The National Security Act of 1947 (Pub.L. 80-253, 61 Stat. 495, enacted July 26, 1947) is a law enacting major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the provisions of the act took effect on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first secretary of defense.
The act merged the Department of the Army (renamed from the Department of War), the Department of the Navy, and the newly established Department of the Air Force (DAF) into the National Military Establishment (NME). The act also created the position of the secretary of defense as the head of the NME. It established the United States Air Force under the DAF, which worked to separate the Army Air Forces into its own service. It also protected the Marine Corps as an independent service under the Department of the Navy. Aside from the unification of the three military departments, the act established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, the latter of which is headed by the director of central intelligence.
The legislation was a result of efforts beginning in 1944. President Harry S. Truman proposed the legislation to Congress on February 26, 1947. The bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 28, 1947, and in the Senate on March 3, 1947. Senator Chan Gurney was the bill's sponsor. Senator Gurney, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, led committee hearings for the bill from mid-March to early May. The bill passed in the Senate on July 9, 1947, and in the House on July 19, 1947. The Senate agreed to a related House resolution () on July 16, 1947. The bill received bipartisan support and was passed in both chambers by voice vote. The National Security Act of 1947 was signed into law by President Truman on July 26, 1947, while aboard his VC-54C presidential aircraft Sacred Cow.
Background From 1921 to 1945, Congress considered approximately 50 bills to reorganize the armed forces. Mostly due to opposition by both the Department of the Navy and the War Department, all but one failed to reach the floor of the House, and even this one was defeated by a vote of 153 to 135 in 1932. However, by the end of World War II, several factors forced leaders to more seriously consider restructuring the military to improve unity.
Pearl Harbor By 1945, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had already been investigated several times, for example by the Roberts Commission, and would continue to be investigated through almost the end of the century. One of the findings that emerged was the probable role of intelligence failures linked to interservice bickering between Pearl Harbor's Army and Navy commanders, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel. Though not a court martial, the Roberts Commission explicitly accused the two of dereliction of duty for not conferring to coordinate in light of the warnings. “Admiral Kimmel, General Short Held Derelict in Duties,” The Miami Daily News, 25 January, 1942.
Joint operations in World War II During World War II, interservice cooperation remained voluntary, requiring complex interchanges of liaisons for planning and operations. Additionally, the Army and Navy often competed for resources, for example industrial production and new recruits. Enabling operations under these conditions had required the creation of numerous joint agencies and interdepartmental committees.
World War II had also given the US military two case studies of joint operations between Europe and the Pacific. In the Pacific, the Army and Navy had experienced constant friction from command and logistics problems. In Europe, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), created based on the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, had smoothed over these coordination problems and became President Roosevelt's principal military advisors.
The JCS became a key source of advocacy for creating a single unified military department after the war. Following studies by the JCS Joint Strategic Survey Committee on ways to resolve joint roles and missions problems, George Marshall published a memo in support of postwar unification on November 2, 1942. Marshall's memo called for the following:
Reorganizing the Navy and War Departments into a single department led by a civilian secretary Creating an independent air force under the new department Creating an independent supply service under the new department Placing each of the four services under a civilian secretary and a military chief of staff Creating a "United States General Staff" made up of the four service chiefs plus a chief of staff to the President.
The rise of air power During both world wars, but particularly World War II, aviation had become increasingly important. The aircraft carrier had overtaken the battleship as the Navy's premier surface combatant. Army airmen had called for an independent air service since 1919, and the Army's Air Corps had already been expanded into what bordered on a separate service. Finally, the advent of nuclear weapons delivered by bombers led some leaders, such as Curtis LeMay, to believe air power would inevitably become more decisive than ground warfare or sea power. The time seemed right to create an independent air force, but it would require congressional action.
Shrinking budgets Immediately following the war, confronting the Soviets was a lower priority than ending wartime austerity, balancing the federal budget, and returning to peace. This situation would not change until the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons in 1949, followed by the Korean War in 1950.
