Jerry Hendrix
“They Have A Boss” - Ike’s Management of the Joint Chiefs - “I know better than any of you fellows about waste in the Pentagon and about how much fat there is to be cut because I've seen those boys operate for a long time.” When Dwight Eisenhower became president, he came with an agenda to massively reorganize and reform what he considered to be a vastly bloated federal bureaucracy, especially in the Department of Defense, and to drive through an entirely new national security strategy. But to accomplish his goals, he knew that he would need allies amongst both civilian appointees and the uniformed leadership in that vast organization.
Regarding the civilian leadership, the change of government allowed Eisenhower to usher out the by now nearly professional (the Roosevelt and Truman administrators combined for twenty years of political rule) political administrators who had headed up the multitude of three-letter-agencies that had emerged under the New Deal and replace them with businessmen who had experience running large organizations. As for the military, perhaps due to his familiarity with the current generation of military service leaders, Eisenhower wanted to install a new slate of uniformed heads of the military services, who also comprised the Joint Chiefs, to dramatically alter the nation’s military strategy.
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