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REFORMING THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL:

EFFICIENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

Serial No. 114–224

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable David C. Miller, Jr., Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Atlantic 

Council (former Special Assistant to the President, National Security Council) .......................................................................................................................... 4

The Honorable Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr., Chairman of the Board, The 

Stimson Center (former Assistant Secretary for Political Military Affairs, 

U.S. Department of State) ................................................................................... 12

The Honorable Derek Chollet, Counselor and Senior Advisor for Security 

and Defense Policy, The German Marshall Fund of the United States 

(former Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense) .................................................................................................. 18

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable David C. Miller, Jr.: Prepared statement .................................... 7

The Honorable Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr.: Prepared statement .......................... 14

The Honorable Derek Chollet: Prepared statement .............................................. 20

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 50

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 51

The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress from the 

Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement .............................................. 53

The Honorable David C. Miller, Jr.: Material submitted for the record ............. 55

The Honorable Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr.: Material submitted for the record ... 63

(1)

REFORMING THE NATIONAL SECURITY 

COUNCIL: EFFICIENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2016

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward Royce (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Chairman ROYCE. If we could ask all the members to take their 

seat and the audience as well, this hearing Reforming the National 

Security Council: Efficiency and Accountability, will come to order. 

In recent years, there has been increasing bipartisan concern 

over the size and the role of the President’s National Security 

Council. In too many cases, its traditional role of ‘‘honest broker’’ 

has evolved to a policy-making role. It has even undertaken secret 

diplomatic negotiations and that has been done outside of Congress’ view. 

Indeed, one observer recently wrote, ‘‘The national security advisor and his or her staff remain among the most influential entities 

in the Federal bureaucracy that are not subject to direct congressional oversight.’’ This has proven to be a problem for this committee. 

While concerns about the NSC aren’t new, they have reached 

new heights, leading to current proposals before Congress to statutorily restrict the size of the NSC staff. This is a staff that has increased from 100 persons at the start of President George Bush’s 

presidency to reportedly over 400 people today on the NSC staff. 

Such a large staff sends the message that the President intends to 

run foreign policy and military operations out of the White House 

to the exclusion of the cabinet. 

It also makes for more meddlers. Indeed, former Defense Secretary Gates has complained that the ‘‘micromanagement’’ of the 

Obama White House ‘‘drove me crazy.’’ A smaller staff would more 

likely empower cabinet secretaries to do what they have been selected and confirmed by the Senate to do and that is to run their 

departments. 

More staff means more meetings and often paralysis. According 

to a report in the Washington Post last year, on some issues, NSC 

meetings of the cabinet deputies ‘‘grew so repetitive’’ that ‘‘deputies 

stopped coming, sending assistant secretaries and below in their 

stead.’’ How many hearings has the committee held on Ukraine at 

2

which State Department officials have told us that the White 

House is still debating Kiev’s request for heavy defensive weapons? 

Also of concern, the profile of an NSC staffer has changed from 

a seasoned professional doing a stint at the White House as the 

capstone of their career, to that of junior professionals just off the 

campaign trail. As one interviewed for the Atlantic Council’s Study 

we will hear about today said, ‘‘This is no place for on-the-job training of bright, young, but inexperienced people.’’ Especially at the 

expense of the State Department. 

Take the President’s move to normalize relations with Cuba, secretly run out of the White House by two NSC staffers. Secretary 

of State Kerry was not informed of these negotiations until the discussions were well underway, and State Department officials in 

charge of the region found out only as the negotiations were all but 

done. 

Why do we care? When the committee requested that these NSC 

staffers testify, we were told no and given a separation of powers 

excuse. But our role and the responsibility is to conduct oversight 

of U.S. relations with foreign nations. And if the committee can’t 

hear directly from those most involved in these negotiations, our 

role and influence—and that of the American people we represent—is significantly minimalized. 

This morning, we will hear from several witnesses who have direct experience with the growing size and role of the President’s 

NSC. While today’s focus is about process, process is important to 

good policy. And we hope that our discussion will lead to recommendations for the next administration to improve the efficiency 

of this important body. 

And I now turn to the ranking member for any opening remarks 

from Mr. Eliot Engel of New York. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling this 

hearing. Ambassador Miller, Ambassador Bloomfield, Mr. Chollet, 

welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee. We are grateful for your 

time and your expertise. 

It has been nearly 70 years since the National Security Act created the National Security Council. Over that time, the council has 

proved to be a flexible and dynamic body. Every President has 

shaped the NSC staff in a way that has worked best for his purposes. 

Congress intended for the NSC staff to serve as the President’s 

advisory and interagency coordinated body. As the National Security Act put it, to ‘‘advise, coordinate, access and praise’’ policymakers relating to national security. 

Obviously, over that time, national security politics and concerns 

has changed, as the world has changed and the NSC has had to 

keep pace. As we think about how the NSC might look under future administrations, we should keep in mind lessons learned in 

the NSC’s first 70 years. 

First, a selection of a National Security Advisor is one of the 

most critical appointments the President will make. This person 

sets the tone for the rest of the NSC and the National Security 

Agencies. The President should have full faith with the National 

Security Advisor as a trusted confident, a role that Congress has 

supported. 

3

Secondly, the President’s policy staff should be national security 

experts with experience managing interagency processes. Even 

though many of them are detailed from other parts of the government, their loyalty should be to our national security and not to 

any one agency or service. 

And thirdly, while the NSC staff should certainly be in the business of advising the President on policy and ensuring the agencies 

are carrying out that policy, the NSC staff itself should not be carrying out the policy. That responsibility rests with the cabinet 

agencies with Congress’ oversight. 

It is essential to our discussion today how do we ensure that the 

execution of foreign policy stays where it belongs. One common explanation is that the NSC mission creep results from the NSC staff 

growing too large and the easy solution is to limit the size of the 

staff. I am sympathetic to that feeling because we don’t want it to 

be too large and we don’t want it to be usurping things that the 

State Department or the Agency should do. But it is not just that. 

That, in itself, in my opinion, is too simplistic. It fails to take into 

account why the staff is growing and ignores the bureaucratic demands placed in the NSC. 

The real questions we should be asking are about the appropriate role of the NSC and how it is managed, issues that are important, regardless of the size of the staff. I do want to say that 

I am concerned about the size of the staff but I think these other 

things are at least equal of concern as well. 

In a certain way, the NSC was set up as a clearing house. Seventy years ago, the cabinet agencies had relatively clear-cut missions with a minimal amount of overlap. When matters emerged 

that required cross-agency collaboration or tradeoffs, the question 

went up the food chain to the NSC and the NSC coordinated 

among agencies. 

Today, we face so many more issues that are crosscutting and 

overlapping and they often involve a whole host of cabinet agencies. Just consider the Zika virus. State Department, HHS, and the 

Agriculture Department all have roles to play in addressing that 

problem but our civilian agencies are still essentially a stovepipe 

bureaucracy. So, when questions emerge about one of the many 

complex national security issues we face, those questions still get 

passed up to the NSC, often leaving policy-making decisions in the 

White House’s hands. Over time, this pattern has forced the staff 

to grow as well. Past attempts to create so-called tsars to oversee 

overlapping issues have proved to be a Band-Aid at best, and at 

worst, totally ineffective. So, how do we empower our agencies to 

deal with a modern set of challenges without having their first 

phone call be to the White House? How do we modernize our agencies and, we think, decades-old bureaucratic structures ill-suited to 

the new challenges we face? 

We know this sort of reform is possible. We saw it succeed decades ago when the Goldwater-Nichols Act forced our military services to work together in joint commands. That law promoted collaboration and a more unified approach to military concerns. Following the same approach, we need to make it easier for the talented men and women in our cabinet agencies to collaborate and 

arrive at policy consensus. That way, NSC staff could get back to 

4

their original mission, advising the President on policy, seeing that 

policy carried out, and facilitating coordination among agencies 

only in those instances when it is absolutely necessary. 

Yet, we simply cannot expect our agencies to shake off decadesold procedures and habits if Congress isn’t providing them with the 

tools and resources they need to become effective, modern organizations. It has been 15 years since Congress sent a State Department 

authorization to the President. I want to repeat that, 15 years since 

Congress sent a State Department authorization to the President. 

I don’t think anyone on this committee, on both sides of the aisle, 

is happy about that. This committee recently marked up such legislation. It is sitting on the launch pad, waiting for House leadership 

to say go. I think the problem that we are discussing today is one 

more reason that the House needs to finish its work on the bill and 

I would encourage all the other National Security Committees to 

look at what needs to be done to bring their agencies into the 21st 

century. 

To our witnesses: I am curious to hear your views on the structure of the NSC and how we can make our agencies more effective 

and collaborative when it comes to policymaking. Again, we are 

grateful for your time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Engel. So, this morning we 

are pleased to be joined by a distinguished panel. We have Ambassador David Miller. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Previously, Ambassador Miller served as the Special 

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs at the National Security Council staff. Additionally, he served as the United 

States Ambassador to Zimbabwe and to Tanzania. 

The Honorable Lincoln Bloomfield. Ambassador Bloomfield is 

chairman of the board of the Stimson Center and previously he 

held a series of positions in the Departments of State and Defense, 

including serving as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political 

Military Affairs. 

And we have the Honorable Derek Chollet. He is Counselor and 

Senior Advisor for Security and Defense Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and previously he served as the 

Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense. 

Without objection, the witnesses’ full prepared statements will be 

made part of the record and members will have 5 calendar days to 

submit any statements or questions or any extraneous material for 

the record. 

So, Ambassador Miller, if you could please summarize your remarks, we will begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DAVID C. MILLER, JR., NONRESIDENT SENIOR FELLOW, THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL 

(FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL) 

Ambassador MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is nice to see 

you again. 

Chairman ROYCE. Good to see you back. 

5

Ambassador MILLER. We spent many interesting hearings on Africa, so it is great to be back. 

Ranking Member Engel, thank you and all the members of the 

committee. I must say I am exceptionally pleased to see this many 

members of your body interested in the management of the NSC. 

It is an immensely serious topic. It doesn’t get a lot of public discussion. 

Chairman ROYCE. I am going to ask you, though, Ambassador, 

to move your microphone right there. 

Ambassador MILLER. Does that work? Good. It is just a lack of 

practice. I will get it. 

