________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
the Army," and allow the Chief of Staff or Vice Chief of Staff to make the right kind of
decision.
Several interesting things came up. I remember one issue that came out followed General
Abrams saying, "We have got too many reports of survey and we never find anybody
responsible. Why can't we simplify the procedure where we just hold somebody responsible
if he loses something, and don't have to go through all this paperwork?"
He sent the Army's Inspector General around the Army to check. The Inspector General
came back and said, "We just got all kinds of stuff missing and we've got all kinds of
paperwork out there, and it takes forever to get it processed before we get the missing items
replaced."
So, the DCSLOG was asked to take a look at the issue. The answer that came back up said
basically that the fix was too tough because the Judge Advocate General [JAG] says we've
got to do all this stuff. The JAG was saying we've got to follow the law, and all that.
So, it came down to us in the special action team. I was the one who got the action, but there
were two or three of us who sat around and jawboned the issue so we would know what was
going on in the field. What it came down to was that we really ought to have a simple process
that, if a soldier loses something, that's simple negligence. You shouldn't have to go through
all the paperwork, but the soldier ought to pay for it through a simplified procedure.
So, I took the paper back to the DCSLOG and the JAG and nobody was happy with that. I
mean, it was sort of, "This is the way we do things and we should continue doing it the same
old way." By dialoguing things and by forcing the issue under the signature of the Director of
the Army Staff, people were required to relook the issue. Questions were asked back to the
DCSLOG and the JAG, "Why can't we do this?"
By going back and forth to the lieutenant general, Director of the Army Staff, we drove a
process whereby people relooked the issue, challenged the unthinkable, and came up with
new ideas, and we overcame the obstacles to change the system. So, that process was
operated by CAR, and specifically the special action team, so that was a value to the Chief of
Staff of the Army. We would get questions coming down from the Joint Chiefs: "What
about...; I heard about this..." and we would develop answers. Books and articles would
come out. We had a lot of them at that time right after Vietnam and My Lai, different kinds
of things where we would do an analysis and send it up in an executive summary so that the
Chief of Staff or the Vice Chief of Staff could get a feeling for what it was and have some
sense of what's in the book or paper and could send other questions out and get more into it
if they wanted to.
One project I did involved the Center of Military History. After General Abrams died in
office from cancer, General [Frederick C.] Weyand was selected to replace him. General
Weyand wanted to bring in former Chiefs of Staff and talk to them about the Army of the day
and the issues we faced.
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