Task force

“ A member of the Task Force may designate, to perform the Task Force functions of the member, a senior-level official who is a full-time officer or employee of the member’s agency. At the direction of the Co-Chairs, the Task Force may establish subgroups consisting exclusively of Task Force members or their designees, as appropriate. ”

“ Again, I think the President feels like the task force is an idea that combines a lot of smart people and a lot of different governmental jurisdictions with a senior advisor who has some real expertise in doing some of this restructuring and representing both the concerns of investors and bond holders, but also the livelihoods of tens of thousands of auto workers in the Midwest who need to have a seat at the table, as well. ”

“ By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution of the United States of America, and in order to extend the time for the Task Force to complete its work, Executive Order No. 12308 is hereby amended as follows:
Section 1. Section 1 is amended by deleting "No more than one member shall be a full-time Federal officer or employee. The remaining members shall not represent Executive agencies.".
Sec. 2. Section 4 (b) is amended to read, "The Task Force shall terminate on October 31, 1981.". ”

“ The Task Force shall consist of the heads of the following departments and agencies or their representatives: the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and Education; the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space and Administration, Small Business Administration, and Social Security Administration ”

“ Consistent with applicable law, the Task Force shall outline a Government-wide action plan that identifies existing Federal services for returning Global War on Terror service men and women and that ensures the provision of such services to those service members as effectively and expeditiously as possible. The Task Force shall submit the action plan to the President within 45 days of the date of this order. ”

“ During the virtual inaugural convening of the Task Force, representatives from more than 20 federal agencies and offices underscored the shared commitment of every agency in collaborating and coordinating across the federal government to ensure the United States leads the world in a clean energy revolution that creates American jobs with the chance to join a union and builds back an inclusive, equitable economy. ”

“ As part of any review of Joint Task Force 170's proposed strategy, I welcome any suggested interrogation methods that others may propose. I believe we should provide our interrogators with as many legally permissible tools as possible.
4. Although I am cognizant of the important policy ramifications of some of these proposed techniques, I firmly believe that we must quickly provide Joint Task Force 170 counter-resistance techniques to maximize the value of our intelligence collection mission.
Encls
(signature)
James T. Hill
General, US Army
Commander
1. ”

“ When we were deprived of power and authority, when the term ‘Commanding Officer’ was sterilised, we have once again been insulted by a telegram from the Stavka to the effect that: ‘Commanding Officers who will now hesitate to apply armed force will be dismissed and tried.’ No, gentlemen, you will not intimidate those who are ready to lose their lives in the service of their country. ”

“ An extension of the limit so as to embrace persons over forty-five years and physically fit for service in guarding posts, railroads, and bridges, in apprehending deserters, and, where practicable, assuming the place of younger men detailed for duty with the Niter, Ordnance, Commissary, and Quartermaster's Bureaus of the War Department, would, it is hoped, add largely to the effective force in the field without an undue burden on the population. ”

“ Another important lesson taught by our experience since the Civil War, no less than at the commencement of that period, is that prompt and vigorous action, in accordance with established military methods, whenever military force must be employed, necessarily presupposes such knowledge of the laws on the part of department and army commanders as will justify the President in intrusting them with discretionary authority to act without specific orders in each case. ”

“ He is not an enlisted man, whose duty is largely that of blind and prompt obedience, but a citizen temporarily bearing arms for a specific and limited purpose.
The method of discovering and applying correct principles applicable to all bodies of men acting under authority to the police force; to do away with improper conditions; to reconcile discrepancies, and to establish the administration of the department upon a stable foundation, ought to be the work of a suitably constituted commission. ”

“ If this position is sound to the extent claimed, then when war exists, foreign or domestic, and the country is subdivided into military departments for mere convenience, the commander of one of them can, if he chooses, within his limits, on the plea of necessity, with the approval of the Executive, substitute military force for and to the exclusion of the laws, and punish all persons, as he thinks right and proper, without fixed or certain rules. ”

“ Two separate organizations existed with parallel functions--the 'general' more occupied in giving direction to his troops than in providing for their material wants, which he regarded as the special province of the staff, and the 'intendant' (staff) often working at random, taking on his shoulders a crushing burden of functions and duties, exhausting himself with useless efforts, and aiming to accomplish an insufficient service, to the disappointment of everybody. ”

“ As indicated at the beginning of the second chapter, a number of Administrative Services are required, to provide the Fighting Troops with all they need to keep up their strength and efficiency. An army cannot act without a service of communication for transmission of Orders; it cannot exist without a supply of food and clothing, fight without ammunition, or move without transport to carry these stores. To maintain its discipline there must be Police, and a department of Military Justice. ”

“ Look at the quartermaster’s department,—the commissary department,—the State department, and the war department, and you will everywhere find the proofs of utter incompetence, leading straight, as I have before remarked, to that ruin which is pending at the present moment over the country. Our society is uprooted, and there is no hope for the country. Blockade-runners, forestallers, stragglers from the army—Good morning, Colonel Desperade; I was just speaking to our friend, Colonel Surry. ”

“ You will find that the control and manipulation of these forces are carried on by the various political officers, and it is through these departments that instructions come with regard to the movement of troops in any required direction for any specific purpose. In a word, the Houses of Parliament make laws and alter them as in their wisdom they determine; they appoint the officers controlling the executive departments and they have at their disposal the means of ensuring that these laws are carried into effect for the carrying on of society to-day. ”