I am here today to present the Atlantic Council report, which I 

think you all have seen a copy of. It is named ‘‘A Foundational Proposal for the Next Administration.’’ It was drafted over a couple of 

years by Ambassadors Tom Pickering and Chet Crocker, myself, 

and Dan Levin. I suspect you know most of them and have talked 

with them before. 

The report is meant to address two issues, that is, what did we 

learn over the 60 or some interviews we conducted over 2 years. 

The interviews were conducted by all of us in-person. We felt that 

the subjects that were being discussed were sensitive enough that 

when you interviewed former cabinet officers or national security 

advisors that those doing the interviewing had to have had similar 

jobs, sat in the same meetings, and been subject to the same pressures. 

I must say that the opening comments were excellent and, in 

many ways, speak to our observations but let me offer a few comments on the spirit of our report. 

We spent so much time on the NSC because if it doesn’t work, 

it is like congestive heart failure. If the NSC is not working well, 

the entire executive branch foreign policy and military structure 

slows down and is not effectively used. 

And there is another point that I would like to make at the outset and I hope will make throughout the presentation and that is, 

this is a non-partisan report. We looked at administrations going 

back for some period of time. General Scowcroft’s thesis at West 

Point was on the Eisenhower NSC. So, we go back a good ways. 

I am fond of describing the document as an owner’s manual for 

the NSC. It tells you what has worked in the past, what has not 

worked, and it is policy neutral, if you will. It is meant to say if 

you want to run an NSC in a manner that has been effective in 

the past, take a look at this document. Learning how to run the 

NSC is something that we may have lost track of. 

The recommendations are quite simple and they are coincident 

with what you two have mentioned in your opening comments. The 

NSC needs to get back to its original mission of coordinating policies for the President and then ensuring that those policies are 

faithfully executed. The role of the National Security Advisor is absolutely critical. It is clearly, I believe, the most important Presidential appointment not subject to Senate confirmation. 

The size of the NSC staff has, as we have all observed, grown 

quite large. There are a variety of reasons for that but it is much 

larger than it has been historically. 

6

The NSC has struggled, over time, with creating a strategic planning staff that has never worked too well and there are some 

issues about how to coordinate executive branch legal advice better. 

In the few moments I have left, the chairman had a question 

about why this happened. I think to a certain degree, the most important factor is inertia. It has just grown. It has not been successfully checked by the Congress or by cabinet members or agency 

heads. There is another observation that the NSC has become inbox driven, that there are so many issues in the world that surely, 

the President must have a position on all of them. The 24-hour 

news cycle I think is another contributing factor. We have talked 

to senior NSC officials who said the ability to delegate key Presidential positions to departments and agencies to make public statements has not worked exceptionally well. 

The State Department, where I enjoyed working and am proud 

to have worked with the foreign service, is still seen as being too 

slow, too bureaucratic and we all need to address that. The multidisciplined threat that you have mentioned is another issue where 

the NSC has stepped in and added personnel to deal with that. 

And finally, there is an issue that I will touch on at the end and 

that is there seems to have developed a serious split in this town 

between politically loyal foreign policy professionals and professionals that work for the departments and agencies. I think we 

need to address that. 

Finally, and I thought your comments about the lack of an authorization bill for the State Department were bang on. There is 

little reward in this town for building institutional capability in the 

executive branch. That is in some distinction from the private sector, where the building of institutional capability is seen as a key 

responsibility for a CEO. 

I am over my time but I have one less thing I would like to say. 

I have been out of town for a little bit and when I came back and 

got involved in writing this, my friends said to me, David, you have 

been gone too long. I am in San Antonio. And the trust that was 

in this town when I was younger, which was some time ago, seems 

to have gone. And I hope this hearing is part of a step to begin to 

develop a more civil dialogue among those of us who may see issues 

differently but we all love the country. 

That is it. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Miller follows:]

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Chairman ROYCE. Ambassador Miller, that is exactly the tone we 

want to set and we appreciate you being the lead witness here. 

Ambassador Bloomfield. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LINCOLN P. BLOOMFIELD, 

JR., CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, THE STIMSON CENTER 

(FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLITICAL MILITARY 

AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE) 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Thank you, Chairman Royce, Ranking 

Member Engel. Thank you, members of the committee, for the 

honor of testifying before you today. I would like to second the remarks that both of you made. And it is clear that the issues that 

are covered in my prepared testimony are the same ones that you 

have already articulated. 

I really want to make four brief points from the standpoint of 

someone who does not have the most recent experience and has not 

served on the NSC but, in the last 35 years, I have been in the 

interagency in five different administrations. So, I am going to take 

a broader view. 

I will play the resident optimist. I think everyone who is here in 

this room today is here because they believe that it can be fixed 

and so do I. 

The first point starts with the legal mandate for the NSC and 

the privileges that the NSC enjoys. So long as the NSC staff and 

the national security advisor are coordinating the work of the other 

national security agencies of government and following the legal 

mandate to make the tools of government more integrated and 

more effective, military and non-military, then they should continue to enjoy the prerogative of being the President’s staff and, 

therefore, not being Senate-confirmed, not being subject to testimony, not having their paperwork subject to the same oversight 

and public oversight that the line agencies of government have. 

That said, there are lines that they can cross, and have in the 

past, where these privileges come into question. One of the two 

sources that I consulted, and I applaud the effort of the Atlantic 

Council and its co-chairs, both of whom I greatly respect, but I 

have in my hand the so-called Tower Commission Report. And people of a certain age will remember this big blue book that I am 

holding. This was one of the eight investigations on the IranContra Affair. This was done by three very respected statesmen, 

Senator John Tower, Senator Edmund Muskie, and Lieutenant 

General Brent Scowcroft, who had previously served as President 

Ford’s National Security Advisor. They found that the NSC Advisor 

and staff had conducted a covert operation in transferring funds to 

the Nicaraguan contras. And without re-litigating the merits of the 

case, they issued a warning to future Presidents, which I will read 

to you. They are warned, and members of the National Security 

Council and National Security Advisors, ‘‘of the potential pitfalls 

they face, even when they are operating with what they consider 

the best of motives.’’

So, I think that there is a cautionary note. There may be issues 

where the NSC is becoming operational and setting policy, rather 

than coordinating it. And that is, historically speaking, a problem. 

13

The second source and the third point I want to make has to do 

with the evolution of the NSC and, with the privilege of the committee, I would like to hold up a book by my late father, MIT Professor of Political Science Lincoln Bloomfield, who served on the 

NSC under his colleague, Zbigniew Brezezinski, for 1 year under 

the Carter administration and wrote in 1982 ‘‘The Foreign Policy 

Process: A Modern Primer,’’ in which he reviewed 40 years of National Security Councils. 

Among the insights gained here were that technology moves only 

in one direction. Under the Kennedy administration, the White 

House Communications Agency installed equipment so that the 

White House could see the same diplomatic dispatches, the same 

military dispatches, the same intelligence reports as the other 

agencies, which made them more powerful and brought them into 

the conversation. 

Under the Nixon administration, they had secure facsimiles. So, 

now, the White House could send agendas and papers for discussion in the situation room. And Dr. Kissinger famously used this 

to great effect, and was actually dual-hatted as Secretary of State 

and NSC Advisor for 2 years. 

And so, in some ways, you can’t turn the clock back to the 1970s 

or ’80s, or the 1950s, and we have to recognize this. 

But before we conclude, and this is my final point, that the NSC 

needs to be—that there is a right size for the NSC and that the 

President’s prerogative should be, in some way, changed or interfered with by the Congress. I think it is really important to recognize that the NSC is trying to chase a bureaucracy in Washington 

that is much bigger than it was 20 or 30 years ago. There are so 

many more undersecretaries and assistant secretaries and issuespecific offices that they are asked to coordinate that you could understand why the size has gotten larger. And I think this leads to, 

perhaps, a broader conversation on how to right-size the entire national security process. 

I published last Friday, in Foreign Policy, an article that takes 

a slightly larger view of the national security management challenge and I commend it to the members, I think copies have been 

made available, and with the chairman’s permission and the ranking member, I would hope perhaps it could be brought into the official record or the hearing. 

Chairman ROYCE. Without objection. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Bloomfield follows:]

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Chairman ROYCE. Mr. Chollet. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DEREK CHOLLET, COUNSELOR AND SENIOR ADVISOR FOR SECURITY AND DEFENSE 

POLICY, THE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED 

STATES (FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE) 

Mr. CHOLLET. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Engel, members 

of the committee, it is an honor to appear before you again and I 

will briefly summarize my longer statement for the record. 

I approach this important topic from a unique perspective. I 

served on President-elect Obama’s NSC Transition Team 8 years 

ago and then I went on to serve for 6 years in the Obama administration at the State Department, at the Pentagon, and at the National Security Council staff at the White House. So, therefore, I 

follow the assessment of this administration’s NSC system with 

great interest, since I both experienced and am partly responsible 

for many of the concerns that have been raised. 

Consider the three most common concerns expressed about the 

current NSC. First, that it is too big; second, that it is too operational; and third, that it has a proclivity for too much micromanagement and too little strategic thinking. And let me take each 

in turn. 

First, most experts and former officials believe that the NSC is 

too big. We certainly thought so during the 2008 transition from 

President Bush to President Obama, as does the current NSC leadership today. And yet the trend, I think, is headed in the right direction. Today’s NSC policy and leadership staff consists of fewer 

than 200 people. And my understanding is that with the current 

downsizing underway, and there has been about a 15-percent cut 

in NSC staff since January 2015, the NSC staff size that Obama 

will leave next year will be roughly the same as what he inherited 

from President Bush in 2009. 

And it is important to consider these numbers in context. Some 

of the widely cited higher numbers of the Obama NSC staff size reflect the back office functions like those staffing the White House 

situation room, the records management personnel, as well as the 

integration of the Homeland Security Council in 2009. And moreover, even despite its growth, the current NSC remains comparatively small. The Joint Chiefs of Staff is over seven times larger. 

The State Department’s Office of the Secretary is nearly twice the 

size of the NSC staff, as is the staff of the Congressional Research 

Service. So in many ways, the NSC’s evolution reflects global complexity and how much the world and our Government has changed. 

