ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00965R000300100003-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 3, 2003
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: January 1, 1960
• Content Type: STUDY

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86th Congress
2d Session J
ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
STUDY
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
BY ITS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL POLICY MACHINERY
(Pursuant to S. Res. 248, 86th Cong.)
UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1960
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
JOHN L. McCLELLAN, Arkansas, Chairman
HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota
SAM J. ERVIN, JR., North Carolina CARL T. CURTIS, Nebraska
'HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, Minnesota JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
ERNEST GRUENING, Alaska
:EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine
WALTER L. REYNOLDS, Chief Clerk and Staff Director
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL POLICY MACHINERY
HENRY M. JACKSON, Washington, Chairman
,HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, Minnesota KARL E. MUNDT, South Dakota
EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
J. K. MANSFIELD, Staff Director
ROBERT W. TUFTS, Chief Consultant
RICHARD E. NEUSTADT, Special Consultant
,DOROTHY FOSDICK, Professional Staff Member
,BREWSTER C. DENNY, Professional Staff Member
HOWARD E. HAUGERUD, Professional Staff Member
WILLIAM O. FARBER, Minority Counsel
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The Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery has been making
a scholarly and nonpartisan study of how our Government can best
organize to formulate and execute national security policy. This is
the first full-scale examination of this problem since the discussion
and debate preceding the passage of the National Security Act of
1947.
The most important questions facing the new President are in the
area of national security. If free institutions are to survive and
prosper, the Nation must have a strategy for peace which will com-
mand wide support, at home and abroad, and which will effectively
marshal and use our resources and guide our efforts in the cause of
peace with justice.
The National Security Council, composed of the Government's
ranking officials in the fields of foreign and defense policy, was estab-
lished in 1947 to advise the President "with respect to the integration
of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national
security." It can be of major assistance to the President in helping
him devise a long-term national strategy and direct the Nation's efforts
in the field of national security. The Council and its subordinate
machinery have therefore been a central subject of the subcommittee's
inquireies and hearings.
Th subcommittee has released detailed testimony on the National
Security Council given by Robert A. Lovett, James A. Perkins, Sidney
W. Souers, Robert Cutler, Dillon Anderson, Adm. Arthur W.
Radford, Secretary of State Herter, Secretary of Defense Gates,
Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor George F. Kennan, Paul H. Nitze, Robert
Bowie, and Gov. Nelson I. Roctefeller. It has also secured the views
of many other present and former Government officials and students
of the policy process.
Earlier this year the subcommittee published "Selected Materials,"
a compilation of official documents and articles relating to the NSC,
and also issued as a subcommittee print a study entitled "Organiza-
tional History of the National Security Council," prepared by Mr.
James S. Lay, Jr. and Mr. Robert II. Johnson of the NSC staff.
This staff report is intended to make available to the incoming
administration. certain findings about the role of the Council in
assisting the President in developing and carrying out national se-
curity policy.
HENRY M. JAcKsoN,
Chairman, Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery.
DECEMBER 12, 1960.
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CONTENTS
Page
Foreword-------------------?--------
Introduction
--------------------- - - - - - - --- ------- 1
The Council and the system------------------------------------------ 2
The new President's choice------------------------------------------- 2
The Council's span of concern---------------------------------------- 3
The Planning Board------------------------------------------------- 4
The Council itself--------------------------------------------------- 5
The Operations Coordinating Board ----------------------------------- 6
New directions------------------------------------------------------- 8
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ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
This is the second of a series of staff reports being issued by the
Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery. These studies, which
draw upon the large body of testimony and counsel given the subcom-
mittee since it was established over a year ago, make suggestions for
improving the national security policymaking process.
By law and practice, the President has the prime role in guarding
the Nation's safety. He is responsible for the conduct of foreign re-
lations. He commands the Armed Forces. He has the initiative in
budgetmaking. He, and he alone, must finally weigh all the factors-
domestic, foreign, military-which affect our position in the world
and by which we seek to influence the world environment.
The National Security Council was created by statute in 1947 to
assist the President in fulfilling his responsibilities. The Council is
charged with advising the President-
with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and mili-
tary policies relating to the national security so as to enable
the military services and the other departments and agencies
of the Government to cooperate more effectively in matters
involving the national security.
The NSC was one of the answers to the frustrations met by World
War II policymakers in trying to coordinate military and foreign
policy. It is a descendant of such wartime groups as the State-War-
Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC).
