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McNeil's charts showed bewildering mazes of bureaus and sub-bureaus through which procurement orders had to pass. Kentucky's Senator John Sherman Cooper studied the charts, announced that by his count an ammunition order "would go through 42 different departments and almost 200 operations" before contracts were actually placed. Senator Byrd asked McNeil how far the order would travel in the process. Said McNeil: "The speedometer reading on that is 10,000 miles, I am told."*
Every one of the operations in the mazes was originally set up with some laudable purpose, such as the elimination
*A parallel to Pentagon red tape was the drill for loading, firing and reloading a musket in the British army in the 17th century. The drill was designed to eliminate individual error and to achieve uniform rate of fire. Its 31 orders, as recorded by Robert Graves in Sergeant Lamb's America: "March with your rest in your hand! March, and with your musket carry your rest! Unshoulder your musket! Poise your musket! Join your rest to your musket! Take forth your Match! Blow off your coal! Cock your match! Try your match! Guard, blow, and open your priming-pan! Charge your musket! Draw forth your scouring stick! Shorten your scouring stick! Put in your bullet and ram home! Present! Give fire! Dismount your musket! Uncock your match! Return your match! Clear your pan! Prime your pan! Shut your pan! Cast off your loose powder! Blow off your loose powder! Cast about your musket! Trail your rest! Open your charge! Withdraw your scouring stick! Shorten your scouring stick! Return your scouring stick! Recover your musket!" of graft or waste or human error. But in sum, they add up to inefficiency and delay. After listening to the week's testimony, Senator Byrd summed up the picture as he saw it: "I believe the record shows clearly that there were shortages in Korea. I think it shows that, to meet Korean requirements, we have drained United States stocks dangerously. I think the ammunition investigation will be a big factor in effecting a wholesale reorganization in the Pentagon, especially in the business and administrative functions of the Army Department."