those staffs and to members of the JCS. Accordingly, invariably, each step was resisted.

I think it is fair to say there was a general expectation that resistance would in time lead to the abandonment of this initiative. This proved to be wrong. Resistance produced more hearings, more news stories critical of Pentagon leadership, more Secretary's Performance Reviews which rarely reflected well on the military leadership, and an ever-increasing number of supporters in the Congress.

Congressional support for this initiative was thought at first to be a passing fancy. Were it not for the persistent efforts of Congressmen Dan Daniel and Earl Hutto in the beginning, and then the powerful advocacy of Senator Cohen and Senator Nunn, this effort could have died. But for several years now, Congressional support has been bi-cameral and bi-partisan, and it continues to grow.

The fact is that those who wanted to contain this effort and kill it missed opportunity after opportunity to do it. If it was our objective to lay a path leading to legislation creating a unified command and a separate Assistant Secretary for Special Operations/ Low Intensity Conflict, we couldn't have done it without these folks. They were the best enemies we could possibly have hoped for.

But this was never our objective. We sought only to put the capability back together, properly integrated in service force structure and in our defense strategy, and to assure that those who served in our Special Operations Forces would not be discriminated against in terms of career advancement.

If those simple, limited goals could have been achieved, I doubt there would have ever been any thought given to legislation. But they couldn't be achieved, and the legislation came; now, we must pass up no occasion to nurture its purposes into a robust and irrevocable life.

To this point, there seems to have been something less than a wholehearted effort to implement both the letter and the spirit of the legislation. The command is located in Florida; much of the old Special Planning staff, which is the nucleus for the new ASD staff, has been pushed out of the Pentagon; numerous assertions that Program 11 has been implemented have proven to be less than accurate.

Still, an objective observer might find plausible and benign explanations for all of these seemingly negative signs.

On the other hand, the Command has a competent and well-led liaison office in the Pentagon. I learned earlier this week that the first eleven new Combat Talons are coming off the line, and Lockheed is building to the next tranche. That should put a lump in the throat of anyone who ever fought and prayed to make it happen. And the number of conversions to Pave Lows is growing. The single most gratifying and most important sign of progress is that Special Operations people are going on to flag rank in increasing numbers. That barrier could only be breached by the Services from within -- not by Congress and not by OSD's direction -- and the fact that it has been tells us a great deal worth knowing about the real progress being made.

Now we have an ambiguous situation.

The seeming indifference to the implementation of the Special Operations Forces legislation occurred under the previous Secretary of Defense. A part of that indifference, not to say active resistance, was a series of efforts to nominate to the post of Assistant

Secretary for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict individuals not widely viewed as sympathetic to the purposes of that post. This produced a series of disappointments for those individuals. Finally, however, one name made it as far as this Committee.

Part of the ambiguity of the present situation resides in the fact that the man who sent that name forward is no longer Secretary of Defense. And we don't know what is the attitude of his successor toward the purposes of the legislation. . . toward the restoration of Special Operations Forces. The question is whether we can reasonably infer what is that attitude from the fact that the new Secretary has not merely endorsed, but actively supports the nomination his predecessor sent forward.

The views and motives of the nominee himself are perplexing. I have not spoken with him personally; I am told that he denies every allegation that he opposes the purposes of the legislation and of the post to which he is nominated, and that he attributes those allegations to misunderstandings of his stated views.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it ought still to be pointed out that his supporters are laboring under the same misunderstandings as vex those who oppose him.

Mr. Oppenheimer, whose support the nominee sought while he was still pursuing the nomination, wrote to Mr. Taft that the nominee opposed the legislation verbally and in writing and cited that opposition as a qualification for the post.

And it is my understanding that Mr. Carlucci defends the nominee as having taken "the building's" position on the legislation. But "the building's" position was to oppose the legislation, which is what the nominee is accused of doing, and what he now dismisses as a misunderstanding. What is especially perplexing is that the nominee was not in "the building" at the time this issue was joined, and had no institutional purpose in taking "the building's" position.

Mr. Chairman, as I said at the beginning, I have tried as hard as I know how, to reason through this matter.

It is a conundrum. I do not know if we can infer Mr. Carlucci's views on the legislation from his support for Mr. Berquist. And that really is the central question.

I don't know if Frank Carlucci is immersed in this subject, as some of us are, and if he understands it -- at this point -- as some of us do. His management style is one which tends to assign time and mental energy according to how much of the budget a particular issue represents. On this basis, he may have yet to think long and deeply about this matter. Also, as do most institutional men, he tends in the main to accept institutional wisdom as the most immediately reliable guide through an issue. The institutional wisdom on this issue is still that Congress has meddled in matters in which it has no competence, and that the legislation was an egregious mistake.