The Council is not a decisionmaking body; it does not itself make
policy. It serves only in an advisory capacity to the President, help-
ing him arrive at decisions which he alone can make.
Although the NSC was created by statute, each successive Presi-
dent has great latitude in deciding how he will employ the Council to
meet his particular needs. He can use the Council as little, or as
much, as he wishes. He is solely responsible for determining what
policy matters will be handled within the Council framework, and how
they will be handled.
An important question facing the new President, therefore, is how
he will use the Council to suit his own style of decision and action.
This study, drawing upon the experience of the past 13 years,
places at the service of the incoming administration certain observa-
tions concerning the role of the Council in the formulation and
execution of national security policy.
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THE COUNCIL AND TIIE SYSTEM
When he takes office in January, the new President will find in
being a National Security Council and an NSC system.
The Council itself is a forum where the President and his chief
lieutenants can discuss and resolve problems of national security. It
brings together as statutory members the President, the Vice Presi-
dent, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the Office
of Civil and Defense Mobilization, and as statutory advisers the
Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. The President can also ask other ketiy aides to take part in
Council deliberations. The Secretary of the Treasury, for example,
has attended regularly by Presidential invitation.
But there is also in being today an NSC system, which has evolved
since 1947. This system consists of highly institutionalized proce-
dures and staff arrangements, and a complex interdepartmental com-
mittee substructure. These are intended to undergird the activities
of the Council. Two interagency committees-the Planning Board
and the Operations Coordinating Board-comprise the major pieces
of this substructure. The former prepares so-called "policy papers"
for consideration by the Council; the latter is expected to help follow
through on the execution of presidentially approved NSC papers.
The new President will have to decide how he wishes to use the
Council and the NSC system. His approach to the first meetings of
the Council under his administration will be important. These early
sessions will set precedents. Action taken or not taken, assignments
given or not given, invitations to attend extended or not extended,
will make it subsequently easier or harder for the President to shape
the Council and the system to his needs and habits of work.
He faces questions like these : What principals and advisers should
be invited to attend the first Council meetings? What part should
Presidential staff assistants play? What should the participants be
told about the planned role and use of the NSC system? Who will
prepare the agenda? What items will be placed on the agenda?
Should the Council meet regularly or as need arises?
THE NEW PRESIDENT'S CHOICE
The new President has two broad choices in his approach to the
National Security Council.
First: He can use the Council as an intimate forum where he
joins with his chief advisers in searching discussion and debate of a
limited number of critical problems involving major long-term stra-
tegic choices or demanding immediate action.
Mr. Robert Lovett has described this concept of the Council in
terms of "a kind of `Court of Domestic and Foreign Relations":
The National Security Council process, as originally
envisaged-perhaps "dreamed of" is more accurate-con-
templated the devotion of whatever number of hours were
necessary in order to exhaust a subject and not just exhaust
the listeners.
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* * '* The purpose was to insure that the President was
in possession of all the available facts, that he got firsthand
a chance to evaluate an alternative course of action disclosed
by the dissenting views, and that all implications in either
course of action were explored before he was asked to take
the heavy responsibility of the final decision.
Second: The President can look upon the Council differently. He
can view it as the apex of a comprehensive and highly institutional-
ized system for ,generating policy proposals and following through on
presidentially approved decisions.
Seen in this light, the ,Council itself sits at the top of what has
been called "policy hill." Policy papers are supposed to travel through
interdepartmental committees up one side of the hill. They are
considered in the Council. If approved by the President, they travel
down the opposite side of the hill, through other interdepartmental
mechanisms, to the operating departments and agencies.
THE COUNCILS SPAN OF CONCERN
The voluminous record of meetings held, and papers produced,
makes it clear that the Council and its subordinate machinery are
now very busy and active. A long list of questions always awaits
entry on the NSC agenda..
Presidential orders now in force provide that all decisions on na-
tional security policy, except for special emergencies, will be made
within the Council framework. In theory, the embrace of the NSC
over such matters is total.
Yet many of the most critical questions affecting national security
are not really handled within the NSC framework.
The main work of the NSC has centered largely around the con-
sideration of foreign policy questions, rather than national security
problems in their full contemporary sense. A high proportion of the
Council's time has been devoted to the production and study of so-
called "country papers"-statements of our national position toward
this or that foreign nation.