For example, the traditional regional policy offices, Latin America, Asia, Europe, et cetera, have looked similar in both size and 

function during the past several decades, yet there are now new 

policy dimensions the NSC must cover such as cybersecurity, climate change, WMD proliferation, biosecurity and global health, 

global economics, counterterrorism. Few of these issues were 

prominent a quarter century ago and none of them reside in a single agency, which is why close coordination is so important. 

19

Because of this complexity and the importance for the President 

to maintain flexibility in how she or he can respond to events, I believe it is a mistake to impose arbitrary caps on the NSC staff size, 

nor do I believe it wise to make the position of National Security 

Advisor require Senate confirmation. And here, I can do no better 

than echo the 1987 Tower Commission Report, which studied this 

issue carefully and in its warning that doing so, making the NSC 

Advisor Senate-confirmed would undermine the Presidential advisory role the National Security Advisor must play and only create 

more bureaucratic confusion and tension than it would resolve. 

Now, concerns about the NSC size relate directly to a second enduring critique that the NSC is too operational. Now, agencies 

must be given the responsibility and be held accountable for doing 

their jobs. And in my experience, that is what Presidents and members of the NSC staff wanted. But at the same time, agencies must 

operate within the policy parameters set by the President. Now, 

sometimes, when the White House tried to enforce regular order 

and place the agencies in charge of a policy, then it was accused 

of taking its eye off the ball. And where you stand often depends 

on whether you agree with the policy direction. For example, 

Obama’s NSC has held tight control over U.S. troop levels in Iraq 

and Afghanistan but it is important to remember that the Bush 

White House conducted the same intense oversight when managing 

the surge in Iraq from the West Wing in 2007 and 2008. Moreover, 

some policy issues lend themselves to a strong White House lead 

and many of those delicate tasks require such agility that they are 

best managed from a tight circle within the White House. 

Yet, these must be the exception, rather than the rule, which 

brings us to the third common critique, that by micromanaging, the 

NSC is not doing enough strategy. 

I used to run the strategy office at the NSC. So, I can fully appreciate how difficult this task can be. And in today’s tumultuous 

policy environment where our President is expected to respond to 

almost everything instantly, it is very difficult to keep the urgent 

from overwhelming the important. Crisis management tends to 

dominate the NSC’s operations. And although during my time and 

since, the NSC staff worked very hard to allow senior officials the 

opportunity to think about long-term strategy and examine crosscutting issues, it has not nearly been enough. 

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Engel, members of this committee, the recent focus on the NSC’s design and operation has 

generated an important debate. I welcome congressional attention 

to this issue. My hope is that by opening up this conversation, we 

can make some necessary changes, empower agencies to do their 

jobs, while ensuring that the President gets the advice and support 

she or he requires to conduct a strong, coordinated, and strategic 

national security policy that serves the interest of the American 

people. 

Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Chollet follows:]

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Chairman ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chollet. I think the difficulty 

here, if we look at the drift, is if we look Ambassador Miller’s report, the report that we are discussing, in that report there is a 

story of a four-star general receiving a phone call with orders from 

a low-level NSC staffer. So, the directive did not originate from the 

President. It didn’t originate from the Secretary of Defense. It 

didn’t originate from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It originates 

from a rather low-level staffer. 

Clearly, the goal here is to get back to a system on foreign policy 

that works when different agencies and branches play their proper 

role. What we have to figure out here is how to get a situation 

where diplomats do the negotiating, where commanders call in the 

air strikes, where Congress conducts oversight and that is not happening under the current and past. The way in which this has 

morphed over the years has led to these problems that we are talking about today. 

And so, I would just ask this question to the panel: What State 

Department reforms are most necessary to facilitate the evolution 

of power from the NSC back to the Department where the expertise lies and where you don’t end up with low-level staff members 

making these kind of calls to four-star generals? How do we get 

back to the system the way is intended to work and in which it will 

function most effectively? 

And Ambassador Bloomfield, maybe you will add to that because 

you make the point that this has become a problem not just at the 

NSC but also it is something that affects us, Congress, and the administration. We have a situation where our instinct is to appoint 

a special position on everything and so you have all of the special 

envoys and all of the coordinators adding to the complexity of a situation where the agency that is supposed to be in charge of making 

the decision isn’t doing its role. 

So, I will open that question to the panel. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. If I may, Chairman Royce, I don’t believe that the people who strategized American policy during the 

height of the Cold War, when we were 25 minutes from extinction 

from Soviet nuclear weapons, were any less intelligent than the 

people that we have in senior positions today. In fact, I would 

argue that we have too many very talented people trying to chase 

authority, funding, control over policy, authorship of policy. And I 

have many friends on the inside who have great difficulty getting 

a well-considered, innovative idea all the way out of the building 

in the State Department. 

And so I think that consolidating offices, and this is under both 

administrations, Republican and Democrat. I have spent half my 

career outside the government. When I had been appointed to come 

in, I asked the question how much sense does this activity make? 

Is this something that we need to be doing, that my people should 

be spending time on, or are we just playing ping pong inside the 

bureaucracy and sending papers back and forth? 

So, I think there is a great deal of process that can be consolidated. And what happens when you try to show how important an 

issue is by putting a special office in charge is that everything else 

becomes diluted. You dilute the currency of high-ranking people so 

that, in the Congress, you have 40 plus assistant secretaries. I was 

25

very honored to be an Assistant Secretary of State. If I were Secretary of State today, I don’t think I could name them all or recognize their faces. These are Senate-confirmed——

Chairman ROYCE. Right. Well, there is another element of this. 

And that is part of this goes to the experience or the expertise of 

the staff. One of the questions in this study, the explanation from 

another lower level staff member is you have a hard time running 

the interagency process if you have never held a senior position in 

one of the agencies. So, this is another aspect of the problem, in 

terms of the expertise and not consolidating this decisionmaking 

where it belongs. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. If I may, at the high levels, the under 

secretary level. There was one Under Secretary of State under 

President Kennedy, that was the second-ranking person in the department. The President would call the Under Secretary on the 

telephone. There are six or seven today. The same in the Pentagon 

in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. And I think, by the way, 

the Office of the Joint Chiefs, the Combatant Command Staffs, I 

was there when they started to put joint JIACs together and was 

part of the approval process. They are thick with all sorts of flavors 

of experts on their own staffs. I think we need to downsize. And 

what happens is, you have high officials who only have one-seventh 

of the picture. How strategic of a view will an administration have 

if everyone has just a sliver or a soda straw view of policy that they 

care about? We need to start elevating people and giving them a 

broad swath of policy authority so that they can think very strategically and when the Zika virus becomes a problem, we can put a 

task force together and have it expire once the problem is under 

control. 

Chairman ROYCE. Well, my time has expired, so I will go to Mr. 

Engel. But it seems to me the NSC should return to its original 

mission of managing the development of policy options for the 

President of the United States. If that can be the end game here, 

I think we can get back to its original function and an effective 

function. Mr. Engel. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo my concern along with you, the two questions you asked about the role of 

Congress. We are very anxious. Many of us feel that more and 

more things are slipping away from what Congress is supposed to 

do and we don’t like it and don’t think it is good for the country. 

So, I am very concerned about it. 

I believe the chairman also spoke about tsars. And I wanted any 

of you who care to say what observation would any of you make 

about the usefulness of these tsars, the proliferation of special coordinators and special representatives that the State Department, 

these were created to shepherd initiatives into provide help with 

the coordination. And sometimes it has actually been an impediment to coordination. So, from the perspective of the NSC, do these 

types of structures help or inhibit effective interagency coordination? Anyone who cares to answer that? 

And let me say, before you do, I want to thank all three of you 

for excellent testimony. And Dr. Miller, I am glad that you couldn’t 

have put it better when you said that there is difference of opinion 

way all over the country and I think that is important. 

26

The chairman and I have tried to conduct this committee as the 

most bipartisan committee in the Congress because we believe that 

foreign policy is bipartisan and differences need to stop at the water’s edge. 

So, I just want to let you know that in the 4 years we have been 

doing this, we have tried very hard. It doesn’t mean we agree all 

the time, but we have tried very hard to work together. And my 

commendation to members, my colleagues on both side of the aisle, 

who have worked very hard, even when we have a disagreement, 

we have a good discourse and we try to find common ground. 

So, if anybody wants to answer that tsars question, I would appreciate it. Ambassador Miller. 

Ambassador MILLER. I ended up——

Mr. ENGEL. If you could, pull the microphone toward you. 

Ambassador MILLER. I will get this. I ended up supporting one 

of our first tsars, when Bill Bennett was given the drug war. And 

so I have spent a good deal of time figuring out what support from 

the White House is appropriate and where it is damaging. 

We, I think, have gotten to rely too much on Band-Aids and we 

appoint tsars, or special envoys, or administrators, when they are 

duplicative of functions that already exist but don’t seem to be 

moving as fast as the White House would like or performing exactly what the White House wants. 

So, my sense is that you need task forces. You need special envoys on occasion but your first examination ought to be is there an 

assistant secretary that already has this responsibility? Is there a 

competent Ambassador on-site? Because when you appoint a person with duplicative authority, it can really set things back. It is 

just confusing. 

That said, there is going to be a need for these, as we go forward, 

but they ought to be led by the departments and agencies that 

have the lead stake in the issue and supported by the NSC. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. Mr. Chollet, you had your hand up. I 

don’t know——

Mr. CHOLLET. Yes, well I very much want to echo what the Ambassador has said. Tsars have been, in the past, a good thing but 

there is also too much of a good thing. And the tsars that I, both 

at the State Department or at the White House that I worked 

closely with during my time in government, whether going back to 

the Clinton administration, the tsar on the Balkans, or during the 

Obama administration the SRAP structure on Afghanistan and 

Pakistan at the State Department, were successful, had some challenges, but were successful in trying to bring about greater coordination both within the Department. It is also within the broader 

interagency. But clearly, every administration, I think, in the modern era has seen a proliferation of these tsars. And when a new 

team comes in—we certainly did this in 2008, I expect the next 

transition team will do the same—is take a close look at these various idiosyncratic bureaucratic structures that administrations create, sometimes for personnel reasons, sometimes because an issue 

becomes so important that they don’t want it to overwhelm the 

other senior officials who have the whole world to worry about. But 

I think we have to be very mindful moving forward that there can 

be too many of these and this will just create Band-Aids that don’t 

27

actually get at the core coordination strategic problem that we are 

all interested in trying to solve. 