“ A large force of volunteer officers must be kept up in a time of peace,—which is contrary to the jurisprudence of all highly civilized nations,—or the volunteer officers must be mustered out, and thus leave an important arm of the war department without the necessary administrative government. ”

“ The commanding officers of divisions, departments, and posts, should have the amplest powers, not only to command their troops, but all the stores designed for their use, and the officers of the staff necessary to administer them, within the area of their command; and then with fairness they could be held to the most perfect responsibility. The President and Secretary of War can command the army quite as well through these generals as through the subordinate staff-officers. ”

“ It is the duty of each division chief to extend the organization throughout the city within the lines of his department in such manner as to attain so far as practicable the following ends: (1) the enlistment of responsible persons of sufficient number in each bank, business house and industrial plant of importance, whose sworn duty it will be to promptly report through the proper channel all cases of disloyalty, industrial disturbance, or other matter likely to injure or embarrass the Government of the United States ”

“ And to this end, the officer aforesaid is hereby authorized and required to employ so many persons as he may deem necessary to overcome such force, and to retain them in his service, so long as circumstances may require. ”

“ But we shall, at least, have an Army which will know its own organization and will be inspected by its proper commanders, and to which, as a unit, emergency orders can be issued in time of war or other emergency. Moreover, the organization, which in many respects is necessarily a skeleton, will furnish a guide for future development. ”

“ All officers in command of corps and fixed military posts will assume the highest military powers allowed by the laws of war and Congress. They must maintain the best possible discipline, and repress all disorder, alarms, and dangers in their reach. Citizens who fail to support the Government have no right to ask favors and protection, but if they actively assist us in vindicating the national authority, all commanders will assist them and their families in every possible way. ”

“ In military organization, no matter how large the army, the will of its high command quickly [Pg 36] passes from superior to subordinate until in the end it has reached the squad leaders and they have transmitted it to the men in ranks. The whole vast machine may thus move uniformly, accurately responsive to the master mind. So in any large business; department heads, superintendents, foremen and subforemen furnish the line of control from the head to all his men no matter how numerous or how far removed. These subordinates represent his policies, his will, and his spirit. ”

“ While the number of commissions in each grade and each staff corps, department, and arm of the service shall be kept within the limits fixed by law, officers shall be assigned without reference to the term of their commissions solely in the interest of the service; and officers and enlisted men will be transferred from one organization to another as the interests of the service may require. ”

“ The staff officers could be made the ready and safe means of thwarting the Government in its orders for the removal of troops from one command to reënforce threatened positions in another, and could be easily rendered subservient to the natural but dangerous propensity of most commanders to retain all the troops under their own control for the safety of their own commands, without reference to more urgent needs at other points. ”

“ So in closing our consideration of this phase of our subject, permit me to say that efficient civil service will never be attained—can never be attained—if department, division and other supervising and directing heads sit at their desks most of the time, approving documents and requisitions, reading reports and talking politics. If they expect men under them to work, they must get out on the job where they expect the work to be done, and that, too, whether the job be in the office or in the field. ”

“ With us, to-day, the law and regulations are that, no matter what may be the emergency, the commanding general in Texas, New Mexico, and the remote frontiers, cannot draw from the arsenals a pistol-cartridge, or any sort of ordnance-stores, without first procuring an order of the Secretary of War in Washington. The commanding general--though intrusted with the lives of his soldiers and with the safety of a frontier in a condition of chronic war--cannot touch or be trusted with ordnance-stores or property, and that is declared to be the law! ”

“ Let them see also how much more difficult it is for the officers and noncommissioned officers to maintain control over the movements of troops in extended order, and the consequent necessity and duty of every soldier, when in extended order, doing all he can, by attention and exertion, to keep order and help his officers and noncommissioned officers to gain success. ”

“ The object of this law is to confer on the commander of troops whatever liberty of action the case demands. He has the power even to go beyond the regulations, in circumstances of urgency and pressing necessity. The extraordinary measures he may take on these occasions may require their execution without delay. The staff-officer has but one duty before obeying, and that is to submit his observations to the general, and to ask his orders in writing. ”

“ Headed by a Director with the rank of chief superintendent, the Special Action Force shall function as a mobile strike force or reaction unit to augment regional, provincial, municipal and city police forces for civil disturbance control, counterinsurgency, hostage-taking rescue operations, and other special operations. ”

“ The commanders should possess complete independence in the conduct of military operations, and have a decisive voice in questions of discipline and service training.” The object of the organisations, on the other hand, was to introduce their policy [Pg 313] wholesale among troops, and “the Commissars must be the introducers of (this) single Revolutionary policy of the Provisional Government, the Army Committees must direct the social and political life of the soldiers. The restoration of the disciplinary authority of the commanders is not to be thought of,” etc. ”

“ Discussions by officers and soldiers concerning public measures determined upon and declared by the Government, when carried at all beyond temperate and respectful expressions of opinion, tend greatly to impair and destroy the discipline and efficiency of troops, by substituting the spirit of political faction for that firm, steady, and earnest support of the authorities of the Government, which is the highest duty of the American soldier. ”