A policy of moving out and doing it, and asking forgiveness afterward

A policy of moving out and doing it, and asking forgiveness afterward is the emergency principle Philip K. Russell advanced as the United States Army weighed intervening in the Reston monkey-house crisis. It put speed ahead of advance legal approval, while exposing the gap between the Army’s capacity to act and its uncertain authority to control a disease emergency on American soil.

Origin in a Conflict of Authority

The phrase arose during a meeting about whether the Army should become involved in stopping the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the congressional mandate to control human disease; the Army, by contrast, lacked a clear mandate to fight viruses on American soil. Yet participants believed the Army possessed expertise and resources the civilian agency did not. Russell reduced the mismatch to a contrast between capability and jurisdiction: the Army had the muscle but not the authority, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had the authority but not the muscle. He expected the overlap to provoke a jurisdictional confrontation.

The practical stakes made delay seem dangerous to Russell. A major field operation against a hot virus had never before been organized by the Army, and the response would have to be assembled from scratch. He envisaged a team of biohazard-trained soldiers who could work together and accept the risk of the mission. The phrase answered the immediate institutional problem as he saw it: if lawyers were asked first, they might advise that the operation could not or should not proceed, leaving the Army unable to use its capabilities.

The Phrase as an Operating Principle

Russell’s formulation was more than a preference for haste. It proposed a sequence: move first, then seek forgiveness, rather than ask permission and risk being denied. In the meeting, he argued that legal justification could follow the decision to act. The principle therefore treated advance approval as a potential obstacle to containment, while accepting that the Army might later have to account for the legality of its intervention.

The force of the wording lies in its reversal of normal procedure. It does not resolve who legally controls an outbreak; it urges action despite that uncertainty. The surrounding discussion makes the tradeoff explicit: the Army could contribute the trained personnel and operational capacity, but a confrontation with the agency holding the statutory public-health mandate was possible. The phrase is thus both an emergency rationale and an admission that the proposed action risked exceeding clearly established authority.

Responsibility Remains Contested

The later exchange between Dan Dalgard and C. J. Peters shows that acting quickly did not eliminate disputes over who would bear responsibility. Dalgard offered to turn the monkey house over to the United States Army, and Peters was told he could consider the facility and its animals the responsibility of the United States Army. Peters was wary of what that wording might entail if anything went wrong and people died. He wanted control of the building but did not want an unclear assumption of liability; he told Dalgard that the safety of his people and the public came first, while saying he needed to consult his command.

As the crisis worsened, Dalgard’s company managers approved the proposed handover but wanted the oral agreement put in writing and the Army to assume legal responsibility for the building. Dalgard asked Peters to accept liability for events after the Army took over. Peters rejected that proposal, judging that the outbreak required clarity and speed rather than lawyers delaying a decision. The evidence records the conflict, not its final resolution: the call ended with Dalgard agreeing to fax Peters a document.

Significance

The policy’s significance lies in the tension it names without settling. In Russell’s meeting, the danger was that legal caution might prevent a capable force from acting; in the later handover discussions, the danger was that an urgent transfer could leave responsibility and liability unclear. The expression makes decisiveness sound like a remedy for institutional paralysis, but the subsequent negotiations reveal its limits: moving first could accelerate a response without making the chain of authority or accountability straightforward.