FANTASIES FROM THE FUDGE FACTORY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001300430001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 26, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 19, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

By ITilli:'ain- L. Givens
for his ac .rn s pa policies an ep nded. it a clear charter and the authority it.
increasingly upon "a new breed of nail needs to cart} out its responsibilities,
itary strategists and academic social For State, this has been done repeat-
scientists"; and Lyndon Johnson,
whose secretive, idiosyncratic ways,
fondness for contrived diplomatic spec-
taculars, and repeated tinkering with
State's administrative machinery fur-
ther eroded State's waning influence.
Publicly exhorting the State Depart-
meat to take charge of the foreign pol-
icy-making process, Kennedy and John-
i'son tacitly denied the department the
backing it needed to do so, allov,-ed
rival agencies to dominate State in the
bureaucratic rough-and-tumble, and
gradually transferred power to a bur-
, geoning National Security Council
staff in the White House,
cc,
1 h.rorcl;liorrt the careerist rank's is a wistful
?yearrrini' for good old days that really never
Were, a diplomatic falter Mittylwid in. which.
G711 elite corps Of professional d iplonrats, all
lookin and acting like George en.nan, have
the President's ear ...s'
~_- Thy a?!~h_o~-sP~li1.-I~J_u.F6t~.C,s_.~~2'~e?,~tZ_sr..ri?~Se.~.i11c..?~r,_
1" ALL THE foreign service offi-
cers who have written ]Master
..Plans for reforming the State Depart-
J
Approved For Re -gjW&1/ /0,L
STATINTL S_P 1911
( A (' T
['itLxyl r
..' l~.nwmq
he puts it, Hamiltonian-approach to
the management of American foreign
policy,. For all its stylistic superiority,
however, "Fudge Factory" turns out to
be yet another apologia for our career
diplomatic establishment and a plea to
the President to restore the' careerists
to their "rightful" predominance in the
foreign policy process.
ment were laid end to end they would
reach from Washington to Harvard
University, where they would find still
more foreign service officers, on leave
or retire(], writing still more Master
Plans.
The latest and by far the best writ-
ten work yet in this bottomless genre
Is "The Foreign Affairs Fudge Fac-
tory" by John Franklin Campbell, a
30-year-old former staff assistant to
under secretaries of state George Dall
and Nicholas Katzenbach. Camp-
bell is a first-rate journalist and an ar-
ticulate advocate for the elitist--or, as
War II, the rationale oes, the State c,u~Ier W LI1L I I t:01UU11l .
h form flan, v,ero pleading onco more
Department has been badly used by a Well, fine. But if it is all so clear and for tho President to "mains clear that
succession of Presidents, most notably simple, why don't they quit writing he regard: American ambassadors as
Franklin Roosevelt, who distrusted Plans and do it.? The careerists appar- psis (their empbasi s) p: r;?onal ac-pre
the.roreign service ("the profession of ently feel it is the President's responsi sentatives to exercise, o,i his beh zlf,
perfection" and turned for advice to bility. )Iut, alas, the President can't ad- control over all United States govern-
Appreimed}yForcl elea$ea i /OS~0 (:i (i lA RE)PS'l 9' O ROG1, 0"300+Or9 Er'1 4 r+ country."
John Kennedy, who quickly -r0-,v Erns- other duties, All that a Presiden can
trated with State's lack of enthusiasm do for any executive agency is to gWe
Sireazriliriin Prescrilrecl
3\. A-S A CONSEQUENCE of all this,
the careerists tell its, the State De-
partment has lost control of the for-
eign. affairs machinery it is supposed
to be running. Its. ranks swollen by
military,. intelligence and economic
specialists, administrators, propagand-
ists, and sundry other nondiplomatic
.outsiders, the department is far too
big, both in Washington and overseas,
and its authority fragmented among
other agencies, most notably the De-
fense Department and the CIA.
What must be done, Campbell
proscribes, is. to streamline the State
Department by reducing its personnel
by half, reorganizing the remainder oil
leaner lines, and trimming out, exc''ss
layers and extraneous functions. Over-
seas missions should be drastically I from the President."
ense of the '-
at the ex
lar
el
ared
p
y
g
p
,
oher executive ^"encies and ttniba;sa_ At the swine tl.1o
dorial authority restored over all per licked fig the State Dep t?tment a coon-.,
sonnel in each American embassy. tt?y director for etch naation, who was
State should be given the authority to fts:iurea the interdcpaa imeutni
and responsibility to prepare a single, "direction, coord.i.nation, and F;upe1 v'1-
unified foreign affairs budget for the sory" role at the working level and
entire government, and to control gov- serve as a FVa.shin ;t.on counterpart to
ernment personnel assigned overseas the ambassador in the field, Hero, In a;
by all agencies. Horizontal clearances pack-aga, was all the authority a Pros!-
should be eliminated, and "each mat- d4nt eatz convoy. But tho dipi.orrtat.5
ter requiring action should he assignee]
ha
dle
find the
abl
t
-
.
e
n
o
to a single officer who must himself were never S
take responsibility for consulting (but Tougher, savvier bureaucrats from the
not obtaining clearances from) other other sp.'cucles State was.aupkosed to
interested parties in the decision" to be leading continued riding roughshod
act. Finally, this new, ]can State De- over the department's . prerol;etives
.drIvin"g ever deepening inroads
partriient should be moved back into and
the old, Executive Office Building, into its Influence. By mid-1968, the
where it was housed in its prc-World 11 " ung Turks" of the' foreigt! r rvlce,
halcyon days, and where it could be in that ye{ r?e version of th Master Re-
edly; the foreign servico -imply Ii s nnt:
been tip to the task.
There is considerable evidence that
the real problem is not State's orgrmiz-
tion or lack of authority, but the- diplo-
mats themselves--that they would be
no more competent to manage the
new, streamlined State Depat?til-lent
they dream of. than they have been to
run the old one, and that the authority
they are pleading for would soon, like
Pin.occhio's five gold pieces, slip again
from their grasp into the hands of pred-
ators.
ITEM: One of John l ennedy's first
acts upon taking office in 1961 was to
issue a letter to all American ambasea-
dors, authorizing and directing then to
"oversee and coordinate all the activi-,
ties of the U.S. government" in their.
countries. Through Secretary of State
Dean Rusk he expressed the "active
expectation." that State would "in fact
take charge of foreign policy." I'rdsi-
dent? Johnson in 1966 instituted' a top-
level foreign policy-staking body called
the ' Senior Interdepartmental Grcup
(SIG), installed State at the head of it,'
and directed Secretary Busk -to "as-
sume responsibility to the full extent
permitted by law for the over-all direc-
tion; coordination and supervision of
interdepartmental activities of the U.S.
government overseas," in what was
pointedly identified as "formal
specific over-all directive authority.'