Mr. ENGEL. Ambassador Bloomfield. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Yes, if I may. My last position in government was as a special envoy in 2008. I came back part-time on 

an issue that the chairman knows about. I was to try to travel the 

world and quietly remove shoulder-fired missiles from circulation. 

And you had to be able to speak to heads of government, chiefs of 

defense, because no second in a ranking would ever give up a 

weapon, you have to go to the top. And so I took my orders directly 

from Steve Hadley and Condoleezza Rice and had very strong support from the NSC Counterterrorism Team. My observation, 

though, and this is a little bit of dirty laundry, is that there are 

lots of senior people walking the halls of the State Department 

looking for a job that is at their rank and that this is a way. They 

want these positions. It is not clear to me they are all necessary. 

What I would do, and this is probably a little bit out of the ordinary but I have seen it in the past, is to identify prominent Americans in the private sector and in Congress who could be a well-received envoy to deliver a message to a head of state, somebody of 

prominence. And I include members of the House and Senate in 

that list on both sides of the aisle, which would add credibility to 

the President or the Secretary of State’s message. 

So, I hope we think about that and move in that direction. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. If the chairman will indulge me, I have 

a quick question that I would like to ask you, all of you. 

The current House language in the fiscal year 2017 NDAA calls 

for Senate confirmation of a National Security Advisor if the NSC 

staff exceeds 100 employees, including detailees. I want to quote 

Stephen Hadley, who is former NSA to President George W. Bush. 

He said, and I quote him, ‘‘If a President thought that what he or 

she shared with the National Security Advisor could be compelled 

in public testimony, the President would look elsewhere for a national security and foreign policy confidant.’’ That is a quote. 

So, do you think that Senate confirmation, any of you, of the National Security Advisor would inhibit this person from serving the 

President and does it also raise questions about the constitutional 

separation of powers? 

Anyone care to try it? 

Ambassador MILLER. I suspect I speak for all of us but I will 

start off. And that is I don’t think advice and consent for the President’s personal staff makes sense. 

That said, we are in a situation where the Congress needs to 

play a larger role and have a larger discussion with the President 

about how the NSC works and who is selected. Now, that doesn’t 

mean a vote but I surely wish that you all and the Executive Office 

of the President have a more candid or active discussion about who 

is there and who is serving. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. 

Chairman ROYCE. If the gentleman would yield. 

Mr. ENGEL. Yes, certainly. 

Chairman ROYCE. From my standpoint, if you look carefully at 

the language, the intent there seems to me, and it is not our language, it is from the Armed Services Committee, but the intent 

28

seems to be to control the size of the staffing and get it back to the 

original numbers because confirmation isn’t required, as long as 

the executive branch concurs with evolving back to the original size 

of the indices NSC staff. 

So, I don’t think the intent is to drive confirmation. I think the 

intent is to try to exercise some kind of congressional oversight or 

control over what has actually happened in the agency. So, I would 

just throw that in for the mix. I don’t know how else to do that but 

this hearing is an attempt. 

Ambassador Miller? 

Ambassador MILLER. I think if you look at what we have written, 

indeed, there is very strong support for limiting the headcount at 

the NSC, as it is seen as the root cause of a number of subsets of 

problems. But there is equally strong opposition to the advice and 

consent. So, I think your observation is right on. 

Chairman ROYCE. Yes, I think it is a clumsy attempt to get at 

your objective. So, our hope is to reach a bipartisan consensus of 

a more effective way to get to that objective. 

We go now to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you for this hearing. From the ransom payments in Iran, to the alleged secret Iran deals, and humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding every day in Syria, the manipulations of intelligence on 

ISIS, there are too many examples of how the White House has 

manipulated information while keeping the Congress and, most importantly, the American people in the dark. 

And Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for bringing up Cuba in 

your opening statement because that is a good example of what 

was happening with the secretive nature. The White House decided 

to keep not only Congress in the dark but also cut out the State 

Department and others, even though the White House was negotiating with the Cuban regime for more than a year. Then Assistant 

Secretary Jacobson testified before our committee in February 2015 

that she found out about the negotiations just weeks before the announcement. And when former Deputy National Security Advisor 

and now Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken testified at his 

confirmation hearing in November 2014, he assured the Senate 

Foreign Relations Committee that any change in U.S. policy toward 

Cuba would be done in full consultation with Congress. Well, that 

turned out to be an utter falsehood, as less than a month later with 

zero consultation with the Congress, the administration announced 

what has proven to be a complete failure of a deal with the Castro 

regime. And as we heard from Ambassador Bloomfield, NSC staffers shouldn’t conduct official actions, which are supposed to be the 

responsibility of agencies that are answerable to Congress, and 

then expect to be immune from accountability. 

So, Mr. Chollet, I have a series of questions. We won’t have time 

to answer them but maybe we can have a discussion afterward. 

Is it worrisome that NSC is not accountable to Congress or that 

when Congress attempts to exercise our oversight authority in the 

foreign policy realm, it cannot perform that function because NSC 

officials do not testify before Congress? Also, what steps can Congress make in order to make the NSC more transparent? 

29

There was a time when NSC staffers were trained on the proper 

rules to delineate between the duties and roles of the NSC and the 

duties and roles of the State Department or Defense Department, 

making sure that they didn’t overlap and, instead, stayed focused 

on their responsibility in those lanes and left the policymaking to 

the proper person. And I was wondering if you received that kind 

of training when you were at the NSC and do you have any idea 

if training programs of this type still exist. 

Also, in November of last year, when I traveled to Afghanistan 

and our generals on the ground indicated that their hands were 

tied when it came to operations, no doubt it was because, I believe, 

NSC was overriding our leaders on the field, and former Defense 

Secretaries Gates and Panetta both have complained about NSC 

staff imposing themselves on their jurisdiction. Based on your experience in both the NSC and various government agencies, maybe 

you can help shed some light on that. 

Thank you, sir. 

Mr. CHOLLET. Thank you very much and I would be happy to follow up with you as well, if I don’t get fully to answer your good 

questions. First, I will take it in reverse order. 

On the tension between White House oversight, political oversight, and what is going on in military operations, I experienced 

that on both sides of the ball, right, at the NSC staff but then also 

when I served at the Pentagon as an Assistant Secretary. 

And whereas there are examples, and I don’t know exactly when 

the example that the Ambassador’s report cited about when a junior staffer apparently called the Pentagon to ask for something that 

was completely out of order, that is not the regular order. That 

doesn’t happen that often, at least in my experience. And when it 

does happen, it should be stopped, absolutely. The National Security Advisors I have worked for, the Secretary of Defenses I have 

worked for would not tolerate that. 

That said, there is such a thing as Presidential control over the 

use of military force. So, if the NSC staff, on behalf of the President, is essentially ensuring that the agencies follow the President’s prerogative on how that force should be used, what kind of 

targets we hit, what sort of operations we conduct, it seems to me 

that that is something we would want. 

I was struck in 2008 coming into the Obama administration how 

intensively the Bush White House and the Iraq/Afghanistan tsar 

and the directorate that was created to run the surge in Iraq, in 

particular, how deeply involved in military operational issues that 

that team was, much to the distress of uniformed military and the 

Secretary of Defense at the time to have a sitting three-star general working in the basement of the West Wing, essentially running the surge in Iraq. 

So, I think that should be the exception. It should not be the 

rule, which then gets back to the opening question, which was NSC 

staff, senior NSC officials engaging in direct foreign engagements. 

I think there should be as little of that as possible. 

Throughout our history, we have seen National Security Advisors 

take on important missions on behalf of the President that are extremely sensitive and secretive. Henry Kissinger’s opening to 

China——

30

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. That is right. 

Mr. CHOLLET [continuing]. Brzezinski’s normalization of China 

several years later. But then we have also as the Tower Commission pointed out, very negative examples of that. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Well, thank you. 

Mr. CHOLLET. So, it should be the exception, not the rule. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. I know I am out of time but thank you for this hearing. 

Thank you, gentlemen. 

Chairman ROYCE. Thank you. We will go to Mr. Brad Sherman 

of California. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Last century the high-water mark for the NSC 

was Kissinger. Everything we complain about now was probably 

more true then, in terms of the NSC. 

As to this century, I have seen this committee and the House of 

Representatives in general go from foreign policy makers to foreign 

policy kibitzers that are at least allowed to provide some oversight 

and some input to really an irrelevancy because the most important people making and carrying out foreign policy don’t even come 

here and pretend to listen to us. 

Mr. Chairman, the Armed Services Committee passes an authorization bill every year and nothing illustrates the importance of 

that more than that the provision to limit the size of the National 

Security Council is in their bill and will be considered in their bill, 

whereas our bill for 15 years is an exercise in—well, often isn’t 

even written. It usually isn’t even considered by the House and 

hasn’t reached the President’s desk in 15 years. 

So, what we need to do is say not how can we possibly get the 

most important Presidential advisor on foreign policy to come into 

this room but how can we write an authorizing bill in this room 

that becomes law? And I would like to see us demand that we don’t 

appropriate money for foreign policy that isn’t authorized. And we 

could do that by insisting that the authorizing bill that we pass be 

joined to the appropriations bill and that neither the Senate nor 

the President should be able to get the money without dealing with 

the authorizing provisions. And if we, as a committee, would demand that the rule for considering the foreign operations appropriations bill include both the authorizing and the appropriation. 

And I would like them to be separate bills but separate bills where 

one of them is thrown away, that is not the best approach. So, if 

they were married, then, when they go over to the Senate, we 

make it plain—you have to have an authorizing and an appropriations bill. You go to the President and you say you want the money, 

you have to look at the appropriations; you have to look at the authorizations as well. 

Mr. Chollet, I am going to go into a much less significant point. 

You compared the NSC staff to CRS. Is that just the CRS foreign 

policy national security folks? That is not their folks on medicine 

or transportation or whatever. 

Mr. CHOLLET. Fair enough. I used the most expansive numbers 

both for the NSC staff——

Mr. SHERMAN. Right. 

Mr. CHOLLET. So, I took the most number of them as well as 

CRS to try to make an apples to apples——

31

Mr. SHERMAN. But you looked only at what portions of CRS? 