I understand also that Mr. Berquist is Mr. Carlucci's friend. This would help to explain how he might send forward with alacrity a nomination others might consider problematical. It would not lead automatically to a conclusion that Mr. Carlucci wished to stymie the purposes of the legislation and wreck the effort to restore Special Operations Forces. It may be that Mr. Carlucci does not perceive Mr. Berquist's motives as others do. In any case, there is no way to test the accuracy of those perceptions except by putting Mr. Berquist in the job and watching his performance.

This does not mean the members, or any of us, are left to fly blind in thinking this out. There are other things to consider.

The first, and most obvious, is that the Senate just gave Frank Carlucci an overwhelming vote of confidence in confirming him as Secretary of Defense. Only one member dissented. Clearly this confidence extended to his ability to choose the people he wants to have working for him, as this is so fundamental to the role of a Secretary. Though the Senate has an obligation to advise and consent on nominations, dissent is always an exception and if it were expected to be otherwise -- that is, if the Senate anticipated it would early or often question the Secretary's judgement about the people he wished to have around him -- then it does not seem probable that he would have been seen to deserve or that he would have received such a vote of confidence.

So there is the matter of consistency here, and it points up the fact that, in a very real sense and in this very peculiar situation, Frank Carlucci and not Ken Berquist is really the issue.

The new Secretary has an understanding of the problems and vulnerabilities of the developing nations far exceeding that of any previous Secretary of Defense. I trust that, as he thinks on it, he will have a keener appreciation of the role of Special Operations Forces in defending U.S. interests in the Third World . . . in low-intensity conflicts, than any previous Secretary of Defense, and that he will not be party to an effort to divest the nation of this capability.

Further, Frank Carlucci has no apparent personal or political ax to grind. He has served in high positions under Presidents of both parties and may again; he stands to gain nothing and lose much by opposing the will of the Congress, not to say the law. And our Special Operations Force capability exists now as a matter of law.

It should be noted too, that the welfare of our Special Operations capability does not reside exclusively with the Services or the Secretary. Congress wisely gave the National Security Council a role vis-à-vis these forces. The National Security Advisor, General Colin Powell, is a man of stainless and unimpeachable integrity, and that integrity is another guarantor of the well-being of these assets. He is also a brilliant and broad-gauged military man, and I do believe he appreciates the utility of these assets; so there comes as well a pragmatic interest in, as well as a dogmatic commitment to, their survival and success.

Mr. Chairman, I noted at some length, in the beginning of this testimony, how opportunities were lost, how the issues got personalized and people got blinded to their own interests accordingly, how cooperation was refused, and how those who refused it ended up with the short end of the stick. I tried to suggest also that the real war is over, and nothing needs to be proved any further. It is understood that Congress has a more than passing interest in this matter, and that it has a hammer it is willing to use when necessary. It is understood this matter can't quietly squirreled away, to die of neglect in the dark when no one is looking.

The thing is won; the question is how to consolidate the victory. . . how to take "yes" for an answer.

What is happening here is that Frank Carlucci is co-signing for Ken Berquist a request for a loan of the confidence of this Committee. It doesn't seem to me consistent with the mandate so recently given him for you to deny that confidence, or to deny him his nominee.

There are those who see the year ahead as a fragile time for Special Operations Forces, and see that what is done in this year can do great damage to this initiative, and that what is not done can do great damage as well. I understand the argument, but I don't believe anything can kill this initiative now, for the simple reason that the geopolitical realities of the world now and for the foreseeable future require these forces and an understanding

of how to use them.

But the short answer to that concern is simply that, imputing the worst will in the world to Ken Berquist and assuming he has free rein to work his will, I don't think there can be any more damage done by putting him in the job than is being done by leaving the slot empty. The ship has as much chance of being washed up on the rocks with no one at the helm as it has of being deliberately steered onto the rocks by a malevolent helmsman.

Indeed, it has probably a greater chance. For, if Mr. Berquist should be confirmed in this post, he will be watched more closely than anyone in the Pentagon with the possible exception of Fawn Hall, and I believe he will be left with little choice but to steer as straight as he knows how. More than this, in spite of past suspicions, and current fears, I have great difficulty imagining that a person could take something which so many have struggled to create, something the necessity for which is no longer susceptible to reasonable debate, and deliberately destroy it out of a hope for some personal gain consisting of we know not what.

