Here’s an excerpt from Samuel Huntington’s classic 1959 book, The Soldier and the State:
The principal antagonist of the Joint Chiefs within the central defense organization was the Comptroller. Like the JCS, however, his office afforded an excellent illustration of the deceptive quality of the formal legal structure. On the organization charts the Comptroller was lost among the crowd of nine assistant secretaries of defense. In actual operation of the Department, however, he was a political force rivaled only by the military leaders themselves.
… Thus, the Comptroller’s office developed as the Freudian superego of the Department: an internal mechanism of restraint and control reflecting external demands and interests. It was the “garrison in the conquered city,” giving powerful representation to an essentially unmilitary and alien element in the Department.
A final factor enhancing the power of the Comptroller was the continuity in office of Wilfred J. McNeil. McNeil had been the Fiscal Director of the Navy under Forrestal. In 1947 he became the budgetary and fiscal assistant to Forrestal as Secretary of Defense. In 1949 he became Comptroller, a position he still held in 1955. He was unique among the higher leaders of the Defense Department in that he preformed the same job for all of the first five Secretaries of Defense. It is not surprising that he was labeled the “virtually indispensable man” of the Pentagon. The Comptroller’s office possessed knowledge and experience in a way which even the military could not rival and which was quite beyond the grasp of transient political appointees.
Interestingly, McNeil neither believed the creation of a unified DoD in 1947 was a good idea, nor did he look kindly upon the development of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System in the early 1960s. Perhaps the “indispensable man” of the Pentagon understood something more deeply than the transients.
Who could ever be called the indispensable man or woman in DoD or any of the services today? It is almost unthinkable that one could exist. Perhaps Secretary of the Navy John Lehman was the last person who could take such a title. I don’t think Bill Perry, Donald Rumsfeld, Harold Brown, or Robert Gates rose to that level necessarily. None of them had such a significant tenure, often jumping to industry or academia for large swaths of time.
Some may claim the system is better for not having to rely on “great men” or “great women.” The process runs defense, the people are merely interchangeable. The system is too big and programs run too long for an individual to have an impact. I find it difficult to accept that view, and perhaps from here the true problems of DoD start.
I might have an easier time accepting the non-importance of individuals if bureaucratization of the private sector had occurred, but the largest and most successful companies continue to be associated with individuals. Perhaps it is the ability to start something new on modern paradigms that allows individuals to have such an impact, and grow companies to be of world importance within a few years.
DoD’s first and long-serving Comptroller Wilfred McNeil (at DOD from 1947-1959) may not have been a fan of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) put in place by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the mid 60’s (so, please, how do we know McNeil was not a fan?), but, in any case, the PPBS process (aside from the other plus and minus effects it may have had) has arguably been a boon to the reach and power of Comptrollers in the DoD.
How else to explain the establishment by the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) of its own Task Force on PPBE reform to help make sure the Congressionally-established Commission on PPBE Reform gets things right? (https://www.asmconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/PPBE-Task-Force-Press-Release-FINAL.pdf)
Stepping back from it all, the one underlying, grounded-in-the-Constitution fact confronting PPBE reform is that the DoD runs on annual budgets set by the Congress. That means that – however the PPBE process may wind up being changed – it still, in the end, must produce a “budget request” to the Congress. And that makes it unavoidable that the role, reach, and power of Comptrollers will continue unabated no matter what happens (unless and until somebody decides that some other civilian offices within DoD are better equipped to pull the DoD’s annual, very large budget together).
Some men are great – others have greatness thrust upon them.
DoD Comptrollers fall into the latter category.
Thanks for the comment! I had a link up there on McNeil slamming PPBS, and here’s another related one: https://acquisitiontalk.com/2022/01/you-cant-make-decisions-based-on-40000-pages-of-paper-mcnamara-was-wrong/
ASMC seems pretty bullish on reforming PPBE, to my surprise. Conlin and Holt are especially interesting: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/podcast/on-dod-with-jared-serbu-podcast/getting-to-work-on-fixes-to-the-pentagons-broken-budgeting-system/
Certainly comptroller will still have power. Particularly in execution. But budgets should not detail every little program plan, every little action. As Rickover plainly said: “The Comptroller’s function should be to advise the Secretary of Defense as to the availability of funds, not whether a specific weapon system is or is not needed.”
All good points – and I apologize for missing the McNeil links (my red-green colorblindness strikes again). The ASMC Task Force on PPBE Reform is indeed pointing out things that need to be be taken into account, but I don’t think they’re saying anything that the members of the Legislative Commission don’t already understand.
In all of this – taking both McNeil’s (persuasive) arguments AGAINST centralization into account and McNamara’s (understandable) arguments FOR it (because left to their own devices, the Military Departments will each inevitably want to fund their own solutions) – the importance of having clear-thinking, strong individuals in the top leadership positions, both in OSD and the Military Departments, becomes even clearer, no matter what the underlying “process” looks like.
Finding appointees willing, able, and prepared to speak truth to the Congress (and keep their jobs) is always going to be difficult.
Agree! Leadership is hugely important, but need operationally minded people at the top with checks-and-balances from financial rather than the other way around. McNeil understood his role, McNamara did not. Congress will usually do the right thing when the right thing can be demonstrated and explained.
It was interesting that in the 1950s, I actually believe the services worked better together because they weren’t so stovepiped through the PPBS. For example, leadership made Army and Navy co-develop ballistic missiles through Jupiter, but when a sub-launched IRBM became possible, the Navy broke off for Polaris. But they continued helping each other. Army engineers spent an inordinate amount of time helping Navy solve interesting problems of launch from a sub and navigation. Similarly, Army experiments solved the nose-cone reentry problem for Air Force Atlas ICBM, which incorrectly presumed a “blunt nose” design based on a systems analysis.