Building behemoth

HEADNOTE

The challenge of constructing a Homeland ecurity Department may make the epic struggle to create the Defense Department look easy.

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When

President Bush proposed a new Department of Homeland Security to protect Americans against 21st century terrorist threats, he declared it was the biggest federal reorganization since 1947, the year Harry Truman combined the armed services into the Defense Department. The president may regret the comparison. Before Truman's effort had any effect on military coordination, it spawned the mother of all turf wars.

In the Navy Truman's reform was seen as a pretext to help the Army gobble up the Marine Corps and to dissolve the Navy's aviation wing, which was threatened by the creation of the Air Force. This sentiment boiled over in May 1949, when a senior Navy official leaked a document to Congress that falsely alleged wrongdoing in the procurement of the B-36 bomber, the workhorse of the new Air Force. By sabotaging the B-36, some Navy officials believed they could win funding for a new aircraft carrier that would guarantee the survival of naval aviation. But ofter congressional hearings and a Navy investigation, the gambit backfired and some Navy employees lost their jobs.