and members of Congress. The concept of a national study commission also received support from the National Historical Publications Commission in a resolution passed on September 20, 1974, from the Society of American Archivists in a resolution passed in October 1974, and from other professional and learned societies.

On December 19, 1974, the National Study Commission on Records and Documents of Federal Officials (also known as the Public Documents Commission) was established when President Ford signed the Public Documents Act into law. This seventeen-member commission has been assigned the broad responsibility of studying the problems and questions relating to the control, disposition, and preservation of records and documents produced by or on behalf of federal officials. The commission is to report its findings and conclusions, including recommendations for legislation or other action, no later than March 31, 1976.

This article is based upon the archivist's testimony before the Subcommittee on Printing. It emphasizes some of the complex issues the commission will need to consider in the course of its investigation, and it is presented here by the editors as a contribution to the public discussion of this most important issue.

Today many of the people of our nation have become unsure that the records of the past few years have been or are being preserved adequately. Consequently, a number of bills have been introduced in the Congress that are designed to change the status of the papers of elected officials from that of private property to public documents. The demand for such a change can be heard not only in the halls of Congress and in the journalism fraternity but also within the professional societies of archivists and historians.

We in the national archival system are troubled by these efforts to change suddenly a two-hundred-year-old tradition not only because we are responsible for administering the present system but because we believe in its essential soundness. Beyond this concern, however, the changes now being proposed have evidentiary and constitutional implications for the future whose results the advocates of change may not anticipate nor wish to occur. Nevertheless, archivists recognize and support the need for a thorough review of the traditional arrangements for the preservation of the records and other documentary sources of our national life. During the last sixty years we have experienced a paperwork explosion much larger than anything that could have been predicted by the Taft Commission of 1912, formed to solve problems in paperwork caused by the invention of the ordinary typewriter. Today's explosion has been hastened and complicated by the almost unlimited capacity of modern

reproduction machines to multiply copies, disseminate information, and glut files. Furthermore, tragic events of the past decade have reminded us that we must respect the nature of documents as critical evidence of men's actions. Surely the traditional concepts of preserving and servicing archives cannot be expected to serve the expanded needs of the present and the future unless they are reviewed and updated from time to time.

Therefore, while we of the National Archives are disturbed by the clamor for a quick change in the definition of the various papers of elected officials, we strongly support the call for a study commission to examine the foundations of the historical evidence, presumptions about what material should be kept as the public record, and how best to preserve it to serve the needs of the future. These archival problems are both philosophical and procedural, and a study commission can be a good approach to solving them, provided that the commission is well staffed and has a clear charter.

Two general propositions that have infused and guided the nation's archival system should also guide any study commission formed to review its conceptual problems. First, whatever arrangements are made must assure the maximum preservation of useful historical material. Second, those arrangements must aim at the earliest practicable public accessibility of that historical material. A natural tension exists between these propositions: pressing the one discourages the other. We are interested in preserving the best evidence. Yet if the goal of public accessibility is pursued with too much vigor or haste, the creators of records may be discouraged from leaving adequate documentation for archivists to keep and historians to sift. Therefore a balance must always be sought in applying these propositions. For when they are kept in balance they serve two axioms: mankind is entitled to its history, and history requires evidence.

Keeping these principles in mind, the commission should examine the nature of public records as an adequate documentation of the affairs of government, test traditional definitions and practices regarding public records, examine the role of elected officers as they generate and retain files reflecting both politics and public administration, and seek to find the best and most equitable means of document

ing their role in public affairs. In addition, the commission should not overlook the question of the nature and disposition of the records created by appointed officials such as cabinet officers, White House and congressional staff, and federal judges.

Archivists can suggest where many of the problems lie for this study commission, but their solution is essentially a political one. The traditional archival view of government records from the beginning of the republic has been that the public actions of the incumbents of elective office are effectively reflected in such public documents as the acts of Congress, proclamations, diplomatic letters, and the like. This view holds that the files of an elected officer are informal, not required to be kept, and not subject to statutes controlling federal records because the elected official has a right and a need to protect the confidences that he allows to become a part of his files.