The Council, indeed, appears to be only marginally involved in
helping resolve many of the most important problems which affect the
future course of national security policy. For example, the Council
seems to have only a peripheral or pro forma concern with such mat-
ters as the key decisions on the size and composition of the total na-
tional security budget, the strength and makeup of the armed serv-
ices, the scale and scope of many major agency programs in such
fields as foreign economic policy and atomic energy, the translation
of policy goals into concrete plans and programs through the budg-
etary process, and many critical operational decisions with great long-
term policy consequences.
The fact is that the departments and agencies often work actively
and successfully to keep critical policy issues outside the NSC system.
When policy stakes are high and departmental differences deep,
agency heads are loath to su~mit problems to the scrutiny of coordi-
nating committees or councils. They aim in such cases to bypass the
committees while keeping them occupied with less important mat-
ters. They try to settle important questions in dispute through "out
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of court" informal interagency negotiations, when they are doubtful
of the President's position. Or else they try "end runs" to the Presi-
dent himself when they think this might be advantageous.
Despite the vigorous activity of the NSC system, it is not at all clear
that the system now concerns itself with many of the most important
questions determining our long-term national strate or with many
of the critical operational decisions which have fategy ful and enduring
impact on future policy.
THE PLANNING BOARD
As the NSC system operates today, most of the matters which ap-
pear on the Council agenda are the product of a highly formalized
and complex "policy paper production" system. The heart of this
system is the NSC Planning Board, an interagency committee whose
membership parallels that of the Council at the Assistant Secretary
level. The initial drafts, of policy papers are normally written by
the departments and agencies, acting individually or in concert. But
the Planning Board is responsible for the final content and language
of most papers which reach the Council table. As Governor Rocke-
feller told the subcommittee :
I think the public does not recognize the degree to which
the Planning Board really does 95 percent of the work, and
it is not very often that a paper is changed by the Security
Council.
The Planning Board is an interdepartmental committee, chaired by
the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
Although formally appointed by the President, who has admonished
them to act in their Individual capacities in seeking "statesmanlike"
solutions, the departmental members are oriented to the problems and
perspectives of their own agencies. They can be expected to try to
guard departmental interests.
From the outset, the drafting of a Planning Board paper is an in-
volved process of negotiation, barter, offer, and counteroffer among
the many departments involved. Governor Rockefeller has described
the Planning Board process in these words :
A major question is presented to the Planning Board and
the various parties at interest, namely, the departments, each
with its own role in relation to the area under discussion,
work pretty carefully with highly skilled representatives to
get language into the position paper which, while it does not
violate the objective, protects their own position and their
own special-I don't say interest-responsibility in this field.
* * * So you get a watered-down version before it comes to
the NSC and * * permissive language which is not too ob-
vious in the phraseology. This is quite an art, this business.
Many papers going from the Planning Board to the Council do
indeed contain "splits"-statements of different departmental view-
points.
But it is not at all clear that the "splits" actually help the Council
understand the real policy alternatives and the true policy options
available on some issue under debate. They may crystallize minor
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points of difference between competing agency views. The alterna-
tives the "splits" normally reflect, in any case, represent differences
in departmental or agency viewpoint. Such differences do not neces-
sarily define or illuminate the real policy choices available. More-
over, "splits" are themselves a product of interagency bargaining.
Their phrasing is adjusted to what the traffic can bear and shaped
in the interest of winning allies for particular points of view.
Furthermore, the Planning Board papers are not "costed" except in
the most general way. The budgetary consequences of proposed
courses of action are set forth only in order of magnitude terms.
As a result, Council members are little assisted in weighing the bene-
fits of alternative policy courses against the costs.
Finally, the Planning Board, by its very nature, is not a creative
instrument for developing and bringing forward imaginative and
sharply defined choices, particularly in uncharted areas of policy. In-
teragency committees of this kind have a built-in drive toward lowest
common denominator solutions. They can comment, review, and ad-
just. But they are not good instruments of innovation.
The limitation of the Planning Board itself in developing new re-
sponses to new problems is in part demonstrated by the employment
for this purpose of outside consultants and "distinguished citizens
committees," such as the Killian and Gaither Committees on defense
and the Draper Committee on military and economic assistance.
