Combat Studies Institute Press Combat Studies Institute Press 

US Army Combined Arms Center US Army Combined Arms Center 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

Kendall D. Gott Kendall D. Gott 

Managing Editor Managing Editor 

Michael G. Brooks Michael G. Brooks 

General Editor General Editor 

The Proceedings of the Combat Studies InstituThe Proceedings of the Combat Studies Institu

2008 Military History Symposium 2008 Military History Symposium 

The US Army and the The US Army and the 

Interagency ProcessInteragency Process

Historical PerspectiveHistorical Perspective
The US Army and the
 

Interagency Process:

Historical Perspectives 

The Proceedings of the Combat Studies Institute 

2008 Military History Symposium 

Kendall D. Gott
 Managing Editor
 

Michael G. Brooks
 General Editor
 

Combat Studies Institute Press 

US Army Combined Arms Center 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 
 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

Combat Studies Institute Military History Symposium (6th : 2008 : Fort Leavenworth, Kan.) 

The US Army and the interagency process : historical perspectives : the proceedings of 

the Combat Studies Institute 2008 Military History Symposium / Kendall D. Gott, managing 

editor; Michael G. Brooks, general editor.

 p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references.

 ISBN 978-0-9801236-6-1

 1. United States. Army--Organization--History--20th century. 2. United States. Army­

-Management--History--20th century. 3. Interagency coordination--United States--History-­

20th century. 4. Military planning--United States--History--20th century. 5. United States-­

History, Military--20th century. 6. United States--Military policy. 7. National security--United 

States. I. Gott, Kendall D. II. Brooks, Michael G. III. Title. IV. Title: U.S. Army and the interagency process. 

UA25.C64 2008

 355.6’8--dc22

 2008048742 

First Printing: December 2008 

CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views expressed 

in this CSI Press publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those 

of the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. A full list of CSI 

Press publications, many of them available for downloading, can be found at: 

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/csi/RandP/CSIpubs.asp 

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as an official 

publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official seal on any republication of this 

material without the expressed written permission of the Director of CSI. 

Book Design by Michael G. Brooks 

ii 
 

Contents 

Foreword ..................................................................................................................vii
 

Introductory Remarks 

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV
 

Commanding General, US Army Combined Arms Center ................................. 1
 

Keynote Address 

USNORTHCOM Interagency Coordination 

Brigadier General Robert J. Felderman .............................................................. 3
 

Question and Answer ........................................................................................... 27
 

Day 1, Panel 1: The Difficulties in Interagency Operations 

The Interagency Process and the Decision to Intervene in Grenada 

by Edgar Raines, Ph.D. ....................................................................................... 33
 

The Interagency in Panama 1986–1990 

by John T. Fishel, Ph.D. ...................................................................................... 65
 

Lebanon and the Interagency 

by Lawrence Yates, Ph.D. ................................................................................... 77
 

Question and Answer ........................................................................................... 87
 

Day 1, Panel 2: The Interagency Process: Southeast Asia 

The Interagency Process and Malaya: The British Experience 

by Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Ph.D. .................................................................. 93
 

The Interagency Process and Vietnam: The American Experience 

by Jeffrey Woods, Ph.D. ..................................................................................... 105
 

Question and Answer .......................................................................................... 115
 

Day 1, Panel 3: Interagency Efforts at the National Level 

21st Century Security Challenges and the Interagency Process: 

Historical Lessons about Integrating Instruments of National Power 

by Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D. .................................................................................. 127
 

The Independence of the International Red Cross: The Value of Neutral and 

Impartial Action Concurrent to the Interagency Process 

by Mr. Geoffrey Loane . ..................................................................................... 147
 

Question and Answer .......................................................................................... 157
 
Day 2, Featured Speaker 

Why Interagency Operations and Reform are Hard To Do 

by Richard W. Stewart, Ph.D. ............................................................................ 161
 

Question and Answer .......................................................................................... 171
 

Day 2, Panel 4: Interagency Case Studies 

Approaching Iraq 2002 in the Light of Three Previous Army Interagency 

Experiences: Germany 1944–48, Japan 1944–48, and Vietnam 1963–75 

by Lieutenant General (Ret.) John H. Cushman ............................................... 187
 

A Mile Deep and an Inch Wide: Foreign Internal Defense Campaigning in
 

Dhofar, Oman, and El Salvador
 

by Mr. Michael P. Noonan ................................................................................ 199
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 211
 

Day 2, Panel 5: Post-War Germany 

Role and Goal Alignment: The Military-NGO Relationship in Post WWII Germany 

by Major Tania M. Chacho, Ph.D. .................................................................... 217
 

Between Catastrophe and Cooperation: The US Army and the Refugee Crisis
 

in West Germany, 1945–50
 

by Adam R. Seipp, Ph.D. .................................................................................. 245
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 257
 

Day 2, Panel 6: The Interagency Process in Asia 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor 

by Major Eric Nager ......................................................................................... 265
 

