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This searching examination of privilege, responsibility, and esteem within the officer corps of all services evokes memories of one of the most-discussed articles ever published in Proceedings, excerpted heavily in these pages. Colonel Summers builds upon issues raised by the late Colonel Heinl more than three decades ago, and carries them forward into a current situation that shows few signs of improvement. Some of Colonel Heinl’s points have not survived the passage of time; unfortunately, most have.
odic lie detector tests. But Secretary Shultz, a former Ma' rine Corps officer, flatly refused. If his integrity and veracity were questionable (i.e., if the President did not have “special trust in his abilities”), Shultz reasoned, then he had no business being Secretary of State. But as long as he was Secretary of State he would not demean that office by allowing his honor to be brought into question and h>s integrity to be measured by a machine. Faced with his flat refusal to compromise his principles for the sake of bn
A dozen years ago. Army Chief of Staff General Bernard W. Rogers told his senior officers, “If the American people cannot trust our word, if they cannot rely on our conduct, we can hardly expect them to trust us with the lives of their sons and daughters. ... If we are to have the confidence of the public—and an officer corps worthy of the name—we must recapture our sense of indignation. We must treat those persons who disgrace our good name with the disapproval they deserve.”
High up and way down in the chain of command, former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Navy Lieutenant Elizabeth Susan Unger made headlines by refusing to allow their honor to be questioned and their integrity to be measured by machines, no matter how commendable the reasons for testing.
Those within our ranks who disgrace our good name are relatively easy to deal with. They can be brought to trial, stripped of their status as officers, and dismissed from the service. Much more insidious than such rogues and scoundrels, however, are those highly placed governmental functionaries who—in pursuit of what they see as a greater good—unwittingly undermine the special trust and confidence the officer corps traditionally deserves. These bureaucratic bunglers truly should excite our sense of indignation for, left to their own devices, they will surely destroy the very foundations of honorable service.
They certainly excited Secretary of State George Shultz’s indignation when they tried to undermine the special trust and confidence accorded to his office. Trying to stop leaks (a commendable goal in itself), they insisted that everyone, including the Secretary himself, take peri-
reaucratic expediency, the plan was quietly dumped in the trash bin where it belonged.
Unfortunately, no equivalent of George Shultz has emerged in the Pentagon. When the functionaries there Wgain in pursuit of a commendable goal—this time a rug-free service) devised rules and procedures that rode ^°ughshod over the concept of “special trust and confi- ence” and deliberately undercut the integrity of the offiCer corps, everyone fell in line. Well, almost everyone. A 2 September 1988 story in The Washington Post atelined Great Lakes Naval Training Center said that •cutenant Elizabeth Susan Unger, “the kind of officer e United States Navy usually brags about,” was facing a c°urt-martial for refusing to allow an enlisted woman to Monitor her while she gave a urine sample as part of a r°utine random drug-testing program. In a masterpiece of nderstatement Lieutenant Unger said, “I think it’s defining and degrading. ... I think it’s wrong.”
‘be Navy did not agree. Found guilty of willful disobe- ence of a lawful order, Lieutenant Unger resigned her °nimission rather than see it further demeaned.
Sometimes events only reveal their true meaning en they are put in historical perspective,” I wrote at the nie. “Go back 40 years and visualize telling Admiral ester Nimitz, the World War II naval hero, that he had
Then tell him a sailor had to watch him give the sample to ensure that he wasn’t cheating.”
Nimitz would have gone straight through the overhead, and you can be sure there would have been hell to pay after calling into question both his honor and his dignity. Today, the generals and admirals may have allowed their own honor to be impugned by willingly taking part in this drug-testing travesty, but Lieutenant Unger—a graduate of the first class at the Naval Academy to include women, a civil engineer, the wife of a Navy flight officer and daughter of a former Annapolis professor of chemistry— has not forgotten what being a naval officer is all about. Admiral Nimitz would have been proud.
At an earlier leadership lecture at the Army’s Command and General Staff College my theme was also the integrity of the officer corps. Harking back to the 2,000-year-old Confucian Doctrine of Names, I emphasized that “Never in the history of mankind has there ever been a military or naval officer who has abused drugs.” There may have been some who took drugs while wearing military or naval officers’ uniforms, but they were not officers. They just dressed like officers. As Confucius explained, a person’s title is contingent on his or her living up to the requirements the title conveys.
An American military or naval commission carries very specific requirements, for it is granted contingent on the “special trust and confidence” the President reposes in the officer’s “patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities.” In The Armed Forces Officer, S. L. A. Marshall emphasizes that the one key word on every military officer’s commission is fidelity. Patriotism, according to Marshall, is a clear-cut issue. Without love of country an American would not seek commission at its hands, unless pretending to serve in order to work injury. Valor, on the other hand, is an unknown, since the depths or limits of one’s courage are defined by crisis. Products (in part) of heredity and environment, individual abilities vary. Otherwise, intellect or even genius might be attained by effort alone.