The main source of policy innovations is the contribution of an
individual. He may be found outside, or anywhere within, the
Government. But normally he will be found working in a department
or agency, grappling day in and day out with some pressing national
security problem.
Given imaginative proposals from such individuals, interagency
committees like the Planning Board can be helpful in criticizing and
commenting. But if, in the interest of "agreed solutions," such com-
mittees blur the edges and destroy the coherence of these proposals,
they do the President a disservice. There is strong reason to believe
this is now the case.
The National Security Council now holds regular weekly meetings.
The meetings vary in size. Sometimes the President meets with only
a handful of principals in conducting important business. On other
occasions, 30 or 40 people may attend. A typical session, however,
may have two dozen people present. Some 15 people may sit at the
Council table, with perhaps another 10 looking on as observers and
aides.
.Mr. James Perkins has made this comment on the size of Council
meetings :
* * * I think that the more one uses the NSC as a system of
interagency coordination and the legitimatizing of decisions
already arrived at, the growth in numbers is inevitable,
because people left out of it and not at the meetings whose
concurrence is required have a prima facie case for attending.
But if one -views the Council primarily as a Presidential advisory
body, the point quickly comes when the sheer numbers of participants
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and observers at a meeting limits the depth and dilutes the quality
of the discussion. The present size of most Council meetings appears
to have reached and passed this point.
There are different kinds of Council meetings. Some are briefing
sessions designed to acquaint the participants with, for example, an
important advance in weapons technology. Other meetings center
around so-called "discussion papers," which aim not at proposing a
solution to some policy problem but at clarifying its nature and out-
lining possible alternative courses of action.
. The more typical Council session, however, follows a precise agenda
and focuses upon the consideration of Planning Board policy papers.
These papers have a routine format. As Robert Cutler has described
them :
For convenience, a routine format for policy statements
was developed. Thus, the busy reader would always know
where to find the covering letter, the general considerations,
the objectives, the courses of action to carry out the objectives,'
the financial appendixes, the supporting staff study ; for
they invariably appeared in this sequence in the final docu-
ment.
* * * The standardization of these techniques made it
possible for the Council to transact, week in and week out,
an enormously heavy load of work.
The main work of the Council, thus, now consists of discussion
and a search for consensus, centering around Planning Board papers.
The normal end product of Council discussion is a presidentially
approved paper setting forth the recommendations of the Planning
Board paper, with such amendments, if any, as are adopted after
Council deliberations. This paper is transmitted through the Opera-
tions Coordinating Board to the operating departments and agencies.
But one point is fundamental : Policy papers and actual policy are
not necessarily the same.
Pieces of paper are important only as steps in a process leading to
action-as minutes of decisions to do or not do certain things.
Papers which do not affect the course of governmental action are
not policy : they are mere statements of aspiration. NSC papers are
polic only if they result in action. They are policy only if they cause
the &overnment to adopt one course of conduct and to reject another,
with one group of advocates "winning" and the other "losing."
It appears that many of the papers now emerging from the Coun-
cil do not meet the test of policy in this sense.
THE OPERATIONS COORDINATING BOARD
The job of helping follow through on policies emerging from the
Council and approved by the President is entrusted to the Council's
Operations Coordinating Board. In terms of the NSC system, the
OCB is to policy followup what the Planning Board is to policy de-
velopment. It is an interdepartmental committee on the Under Sec-
retary level chaired, like the Planning Board, by the Special Assist-
ant to the president for National Security Affairs.
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The OCB, assisted by an elaborate system of interagency working
groups, prepares plans for carrying out the intent of NSC policies,
transmits them to the departments and agencies, secures information
on the status of programs underway, and reports back through the
NSC to the President on progress.
In theory, the OCB does not make policy. Its mandate extends
only to helping carry out policy. But this limitation is not and can-
not be observed in practice.
When it receives an NSC policy paper the initial job of the OCB
is to determine the real meaning of the document in hand. It must
often translate general statements, susceptible of varying interpreta-
tions, into tangible objectives together with plans for achieving them.
Departmental aims and interests are at stake in this determination.
The process of translating an NSC paper into an action-oriented pro-
gram therefore involves the same kind of interagency bartering and
negotiating which takes place earlier in the Planning Board.
The OCB is an interagency committee which lacks command au-
thority. It can advise, but not direct, the operating agencies.
