SUGGESTIONS ON HISTORICAL RECORDS BEARING ON THE PRESIDENT'S INTELLIGENCE ADVISORY BOARDS, 1956-69

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00161R000100140002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 13, 2001
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: October 17, 1969
• Content Type: MEMO

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17 Oct. 1969: M.P.C. -1j
Historical Memorandum
Subject: Suggestions on Historical Records Bearing on the
President's Intellige nce Advisory Boards, 1956-69
n historical and archival terms it must be emphasized
that there have been four different and successive public-
citizens' boards used by four successive Presidents for ?e-
viewing CIA and U.S. intelligence during the past lz-- years
s.nce 1956. These four agencies must be considerea some-
what separately, I think, in historical and archival terms,
were
although they developed in a s sequence andu,,`,or-edz
by only two secretariats for the four boards
1956-59, and 1959 to date), and/handled in
CIA by only two CIA liaison officers for the four boards
(Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, 1956-65, and John A. Bross, 13 July
1965 to date).
f'he unique files on Board matters kept in CIA first by
Kirkpatrick and then by Bross are of course the primary an c
essential sources for any historical studies or revised
studies on CFA's continuing and changing relationships with
these several Presidential bea~?;:s. The suggestions below are
addressed mostly to the variety of other files, kept withi::
I i /HC- / Co
25X1A
25X1A
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25X1A
25X1A
CIA or on the outside, which contain-.or might contain--
parallel sources of historical evidence that go beyond
rere
the central files that kept by the CIA liaison control
officer under `rev. 13 July 1965) and previous
HR's. (Text of r--%v. 13 July 1965, attached.)
The four Boards are as follows: (1) President
Eisenhower's initial Board, Jan. 1956 to Jan. 1961,
headed first by Dr. James R. Killian, later by Gen. John
E. Hull; (2) President Kennedy's .:oard, 1961-63, headed
first by Dr. Killian, May 1961 ff., then by Clark Clifford,
May 1963 ff.; (3) Presid at Johnson's Board, headed (again)
by Clifford, Nov. 1963 ff . , then by Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor,
1968 ff; and (4) President iixon's Board, reconstituted on
20 March 1969 and headed (again) by Gen. Taylor, with some
old members re-appointed and a number of new members addedc,
These and other membership changes all have had a direct
bearing both on the history of CIA's relationships with
the Board and on the tracing of relevant historical records,
outlined below.
In addition, the pre-1956 period of CIA's history should
be noted, in passing, because of the variety of important
pr :cedents
legislative and conceptual origi and Jen1 bearing
on the four later Presidential boards. These origins and
precedents date back variously to 194.?-f.8 an: 1954-55, and
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had
they have even ~iXx~j6 earlier roots in some of the World War
n
II public investigations of the U.S. intelligence community,
notably in re the Pearl Harbor disaster of 1941. More
immediately, in 1954-55, it is clearly evident, in some
of the records in ?/DCI used by the Historical Staff for
the Dulles period of CIA, that tie Presidential citizens-
board idea was being formulated, actively and in specific
terms, during certain crucial days in 1954 (specifically
June 7 to 9), when Congressional attacks were now con-
verging on CIA from several directions, notably from Senator
alike .Mansfield (who had been promoting the Congressional
watch dog idea for some time), and Senator Joseph McCarthy
(who was urging personnel investigations and purges). During
those crucial days, the records show that Allen Dulles and
other CIA officials were e ose consultation with
President Eisenhower's assiatnts in the White House,
notably Sherman Adams, Wilton D. Persons, and Robert Cutler,
undertaking together to draft, discuss, and revise various
alternative proposals for meeting the attacks, including the
use of outside investigations of CIA by a blue-ribbon
committee to be made up of distinguished private citizens.
These proposals led directly, it from the records,
to the hark Clark Task Force of Eoove_.- Commission No. 2
(announced 4. July 195z_`., and James H. DGoli the Study Group
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(8 July 1954), and--eventually--the James R. Killian Board
(announced 13 Jan. 1956). These ideas in June 1954,
furthermore, were not wholly unprecedented. See, for
example, the experience of CIA, IAC, and USCIB with (1)
Hoover Commission No. 1 in 1948, notably the Eberstadt Task
Force on the "National Security Organization" (for which
John A. Bross was CIA's chief staffer, along with
and (2) the NSC's Intelligence Survey Group
in 1948, made up of outside citizens including Allen W.
Dulles, William H. Jackson, and Mathias Correa (for which
Robert Blum of Defense Secretary Forrestal's staff was the
principal intra-governmental staffer). For these early
years there are a variety of histories and historical
records, on file in the Historical Staff or recorded
in HS indexes and Records Center indexes, which bear
importantly on CIA's relationships with public-citizens
committees and with the public-citizens committee concept.
