◆ SpookStack

~ .. Beerli remember had been in DPD by that time for, I think, at least five years; so I had known him in a number of different capacities. I had known him out in the Nevada test site; I visited him when he was Base Commander in Ankara, Turkey; he had then been back as operations officer, if I am not mis- taken, and then he became the Chief of DPD. I had always regarded him as per- haps the best single Air Force Officer that moved through that operation in all of its years. Now I had a darn high regard for Beerli, so that's answer #1 -- I would admit to probably an element of prejudice on my part. Observation #2 is that with hindsight, I think my first decision still was the right one. Remem- ber that DPD had only absorbed what had been the Air Operations Unit of the old PM Staff, and here you did have a ready- made and a really highly competent organ- ization for the purpose of developing the [air] capability; and I think that to have tried in the short time span of the Cuban operation to have built another organiza- tion for that purpose would have been wasteful and duplicative and delaying itself. I think that was a correct de- cision on my part. The decision that with hindsight I think is questionable, was the failure to subordinate Beerli to Hawkins ••• I am inclined to think that was a mistaken decision as it turned out. Now if you want to know, however, the argument for it, I seem to remember feel- ing that the memo I wrote to Hawkins at least set forth the arguments pretty persuasively; and the argument, after all, by analogy was that you do have in the military, theater commanders, but you nevertheless do have an independent Air Force. I am well aware that this is a subject of certainly decades of debate over this problem in the military; but - 14 -