Though the ranks of the Whiz Kids in the Defense Department are
proliferating, five stand out for the scope and strength of their
influence:Alain C. Enthoven, 31, intense and dark-suited, looks more like a young
college professor than a weapons analyst. Yet, as deputy comptroller
for systems analysis, this young economist must lay bare the
calculations on which many defense decisions are made. After graduating
from Stanford with honors in economics, spending two years at Oxford as
a Rhodes scholar and getting his Ph.D. from M.I.T., he joined the Rand
Corp. think factory, where he helped direct a major study of Strategic
Air Command operations and strategy that later became part of the
Kennedy Administration's defense policy. Deeply concerned by the
problems of defense , he took a leave from Rand to work in the Defense Department
two years ago, decided to stay on. Though he at first worked 70 to 80
hours a week, he is now in his office only from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Says
he: “I can't increase output by working longer.”Harold Brown, 34, unlike most of the Whiz Kids, occupies a position of
direct power as director of defense research and engineering. A
forceful advocate of U.S. nuclear testing. Physicist Brown is Secretary
McNamara's principal technical adviser, and is probably the scientist
to whom President Kennedy now pays closest heed. Complains an Air Force
officer who tangled with him over the derailed RS-7O bomber program:
“He's awfully cocky and sure of himself.” A Columbia Ph.D. at 21, he
worked throughout the 1950s with the University of California's
Radiation Laboratory, where he did research in the design and
application of nuclear explosives, the detection of nuclear blasts, and
the controlled release of thermonuclear energy.Henry S. Rowen, 36, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for policy
planning and national security affairs, also came to Defense through
the Rand Corp. after graduating from M.I.T. and studying at Oxford.
Planner Rowen concentrates on strategic questions for the future
rather than day-to-day defense programs, originated major elements in
the “no-city” strategy outlined by McNamara in Ann Arbor. Mich., last month;
under it. U.S. retaliation to surprise attack would concentrate on Soviet
military objectives and avoid destruction of cities. Articulate and
wide-ranging in his interests—which may be NATO or guerrilla
warfare—he worked at Rand on a broad study of overseas bases that
turned into a full-dress comparative review of U.S. v. Soviet strategic
airpower. “As soon as he touches a sensitive nerve,'' says an Air Force
planner, “the military begin to yell. But he always knows what he's talking
about.”
