United States Secretary of Defense
Secretary of Defense of the United States of America |
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Flag of the Secretary of Defense[1] |
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Seal of the Department of Defense Department of Defense Office of the Secretary of Defense |
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Department | Department of Defense Office of the Secretary of Defense |
Style | Mister Secretary |
Formation | September 19, 1947 |
First holder | James Forrestal[2] |
Succession | Sixth in the presidential line of succession.[3] |
Deputy | Deputy Secretary of Defense (principal deputy) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (military deputy) |
Salary | Executive Schedule, Level 1[4] |
Website | The Official Home of the Department of Defense |
The Secretary of Defense (SecDef) is the leader and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense, an Executive Department of the Government of the United States of America.[5][6][7] This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in many other countries.[8] The Secretary of Defense is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council.[9]
Secretary of Defense is a statutory office, and the general provision in 10 U.S.C. § 113 provides that the Secretary of Defense has "authority, direction and control over the Department of Defense", and is further designated by the same statute as "the principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of Defense."[10] Ensuring civilian control of the military, an individual may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular (i.e., non-reserve) component of an armed force.[11]
The Secretary of Defense is in the chain of command and exercises command and control, subject only to the orders of the President, over all Department of Defense forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) for both operational and administrative purposes.[12][13][14][15] Only the Secretary of Defense (or the President) can authorize the transfer of operational control of forces between the three Military Departments (Departments of the Army, Navy & Air Force) and the currently nine Combatant Commands (Africa Command, Central Command, European Command, Northern Command, Pacific Command, Southern Command, Special Operations Command, Strategic Command, Transportation Command), and between the Combatant Commands.[16] Because the Office of Secretary of Defense is vested with legal powers which exceeds those of any commissioned officer, and is second only to the Office of President in the military hierarchy, it has sometimes unofficially been referred to as a de facto "deputy commander-in-chief".[17][18][19] The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the principal military adviser to the Secretary of Defense and the President, and while the Chairman may assist the Secretary and President in their command functions, the Chairman is not in the chain of command.[20]
The Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, are generally regarded as the four most important cabinet officials because of the importance of their departments.[21] Secretary of Defense is a Level I position of the Executive Schedule and thus earns a salary of $199,700 per year. The current Secretary is Leon Panetta, who assumed office July 1, 2011.
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[edit] History
The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were established in 1775, in concurrence with the American Revolution. The War Department, headed by the Secretary of War, was created by Act of Congress in 1789 and was responsible for both the Army and Navy until the founding of a separate Department of the Navy in 1798.
Based on the experiences of World War II, proposals were soon made on how to more effectively manage the large combined military establishment. The Army generally favored centralization while the Navy had institutional preferences for decentralization and the status quo. The resulting National Security Act of 1947 was largely a compromise between these divergent viewpoints. The Act split the War Department into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, each with their own Secretary, and created a sui generis National Military Establishment led by a Secretary of Defense. At first, each of the service secretaries maintained quasi-cabinet status. The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, who in his previous capacity as Secretary of the Navy had opposed creation of the new position, found it difficult to exercise authority over them with the limited powers his office had at the time. To address this and other problems, the National Security Act was amended in 1949 to further consolidate the national defense structure in order to reduce interservice rivalry, directly subordinate the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to the Secretary of Defense in the chain of command, and rename the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense as one Executive Department. The position of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the number two position in the department, was also created at this time.
The general trend since 1949 has been to further centralize management in the Department of Defense, elevating the status and authorities of civilian OSD appointees and defense-wide organizations at the expense of the military departments and the services within them. The last major revision of the statutory framework concerning the position was done in the Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. In particular, it elevated the status of joint service for commissioned officers, making it in practice a requirement before appointments to general officer and flag officer grades could be made.
[edit] Powers and functions
In the U.S. Armed Forces, the Secretary of Defense is often referred to as SecDef or SD. The Secretary of Defense and the President together constitute the National Command Authorities (NCA),[22] which has sole authority to launch strategic nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons are governed by this dual-authority – both must concur before a strategic nuclear strike may be ordered.
The Secretary of Defense by statute also exercises "authority, direction and control" over the three Secretaries of the military departments (Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of the Air Force), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Chief of Staff, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations, and Air Force Chief of Staff), the Combatant Commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands, the Directors of the Defense Agencies (for example the Director of the National Security Agency) and of the DoD Field Activities. All of these high-ranking positions require Senate confirmation.