Mr. CHOLLET. No, no, no, no. This was the entire thing. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay, so you are saying that——

Mr. CHOLLET. So, this is——

Mr. SHERMAN. But I mean it is like you are comparing apples 

with a fruit plate. 

Mr. CHOLLET. So, I included in the NSC staff the back office people. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Yes, but everyone at the NSC staff deals with national security. There are people over at CRS who are dealing with 

health policy. So, the fairer comparison would be the entire White 

House and the old Executive Office Building, and all the offices of 

the President, and all the tsars. Because otherwise, you are comparing a department at CRS that deals with health policy and you 

don’t have anybody at—I hope you don’t have anybody at the NSC 

who is focusing on a cure for cancer or——

Mr. CHOLLET. But there are people on health policy. 

Mr. SHERMAN. On health? 

Mr. CHOLLET. I mean not domestic health policy but global 

health is a huge issue. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Right, global, yes. Okay. 

Ambassador Miller, were you indicating a desire to say something? 

Ambassador MILLER. My hope is that you all can take a very serious look at improving the performance of the State Department. 

I spent most of my life investing capital and looking at the performance of companies. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they 

aren’t. But whatever, you can learn a lot. 

State needs to step back. You need to help them step back and 

say what do we need to do to make the department work. The Foreign Service is a fine, fine institution. I was immensely well-served 

as a political appointee in two Embassies, very well served at the 

NSC. There is more human capability at State going to waste than 

in almost any institution I have ever seen. 

Somehow or other, we need to put our minds together to say how 

can we fix this because——

Mr. SHERMAN. So you think maybe Congress should oversee the 

State Department, write an authorization bill, pass it into law, and 

have an agency of the Federal Government act according to congressional authorization. That is a brilliant and innovative idea, 

one that we ought to apply to the State Department. 

And I yield back. 

Ambassador MILLER. I have waited all these years for that opportunity. Thank you. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I yield back. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [presiding]. Well, here we are and it is in my 

hands. There you go. Be afraid. Be very afraid. 

All right, let me just note that I had the privilege of serving in 

the White House for 7 years and I had a lot of experience with the 

NSC and a lot of experience since then and during that time, with 

the other agencies of government. So, I have more than just having 

been here on this side of the questioning. 

Let me suggest this. I think that our Government isn’t working 

as effectively as it could and should. I think that targeting the NSC 

32

is the wrong target. Having, as I say, experience with all of these 

players, it is not the NSC that is the problem. The problem is we 

have a bloated State Department and a bloated intelligence community. I mean after 9/11, what did we do? We made the intelligence community even more complicated, put even another layer 

of bureaucracy between the President and his intelligence sources. 

That is what we did in Congress. 

Now, the fact is the National Security Council was established so 

that the President of the United States would have people on his 

staff who could keep up on the issues of the day. And now there 

is a debate whether or not the NSC is overstepping its bounds 

when the President actually engages in foreign policy activities 

that I guess the Congress or other people or the State Department 

feels they should be conducting. Let us note that Kissinger made 

a dramatic difference in the history of this country when, at the 

height of the Cold War, when it was going against us, it looked like 

the United States was going down, that he changed the whole dynamics by reaching out to China. That happened secretly. I believe 

if they tried to do it through the State Department, that initiative 

never would have succeeded. That would have been undercut and 

every step of the way, not to mention what would happen if the 

CIA and everybody else was involved in it. 

Let me note also that the bad use of the NSC, what Ambassador 

Bloomfield mentioned was the Iran-Contra Affair. We had given 

the contras $100 million the year before to the CIA and then all 

of a sudden we are going to cut them off. There is a lot of politics 

being played on that that culminated, instead of letting those guys 

go, Ollie North took it upon himself to make sure they got money 

for ammunition, et cetera. So, I don’t think that is an example of 

how things go haywire. 

And thinking back, the Iran-Contra Affair demonstrated that the 

President of the United States has to be a player in these things 

and has to have a staff that is able to be a player. 

Ollie North, also, I might add, when he was there, took it upon 

himself to reposition a carrier battle group so that when the Achille 

Lauro was taken over that we would have airplanes that could actually intercept the terrorists when they were captured, if you remember that. 

Now, I don’t know if we would have gone through the normal 

channels whether that carrier battleship would force but they at 

least paid attention when Ollie North called up the admiral and 

said, that would be a good place to have put them there in case 

of emergency. 

One personal example I remember and I have been deeply involved in the Afghan thing since I was a speechwriter. What is a 

speechwriter doing being involved in helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan? But that is the way it was and there was a situation 

where a general called me and said look, we have to take off within 

a matter of days or there is a field hospital that will not go to the 

Mujahideen on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

And these are men who put their lives on the line for us and the 

Pakistanis are demanding money for our planes to land and our 

planes aren’t going to land. And thus, hundreds of Mujahideen are 

33

going to die because we don’t have this field hospital that is in the 

back of the C-130 waiting to go there. Can you do something? 

Now, at that time, I am a member of the President’s staff. I am 

a Special Assistant to the President of the United States. Well, if 

I had to go call up somebody over at the State Department, the 

CIA, or the Defense Department, it would not have gotten done. I 

know that. Hundreds of people fighting for us against the Soviet 

army would have been dead. And I called up a guy at NSC and he 

said well, we can’t do this on our own; I can’t do this. And I said 

look, all I want you to do is take a call, give a call to our Embassy 

in Pakistan, and they will then tell the Pakistani Government that 

the White House has called and the job will get done. Oh, I can’t 

do that on my own. You know what? He called back and he said 

okay, I will do it. Because I told him, I said okay, hundreds of people will die who are our best allies in the fight against the Soviet 

Union and they will die because you are not willing to make one 

call. 

He calls back and says okay, I will do it. And do you know what? 

One call and that hospital equipment got there and hundreds of 

lives were saved. We need to have a National Security Council that 

can function, that can do that, that can save the lives of those of 

hundreds of thousands Mujahideen fighters or whoever it is that is 

in jeopardy around the world. 

And isn’t NSC involved in crisis management? Okay, the President needs a staff to be there during a crisis. Does the President 

need someone for policy analysis so that he is not getting hundreds 

of reports from different points of view? Let somebody be there who 

can digest it over a matter of days, rather than an hour when the 

President has to make a decision. No, we need that. 

And I think that the NSC should not be decreased and, instead 

we should try to make the rest of the government more efficient 

and that is where things are breaking down. 

Please feel free to comment on anything I just said right down 

the line, Ambassador Miller. 

Ambassador MILLER. On the intel situation, I could not agree 

more. For my 2 years at the White House, I ran the Counter Terrorism Coordination weekly meeting, the CSG, Lincoln and I got to 

meet each other then. 

Counter terrorism requires a very tight turning radius and that 

means speed of movement and trust of communicators. You can’t 

do that among large bureaucratic structures I don’t think. Eventually, it gets down to does the J3 trust you? Does the head of 

counter terrorism at the CIA trust you? Do your principals trust 

you as the first line actors? And if they don’t, you can lose that advantage of information which may be stale in 2 or 3 days and you 

have to move. 

On your ability to call, let us suppose you need to call the J3. 

The problem with a very, very large White House staff is that senior officers at the Pentagon don’t get to know the White House staff 

and they don’t really know who is phoning. And you get more stories about the White House called—456-1414 is not a self-dialing 

machine. You know——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Ollie did make telephone calls. 

34

Ambassador MILLER. Listen, I followed Ollie on and Ollie and I 

traded notes on a lot of stuff. I got to know the J3 well enough, 

General Scowcroft and Secretary Gates way back then. We all 

trusted each other. And you could pick up the phone and you could 

call then Admiral Owens, who was Secretary Gates’ military aid, 

and say Bill, we have a problem and we have to do something in 

a hurry. Now, Bill knew who I was. 

If you don’t have that trust, things don’t work right and that is 

one of the problems with having a larger staff. If the larger staff 

stays inside and does analytic work, that is fine. But if you are a 

special assistant, somebody at the Pentagon better know who you 

are when you pick up the phone and say let us move a carrier task 

group. That is a serious decision. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right, thank you. And real quickly, I am 

sorry I blabbed on with too much time here, but very quickly, if you 

have some disagreement, please feel free. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Congressman Rohrabacher, I just 

want to reiterate the importance of the structure of government 

that has worked so well. The NSC staff should be up to the President. The President should have whatever staff the President is 

comfortable with, he or she, so long as the staff does not do things 

which would more properly be under the purview of both the American people’s right to have oversight and the Congressional oversight and the authorized activities. As long as they are coordinating and operating under the 1947 mandate, they can have as 

many people as they want—whatever makes the President comfortable—but that line should not be crossed. 

The second thing I need to say—Derek has been an Assistant 

Secretary of Defense, and I was in ISA for 8 years at the Pentagon—the National Command Authority is sacrosanct. There is a 

famous story in the Nixon administration when Dr. Kissinger 

called Secretary of Defense Laird and said the President wants 

such and such to be done. And he said well, let the President call—

click. And that is the National Command Authority. 

If there are lives on the line and exigencies, if you haven’t predelegated the authority to the people who are capable of doing the 

right thing, whether it is the State Department in a Benghazi situation or the Pentagon in a military situation in the field, then that 

is a failure of policy, but it is fixable. We just simply need to recognize these are the things that have made America work so well in 

the past. We just simply need to recognize the lines and execute 

properly. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chollet. 

Mr. CHOLLET. I know you are out of time, so I will be very brief. 

I fully agree with what both of my colleagues here have said. 

I just want to echo, sir, your point, which is mainly the growth 

of the NSC does reflect the growing complexity and size of our national security apparatus and that there are entire dimensions of 

policy that didn’t exist 25 years ago that now the President needs 

to fully understand. He needs to have folks around him who fully 

understand. So, that explains a lot of the growth. 

I think the NSC is too big. I think it can be smaller and I think 

the trend, as I said, is headed in the right direction but I don’t 

think we should have an arbitrary cap on it. 

35

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes, I don’t ever remember getting a briefing 

on the threat of cyber-attack back during the Reagan years. 

Mr. Sires, you are now recognized. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is all right that you 

went over a little bit. 

First of all, this is a very informative hearing. I want to thank 

you for being here. On one side we have experience, on one side 

we have youth that has worked, and Ambassador Bloomfield, you 

are in the middle somewhere, as far as—but it has been informative. 