Many of the most important decisions affecting the course of pro-
grams under OCB surveillance are made outside the framework of
the Board. Programmatic budgetary decisions are a notable example.
Also, the departments often bypass the OCB, pursuing their own in-
terpretations of policy or engaging in "bootleg coordination through
extramural means.
The formal machinery of the OCB includes a large number of
working groups which turn out detailed followup studies and papers.
The significance of much of this work has been strongly questioned.
Secretary of State Herter made this comment before the subcom-
mittee :
I was Chairman of OCB for 2 years. The feeling of utility
varied an awful lot. At times you felt that you were being
very useful. At other times you felt you were fannino the
air or spending a lot of time reviewing minutiae. * * * *hen
you get into the formal sessions, you again apply yourself
to paperwork. Sometimes you get yourself so bogged down
in the editing of a word or a sentence that you say, "My
God, why am I spending so much time on this?"
The nature of the danger seems clear. Actually, the OCB has
little impact on the real coordination of policy execution. Yet, at
the same time, the existence of this elaborate machinery creates a
false sense of security by inviting the conclusion that the problem
of teamwork in the execution of policy is well in hand.
Recently, the Board has abandoned or relaxed many of the rigid
reporting requirements which governed its work when it was estab-
lished, and has focused its attention upon a smaller number of im-
portant problems rather than spreading its efforts across the board.
These steps have reportedly been helpful.
But there is a more fundamental question at issue : Can an inter-
departmental committee, like the OCB, be counted on to discharge
effectively major responsibilities for followthrough? The evidence
points to the contrary.
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8 ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
NEW DIRECTIONS
Two main conclusions about the National Security Council emerge :
First: The real worth of the Council to a President lies in being
an accustomed forum where he and a small number of his top ad-
visers can gain that intellectual intimacy and mutual understanding
on which true coordination depends. Viewed thus, the Council is a
place where the President can receive from his department and
agency heads a full exposition of policy alternatives available to
him, and, in turn give them clear-cut guidance for action.
Second: The effectiveness of the Council in this primary role has
been diminished. by the working of the NSC system. The root causes
of difficulty are found in overly crowded agenda, overly elaborate and
stylized procedures, excessive reliance on subordinate interdepart-
mental.mechanisms, and the use of the NSC system for comprehen-
sive coordinating and followthrough responsibilities it is ill suited to
discharge.
The phi
losophy of the suggestions which follow can be summed up
in this way-to "deinstitutionaJize" and to "humanize" the NSC
process.
The President's instrument
The Council exists only to serve the President. It should meet
when he wishes advice on some matter, or when his chief foreign
and defense policy advisers require Presidential guidance on an issue
which cannot beresolved without his intervention.
There are disadvantages in regularly scheduled meetings. The
necessity of having to present and to discuss something at such :meet-
ings may generate business not really demanding Presidential con-
sideration. Council meetings and the Council agenda should never
become ritualistic.
The purpose of Council discussion
The true goal of "completed staff work" is not to spare the Presi-
dent the necessity of choice. It is to make his choices more meaning-
ful by defining the essential issues which he alone must decide and
by sharpening the precise positions on the opposing sides.
Meetings of the Council should be regarded as vehicles for clarify-
ing differences of view on major policy departures or new courses of
action advocated by department heads or contemplated by the Presi-
dent himself.
The aim of the discussion should be a full airing of divergent views,
so that all implications of possible courses of action stand out in bold
relief.. Even a major issue may not belong on the Council agenda,
if not yet ripe for sharp and informed discussion.
.ttendance at Council meetings
The Secretaries of State and Defense share the main responsibility
of advising the President on national security problems. They are
tlie, key members of the Council. Whom the President invites to
Council sessions will, of course, depend on the issue under discussion.
Eowever, mere "need to know," or marginal involvement with the
matter at hand, should not justify attendance.
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ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL
Council meetings should be kept small. When the President turns
for advice to his top foreign policy and defense officials, he is con-
cerned with what they themselves think.
The meetings should, therefore, be considered gatherings of prin-
cipals, not staff aides. Staff attendance should be tightly controlled.
As a corollary to the strict limitation of attendance, a written record
of decisions should be maintained and given necessary distribution.
The Planning Board
The NSC Planning Board now tends to overshadow in importance,
though not in prestige, the Council itself. However, some group akin
to the present Board, playing a rather different role than it now
does, can be of continuing help to the Council in the future.
