Engineer Memoirs
Executive to the Secretary of the Army, 19671968
Q:
You stayed in the Pentagon when this--
A:
Before that happened, stemming from my contacts with him on this Panama problem,
Stanley Resor decided he would like to have me come into his office as his exec. His
exec at the time was to go to command a unit and actually went to command the 6th
Cavalry Regiment at Fort Meade [Maryland]. He needed to replace this man, [Colonel]
Clay Gompf.
My friend, [Lieutenant General Richard H.] Dick Groves, the son of the general we've
talked of earlier, who then worked in Resor's office, tells this story. They would have
meetings about who to get to replace Gompf. Resor would say, "I want somebody like
Ernie Graves." Then they'd go out hunting. According to Groves, after this had been
going on for a month, he said, "Well, why don't you get Ernie Graves?" So they got
me.
Q:
I've got a lot of neighbors who work in the Pentagon--lieutenant colonels and colonels
in the Army and Air Force and commanders and captains in the Navy. And I want to
read you this quotation from Major General [William A.] Bill Carter, from his
interview, because I think my neighbors bear it out, but I'm interested in your reaction.
General Carter said, "At the Pentagon, you always work night and day. It doesn't make
a difference whether there's a war or not. They generate their wars."
A:
Well, that's true, although it happened that when I was there, in the areas in which I
worked, in one case there was a real issue with Panama, which was not trivial; and in
the other case, we were in a war with Vietnam.
So he's right. The JCS involvement with this Panama negotiation was an example of
that, where there were issues that weren't that important, but that consumed a lot of
time.
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to say that all the time consumed in that
negotiation was over a trivial issue. There was a fundamental conflict between the
United States and Panama over our, if you will, colonial position in their country, on
the one hand, and domestically, the view that the Panama Canal was a vital utility to the
United States and we should not allow a small country to dictate to us the policy and
operations affecting this utility. So that was a real issue.
As far as the Vietnam War is concerned, I was in Resor's office during the Tet
offensive. I was there during the famous--or infamous--squabble over the intelligence,
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