O/DCI Records
1. Central files of Board's Liaison Officer in CIA.
(Kirkpatrick, Bross). The files kept by Kirkpatrick, as
first liaison officer, Jan. 1956, f.,,were in general
kept separately from his operatiles kept concurrently
as Inspector General (to '1.0,032), as Executive Director
(Ap?i-y 1962 to Nov. 1963), and wZ __ecutive Director-Comptroller
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(Nov. 1963 to 5 July 1965). Likewise, it is presumed, the
Board files kept by Mr. Bross, from July 1965 ff., are
kept separate from his working -files as D/NIPE.
In addition, however, important correspondence on
Board-generated problems did also get filed, for the
Kirkpatrick period in particular, in the archives of his
related offices.
(A) E. g. , Kirkpatrick's IG files on internal management
problems and investigatory cases doubtless contain preparatory
and follow-up documentation on some of the numbered rec-
ommendations of the President's Board. That is, copies of
some of these IG papers on Board-generated recommendations
are also filed, in parallel, in the DCI/ER's files, under
"IG" and other headings, along with related internal cor-
respondencewnd comment in some cases.
(B) Similarly, files of the DCI's "morning meetings"
kept by Kirkpatrick as Executive Director doubtless contain
references to deliberations and decisions on Board-related
issues.
(C) Still another example of parallel historical
evidence are the records of the Kirkpatrick-Schuyler-Coyne
committee study done for McCone, in 1961-62, dealing broadly
with CIA's internal organization and community relationships
(on file in These per. Der s contain some useful evidence
personal pa_ c .ci ~a-_o_ (ostensibly wearing his
ILLEGIB
Co=,,-it-tee h .t rat er than his Pr IAE Secretariat hat) .
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2. DCI/Executive Registry Files (correspondence of
the DCI, DDCI, and staff officers in O/DCI). Especially
for the Dulles and McCone period, there are a number of
pertinent folders of correspondence, external and internal,
which contain such historically useful items as the following'.
Examples: DCI's copies of agenda of PFIAB meetings;
DCI correspondence directly with the White House, and
internally with various DD's,on Board recommendations
and follow-up; copies of some of the DCI's semi-annual and
annual reports on CIA, prepared for the PFIAB; papers on
membership questions (e.g., was apparently 25X1A
considered a future candidate by McCone, early in 1962);
(SO tit'.c'LL'V~'1
DCI's correspondence with the C:,'. Comptroller on a BOB
r,
proposal, early in 1960, for a community-wide budget
review (in which the Board was ua, ~y involved);
intra-office correspondence on Tirkpatrick's request
for a special sensitive phone linkage with in
1961 (denied by Gen. Cabell) ; h:: J_efs on some of the
special CIA presentations to the Board (e.g., on personnel
security procedures, 1963); etc.
In each case only _.art of the record is present, of
course, partly because the basis case files and follow-up
records were normally decentralized to the operating
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25X1A
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Directorates and other major components. Furthermore, for
the Kirkpatrick liaison period, the pertinent items are
filed, not normally in a "pres. Board" folder per se, but
r:iore commonly under some of the other established headings
in the DCI/ER filing system, such as "White House," "IG, " .
"Comptroller," "DD /S," "DD/P," etc.
One important index for tracing the above policy-level
material is the DCI/:R log-index (3x5 manifold slips), which
for the Kirkpatrick period contains some useful historical
references to Board-related matters which came to the
attention of the O/DCI but which were not actually filed in
DCI/ER, but routed and recorded elsewhere (as indicated on
the indexes), to one or more other operating offices and
directorates or to an outside addressee. Useful entries
and clues can be found cross-referenced under "Pres. Board,"
"PFIA'3, If various Board members by name, etc.
Finally, certain personal files of Dulles and McCone were
kept separate from the established correspondence folders in
DC'.!'/ER, and doubtless contain memcons, appointment records,
and other data on each DCI's Deraonal involvement with the
Board members, with Bo..rd , etings, with the President and
other authorities in the White House served Ny the :oard,
and with C A and co-.- munity officials wno were coniron i ig
Board-related policy issues.