And from what I gathered, I would tend to think that the NSC 

is just too large. I have problems thinking that a staffer can call 

a four-star general and say, ‘‘Do this.’’ To me, that is—I guess I 

have been involved in politics a long time and it is not your enemies that get you in trouble but your friends or people that work 

for you. And I think that that is a very possible scenario and it has 

happened. But as it gets larger, I think it is even more something 

that can happen and I have a problem with that. 

I have a problem with the NSC negotiating. They negotiated secretly. We had here people from the State Department and we 

asked them about certain negotiations, especially with Cuba. And 

I don’t know if they wanted to lie or not but we were told that they 

weren’t negotiating when, in reality, there was negotiations going 

on. And I would think that if they are negotiating secretly and you 

have a State Department person come before this committee and 

you ask them the question, and she will say no, they weren’t, I 

would take it at her word that she didn’t know that secretly somebody was negotiating. And to me, that is a problem. 

We are a State Department. We are very careful with people who 

are capable of doing the kind of work that some people at the NSC 

is doing. I also think that sometimes this committee, the NSC, is 

used as a buffer. This is to keep people away from reaching maybe 

the presidency or the President using the committee to keep other 

people away. There has got to be somebody in-between to absolve 

any responsibility. 

So, I really don’t think that keep growing this committee is going 

to be helpful to this country or is going to be helpful to the President. I think, as Ambassador Miller expressed, there are many capable people working in different places in the State Department 

where they are tripping over each other to do something. And they 

could do some of the work, instead of growing this committee. 

And can you just tell me what you think it started to go wrong 

with this committee, this NSC committee? Where did you see that 

it started going wrong, with your experience? When did it take the 

wrong direction? Let me put it this way. 

Ambassador MILLER. A very inelegant answer is that apparently 

over time, within the 18 acres at the White House, a sense that 

speed of movement was critical. And that goes way back, if you 

look at the graphs here, it goes way back to the Clinton administration, which we saw our first very big spike in NSC staff. 

The illusion from my standpoint is that speed of movement is 

more important than wise decisionmaking. Wise decisionmaking is 

frequently slow and difficult and there are many times in which 

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36

ing at. But it has become an excuse, I think, for not involving institutions that seem to move too slowly, that have a lot of wisdom and 

experience. This study began more than 2 years ago when I called 

some of my agency friends who had been involved in the Afghan 

situation and I said, really, nobody talked to you about what we 

were doing in the Middle East. And the answer was no, nobody 

talked to us. And I said you have got to be kidding me. 

So, I don’t have an elegant answer to that but I think one thing 

is that the White House has pushed on an open door. The Congress 

has allowed this to occur and it is not healthy for the Congress and 

it is not healthy for the White House either. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Congressman, could I just say that I 

think this suggests a larger solution? I know people have specific 

complaints about the NSC staff, probably in both administrations, 

Republican and Democratic. Part of it is not their fault because 

with the tools and information they have, with the real-time media 

contacts, with Ambassadors coming and calling at the White House 

as well as the State Department and possibly visiting military dignitaries, the question arises of what can the State Department do 

that the NSC staff can’t do. There is a little bit of ‘‘we can do it 

all here.’’ And part of it is because of technology and just the press 

of business. 

So, I think without blaming people, we can look at that and say 

what can we do. Because if it goes much further, it does cross the 

line where there is no oversight and Congress can’t call them before—they can’t confirm the appointees. And the President should 

not want that to happen. 

So, there needs to be a conversation. I, personally, think that 

Congress has immense power over the next President that could be 

a subject of discussion during the transition, and before knowing 

the result of the election, that has to do partly in the Senate with 

the confirmation process and partly with the amount of hearings 

and questions for the record. These are things which are enormous 

burdens on an incoming administration. If their appointees are 

going to be slow to be confirmed, if they are going to get thousands 

of questions that the bureaucracy will be tied up answering, you 

have something to bargain with. And this might be, Congressman 

Engel had brought up the question of, an authorization bill. I 

would like to see a grand bargain, where there are fewer high officials in the Executive Branch and frankly, maybe a few fewer gavels in the Congress so that we can get back to a leaner, high-level, 

principal-to-principal process. 

My congressman is yelling at me. I will stop. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you very much. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Would my friend just yield for one quick observation? 

Mr. SIRES. Sure. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Because I want to return to this when it is my 

turn. Ambassador Bloomfield, excellent point but I want to make 

one point. The change up here with respect to the NSC came out 

of the military, not the State Department. And that causes me 

grave concern about the dismissal of Young Turks calling a fourstar and daring to ask or tell something. That is not a good enough 

reason to revamp the entire national security apparatus of the 

37

President of the United States, which I think my friend, Mr. Rohrabacher, was making as well. 

So, I want to engage in that when it is my turn but I think it 

is important to remember the genesis of the proposed change in the 

legislation. It didn’t come out of the Foreign Policy Committee on 

the Hill. It came out of the Armed Services Committee. 

And I yield back. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Well, if I may, Congressman Connolly, 

I never thought of myself as an old codger but I know a lot of fourstars, retired and some active duty, and it has been my privilege 

to know them. And I have seen them during situations where they 

may even not take guidance from the Secretary of Defense on certain things, like ROE in a situation where they need to keep the 

peace the first day of an intervention. I know these folks and I 

have been there. Derek will have his own experience. 

It is unfathomable to me that a four-star commander in the field 

would take guidance from a staffer in the bureaucracy. It is 

unfathomable to me. I don’t understand it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chollet. 

Mr. CHOLLET. Just very briefly, I agree with that. And again, my 

experience is that that is a rare occurrence, where there is a junior 

staff who tries to call a four-star or a lieutenant colonel working 

in the NSC who calls an admiral to move a carrier battle group. 

It is an exception and not the rule. 

Just one very quick observation on this question of oversight. 

When I served at the White House, I always found myself toggling 

back and forth between two perspectives. One is, why aren’t the 

agencies doing what the President has decided? So, he decided to 

do something. Why isn’t this happening or why is it happening too 

slowly? Or it is, what are they doing? The President hasn’t decided 

yet. They are creating facts on the ground before the President has 

been able to actually make a decision on what he wants to do. 

And I never found a way out of that dilemma, personally. And 

so I do think that there is a sort of secular trend toward greater 

oversight because, of course, that is the common answer for both. 

You hold more meetings. You do more taskings. You try to hold 

agencies accountable. And I think in some ways it goes back to this 

issue of we ultimately do hold the President accountable. When 

things go wrong, the President is blamed. When things go right, 

the President gets credit. And so the NSC staff as an extension of 

the President tends to be more involved in the policies and tasks. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well thank you very much. And that means 

that the President has to be accountable for what his appointees 

do or her. There you go. 

Mr. Perry. 

Mr. PERRY. Thanks, gentlemen. Thanks for all of you for being 

here. It is a fascinating conversation. Minute by minute, it leads 

to new questions, at least on my behalf. 

And I think about the most recent one on accountability of the 

President. You know I hate to bring up the sore subject of Ben 

Rhodes but I don’t see any accountability. I mean I see Ben Rhodes 

on the TV from Laos this week and I, myself, wrote the President 

a letter asking him to relieve Ben Rhodes for his forays that were 

made public. 

38

That having been said, I know the 1947 Act doesn’t specifically 

talk about qualifications but you fine gentlemen who have worked 

in the industry maybe could lead us in the right direction. And I 

would also say right here that I am not an advocate of Congress 

meddling too much in the President’s business. And I think that regardless of the President’s party or who that person is, everybody 

wants the President to have the tools that he or she needs to complete the mission. But it is apparent, I think, to most people, that 

this things is pretty broken for whatever reason. And without any 

congressional oversight, we are completely relying on the executive 

to make the correct decisions. And once it gets a level or two below 

him or her, it seems like the rules are being made up as they go 

for the expedience of whatever at the moment is garnering the attention. 

So, with that in mind what should—I looked at Ben Rhodes’ 

qualifications, knowing what he was involved in, the level. This is 

national security. This is national policy that affects millions of 

lives and the world and I think that the qualifications for that individual have to be profound and robust in my opinion. I mean I 

don’t have the qualifications to do what some of these folks are 

doing and I wouldn’t deign to think that I do. What should they 

be and how does that come about? 

Anybody. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. If I could give a perspective, Congressman Perry. I can’t answer about individuals in the current administration but it has been my observation, and I made this in my 

testimony, that because the agencies in the national security space 

are so bloated with so many empowered people doing you name it, 

there are 80 direct reports to the Secretary of State by my count. 

That is just an unbelievable fact. And I would say OSD and OJCS 

and, as Congressman Rohrabacher pointed out, the intel community with 800 new billets layered on top of the 16 agencies. 

So, that is out there. Now you have the NSC staff which has 

grown into several hundred. And if you could just imagine, and we 

all can try to imagine, the President inside the Oval Office saying, 

‘‘Who are all these people?’’ You are getting huge amounts of paperwork from all of these agencies. Then, you have hundreds of people 

that you met once, when they came in to say hello and take your 

picture. I sort of can understand why he would take five people 

that he trusts and say close the door, we will figure it out. Sort of 

a treehouse mentality. I don’t mean to be——

Mr. PERRY. And I would agree with you. It is just a process problem. My perception in years past is that it was four or five, 10 people that the President trusted and that is who the NSC was now. 

It is apparent now that that is who the current President trusts 

and I don’t blame him. But who are all these other people and why 

do we need them? What have they got to do with anything? 

What are their responsibilities regarding the national security 

strategy? Anybody? 

Mr. CHOLLET. Sure. And Congressman, I served for a year and 

a half as the Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the White 

House. In terms of the creation of the national security strategy of 

the United States, which happens once every 3 years or so——

Mr. PERRY. But you know what the statute is, don’t you? 

39

Mr. CHOLLET. Yes, yes, yes. 

Mr. PERRY. So, in 8 years now, we will have it done twice when 

it is required every single year. 

Mr. CHOLLET. Sure. I mean unfortunately, as someone who 

owned the strategic planning operation or ran it, I would have 

wanted to see it done more often but it has traditionally been done, 

going back to when the statute was created, I think twice in an administration. Bush did it twice. I think Clinton did it twice or did 

it more than twice. 

