Without these the expanding civilian nuclear power industry provides too much of an attractive economic advantage for all but the most dedicated individuals to pass up.

I have always had the support of the Congress in providing the measures necessary to retain the nuclear trained personnel that the country has invested so much in and expects so much of. Let me assure you that I appreciate this support and urge that it be continued in order to allow us to continue to properly operate our expanding nuclear fleet.

Mr. SIKES. You said on a number of occasions that too many people in some offices of the Government are not yet under civil service regulations and under existing law it is difficult to eliminate nonessential personnel whether or not they have any work to do. The Government appears reluctant to make recommendations on this subject, at any rate, they do not make such recommendations. Do you have any thoughts on this?

DEVELOPMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAYERS SINCE CIVIL WAR

Admiral RICKOVER. Yes, sir. I have some comparisions I would like to make that I think you will find interesting.

In the Civil War-the War of Northern aggression-the headquarters organization of the Federal Navy consisted of 87 military and civilian employees. In that war the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, aided by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox ran a Navy of over 600 ships and the Marine Corps. He was the senior decisionmaker to whom all plans were submitted; the final authority on matters great and small. Welles personally kept a careful watch over the work in progress in Navy yards as reported weekly by the various commandants. He personally approved the assignment of officers, and he made the final decisions concerning shipbuilding programs, major naval operations, and the general lines of naval policy. Moreover, he was a Cabinet member with ready access to the President.

Compare this with the position of the Secretary of the Navy as it has evolved over the years. The Secretary still nominally runs the Navy and the Marine Corps, but his real power is limited. Senior naval officers decide officer assignments and promotion, and the Secretary is consulted only for a few top positions. It is mainly naval officers who watch over the work in the shipyards and formulate plans for shipbuilding programs. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense make, or assist the President in making, decisions on naval operations.

Where the Secretary of the Navy does approve shipbuilding matters or matters of naval policy, he can be effectively overruled by many Defense Department officials. As a sign of his loss of power, he is no longer a Cabinet member and does not have legal access to the President.

The loss of the Secretary's power coincides with the administrative growth of the service. In Welles' day, the Navy's organization was simple; today it is massive and complex. There are vast layers of civilian and military bureaucrats, and hundreds of admirals, each with his own personal staff. The Navy has 10 times as many active duty personnel today as in the Civil War; yet it has over 200 times the number of civilians in the Navy Department as compared to 1865.

COMPARISON TO WORLD WAR II

It has essentially become a top-heavy land force with a small percentage of its officers at sea. Currently there are about 62,000 naval officers on active duty and about 465,000 enlisted personnel. This means there is one officer for every seven enlisted men. Only 18 percent of the officers on duty are assigned to sea billets.

In World War II, there was 1 flag officer for every 7,200 people in the Navy. Today there is 1 admiral for every 1,900 people. Of the 284 flag officers in the Navy 150 were on duty in the Washington area as of January 1, 1975. This also means that with about 500 active ships there is almost 1 flag officer for every 2 ships in the Navy. In 1865, there were 19 commodores and 6 admirals in a Navy of 620 ships, or about 1 flag officer for every 27 ships. Today there are almost eight captains for every ship in the Navy. You can see what tremendous proliferations of people has occurred.

The problem extends to the shore establishment. While the number of ships dropped from 876 in 1968 to about 500 in 1975, the shore establishment has remained essentially unchanged. Navy military construction appropriations for fiscal year 1975 was $562.4 million. This is approximately one-third of the total amount of money spent for overhauling ships which is about $1.6 billion. At the same time, 74 ship overhauls in fiscal year 1975 had to be deferred because of lack of funds. Over a half-billion dollars of money is going to the shore establishment even though ships cannot get urgently needed work accomplished. If we ever reduced the fleet to one ship we probably would still have the same shore establishment to keep supporting it.

I am merely giving these figures to you to give you an idea of where the money is going.

Mr. SIKES. Have you been talking about primarily uniformed personnel?