But fidelity, according to Marshall, comes of personal decision. It is “the jewel within reach of every officer who has the will to possess it. It is the epitome of character.” Here we reach the nub of the case. For on the battlefield, will and character are everything.
As Karl Von Clausewitz wrote,
“It is the impact of the ebbing of moral and physical strength, of the heart-rendering spectacle of the dead and wounded, that the commander has to withstand— first in himself, and then in all those who directly or indirectly, have entrusted him with their thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears.
“. . .the inertia of the whole gradually comes to rest on the commander’s will alone. The ardour of his spirit must rekindle the flame of purpose in all others; his inward fire must revive their hope. Only to the extent that he can do this will he retain his hold on his men and keep control. Once that hold is lost, once his own courage can no longer revive the courage of his men, the mass will drag him down to the brutish world where danger is shirked and shame is unknown.”
Written more than 150 years ago, Clausewitz’s observation has been revalidated time and again. “I felt a flash of panic,” wrote rifleman Jack Smith (now ABC News White House correspondent) of his reaction when his company executive officer was gunned down in a North Vietnamese Army ambush in the la Drang valley in November 1966. “I had been assuming he would get us out of this. Enlisted men may scoff at officers back in the billets, but when the fighting begins, men automatically become very dependent upon them.”
It cannot be quantified, but the character and integrity of the officer corps is no small thing. Much more influential than arms and equipment, it determines success and failure on the battlefield.
That’s why the drug-testing procedures are so insidious. Instead of promoting “special trust and confidence” they deny it. They automatically classify all officers as suspected drug users, and also assume automatically that all officers are cheats who must be monitored to keep them from giving false samples. This denies the character and integrity of the officer corps and dangerously undermines military discipline by sending a message to the “other ranks” that their superiors are in fact not superior at all.
“If the American people cannot trust our word, if they cannot rely on our conduct, we can hardly expect them to trust us with the lives of their sons and daughters,” General Rogers wrote in 1977. Today, it is not the American people who “cannot trust our word” and “cannot rely on our conduct.” It is the military establishment itself. Timidly following the edicts of Department of Defense (DoD) functionaries who have no feel for—and certainly no re
sponsibility for—the battlefield performance of officers, generals and admirals lead the way in surrendering the integrity of the officer corps. At present, the only “special trust and confidence” is reposed primarily in the printouts of the drug-testing machines.
In fable, a small child had the wisdom to point out that the emperor had no clothes. In reality, it has taken a relatively low-ranking officer to point out that the officer corps is in danger of losing its soul. Not surprisingly’ Lieutenant Unger has a message that many prefer not to hear.
The most pathetic responses have come from officers trying to camouflage the surrender of their integrity by claiming they were merely setting the example. What they did not say—and what perhaps they could not admit to themselves—is that they have had no choice in the matter- If they did not “set the example” they would automatically join Lieutenant Unger in the dock.
Still other letters revealed how far the erosion has pr°' gressed. One officer wrote that next I’d want to eliminate mandatory physical fitness testing and weapons qualifica' tion. But for most of its existence the officer corps has believed that maintaining physical and technical prof"1' ciency is an officer’s duty. Years ago, officers would have regarded mandatory testing as an insult—a reflection on their character.
Most disturbing of all were letters from enlisted personnel who complained that their officers were not worthy 0 special trust. Whenever those whom the officer corps W*’ lead into battle question the integrity of their leaders, vVt are in big trouble. But in one respect that’s a self-inflicted
UNITED STATES NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS
Vol. No. 82, No. 5 May, 1956 Whole No. 639
SPECIAL TRUST AND CONFIDENCE
By LIEUTENANT COLONEL R. D. HEINL, Jr., U. S. Marine Corps
IN A lower-deck poker game aboard ship, runs an old Navy story, which probably antedates the Tuscarora with her five decks and a glass bottom, a sailor had his hand called, announced that he had a winning hand, and threw in his cards, faces down. One of his mates remonstrated, “Let me see those cards.”
Replied the first sailor, “In the wardroom the officers don't look at each other’s hands.”
“Sure,” came the answer, “but them sonsabitches is gentlemen!”
* * *
The opening words in your commission as an officer in the Armed Forces avow that the President of the United States, no less, reposes “special trust and confidence” in you.
Today, however, that special trust and confidence in you as a comm15' sioned officer is seemingly confinL'L to the President alone.
In the 18th Century, pontificated Samuel Johnson, “An officer is muc more respected than any other m3'1