Mr. PERRY. So, do we need a change in the standard since, apparently, we can’t abide by the standard? What are the consequences of not abiding by the standard? Poor policy, right? Poor 

execution. 

Mr. CHOLLET. I believe there should be more strategic thinking 

in the White House. I very much applaud that recommendation in 

Atlantic Council’s Report. As I said, we tried mightily to give our 

senior policymakers more time to think strategically and get out of 

the inbox but the press of events has been unrelenting. 

And just very quickly, if I could, sir——

Mr. PERRY. So, hold that thought for a minute and then continue 

it afterward. But do you have a recommendation regarding—to me 

one of the bigger issues is we have all these new people, all these 

great minds. We can’t even get a national security strategy out. 

How does the national military strategy follow no national security 

strategy? How does anybody know what the plan is? 

Mr. CHOLLET. I think one of the most important things that a 

new administration can do is try to get the sequencing right in how 

they do these strategies because no administration has gotten it 

right, where you start with the national security strategy, then you 

do the QDR, then you do the QDDR, and then you do all the other 

sort of agency-level strategies. And unfortunately, because of different oversight committees, different processes in the different departments, those are not well-aligned and it doesn’t make much 

sense. I concede that. 

Can I just say very briefly, not to get into individuals but I 

should, Ben Rhodes is a friend and colleague. I worked with him 

very closely during my time in the administration. He is one of the 

most talented people I have worked with in Washington. I have 

worked here for 20 years with a lot of talented people. 

That said, both at DoD, State, and at the NSC, there a lot of 

folks that I worked with who were the best in the business and 

there are a lot of folks I worked with or some, I should say, that 

I worked with and I wondered how they got there. 

This goes back to a question that I was given earlier that I didn’t 

get a chance to answer which was there isn’t really any quality 

training done really in any of the positions in the national security 

field. Basically, once you get out of school or if you are in the career 

foreign service or in the military you get a chance to do a stint at 

NDU, I think that is something we should take very seriously. I 

believe in past authorization bills from the State Department, that 

issue has been looked at, sort of career professional training but to 

ensure that we do have a higher standard in all of our agencies for 

senior officials. 

40

Mr. PERRY. Let me just conclude with this, Mr. Chairman. Regardless of Ben Rhodes’ talents, and I acknowledge he seems like 

a very talented individual by what I have read and what I have 

seen, nothing, nothing at all regarding his talent explains or justifies deceiving the American people outwardly, regardless of the policy outcome. 

The ends do not justify the means and I find it reprehensible, unacceptable, and I think it is a black mark on the administration 

and on American policy and that is my opinion. 

But with that, I yield back. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you. He ended it on a different kind 

of note. That is fine. 

But Ms. Bass, you may begin it on any kind of note that you 

would like. 

Ms. BASS. Well, thanks for letting us know how you really feel. 

Thank you very much for your testimony. I think this has been 

a very, very, very interesting discussion. And I just wanted to ask 

a few questions. 

One, as I listen to the three of you, and I want you to tell me 

whether I am right or wrong, there are things that need to be improved in the NSC but I don’t think I heard any of you say that 

we are in some kind of crisis and that there is something terribly 

wrong. 

I guess listening whether we should increase or decrease the 

staff, what worries me about that is that it seems rather mechanical and I can absolutely appreciate what you were saying Mr. 

Chollet, if I am pronouncing your name correctly, about how things 

have changed so much, especially from Bloomfield, you know what 

you were saying. 

Mr. Chollet, you mentioned climate change and I was wondering 

how—cybersecurity I certainly understand but I was wondering if 

you could give me an example of how climate change fits in there. 

But if each of you could respond to: We are not in a crisis, there 

are things that could be improved, but there is no great disaster 

happening. Am I correct in what I hear? 

Mr. CHOLLET. I will take the first shot, if I could. 

Ms. BASS. Okay. 

Mr. CHOLLET. I agree with you. I don’t think it is a crisis but I 

think it is legitimate and good that this committee, the Congress, 

the strategic community, those of us on the outside now are looking 

into this issue because we have an opportunity here coming up 

with a new President taking office to reform the NSC, to try to 

right-size it, to try to ensure that we are getting the most we can 

out of it, and to help the incoming administration think about 

these important issues that they are going to be inheriting because 

the NSC is very malleable. 

The only thing in statute is the members of the actual NSC, the 

senior level members, and establishing the Executive Secretary. 

Everything else, the President can do things totally differently. 

And so climate change is a perfect example where that is an issue 

that didn’t exist much 25 years ago and now, of course, it has been 

a major issue internationally and a major priority for this administration. So, although it is an issue set that doesn’t solely reside in 

the NSC because there are other agencies within the Executive OfVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:27 Nov 01, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_FULL\090816\21460 SHIRL
41

fice of the President that deal with the various issue of climate 

change, clearly, the effort of the United States Government to try 

to get at this issue, both in terms of how we behave here at home 

but also how we negotiate abroad is something the NSC has had 

to follow as the President has been engaging in international diplomacy on this issue. 

Ms. BASS. Oh, so it is because he has been engaging in international diplomacy that he has——

Mr. CHOLLET. Both. I mean it is a priority. This is one of the 

greatest international——

Ms. BASS. Right. I just didn’t see. I mean believe me, I understand the significance of climate change. I just didn’t see its relation here. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Can I just take a moment? 

Congresswoman Bass, I will be the one that says crisis is too 

strong a word but the bus only shows up every 4 years before an 

election when you can think a little bit out of the in-basket and say 

what should we be fixing. 

I think we have something verging on a crisis in our national security community——

Ms. BASS. Okay. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD [continuing]. And it is not personal to 

President Obama or any of the members of his team who have been 

named today. It is broader than that and it is more historic. 

There is a foreign diplomat in Asia who made a comment a few 

years ago that is true. He said when he deals with other governments, they take 20 percent of the time figuring out their policy 

and 80 percent implementing it. 

Ms. BASS. Oh. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. But in Washington it is reversed. 

Ms. BASS. Yes. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. I have spent much of my life watching 

the internecine battles between people trying to hang onto their authority, their issue. I will give you one example. My old bureau, the 

Political Military Bureau, went into Libya, after Ghadafi was taken 

down, to look for loose weapons and shoulder-fired missiles and 

arms with U.N. folks. 

Then came Syria. And I remember Congressman Royce held a 

hearing on Syrian chemical weapons. But because chemical weapons are WMDs, that is a different bureau. We had teams on the 

ground, operational, with communications, ready to go, but a different bureau said no, that is my turf. And that is just one of a 

thousand, I used the term ‘‘thousand bowls of rice’’ in my testimony 

and I see that. And I think we need to address it. 

Ms. BASS. Okay. 

Ambassador MILLER. Very quickly, Ms. Bass, I think crisis is the 

wrong term but it is close. Crises today seem to be defined by what 

is on the right-hand column of The Washington Post front page, 

whatever. We are in a significant crisis in terms of the stature of 

the United States in the world, full stop. If you are traveling out 

there, you are going to get an earful. If you are an old Ambassador, 

you are used to being criticized. But it is getting worse and we 

need to step back and take a serious look about how our country 

42

is developing international strategy and as Linc was saying, then, 

how we implement. 

Much of our report focuses on the fact that there may have been 

reasonable strategic decisions made but the implementation was 

poor enough to jeopardize the outcome and I think that is a very 

serious issue. 

And one last observation and that is, one of the things that you 

are observing is the White House is trying to solve many, many, 

many problems. There is not a staff at the White House of the size 

to solve all the problems that really fall under the jurisdiction of 

cabinet secretaries and agency heads. 

And so I think one of the things that we need to look at is the 

proper use of the cabinet officials and the agency heads to say the 

President cares a great deal about X and he wants you, Madam 

Secretary, to go do that, not to add another layer of people at the 

White House. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BASS. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. DeSantis. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

So, I think that there are probably too many people in the NSC. 

I think there are too many people in a lot of parts of government 

but to me, it is the authority that they are exercising that is more 

important than the sheer numbers. In other words, if I had to 

choose between a bloated staff that was basically serving the core 

advisory function versus a leaner staff that was actually usurping 

the authorities of the secretaries, I would choose the former. Are 

most of you in agreement with that? I know Ambassador Bloomfield. 

And part of the reason is I think when you have the model gravitating toward where is more policy being implemented by the NSC, 

it really detracts from the accountability that the American people 

have. 

I mean, for example, Ambassador Bloomfield, I saw you served 

in different positions. You had to get confirmed by the Senate for 

those positions. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Yes. 

Mr. DESANTIS. And those were Deputy Assistant posts in the 

State Department? 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Assistant Secretary and above. 

Mr. DESANTIS. Right. At the NSC, for example, we mentioned 

Ben Rhodes as the Deputy. He did not have to get confirmed by 

the Senate, correct? And he has been described as the most influential voice shaping U.S. foreign policy, other than President Obama, 

himself. 

And so I think that somebody who is really wielding that much 

influence in our affairs of State should at least have to sit and get 

Senate confirmation. And if Rhodes is an advisor to the President 

and that is what he is doing, fine. But if he is implementing policy, 

if he is crafting things with the Iran deal, with Cuba, that becomes 

much different. And Ben Rhodes, and I appreciate your comments 

about him, obviously, we have had disagreements with him because 

of how the Iran deal has been handled. We wanted to invite him 

to testify but he is a member of the staff and so he doesn’t come. 

43

He would not have been able to be confirmed to be Secretary of 

State or Secretary of Defense. I mean that is just the reality of the 

situation. 

So, you are putting people who are implementing policy without 

having the check of Senate confirmation. And again, if there are 

White House advisors, I don’t want us dragging in an actual counselor to the President. I think that there are absolutely legitimate 

separation of powers concerns there. 

But then you also have this idea of putting the power in the 

hands of the NSC staff; then, you don’t have congressional oversight, which is what we need to do. 

Secretary Kerry has to come here because Congress controls the 

budget. Secretary of Defense has to come here and they have to answer questions about how the policy is being conducted. That is 

good for Congress but it is also good for the American people to be 

able to see what is going on. 

As I mentioned, we wanted to figure out how this Iran deal happened. We invited Ben Rhodes and he declined to come. And I 

think his position, as it should be, I think that would be legitimate 

but I think he was exercising authority that went beyond that. 