[edit] Office of the Secretary of Defense
The Secretary's principally civilian staff element is called the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and is composed of the Deputy Secretary of Defense (DEPSECDEF) and five Under Secretaries of Defense in the fields of Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, Comptroller/Chief Financial Officer, Intelligence, Personnel & Readiness, and Policy; several Assistant Secretaries of Defense; other directors and the staffs under them.
The name of the principally military staff organization, organized under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the Joint Staff (JS).
[edit] Role in the military justice system
The Secretary is one of few civilians — others are the President, the three "service secretaries" (the Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of the Air Force), and the Secretary of Homeland Security (when the United States Coast Guard is under the United States Department of Homeland Security and has not been transferred to the Department of the Navy under the Department of Defense) — authorized to act as convening authority in the military justice system for General Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 822: article 22, UCMJ), Special Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 823: article 23, UCMJ), and Summary Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 824: article 24 UCMJ).
[edit] List of Secretaries of Defense
The longest-serving Secretary of Defense is the late Robert McNamara, who served for a total of 2,595 days. Combining his two non-sequential services as Secretary of Defense, the second longest serving is Donald Rumsfeld, who served merely ten days fewer than McNamara.
- Parties
- Status
No. | Portrait | Name | State of Residence | Took Office | Left Office | Days served | President serving under |
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1 | James Vincent Forrestal | New York | September 19, 1947 | March 19, 1949 | 558 | Harry S. Truman | ||
2 | Louis Arthur Johnson | West Virginia | March 28, 1949 | September 19, 1950 | 540 | |||
3 | George Catlett Marshall, Jr. | Pennsylvania | September 19, 1950 | September 19, 1951 | 365 | |||
4 | Robert Abercrombie Lovett | New York | September 19, 1951 | January 20, 1953 | 491 | |||
5 | Charles Erwin Wilson | Michigan | January 20, 1953 | October 8, 1957 | 1,722 | Dwight D. Eisenhower | ||
6 | Neil Hosler McElroy | Ohio | October 9, 1957 | December 1, 1959 | 783 | |||
7 | Thomas Sovereign Gates, Jr. | Pennsylvania | December 2, 1959 | January 20, 1961 | 415 | |||
8 | Robert Strange McNamara | Michigan | January 21, 1961 | February 29, 1968 | 2,595 | John F. Kennedy | ||
Lyndon B. Johnson | ||||||||
9 | Clark McAdams Clifford | Maryland | March 1, 1968 | January 20, 1969 | 326 | |||
10 | Melvin Robert Laird | Wisconsin | January 22, 1969 | January 29, 1973 | 1,469 | Richard Nixon | ||
11 | Elliot Lee Richardson | Massachusetts | January 30, 1973 | May 24, 1973 | 114 | |||
– | William Perry Clements, Jr. (as Deputy Secretary) |
Texas | May 24, 1973 | July 2, 1973 | 39 | |||
12 | James Rodney Schlesinger | Virginia | July 2, 1973 | November 19, 1975 | 870 | |||
Gerald Ford | ||||||||
13 | Donald Rumsfeld | Illinois | November 20, 1975 | January 20, 1977 | 427 | |||
14 | Harold Brown | California | January 21, 1977 | January 20, 1981 | 1,460 | Jimmy Carter | ||
15 | Caspar Willard Weinberger | California | January 21, 1981 | November 23, 1987 | 2,497 | Ronald Reagan | ||
16 | Frank Charles Carlucci III | Virginia | November 23, 1987 | January 20, 1989 | 424 | |||
– | William Howard Taft IV (as Deputy Secretary) |
Ohio | January 20, 1989 | March 20, 1989 | 59 | George H. W. Bush | ||
17 | Richard Bruce Cheney | Wyoming | March 21, 1989 | January 20, 1993 | 1,402 | |||
18 | Leslie Aspin, Jr. | Wisconsin | January 21, 1993 | February 3, 1994 | 378 | Bill Clinton | ||
19 | William James Perry | Pennsylvania | February 3, 1994 | January 24, 1997 | 1,085 | |||
20 | William Sebastian Cohen | Maine | January 24, 1997 | January 20, 2001 | 1,457 | |||
21 | Donald Rumsfeld | Illinois | January 20, 2001 | December 18, 2006 | 2,158 | George W. Bush | ||
22 | Robert M. Gates | Texas | December 18, 2006 | July 1, 2011[23] | 1,643 | |||
Barack Obama | ||||||||
23 | Leon Panetta | California | July 1, 2011 | Incumbent | 538 |
[edit] Succession
[edit] Presidential succession
The Secretary of Defense is sixth in the presidential line of succession, following the Secretary of the Treasury and preceding the Attorney General.[24]
[edit] Secretary of Defense succession
In Executive Order 13533 of March 1, 2010, President Barack Obama modified the line of succession regarding who would act as Secretary of Defense in the event of a vacancy or incapacitation, thus reversing the changes made by President George W. Bush in Executive Order 13394 as to the relative positions of the Secretaries of the Military Departments. All of the officials in the line of succession are civilians appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate:
[edit] Living former Secretaries of Defense
- 10th: Melvin Robert Laird
- 12th: James Rodney Schlesinger
- 13th and 21st: Donald Henry Rumsfeld
- 14th: Harold Brown
- 16th: Frank Charles Carlucci III
- 17th: Richard Bruce Cheney
- 19th: William James Perry
- 20th: William Sebastian Cohen
- 22nd: Robert Michael Gates
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/UniformedServices/Flags/Pos_Colors_DoD.aspx, accessed on 2012-01-04.