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3. Deputy Director Files. Each of the four Deputy
Directors, notably the DD/I and the DD/P but also the DD/S
and (after 1962) the DD/R followed by the D9 &T, were con-
sulted by the DCI on Board afairs. Each of them was involved,
in and out of season, in ac:. rising the DCI on such matters as
hoard membership, Board agenda, follow-up on Board rec-
ommendations and criticisms, an,,` present-- to the
Board. Whether a given DD was serving, ex officio, as a
Deputy to the DCI and a member of the DCI's staff, or as
head of a major operating Directorate, all of them doubt-
less recorded items, from time to time, bearing on the
President's Board. From the cross references found in DCI/ER
and other files noted above and below, as well as in the EES
master index, it is evident that Board affairs have from time
to time permeated the work of every major office in every
Directorate. For example, the shelflists of retired re-
cords for the Dulles period, retired by the DD/I and his
principal components, contain some specific references to
Board-related policy files. Doubtless the retired records
of the directorates for the McCone period and later periods
similarly contain abundant documenta-t,ion, in detail, on
CIA's relationships with the Presidential boards.
Spec ial assistants to the !:. i , similar y , were .evolved
in Board matters, and their files doubtless reflect s-ach
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special concerns. E.g., the CIA Sigint Officer 25X1A
was expected to advise the DCI directly when a matter
in the Sigint field was at issue. (Se 10 May
S).
1966, 25X1A
4. USIB Secretariat files. Presidential Board rec-
ommendat ions not infrequently have dealt with community-
wide problems that were taken up in USIB meetings and USIB
committee deliberations, and they are variously noted in the
records. In 1962, for example, Board recommendation No. 15,
dealing with S & T responsibilities generally, was tabled
for USIB discussion (USIB-D-34.4/2 to 4; and USIB-M-197,
225, and 246). Such papers as these, together with any
background notes on these matters in USB/S, doubtless
illuminate both the development of procedure and the un-
folding of events in meeting Board-generated questions
about the community.
5. General Counsel's files. Lawrence Houston, as
G/C, was doubtless consulted on Presidential Board matters,
including origins, charter development, executive order
drafting, membership, etc. His files, including those on
precedents, should be particularly valuable in any review
or re-reviews of the Board's histories.
6. DCI/Pu?,? = A''- -s O f . f i as The press-
surveillance files kept by (later by
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Messrs. contain important
press comment on the development of the Presidential
Board concept, in theory and practice, and on the news
behind the news on Board membership changes, etc. The
New York Times' virtually book-length coverage on CA
and the Community, in April 1966, exposed many details
on the Board. More recently, the news of President Nixon's
use of the Board for an annual "supplementary" intelligence
assessment of the ABM threat, on 14 March 1969, while it
apparently generated little public discussion, was a major
fit..
event , somewhat. upreceden:,ed , in the changing role of the
President's Board.
7. Historical Sta:'f files. The HS/HC collect--on
contains, among other items, copies o the
history of the Killian-Hull Board, 1956-60 (1964), a
HS memo on the changing membership of the boards from
1956 to 1963 (1964), copies of correspondence on the
proposals for a presidential-level board in June 1954,
selected press comments, 1956-59n and a small folder-of
.selected ,-copies of documents (-mostly from DCI/ER files)
illustrating board activities during the McCone period,
1961 ff.
The I7S master index also contains references to a
variety of DD/P, DD/S, and DD/ShhT matters in which_ the
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several boards were interested, variously dated from 1956
Outside Files
Outside CIA, the files under present or former White
;souse control which have a bearing on the four successive'
Presidential Boards are structured somewhat as follows.
S. Board Secretariat Files. These files were kept
a
first by General Cassidy; starting in July 1959, by N.
I'
detailed from the NSC staff. Whether these
files were ever consulted by Mr. Kirkpatrick is not known.
Whether any of the files were periodically retired, either
to the NSC record group (kept in CIA storage for the NSC)
or elsewhere has not been verified. It is doubtful whether
any of these files have been pre-empted for the Presidential
_,ibraries under the National Archives (Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and Johnson Libraries), but the point has not been verified.
9. Presidential Library Files. The personal files
N
of each of the above three former Presidents, which have
been retired or scheduled for ret;,i Te .ent to the appropriate
P side ntial Libras ies, do douuub-~less contain some collateral
papers on the development of a given Board, especially on the
-public aspects. These files (judging from the exam 1e of
FLT p files on OSS) should be interesting at least for
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marginal and tagential items bearing on the Killian, Hull,
Clifford, and Taylor boards, such as membership changes,
and outside pressures, pro and con, seeking to influence
U.S. intelligence policies.
The material selected for the LBJ Library by CIA, in
1968, contains one major item bearing on the his of the
13
Board--a bibliographical listing of the DCI's semi-annual
reports on CIA addressed to the President's Boards, 1956-63,
the five annual reports on CIA, 1964-68, and the DCI's five
annual reports on Community coordination, FY 1964-68. These
important reports (customarily drafted primarily by the several
Deputy Directors), along with the separate annual departmental
reports prepared by the USIB member agencies; provide a basic
historical introduction to the kinds of intelligence development
ti
and performance issues which ware of special interest to the
President's Boards dur~ag those 14 years.
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