And then I guess the final thing that I think about when you 

have people on the NSC staff getting involved with military commanders in the field, totally going outside the normal chain of command. If we had military commanders that bucked the chain of 

command, they would never be able to get away with that. I mean 

that would be a cardinal sin to do it. And so we have a very clear 

chain of command. When you have a combatant commander they 

are reporting up to the Secretary of Defense and then to the President. It should be that we can’t have the NSC staff just basically 

going around the chain of command. 

Ambassador Miller, you wanted to——

Ambassador MILLER. Yes, just very quickly on that. At least one 

of our intelligence agencies has handled the communications issue 

by basically saying no calls to staff in the field from the White 

House will be answered, full stop. Those calls will be referred to 

a headquarters across the river and we will worry about responding to staff. 

We got, in our interviews, we got really, really tough commentary from the military. You all know General Mattis and a 

wonderful group, virtually all from the Naval Service, who felt very 

strongly about that. 

One other, just one comment on confirmation. I, obviously, went 

through the confirmation process in the ambassadorial assignments 

and I found it very valuable. I learned a lot. An Ambassador represents not just the President but the country. So, I think a dialogue with the Congress is actually very helpful. 

And when I was at the NSC, I was immensely comfortable coming up here to discuss issues where I knew members had concerns 

and nobody had to ask me to testify. I was happy to come up and 

talk. And I think that the end of my testimony speaks to that and 

that is, you can’t legislate trust. You can’t change organizations to 

create trust. You have to just begin to work with each other to the 

point that you say yes, these are all pretty bright guys and they 

44

all care about the country. And I hope that is where we might 

begin to move here. 

I am sorry I took so long with that. 

Mr. DESANTIS. That is okay. My time has expired but I appreciate all of you guys coming and testifying. And I think that there 

is probably a consensus that this is not operating the precise way 

it was envisioned and we would like to see some changes with the 

next administration. 

I yield back. 

Chairman ROYCE [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. DeSantis. 

Mr. Gerry Connolly of Virginia. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I will inform my friend from Florida I don’t know that we all 

agree. I certainly don’t agree with his analysis in terms of the prescription. 

Frankly, how Congress is approaching this through the Armed 

Services Committee, not through the Foreign Affairs or Foreign Relations Committees, reminds me of H. L. Mencken. You know for 

every human problem, there is a solution. There is a solution; simple, neat, and wrong. 

I mean I heard my friend Mr. Perry talk about maybe that old 

system of 10 advisors is what we ought to go back to. Well, I mean, 

if you are worried about unwieldy bureaucracies in the White 

House, let us go back to Lincoln’s model. He had two secretaries. 

Would that work? That would certainly not be unwieldy. I don’t 

know that it would. And he had to deal with a Civil War. So, what 

is wrong with that? It is a big, difficult, complex world. 

Ambassador Miller, you mentioned one of the prescriptions was, 

make the State Department work. I thought that was a profound 

statement. 

Ambassador MILLER. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. One of the reasons a President turns to a group 

of advisors is because the bureaucracy doesn’t work for them. 

Ambassador MILLER. I know. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Thank God there were low-level people telling 

the President a different thing than Curtis LeMay during the 

Cuban Missile Crisis. If we had followed the chain of command 

strictly, rigidly, after all, he has the stars, he has been confirmed, 

we would have gone to World War III. Curtis LeMay wanted to 

bomb Cuba, even though he didn’t even know that in fact some of 

the missiles in fact had already been nuclear tipped and were acclimated. Thank God there were other voices than the chain of command. 

There are times the bureaucracy, and I don’t mean that in any 

pejorative way, produces great statesmen and stateswomen. And 

thank God it does. The very best rises to the top. There are other 

times that is not so true. And the President has to rely on a group 

of younger people to give him some advice and, soon, maybe her. 

And so it seems to me, a little thing up here, Congress doesn’t 

do nuance. And so if you look at the legislation, what does it do? 

What is our fix for this vague problem, that it is too big? Well, I 

don’t know. What would make you happy? What would be the ideal 

Goldilocks solution for the NSC size? 

45

And by the way, why have we chosen the NSC? Mr. Chollet, you 

mentioned, would you remind us how big the staff of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon is? 

Mr. CHOLLET. It is roughly seven times larger than the current 

NSC. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Seven times and no one is talking about that. Is 

that a problem? When you were in the White House, was that ever 

a problem? 

Mr. CHOLLET. They had more charts than we did. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Was there ever confusion as to who was speaking 

for whom? 

Mr. CHOLLET. No. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Well, I just I think we need to tread lightly. I 

don’t think that the legislation only ought to have the imprint of 

the Armed Services Committee. I think it needs some foreign policy 

overlay and I think we need to understand what problem it is that 

we are fixing. 

It may be that it is too big and too unwieldy and not coordinated 

and some people overstep their lines. Of course that is going to 

happen but does that merit draconian legislation that says you can 

only have 100? 

How many are on the NSC staff now, Mr. Chollet? 

Mr. CHOLLET. It is about 190 policy staff. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Okay, so we are roughly cutting it in half. And 

if you want to go above that, as the chairman indicated, NSC gets 

confirmed. 

Now, this is why I cited Mencken. Let us assume for a minute, 

stipulate there is a problem and that is the problem. The solution 

guarantees all the things you don’t like, guarantees institutional 

friction until the cows come home because now I am your equal. 

I am confirmed, too. And I got actually official status to get you in 

a lot of trouble over there at the State Department or the Pentagon 

because I am confirmed like you are. And I am not sure that is the 

solution. 

You know if there was someone who understood that, it was the 

guy who probably started all this problem, Henry Kissinger. Because when he finally got the confirmable job, he kept the NSC job, 

too, because he didn’t want that tension. And that is an interesting 

model for us to contemplate. 

At any rate, I am sorry, but the chairman has graciously said I 

could have an extra minute or two to compensate for Mr. Rohrabacher. So, this is your comment. 

Ambassador BLOOMFIELD. Could I just put another idea before 

you? And this is in the spirit of nonpartisanship. Every time there 

is an election, the winning team has a plum book and gives away 

political appointments. I have been in an political appointed position for five administrations. We have watched, over the decades, 

as lower and lower levels of the bureaucracy are awarded to political appointees, people who are loyal, who were helpful on a campaign, that sort of thing, who may have been contributors. And I 

think that we could look at that issue and ask, because as Mr. 

Perry brought up the question of qualifications, it may be there are 

just too many jobs in the foreign policy bureaucracy being awarded 

to people who had talents in the political arena but really didn’t 

46

have background or any seasoning in the foreign policy and national security arena. And that is something that would be a bipartisan endeavor. So, I thought I would put that out there as part 

of the record of the hearing. 

Ambassador MILLER. Mr. Connolly, I think it is time for a 

nuanced look at the State Department. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And I reiterate, that is not us. 

Ambassador MILLER. Yes, but somebody up here has to have a 

nuanced approach to the State Department. It is an institution. 

And I will say this again, every foreign service officer that came 

out of the White House who worked for me, they were superb. You 

put them back in the State Department and they are put back into 

a structure that doesn’t function well. 

The cure, if you will, is complex. It is a problem that has grown 

over many years. And I would hope that a group of staff people up 

here could begin under your direction to say what all might we consider as a new administration arrives to make the Department 

work better. If it doesn’t, you are not going to solve whatever NSC 

problem you think you are facing. 

Mr. CHOLLET. Just one brief comment. And I think this is why 

this hearing is so important because it creates the space for a new 

administration to perhaps make some change. 

I can speak personally from the transition from Bush to Obama, 

where we also came in with some big ideas about how the NSC 

should work better; the NSC was way too big under President 

Bush and we would make it slimmer and hold the agencies accountable. But then once in office, there was also an imperative 

don’t screw up. Don’t change things for the sake of changing things 

before you actually know what you are doing, particularly when we 

are a nation at war. 

And this gets back to holding the President accountable. We 

want and the President should be held accountable. The President 

is the one who got elected. But at the same time, in order help the 

President make the system work as best as she or he can, there 

also needs to be a sense that there is space that should be allowed 

to make those important decisions and, perhaps, absorb some risk 

because that is part of the issue—the President’s national security 

advisors don’t want to take the risk. If I cut the staff too much and 

take away that oversight and that accountability that I am trying 

achieve here to serve the President, then we are going to get 

burned on the other end if something goes wrong. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you for the 

indulgence and I think our witnesses were great. And I really think 

this is a great contribution to a very important subject and I would 

hope that our committee will weigh in and not cede this entirely 

to the Armed Services Committee because I think it is just too important. 

And again, I thank you so much for holding this hearing. 

Chairman ROYCE. Well, I thank you, Mr. Connolly. And I do 

think we may have stretched a point with Mr. Bloomfield’s opinions on the bureaucracy at the size of the Pentagon. Based on his 

writings, I suspect he is every bit as much concerned with the size 

of the bureaucracy there as he is with the size of the NSC. 

47

I would just make a point that there seems to be no disagreement among those that have worked at the NSC that the current 

size increases dysfunction. There does seem to be that conclusion. 

Reducing its size can only help and it is good that the administration is moving in that direction. 

I want to also express my appreciation for the time of our witnesses today. This has been, I think, as I share Mr. Connolly’s 

view, that this should be the purview of this committee. This has 

been a very informative hearing. We have had good participation 

today from the members. 

As Ambassador Miller said, the NSC is the heart of the foreign 

policy machine. And I took that analogy to heart but your other 

point is that there can be heart failure and then we have a massive 

problem. And you know I think the next administration’s goal 

should be getting back to the core function of the NSC and that is 

coordinating policy, coordinating policy where the diplomats are 

doing the diplomacy and the military has oversight over the military and the NSC can give the President the policy options that it 

is intended to. And if not, then Congress has to step in and that 

is especially true when it comes to accountability. That is our role. 

And I thank our witnesses again. And, Mr. Connolly, thank you. 

We stand adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:59 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY THE HONORABLE DAVID C. MILLER, JR., 

NON-RESIDENT SENIOR FELLOW, THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL (FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL)


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[NOTE: The entire report is not reprinted here but may be found on the Internet 

at: http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=105276] 

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY THE HONORABLE LINCOLN P. BLOOMFIELD, 

JR., CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, THE STIMSON CENTER (FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLITICAL MILITARY AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE)


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