Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Papers were sent to us from the Staff Action Control Office to keep us apprised of what was
happening on the Army Staff. A paper might come over that they would say was ready to go
to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and if they thought it was an important issue they'd
send us a copy. Or if a paper came in which they were bothered by or felt something was
amiss--they only had about three minutes to review any particular paper because they had so
many of them--and a more thorough review was needed, it would be given to us. Then we
would go down and try to talk with the staff officers involved from the sending office to
make sure it was straight, so we could recommend basically to the Chief of Staff that he
ought to sign it or not sign it, or perhaps he ought to call a meeting.
I would suppose that process was followed back on the command selection for district
engineers issue. The DCSPER sent a paper up saying the Chief of Engineers wants this thing
to happen, and I nonconcur. It was reviewed; it was sent to the special action team; and the
officer who was monitoring DCSPER or the Chief of Engineers actions looked at it and
determined there were a lot of issues and disagreement and recommended the Chief of Staff
of the Army call a meeting, bring them both in for a discussion, and make a decision.
Within the Office of the Chief of Staff we would write what we called a "BOM," which
stood for blue office memorandum--it had a blue border on it. That would go on top of the
Chief of Engineers' action paper or the DCSLOG's action paper or the others. On it we
would write our analysis and recommendation. Say, for example, the Staff Action Control
Office sent a paper over and thought it needed more review, and when we got into it, we took
issue with it or we felt it really wasn't complete. We would prepare a BOM to the Director of
the Army Staff or the Vice Chief or the Chief of Staff giving our views. "So and so sent up a
paper; he recommends this. However, in looking it over, there are several questions that
arise. We don't think it really answers this or that. Recommend the paper be returned with
the following questions to be asked...." Then we would sign our name as the action officer
making that recommendation. Then my boss, the chief of the special action team, and the
Director of the Army Staff for Coordination, Analysis and Reports would initial it and send it
on up.
Thus, the Chief of Staff would have the paper and he had his own inner staff comments on
top of it. When the paper came back out, the Chief of Staff would have written his decision.
Then the blue office memorandum would be pulled off--it would not go back to the
DCSLOG identifying this lieutenant colonel had taken issue with the lieutenant general's
recommendation. The Chief of Staff's decision would be written on the DCSLOG's paper.
So, what we really provided was a way for the Chief of Staff to have his own thoughts, and
also somebody to do a second independent analysis of an issue.
The Chief of Staff didn't have the time to do it all; somebody else could chase down the
issues. A paper might go in to him that everybody thought was clean, and he might say, "I'd
like CAR to look into the following...." So, we might then have to go look into an issue that
he initiated.
It was a very interesting assignment in that I might track certain things, but there was always
something going on where we were probing into various kinds of things to try to "do right for
168
Previous Page