- ^ http://osdhistory.defense.gov/SODs/forrestal.html, accessed on 2012-01-04.
- ^ 3 U.S.C. § 19
- ^ 5 U.S.C. § 5312.
- ^ 10 U.S.C. § 113.
- ^ Enclosure 2 (a), DoDD5100.1 (2010).
- ^ 5 U.S.C. § 101.
- ^ http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-C0FDE451-36F2483B/natolive/nato_countries.htm, accessed on 2012-01-04.
- ^ 50 U.S.C. § 402.
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §113
- ^ The National Security Act of 1947 originally required an interval of ten years after relief from active duty, which was reduced to seven years by Sec. 903(a) of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. In 1950 Congress passed special legislation (Pub. Law 81-788) to allow George C. Marshall to serve as Secretary of Defense while remaining a commissioned officer on the active list of the Army (Army regulations kept all five-star generals on active duty for life), but warned:
It is hereby expressed as the intent of the Congress that the authority granted by this Act is not to be construed as approval by the Congress of continuing appointments of military men to the office of Secretary of Defense in the future. It is hereby expressed as the sense of the Congress that after General Marshall leaves the office of Secretary of Defense, no additional appointments of military men to that office shall be approved.
See Defenselink bio, retrieved 8/2/2010; and Marshall Foundation bio, retrieved 8/2/2010.
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §162(b)
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §3011
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §5011
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §8011
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §162(a)
- ^ Trask & Goldberg (1997). pp.11 & 52.
- ^ Cohen, Eliot A., Supreme Command: soldiers, statesmen and leadership in wartime (2003). p.231. ISBN 978-1-4000-3404-8
- ^ http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/10/rumsfeld.html, accessed on 2012-01-06.
- ^ Title 10 of the United States Code §152(c)
- ^ Cabinets and Counselors: The President and the Executive Branch (1997). Congressional Quarterly. p. 87.
- ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O63-NationalCommandAuthoritis.html
- ^ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43591679/ns/politics-more_politics/
- ^ 3 U.S.C. § 19.
[edit] References
[edit] Federal law
[edit] Directives and doctrine
- Gates, Robert M. (2010-12-21). Department of Defense Directive 5100.1: Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components. Department of Defense Directive. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/510001p.pdf.
- Mullen, Michael G. (2009-03-20). Joint Publication 1 – Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States. Joint Publications. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1.pdf.
[edit] Print sources
- Trask, Roger R.; Goldberg, Alfred (1997). The Department of Defense 1997-1947: Organization and Leaders. Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense/U.S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 0-16-049163-0. http://osdhistory.defense.gov/docs/DOD%201947-1997%20Organization%20and%20Leaders.pdf.
[edit] Online sources
- "Histories of the Secretaries of Defense". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/. Retrieved September 3, 2002.
- "The Department of Defense Organizational Structure". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.dod.mil/odam/omp/pubs/GuideBook/DoD.htm#Secretary%20of%20Defense. Retrieved November 13, 2006.
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: United States Secretary of Defense |
- The Reinvention of Robert Gates by Michael Crowley, The New Republic, November 9, 2009
- "Top Civilian and Military Leaders". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/osd/topleaders.aspx. Retrieved October 13, 2007.[dead link] – Includes the Secretary of Defense
- More information on each position and biographies of the current Deputy Secretary (DepSecDef) and Under Secretaries (USDs)
United States presidential line of succession | ||
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Preceded by Secretary of the Treasury |
6th in line | Succeeded by Attorney General |
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