Admiral RICKOVER. Yes, sir. But the problem exists for both military and civilan elements. In fact the biggest problem I see is in the Defense Department organization with its vast overlaying of organizations.

THE PROBLEM OF LAYERING

Layering is a problem that stifles initiative, destroys morale, and creates unnecessary delays and costs. The layering and bureaucracy are sometimes so suffocating that I am convinced no surviving corporation could be run like the Department of Defense. It is a contradiction in terms. No business enterprise could possibly operate like this.

Decisions must increasingly be referred to higher and higher levels in the Navy and the DOD. Pope Pius XI warned about this problem in 1931 in his Encyclical "Quadragesimo Anno" when he said:

It is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social and never destroy and absorb them. These words were meant for society as a whole, but they apply equally to the different levels within any large organization, especially the Defense Department. The higher level must not absorb the functions of the lower one on the assumption that, being higher, it will

automatically be wiser and fulfill them more efficiently. Loyalty can grow only from the smaller units to the larger and higher ones, not the other way round; and loyalty is an essential element in the health of any organization.

Mr. SIKES. How has this affected the work of people below the top levels?

Admiral RICKOVER. It has increased the work, and slowed it down. As decisionmaking becomes more centralized, the officials making the decisions find they need more staff. As a result, recent years have seen numerous bright, imaginative young people-right out of school and seeking ways to make their mark-placed in important and responsible positions in the Defense Department.

They spend much of their time finding fault with the work of those who actually do the work. They believe that their learning in law school or their systems analysis training has given them the superior knowledge and the expertise to overrule the work of mundane responsible people who have been at their jobs for many years. They consider the latter to be stodgy and unimaginative. Many of these young inexperienced staff members confuse themselves with the senior officials for whom they work, and readily use their superiors' authority.

The growing tendency is to let these bright young men make the rules governing the Defense Department and the conduct of its business. They are constantly asking questions which require answers without delay and at the expense of the technical work which must be done. For this reason, substantive work must be delayed to answer their requests.

Fighting this layering is about as effective as was the sprinkling of rosewater against bubonic plague. I find I can sometimes wind or unwind the redtape, but rarely cut it; I can sometimes facilitate, but rarely create.

BUREAUCRATIC RIGIDITY

It has been said that the Government is trapped by its own massive bureaucracies. In this respect, the Defense Department is probably no more bureaucratic than the other immense agencies in Washington. In these organizations, approaches to issues seem more oriented to process than to purpose. As the agencies grow in size, decisionmaking becomes more difficult, and less effective. Top officials are so far removed from the issues and the people doing the work that they are reduced to exhortations rather than to leadership. But official cliches fail to arouse a response. The grinding wheels of bureaucracy turn, but with less and less purpose and effect.

I am not naive. We need bureaucracies in order to get much of the work done that the Government is called upon to do. What I rebel against are studies performed to please some bureaucratic mandarin, and the inevitable dominance of little men with little ideas-in other words, bureaucratic rigidity.

I am reminded of one of the czars of Russia who, while walking in his park, came upon a sentry standing before a small patch of weeds. The czar asked him what he was doing there. The sentry did not know; all he could say was that he had been ordered to his post by the captain of the guard. But the captain could only say that the regulations had always called for a sentry at that particular spot. His curiosity having

been aroused, the czar ordered an investigation. But no living man at the court could remember a time when there had not been a sentry at the post and none could say what he was guarding.

Finally, the archives were opened and after a long search the mystery was solved. The records showed that Catherine the Great had once planted a rosebush in that plot of ground. A sentry had been put there to see that no one trampled it. The rosebush died. But no one had thought to cancel the order for the sentry. And so for 100 years the spot where the rosebush had once been was watched by men who did not know what they were watching.

There is no reason why the Defense Department must succumb to this kind of bureaucratic problem. But avoiding it will require more than cosmetic change. The structure of decisionmaking must be rationalized. The burden of proof should lie with those who deprive the lower levels of their function, and thereby their freedom and responsibility. But most of all, the number of layers must be drastically reduced.