In this environment, forces were rapidly demobilized, and budgets were slashed. In Fiscal Year 1946, the military's total budget ceiling was approximately $42 billion. In fiscal year 1947, it was $14 billion. On V-J Day, the US military consisted of the Army's 91 Army divisions, 9 Marine Corps divisions, 1,166 combat ships in the Navy, and 213 combat groups in the Army Air Forces. By the end of demobilization on June 30, 1947, the Army had 10 divisions, the Marine Corps had 2 divisions, the Navy had 343 combat ships, and the Army Air Forces had 63 groups of which only 11 were fully operational.
As forces were reduced and budgets were cut, unification seemed like a promising way to save money by reducing duplication, and this would become a theme to which its proponents would repeatedly return. It also created a sense of urgency to quickly institutionalize lessons learned from World War II. However, the shrinking budgets also created a zero-sum game environment which encouraged interservice bickering by pitting Army and Navy advocates against each other.
Executive power Before World War II, congressional committees oversaw the Cabinet-level War Department and Navy Department, and while each department was separate from the other, both were able to obtain aircraft. During this time, the president had a level of authority over the departments. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress passed the First War Powers Act, which authorized the sitting president "to make such redistribution of functions among executive agencies as he may deem necessary" provided that it is "only in matters relating to the conduct of the present war" and that these authorities will expire "six months after the termination of the war."First War Powers Act of 1941, Pub.L. No. 77-354, 55 Stat. 838 (1941). https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/55/STATUTE-55-Pg838.pdf
During World War II, then-chief of staff of the Army George Marshall brought the idea of unification of the armed services to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but "he was routinely rebuffed on the grounds that a substantive discussion of this option while the country was at war might undermine the war effort." On August 26, 1944, future president Harry S. Truman, who was a senator at the time, wrote that "under such a set-up [of unification] another Pearl Harbor will not have to be feared" in his article "Our Armed Forces Must Be United". Military problems apparent during World War II that turned attention to the need for unification were a lack of preparedness, a lack of attention to "logistics in war," and a "lack of coordination among the services."
In the years following the war, President Truman had been pushing for the unification of the armed services until the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, having research conducted on the topic since 1944 and having expressed his desire for Congress to act on the issue as early as April 6, 1946. He stated in a letter to Congress on June 15, 1946, that he "consider[s] it vital that we have a unified force for our national defense."The Associated Press. (June 15, 1946). "President's program to unify the services, with Army-Navy views". The New York Times. President Truman had worked closely with the Army and the Navy to establish a consensus, but the departments struggled to come to an agreement until 1947.
Drafting legislation However, even if everyone could admit that a military reorganization was necessary, they could not agree on how it should be done. The process of obtaining even tentative consensus would take nearly four years.
The Woodrum Committee On March 28, 1944, the House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. James W. Wadsworth (R-NY) to create a Select Committee On Postwar Military Policy, and this began the debate. The committee chair was Rep. Clifton A. Woodrum (D-VA), and the committee itself was made up of seven members of the Naval Affairs Committee, seven members of the Military Affairs Committee, and nine other members.
Though the War Department considered asking for the hearings to be postponed to prevent an interservice fight that could hurt wartime unity, they decided not to when Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox told Secretary of War Henry Stimson that he also favored unification.
The hearings began on April 24, 1944. On the second day, Lieutenant General Joseph McNarney presented the War Department's plan for unification, which was essentially Marshall's plan as laid out in his memo.
On May 11, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Alexander Vandegrift, addressed the committee.
The hearings ended on May 19, 1944. Due to the increasingly apparent disagreements between the two departments, committee members and military leaders agreed that a fight between them would be bad for the war effort. In June, the committee reported the time was not right for legislation, but encouraged the two departments to continue to study unification.
The Richardson Committee While the Woodrum Committee met, the JCS continued to study the problem by convening their own committee of two Army officers and two Navy officers. It was led by former Pacific Fleet commander Admiral James O. Richardson. The Richardson committee interviewed eighty commanders both at war and in Washington, almost all of flag rank, to get their thoughts on postwar reorganization.
On April 18, 1945, the Richardson Committee presented their findings and recommendations. They found that most Army officers and about half the Navy officers favored unification to a single service, but disagreed on the details. The committee's recommendations went even farther than McNarney's, calling not only for one civilian secretary overseeing the military and none overseeing the individual services, but also calling for a single uniformed "Commander of all Forces."
The Eberstadt Report