John W. Morris
Q ..
Going back to what you just said, is it true to say that for installation commanders, both
facilities engineering and this environmental plan were issues that were important to them,
but they didn't particularly want to concentrate on them?
I'd say the environment was something they thought was a lesser priority than training.
A
The reason the facilities engineer business kept popping up as a management problem was
that most commanders wanted to control the post O&M money. If it wasn't for the fact that
they wanted the money, it would have been a simple matter for the Chief of Engineers to
become the facility engineer for the Army in an effective operational sense, not just in a staff
sense. We never could and still haven't been able to get the installation commanders to release
that money, relinquish the money.
The Corps can budget it, you know, and they put it in the program, but when it comes out, it's
a post commanding general's to allocate. So they may have held hands off, you know, of the
environmental needs.
Q ..
Because one of the complaints is that they want results they can see right away or very soon.
That's one of the reasons why, later on, we got into this one-stop shopping idea. To me it was
A
just unreasonable that all the Corps' talent on the civil side of our house was not at least
available on a reimbursable basis to help the posts. The one-stop shopping idea turned out to
be a winner. The posts were getting immediate results. I mean, if they had a problem, if their
staff couldn't handle it, the post commander or his representative could call up some district
and get help. That started off as just a peanuts program. Now I think work worth hundreds of
millions of dollars goes through that process.
It's improved the Corps' relationship within the Army, at least the Army's understanding.
That's always been an educational problem, getting the Chief of Engineers' civil works
mission to be part of the Chief of Staff of the Army's mission. I mean, those trails have not
always even stayed parallel, much less converge. We'll come to that later, too, because we did
a lot of work on that subject. I think some decent work.
Q ..
Maybe we could conclude today by getting your summary ideas about being deputy. As you
pointed out, by the end of the time you were deputy, you knew that you were going to be
Chief. That made it a little different, but how would you characterize the position of deputy
and how you felt about the work there?
A
The position of deputy is directly influenced by the personality of the Chief. In the case of
General Gribble, he was perfectly happy for the deputy to oversee the civil works program as
his alter ego, basically to manage the aspects of the regulatory issue, the dredging problems,
and all the rest.
He did not have a vastly different attitude toward the military programs, but he seemed to be
a little more involved in the military directly. As far as research and development was
concerned, having been head of research and development for the Army, he was very close
to that. So my work as deputy involved those things which either belonged to the deputy by
some kind of a regulation, or the things the Chief would rather have him do. In my case, the
deputy position provided a great opportunity to get back "up-to-speed" on other than civil
works activities in OCE, the Corps, and the Army as a whole.
As an overall assessment of the job, being deputy for General Gribble for three years would
have been fine. The only problem I would have had, if any, could be my own personality. I'm
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