A Page From History
The 1945 Debate Over a Proposed Department of Defense
On October 26, 1945, President Harry Truman asked Congress to combine the War and Navy Departments into a Department of Defense. The National Security Act of 1947 and subsequent amendments in 1949 and 1958 consolidated the separate entitiess into a single department headed by a civilian secretary. It also created the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate all foreign intelligence collection and analysis and the National Security Council in the White House to coordinate all foreign and defense policy. The following is excerpted from the Pro & Con section of the December 1945 Congressional Digest, which considered the question "Should Congress…
