r its chairman, Gerhard
A. Gesell.[21-10] It was inevitable that the Gesell Committee should
be compared to the Fahy Committee, given the similarity of interests,
but in fact the two groups had little in common and served different
purposes. The Fahy Committee had been created to carry out President
Truman's equal treatment and opportunity policy. The Gesell Committee,
on the other hand, was less concerned with carrying out existing
policy than with developing a new policy for the Department of
Defense. The Fahy Committee operated under an executive order and
sought an acceptable integration program from each service. The Gesell
Committee enjoyed no such advantage, although the Truman order was
technically still in effect and could have been used to support it.
(The Kennedy administration ignored this possibility, and Yarmolinsky
warned one presidential aide that the Truman order should be quietly
revoked lest someone question why the Gesell Committee had not been
afforded similar stature.)[21-11]

[Footnote 21-10: Ltr, Kennedy to Gesell, 22 Jun 62, as
reproduced in White House Press Release, 24 Jun 62,
copy in CMH. For an example of the attention the
new committee received in the press, see Washington
_Post_, June 24, 1962.]

[Footnote 21-11: Memo, Yarmolinsky for Lee C. White,
26 Jul 62, sub: Revocation of Executive Order 9981,
SD 291.2.]

Again unlike the Fahy Committee, which forced its attention upon a
generally reluctant Defense Department at the behest of the President,
the Gesell Committee was created by the Secretary of Defense; the
presidential appointment of its members bestowed an aura of special
authority on a group that lacked the power of its predecessor to (p. 536)
make and review policy. McNamara later put it quite bluntly: "The
committee was the creature of the Secretary of Defense. Calling it a
President's committee was just windowdressing. The civil rights people
didn't have a damn thing to do with it. We wanted information, and
that's just what the Gesell people gave us."[21-12] In fact,
Yarmolinsky conceived the project, named it, nominated its members,
and drew up its directives. Only when it was well along was the
project passed to the White House for review of the committee's makeup
and guidelines.[21-13]

[Footnote 21-1