Joint Military-Civilian Civil Affairs Operations in Vietnam 

by Nicholas J. Cull, Ph.D. ................................................................................. 285
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 295
 

Day 3, Panel 7: Interagency Process in the United States 

Cold War Interagency Relations and the Struggle to Coordinate

 Psychological Strategy
 

by Robert T. Davis II, Ph.D. ............................................................................. 301
 

“Our Most Reliable Friends”—Army Offi cers and Tribal Leaders in
 

Western Indian Territory, 1875–1889
 

by Mr. William A. Dobak .................................................................................. 321
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 333
 

iv 
 

 

Day 3, Panel 8: Military Governments and Courts 

Army Lawyers and The Interagency: An Examination of Army 

Lawyers’ Experience With Military Commissions and Habeas Corpus 

by Colonel Gary M. Bowman ........................................................................... 339
 

Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT): A Grass Roots Interagency 

Counterinsurgency Methodology in Afghanistan 

by Lieutenant Colonel Lynda M. Granfield ...................................................... 371
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 389
 

Day 3, Featured Speaker 

Interagency at the Washington DC Level 

by Mr. Mark T. Kimmitt ................................................................................... 397
 

Question and Answer ......................................................................................... 405
 

Closing Remarks 

Dr. William Glenn Robertson
 

Director, Combat Studies Institute .................................................................... 411
 

Appendix A: Conference Program ..................................................................... 413
 

Appendix B: About the Presenters ..................................................................... 421
 

Foreword 

These proceedings represent the sixth volume to be published in a series generated 

by the Combat Studies Institute’s annual Military History Symposium. These 

symposia provide a forum for the interchange of ideas on historical topics pertinent 

to the current doctrinal concerns of the United States Army. Every year, in pursuit 

of this goal, the Combat Studies Institute brings together a diverse group of military 

personnel, government historians, and civilian academicians in a forum that promotes 

the exchange of ideas and information on a pressing topic of national significance. This 

year’s symposium, hosted by the Combat Studies Institute, was held 16-18 September 

2008 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. 

The 2008 symposium’s theme, “The US Army and the Interagency Process: 

Historical Perspectives,” was designed to explore the partnership between the US 

Army and government agencies in attaining national goals and objectives in peace 

and war within a historical context. The symposium also examined current issues, 

dilemmas, problems, trends, and practices associated with US Army operations 

requiring interagency cooperation. In the midst of two wars and Army engagement in 

numerous other parts of a troubled world, this topic is of tremendous importance to the 

US Army and the nation. 

This year the symposium welcomed as keynote speaker Brigadier General Robert 

J. Felderman, who provided an overview of the organization and capabilities of the 

US Northern Command and its ongoing efforts in interagency cooperation. Other 

featured speakers included Brigadier General (Ret) Mark Kimmit, the Assistant 

Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, and Dr. Richard Stewart from the 

Center of Military History. This volume also contains the papers and presentations 

of the seventeen participating panelists, including the question and answer periods 

following each presentation. The symposium program can be found at Appendix 

A. The proceedings can also be found on the CSI web site currently located at 

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CSI/RandPTeam.asp. 

These symposia continue to be an important annual event for those students and 

practitioners of military history who believe that the past has much to offer in the 

analysis of contemporary military challenges. Every year, both attendees and other 

recipients of the proceedings have uniformly found them to be of great benefit. It is 

our earnest hope that readers of this volume will find the experience equally useful. 

CSI – The Past is Prologue. 

Dr. William Glenn Robertson 

Director, Combat Studies Institute 

Day 1—Opening Remarks 

Introduction 

(Transcript of Presentation) 

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV
 

Commanding General, US Army Combined Arms Center
 

I want to welcome everybody aboard and tell you we are glad to have you here. 

We are looking forward to a great three days. I think everybody can see the title—very 

applicable in the 21st century as we all move forward. The Chief of Staff of our Army 

keeps talking about the fact that we are in an “era of persistent conflict.” In the next 

couple of years, I think we will all recognize and note that the budgets that the US 

military has today will only decline, not increase. And when they do, even greater 

emphasis will be put on everybody collaboratively working together in a coordinated 

manner as we all move forward. There is no question that in the 21st century anything 

that we do is going to be done in what we call a JIIM, a Joint Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational kind of an event. We can even take it one step further and 

say it is going to be comprehensive because it is going to involve all the other entities, 

too, such as nongovernmental organizations, entities such as NATO (North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization), and everybody else. We will all be participating in a collaborative manner wherever we find the US military engaged around the world in the future. 