Such a Board would be used mainly to criticize and comment upon
policy initiatives developed by the departments or stimulated by the
President. It would not be used as an instrument for negotiating
"agreed positions" and securing departmental concurrences.
More reliance could also be placed on informal working groups.
They could be profitably employed both to prepare matters for Coun-
cil discussion and to study problems which the Council decides need
further examination. The make-up and life of these groups would
depend on the problem involved.
So, too, intermittent outside consultants or "distinguished citizens
committees," such as the Gaither Committee, could on occasion be
highly useful in introducing fresh perspectives on critical problems.
The role of the Secretary of State
The Secretary of State is crucial to the successful operation of the
Council. Other officials, particularly the Secretary of Defense, play
important parts. But the President must rely mainly upon the Secre-
tary of State for the initial synthesis of the political, military, eco-
nomic, and other elements which go into the making of a coherent
national strategy. He must also be mainly responsible for bringing
to the President proposals for major new departures in national
policy.
To do his job properly the Secretary must draw upon the resources
of a Department of State staffed broadly and competently enough
with generalists, economists, and military and scientific experts to
assist him in all areas falling within his full concern. He and the
President need unhurried opportunities to consider the basic direc-
tions of American policy.
The Operations Coordinating Board
The case for abolishing the OCB is strong. An interdepartmental
committee like the OCB ias inherent limitations as an instrument for
assisting with the problem of policy followthrough. If formal inter-
agency machinery is subsequently found to be needed, it can be estab-
lished later.
Responsibility for implementation of policies cutting across depart-
mental lines should, wherever possible, be assigned to a particular de-
partment or to a particular action officer, possibly assisted by an
informal interdepartmental group.
In addition, the President must continue to rely heavily on the
budgetary process, and on his own personal assistants in performance
auditing.
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NIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
Problems of staff
The' President should at all times have the help and protection of a
small personal staff whose members work "outside the system," who
are sensitive to the President's own information needs, and who can
assist him in asking relevant questions of his departmental chiefs, in
making suggestions for policy initiatives not emerging from the op-
erating departments and agencies, and in spotting gaps in pot cy exe-
cution.
The Council will continue to require a staff of its own, including
a key official in charge. This staff should consist of a limited number
of highly able aides who can help prepare the work of the Council,
record its decisions, and troubleshoot on spot assignments.
The NSC system now contains several staff components. These
might well be more closely integrated. Also, various special project
staffs on foreign policy matters have been established in recent years
at the White House. Consideration could be given to bringing them
within the NSC framework.
A special problem
The National Security Act intended that one Council member regu-
larly bring to the NSC perspectives on our domestic economy and
domestic resources.
The Director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization is the
present heir of that role. But the concern of the OCDM focuses upon
civil defense and mobilization problems of wartime emergencies.
The Council of Economic Advisers, among other agencies, is now
much more concerned than the OCDM with the kind of domestic per-
spectives relevant to the problems of a protracted conflict whicl.i stops
short of major war.
The new President and the Congress may therefore wish to ask
whether the Director of OCDM should have continued statutory mem-
bership on the Council.
The NSC and the budgetary process
Today, there is often little resemblance between a policy statement
emerging from the NSC and programs finally carried out by the op-
erating departments and agencies. The actual scale and scope of
these programs is determined largely by budgetary decisions made
outside the Council.
An attempt to use the Council for the details of resource allocation
would be no more feasible than trying to use the Cabinet for this pur-
pose. Yet the search for ways and means of relating the Council's
advice more closely to the budget process must be pursued.
The problem is not to make the Council manager or czar of budget
preparation. Rather it is to insure that the perspectives of the Secre-
taries of State and, Defense are brought to bear on an ordering of
national priorities at the target-setting stage of the annual budget
pr paration.
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MEMORANDUM FOR: THE DIRECTOR
For information.
Attached is the second of a series of Staff
Reports being issued by the Subcommittee on
National Policy Machinery. This Study discusses
the National Security Council and its subordinate
activities. the Planning Board and OCB. It
suggests a new group in lieu of the Planning
Boards playing a rather different role and also
suggests abolishing OCB. Note this Study is
due for release 20 December. _
o n 4i arner
egislee 11960
(DATE)
FORM NO. I~I REPLACES FORM 10-101
I AUG 54 WHICH MAY BE USED.
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