Mr. SIKES. How many people did Gideon Welles have?

Admiral RICKOVER. Gideon Welles and Gustavus Fox, with 87 headquarters people, ran the Navy. They dictated the operations at sea. They dictated what the fleet would consist of. But today you must go through 15 or 16 levels before you can get anywhere. At each level the people just delay things because they do not know enough to take action. They make sure they get 20 or 30 initials before they will agree. All of this causes delay and delay costs a lot of money. One thing Congress can do, is to reduce the shore establishment and the huge civilian Defense establishment. Unless you do that, you will never have an efficient Navy-until war comes, and its problems force drastic change.

When war comes it will be looked at, of necessity, but it might be too late by then.

Mr. SIKES. Let me go to another subject.

Admiral RICKOVER. I can talk about that problem at great length because I am a victim of it.

SOVIET INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES

Mr. SIKES. Let's talk about detente now. That is a popular word, detente with the Soviet Union is gaining a lot of credence in some circles. Has detente, if there is such a thing, altered the scope of Soviet intelligence activities in this country?

Admiral RICKOVER. No, sir; it has not.

The scope of Soviet intelligence collection in this country has widened enormously in recent years. Resident Soviet officials at their embassy, the Soviet Mission to the U.N., and other facilities in the United States are now joined by increasing numbers of commercial representatives and persons sponsored by various exchange programs in the overt collection of information which could have an impact upon the security of the United States.

Since the United States and U.S.S.R. established formal diplomatic relations in 1933, the number of Soviet diplomats and other officials assigned to the United States has increased substantially, as has the

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variety of their positions and functions. The total Soviet presence of officially assigned personnel stands at about 1,000.

Increasing interaction between the United States and U.S.S.R. affords considerably greater opportunities for Soviet representatives to contact directly Americans who may possess information responsive to general or highly specific collection requirements. In addition to U.S. officials, who traditionally have been approached openly by their Soviet counterparts, American scientists, technicians and businessmen, also are being contacted by an expanding number of Soviet visitors.

INCREASE IN DIRECT CONTACTS

Occasions for direct contact between various Soviet ministry delegations and U.S. businessmen greatly increased in 1972 and 1973. The list of U.S. firms, for example, which entered into cooperation agreements in science and technology with the U.S.S.R. during this period included Bechtel Corp., Boeing Co., Control Data Corp., Dresser Industries, Inc., General Dynamics Corp., General Electric Co., HewlettPackard Co., International Telephone and Telegraph Corp., Litton Industries, Monsanto Co., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Singer Co., Stanford Research Institute, Tenneco Inc., and Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. The agreements are of a general nature calling not for the delivery of specific products or services but for cooperative developments in various fields. Reciprocal visits of scientists and engineers, joint symposia, and other forms of information exchange are provided for in the agreements, which on the Soviet side are sponsored by the State Committee on Science and Technology.

As a measure of the increased contact approximately 460 Soviet scientists sponsored by the various exchange programs came to the United States in 1973, a greater number than the total for the 3 previous years combined. Statistics on Soviet commercial visitors to the United States vary; however, the lowest available 1973 figure of 750 is more than three times the 1971 estimate of 200. Bilateral trade in 1973 totaled a record $1.4 billion, more than double the level for 1972. These figures place the United States second only to the Federal Republic of Germany among the U.S.S.R.'s Western trading partners.

U.S. MILITARY INFORMATION EASILY AVAILABLE

Mr. SIKES. I suppose they don't have to work hard to be successful? Admiral RICKOVER. No, sir.

Overt intelligence collection is made highly profitable in the United States because unclassified printed materials available in the public domain contain an incredible amount of information on the size and composition of the U.S. military establishment, including its major commands and their organization, training, state of readiness and weaponry. Unclassified documents sold by the Department of Commerce National Technical Information Service (NTIS), one of the many open channels of information in the United States, provide significant amounts of data of value to the Soviets. Soviet representatives may obtain any unclassified publications available to the Ameri