I would rather give him the benefit of any doubt and expect the best of him, knowing that people generally do better when you expect them to, than if you start them off with a chip on their shoulder. I'd think, like most of us, he'd want to be remembered for the good he did, rather than the harm; for what he built, than for what he tore down.

Common sense says to give Frank Carlucci the benefit of the doubt, as well. Because if you deny him the nominee he wants, he will send up another in due time, but you will have left him to associate this initiative with a personal hurt, and unnecessarily soured and sharpened the intrinsic adversarial nature of the relationship between OSD and the Congress which -- as I understand it -- is not a condition to which anyone is anxious to return anytime soon.

We are on the hinge of events here, Mr. Chairman, with an opportunity that may not occur again soon. None of the present top military leadership have any personal ego investment in the outcome of this issue; none have to prove that they can't be told what to do: the issue now rests largely with OSD and how it chooses to act in the weeks and months ahead, and this Committee will help to vector those choices by its decision in this matter. You can deny this nomination. . . and the feeling for doing so is strong. But the way this matter is aligned, if you strike at Berquist, you wound Carlucci whose every signal has been of a desire to cooperate and collaborate with you. It is difficult to see where the benefit comes in closing the door to cooperation and collaboration on this issue.

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In 1942 the first units of what would become the 10th Mountain Division were created over the objections of key leaders in the Army. It was a special purpose unit, not to say a special operations unit; it was unusual in that it was conceived by civilians, and mid-wifed into existence through political influence. Even the recruiting was done by civilians of the National Ski Patrol. It had per capita the highest number of college graduates -- and most of them rich, Ivy League college graduates -- of any unit in the Army; it had also some of the physically toughest men in the country because, when they exhausted the Ivy League skiers base, the recruiters went after cowboys, trappers, loggers and others of that sort; it had a number of champions of various sorts, including two Olympians. The division was fit to fight.

But it had been inflicted on the Army by outsiders. The Army leadership sat on the 10th Mountain from 1942 until 1945, the year the war ended. And, in February of that year, they finally fought the unit in Italy where, from February to June, the 10th Mountain Division distinguished itself as one of the most competent and illustrious divisions in U.S. military history.

When the war was over, the unit was disbanded. It was only recently resurrected as one of the new light divisions.

It is important that the people who have to use Special Operations Forces and the people who have to make decisions about their use believe in these assets and be comfortable with them, and that will take a period of adjustment and acclimatization. The sooner this begins, the better. It can't begin so long as the precedent for hostility between Congress and OSD over Special Operations Forces is sustained. This only plays into the hands of those who have wanted to see this effort fail.

Thank you.

Chairman NUNN. Thank you very much, Mr. Koch, for being here. And we also thank you for your past service to the defense of our Nation.

Mr. Kieff.

STATEMENT OF NELSON R. KIEFF

Mr. KIEFF. Senator Nunn, I have a prepared statement that I would like to have in its entirety entered in the record.

And in the interests of time, it is a rather lengthy statement, I would like to simply read the conclusions of it, if I may.

Chairman NUNN. That will be fine. We will put your entire statement in the record, without objection.

Mr. KIEFF. I read from the concluding paragraphs of the written statement:

Substantial warnings counseled against entrusting Mr. Bergquist with the grave responsibility of the ASD SO/LIC.

His candidacy began, but must not successfully complete, a tainted selection process. As an aside comment, I would like to point out in regard to Mr. Koch's statement that this was not a selection process that Mr. Carlucci had any part of. Candidates were selected, and others rejected, by an other than disinterested arbiter, operating without discernible standards.

Goldwater-Nichols required early identification of candidate qualifications to provide the Secretary of Defense and the President with standards to measure the stature of the person to carry out effectively the duties and responsibilities of the office. Little more than passing thought was given this serious duty, and I may add here, to the written comment, that it was quite late.

Chairman NUNN. I do not know whether Senator Cohen has seen this. I am going to put in the record at this point, an inquiry of the Department of Defense General Counsel whether that statute had been complied with that Mr. Kieff has just cited, which says,

That when a vacancy occurs in an office in the Department of Defense, and the office is to be filled by a person appointed from civilian life by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, the Secretary of Defense shall inform the President of the qualifications needed by a person serving in that office to carry out effectively the duties and responsibilities of that office.

The Kathleen Buck December 9 letter says, the only official written information describing the position itself is the statute by which the position was created, and the legislative history of that statute.

Although substantial written information about Mr. Bergquist's personal qualifications was provided by the Department of Defense to the President, as such information has been provided to the committee, no other written information concerning generic require