OAA

The history of the Office of the Administrative Assistant (OAA) to the Secretary of the Army dates back to the earliest days of the nation, when Congress on August 7, 1789, created a Department of War and specified that the Secretary of War should appoint a Chief Clerk. Mr. Wilson Knox became the first Chief Clerk. From the 1790s through the War of 1812, the War Department was primarily an administrative and record-keeping bureau that served as a conduit for the military’s large volume of correspondence and reports. The department’s handful of clerks were charged with keeping military papers in order and expediting departmental business. When British forces attacked Washington, D.C., in 1814, the men played a critical role by removing nearly all papers from the Secretary’s offices near the White House before the British arrived and saving British standards and colors captured during the American Revolution. The clerks would perform a similar role during the Civil War when in 1864 they joined other department civilians in manning Washington’s defenses for a time to help protect the city from a Confederate threat. The workload of the official who had since been designated the “Assistant and Chief Clerk” changed with the 1917 entry of the United States into World War I. Faced with an unparalleled expansion of the Army via a draft and the related growth of the War Department, Chief Clerk John C. Scofield scrambled to hire additional staff and secure sufficient office space and equipment. In this environment, the main responsibility of the clerks changed from knowing a substantial but relatively limited number of War Department precedents, and where the records containing them were filed, to managing a tidal wave of paper that almost submerged the department in the early stages of the war. Scofield continued in this position after the war, assisting the Secretary with planning activities designed to better prepare the department for future conflicts, before departing in 1931 after an impressive thirty-year tenure as Chief Clerk. The same year, the War Department re-designated his position as the Administrative Assistant. By the time the United States entered World War II in 1941, the Administrative Assistant was supervising records management, printing, civilian medical treatment, and procurement and accounting within the secretariat, along with other activities.

Shortly after World War II ended, Congress abolished the War Department and established a Department of the Army within a Department of Defense. The Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of War became the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. During subsequent decades, the duties of the Administrative Assistant continued to expand. The footprint of the Office of the Administrative Assistant within the recently constructed Pentagon building also grew. By 2000, OAA was responsible for administrative management, maintaining official records, and managing the programs that provided service, supply, and equipment for the Defense Department within the National Capital Region. Critical services included contracting, passports, and motor pool, as well as telephones and computer operations in the Pentagon.

September 11, 2001, was an especially dark day for OAA, but also demonstrated the resilience of its people. When one of four planes hijacked by terrorists hit the west side of the Pentagon, the plane ripped through the outer three rings of the building and killed 125 service members and civilians. The Administrative Assistant’s staff sustained forty of the seventy-five Army deaths. In one brief moment the office lost nearly all of its financial experts and computer files, and this occurred just weeks before the fiscal year ended. Working around the clock, and assisted by retirees who volunteered to come back to work and budget analysts and accountants from other government agencies, OAA nevertheless finished its end-of-year work on time. The staff also reestablished computer and telecommunications connectivity throughout the building and found workspace to make up for the 400,000 square feet destroyed. These extraordinary efforts reestablished normal operations within days and contributed to the reopening of the newly rebuilt sections of the Pentagon on September 11, 2002.

In the ensuing years, the Office of the Administrative Assistant has continued to manage resources for the headquarters of the Department of the Army, provide administrative support to the Secretary of the Army and senior Army leaders, and oversee a range of services across the Department of Defense, even while receiving other missions. In 2003, for example, OAA was assigned as an Executive Agency to aid the rebuilding of Iraq. It provided administrative, human resource, logistics, information technology, facilities, acquisition, and fiscal support to the Coalition Provisional Authority offices in Washington and Baghdad. When prior to the 2004 presidential election Congress called on the Defense Department to ensure every Armed Forces member could vote, OAA worked with other organizations to ensure that more than 2 million ballots were printed and shipped to military posts, camps, and stations worldwide.

In recent years, the evolution of OAA has continued. The Army Reform Initiative has again reshaped its responsibilities. But despite OAA’s ever-changing character, the service its professional men and women have rendered to the United States Army has remained steady for more than two hundred years.