LETTER TO FRANCIS M. BATOR FROM HENRY A. KISSINGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-15-3-11-9
• Release Decision: RIFLIM
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: March 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: July 27, 1971
• Content Type: LETTER

No Objection to Declassification in Full 2010/03/09: LOC-HAK-15-3-11-9
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 27, 1971
Thank you for your July 8 letter with its post-
announcement postscript. As you can imagine,
the whole question of security procedures is
under intensive review, and your views are
both timely and welcome.
I enjoyed our lunch and hope to see you again
soon.
Warm regards,
Henry A. issinger
Professor Francis M. Bator
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
125 Littauer Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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July 23, 1971
MEMORAN 'M FOR MR. KISSINGER
FROM- Jeanne W. Davis,
?s,
SUBJECT: Francis Bator Writes on Security Clearances
Francis Bator has written you (Tab B) to plead that the security
clearances of "the right set of outsiders" (he modestly includes
himself along with Dean Acheson and John McCloy) not be limited
in reaction to the Ellsberg affair. In a postscript added several
days after the original letter, he congratulates you on the Peking
trip and stresses the necessity of reassuring Moscow.
I have prepared a non-substantive reply for your signature (Tab A).
RECOMMENDATION:
That you sign the reply at Tab A.
Attachment
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!ARVARD UNIVERSITY
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
I M. BATOR 125 LmrAPEB CENTER
Pr%aaarof Poli,i &Economy July 8, 1971 CAMIMIPoE, MAMcmJEEr'C5
PERSONAL/CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Henry:
i Thanks again for lunch.
I am troubled by the story on the alleged White House instruc-
tions on clearances. If, in response to Dan Ellsberg's performance, the
government now goes in for massive surgery, cutting out outsiders via the
security-clearance route, the cost to the country could become very large
indeed. No one understands better than you the case for keeping the right
set of outsiders accessible on short notice. As a general rule, that re-
quires that their clearances be kept by and large up to date. I don't
suppose that people like Schelling, Kaysen, Neustadt, etc. have looked
at a classified document in many a month. Certainly I have not. However,
as long as our clearances-are current and on the books, the government
can, if it wishes, call us in at a moment's notice without the nuisance,
expense, and -- unless one goes to special trouble -- delay involved in
re-clearing, with a full field investigation etc. (The full cost of a
full field, when I last knew, came to about $10,000).
The mere process of being forced to make out all those bloody
forms for the umpteenth time, being finger-printed so that the govern-
ment can add a 27th copy of one's fingerprints to .ita.. files, and being
submitted to the indignity of having some nice man asking one's neighbors,
cleaning ladies, etc. about whether one has turned into a lush -- would
be sufficient to cause many of us who have too long a record of involve-
ment and discretion lightly to suffer such nonsense, to turn down routine
requests for help.
Obviously the government should periodically recheck people who
hold high clearances. Equally obviously, in deciding on such audits, it
should exercise some judgment about who is who. I am not sure I would
bother to recheck Dean Acheson or Jack McCloy, or even Kaysen and myself --
unless we turn up making speeches, eyes bulging, on Hyde Park corner.
None of.this argues against the application of "need-to-know".
as a test, though even there, one would want to take into account the
usefulness of keeping the right set of outsiders who don't have an opera-
tionally definable need-to-know casually informed. But application of
the need-to-know standard, especially strict application -- by people
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PERSONAL/CONFIDENTIAL
inside the government who have substantive responsibility for policy --
should make it less dangerous to keep the inventory of cleared people
quite large. Since clearance does not imply a,need-to-know, it does not imply
access. On the other hand, if a need-to-know does arise, a clearance be-
comes necessary. And the need-to-know rule has the enormous advantage
that the judgment whether X,Y, or Z should or should not be informed or
consulted on a particular issue is made by the responsible substantive
officer of the government and not by the security apparatus whose busi-
ness it is to identify people who might not be able or willing to keep
their mouths shut.
One last point. Once the government has pared down the inven-
tory of cleared people, it becomes subject to more intense temptation to
use the clearance machinery for political purposes. It is relatively
harder for a new administration to cancel people's clearances for poli-
tical reasons, than to deny clearance to anyone not cleared. This ap-
plies especially to younger and middle level people, who do not have per-
sonal access: to the center of the government or the "establishment", and
cannot protect themselves (and hence the government) against the misuse
of clearance-denial by personally taking the matter to the top.
The danger is that good people will be excluded from the circle
of informed and useable outsiders or precluded from going in -- and
I have in mind the many people who are not in a position to write or tele-
phone a Henry Kissinger, or a Richard Helms, or even to get wind of the
possibility that a flag has been placed on their folders.
Obviously, all this touches on the related question of what the
government does to organizations like Rand and IDA. I need not labor the
point to you that it would be a minor catastrophe if such places were ser-
iously damaged.
I am quite aware that no one who sits where you sit enjoys in-
volving himself in this sort of question. I tried to avoid it when I was
there -- though in many cases I couldn't and had to take on my Texas friend
Marvin (who, I should say in all fairness, responded perfectly sensibly,
once I had made the case and was on record). But over the long pull, all
this could become serious if it is handled by people who interpret a natural
Presidential reaction to the Ellsberg business too literally. It seems to
me that you, Dick Helms, and if one could engage him, Bill Rogers, would
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PERSONAL/CONFIDENTIAL
Hon. Henry Kissinger
July 8, 1971
once again, the keys are (1) the
to-know, and (2) a better procedure for updating clearances.
be in a strong position to make the,4 case against overreaction. Obviously,
Page Three
with warm regards,
P.S. July 9: Incidentally, after I first dictated this letter yesterday,
I came up with a case in point. I was asked to testify next week by John Culver's subcommittee on the effects on the U.S. of British entry and all
the Orville iFreeman, iRobert
that. My fellow panelists are scheduled to be
Woodcock, Van Cleveland and Ed Dale. Under
surely useful that I am in~tposition
peoplekineELTRHandoin1E totbrief,me office and/or Hal Sonnenfel
on the state of play, and on a lot of technical detail contained in clas-
sified government staff Not
to defendewhthe at ~understandeto
but will put onn'as p position against the protectionists and the people
be the he Administrat atio ly.
who have a_soybean theory of national_power._ In this instance, the initia-
tive for getting briefed has come fromeOe Obviously,bitiisaequallyouse-
ful for senior and even middle level people
to draw in outsiders for help or advice without a lot of prior or even
concurrent foolishness with still another clearance.
P.P.S. July 16: That was quite an announcement last night. Congratulations.
I assume that you are going out of your way to administer large weekly
doses of high-powered tranquilizer to Moscow. They are a good deal more
than we ever were -- and that's saying a lot. Chang-
neurotic about Peking
ing the metaphor, it will take a lotcoPrsdent it massage toireassure
them that we are not trying to play fe games. olitscs -- on the
tainly try to capitalize -- in the Kremlin's internal p
fact that the U.S. President has decided to go to Peking first.
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