Examine for a moment the meaning of the personal property claim as it applies to the papers of elected officials. The claim arose at the end of George Washington's presidency when Washington- relying on the British tradition that the sovereign's working papers were the sovereign's personal propertyclaimed that the files of his office which supported the official record of government action were his personal files and thus his personal property. These files consisted of correspondence, notes, drafts, and working papers-not what he regarded as official records of action. He maintained that these files were peculiar to himself and to his occupancy of the presidency and that they should not pass to his successor. His distinction between personal papers and official records has remained to this day the traditional view because no better alternative for protection of the political liberty of those who run for public office has been proposed. When a man chooses to run for elective office and perhaps to spend a lifetime in seeking, holding, and defending that office, he engages in a highly competitive, even personally precarious, occupation. He is always in the public eye and pursued by a relentless press; his decisions are scrutinized by his opponents for some misjudgment; and his friends may seek to influence his actions. The essence of his occupation is communication and compromise, and all of this is reflected in his files. Elective

office, whether it be that of a member of Congress or the president, represents an intimate combination of political activity and public administration.

Elected officials are political as well as public men. It does not follow necessarily that because a man holds public office his personal and political activities should be disclosed when he leaves office. Many former presidents and Congressmen continue in other public positions. For example, two former presidents were elected to Congress following their presidential terms; one former president, William Howard Taft, became chief justice of the United States; and many members of Congress have held responsible positions at state and local levels after leaving national office. Immediate disclosure of their files-including their frank appraisals of people, events, and programscould be embarrassing and might seriously damage their effectiveness in their new positions. For these reasons the traditional view holds that it is impossible to separate the personal and political files of an elected official from the files that have a direct bearing upon his public responsibilities. Furthermore, the traditional view holds that to declare the files of an elected official to be public property would both diminish his political freedom and lessen the likelihood that the most sensitive materials bearing on his conduct in office would even be retained, much less become available in the future.

If the requirements for documentation in the modern era have in fact gone beyond the traditional archival view, it is not because the papers were typed on government stationery with a government typewriter by a government secretary; it is because the process and organization of government have grown ever more complex. For example, whereas the president once required only one or a very few secretaries, he now has a complex staff organization of approximately 500 members. Time was when he could supervise personally the small staff in the White House office and review almost all of the material it produced. Now, however, staff members might not see the president and they can produce memorandums and reports which are never reviewed or acted on by him. Despite this increasing operational complexity, however, there has never been a consistent policy specifying those organiza

tions within the executive office of the president that produce public records and those whose records are to be included among the president's personal papers. For example, the institutional records of the National Security Council and its permanent staff have remained within the government from one administration to another. Yet the papers of the president's national security adviser, who heads the NSC staff, have been considered to be part of the personal papers of the president. The records of the Council of Economic Advisers have often been removed as the personal papers of the men who served as its members. Some of these files have been donated to presidential libraries or other archival depositories at a later date. On the other hand, the records of the Office of Management and Budget (and its predecessor, the Bureau of the Budget) which is also part of the executive office of the president, have been considered federal records. The proposed study commission may be able to recommend a consistent policy for distinguishing which records created within the executive office of the president should be considered to be the president's personal papers and which should be designated as federal records. In short, there may be a way wherein the circle of personal presidential activity can be more clearly delineated, thus reducing the extent if not the significance of his claim to personal files.

In the recent past, there also has been inconsistency in the treatment of the papers of various presidential staff members. The peculiar dilemma that the present system causes is one in which the records and papers generated by staff members are either the president's or their own; they have not been regarded as federal records. Thus the degree of control asserted by the president over his staff members determines whether they regard their materials as part of his presidential papers or whether they take them away as their own. The latter course is not always a total loss for the public record since archivists solicit these papers and often receive lifetime collections of personal papers as collateral historical evidence.

Some maintain that the way to solve the dilemma of public papers of elected officials is to arrange their files so that truly personal and political matters are separated from matters of official jurisdiction and public administra

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