Dear President Hoover:
I warmly appreciate your telegram in respect to defense reorganization. As you indicate, in the interest of unity, efficiency and the greatest military strength at the least cost, the need is urgent to vest clear-cut authority in the Secretary of Defense. On this very issue serious differences have developed between proposals I have made and certain provisions of the bill now being debated in the House of Representatives. Your message powerfully supports the ,basic approach which I have been striving to advance, and I am most grateful to you for it.
With warm regard,
Sincerely,
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Note: President Hoover's message follows:
The President
The White House
The telegram of June fourth to Congressional Leaders from Charles R. Hook, Chairman of the Task force on the Defense Department of the Second Hoover Commission, represents the judgment and the result of an exhaustive investigation by men who had intimate experience with these problems. I fully endorse their support of the basic principles which you have set forth as fundamental to your Defense Reorganization proposals.
Civilian authority must be made clear-cut.
In June 1949, representing the views of the first Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch and the recommendations of an exhaustive task force investigation by men also of experience in those problems, I testified before the Senate Committee saying that "the Act had not accomplished the unity of command or civilian control of the financial and business operations of the military forces for which we had such high hopes; further that the economy which was expected from it had not materialized; that the essential weakness appeared to lie in the lack of a clear assignment of authority and responsibility to the Secretary of Defense." The evidence of two Commissions and their task forces is overwhelming in its substantiation of your principles, which I join you in supporting.
HERBERT HOOVER
Mr. Hook's telegram of June 4 was sent to the Vice President, the Speaker, and the majority and minority floor leaders of the House of Representatives. The text was released by the White House on June 7.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letter to President Hoover on Defense Reorganization. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233571