At the head of this reorganized military body, the Pentagon placed a civilian official in a newly created assistant secretary of defense position whose power is analogous to but a cut above the secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force. The first person to hold the job at the apex of SOCOM was Charles S. Whitehouse, an old CIA hand who had been one year ahead of Vice President Bush at Yale, where both were members of the secret society known as Skull and Bones.