So today as we move forward, one of the great things about this is that sometimes we 

say those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it. What I would tell you is 

that, in fact, there are some great things from history that we do want to repeat. And I 

am hoping that through these next three days, through these eight different panels, the 

interactive discussions that will take place, and the off-line discussions that we will 

be reminded that there are things that we have done well in the past, and we know we 

have, but that we have just forgotten about, that we will repeat and do well again in the 

future. So I look forward to this. I think there are some great lessons learned out of the 

past, historical perspectives that the US Army and the interagency can dialog and talk 

about and benefit from. I will tell you also that here at Fort Leavenworth there are a 

couple of other great resources for those that have not been here before or really have 

not spent any time here. We have our Combined Arms Research Library which we call 

CARL. Our Combined Arms Research Library is a great resource. You can access it 

through the Internet. You can spend time over there. It is open to the public. It is not a 

restricted library, although there are restricted areas, classified areas in there, but the 

majority of it is wide open to the American public. It just won the 2007 Federal Library 

of the Year Award. It is that kind of quality library that we have here on this installation. 

We just received the award last Friday in Washington, DC. So I would encourage you 

to check it out, if you have not seen it or did not know about it, even if you just want 

to go by and ask some questions. We also have the Center for Army Lessons Learned 
here, closely tied in with the Joint Lessons Learned Center at Norfolk in the JFCOM 

(United States Joint Forces Command) command there. It resides here too. Great lessons learned. And they have an element that just looks at joint interagency lessons 

learned. It is a huge directorate. So that resource exists here at Fort Leavenworth also. 

We also have a host of other entities that reside here and are part of this organization. 

So if you are not aware of those, they exist here and people are more than welcome, 

and we encourage you to look at them, ask questions about them, or come back if 

you want at some other point. I want to thank Dr. Glenn Robertson. Glenn is our director for the Combat Studies Institute. He and his team have done a great job over 

many, many months of getting ready to be where we are today. So Glenn, thank you. 

We appreciate the hard work and effort that everybody has put into getting us to this 

point today, and we really look forward to these next three days. Anyway, I just want 

to officially tell everybody thanks for coming; thanks for being a part of this. This is 

being televised live throughout Fort Leavenworth. We have a closed-circuit television 

system that we use here so it allows any of our CGSC (Command and General Staff 

College) students, the twelve hundred of them that are here daily in school, to be able, 

in their classrooms, to watch what is happening here if they are interested in a particular panel. It also allows anybody else who works on Fort Leavenworth, outside of the 

college, to tune in and watch what is happening here. We are also blogging live from 

this session today. We have three interactive bloggers that will be engaged in blogging 

so there may be a time when different questions are asked by one or two persons in 

the back that are in the “blogosphere” that are sharing this with a large audience also. 

So if you hear other questions coming in, they will probably be coming in through the 

blogosphere in the back or they will be coming in through some of the classrooms with 

an instructor passing something down asking a question. So we will take questions that 

way too. Okay, with that, those are my comments. I just want to say welcome. Take 

the time to reach out and touch other people. You will see a lot of different uniforms 

if you are from outside Fort Leavenworth. In that row right there you will see four of 

our International Liaison Officers. There is another one back over there. They are representing 14 different nations. These officers are assigned here for two to three years. 

They are an incredible resource. They bring great richness to what we do at this institution and in the school itself where you will find 140 international officers, not as senior 

as these and not quite as knowledgeable, but they also are here and you will see them 

around. So there are almost 200 international officers, on a daily basis, that are here at 

Fort Leavenworth that are part of this whole organization and everything we do here. 

So if you see them around, please engage them. Ask them what they do. Quiz them. 

Put them under a little pressure. Do not let them off lightly. But we appreciate you all 

being here too. Thank you very much. 

2 
Day 1—Keynote Speaker 

Interagency Coordination 

(Transcript of Presentation) 

Brigadier General Robert J. Felderman
 

Deputy Director of Plans, Policy & Strategy
 

NORAD and USNORTHCOM
 

Thank you very much. US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) was formed in 

2002 based off of the actions of 9-11, 2001. To kick things off since we are talking 

about interagency, I think it is important for you to have an understanding of who 

your speaker is today. I like to consider myself one of the most joint military officers 

at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and US Northern Command. I am the son of a retired naval officer. I followed him around for twenty-plus 

years. I enlisted in the Air Force and worked on F-106s that had a nuclear strike capability, which is one of the capabilities that NORAD used to monitor. I transferred over 

and was enlisted in the Army, went through Officer Candidate School, was Infantry 

qualified, attended Armor School and flight school, and then throughout the thirty-plus 

years in the National Guard I have worked in Infantry, Armor, Aviation, Medical Service, and Cavalry. I have a real estate business that I maintained as a National Guardsman. I stayed in the National Guard because of being a single parent for over six years 

I realized that was a little bit more important at the time than career. So I have a very 

successful real estate business that allows me these last almost four years to step up and 

work at NORAD and US Northern Command. But I also am on some local boards and 

committees, working down at the city helping write ordinances for real estate, zoning, 

waste water, and different things along that level. I have worked at the state level with 

real estate appraisals and real estate boards in licensing and accreditation. I am on the 

tri-state (Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin) American Red Cross Board of Directors. At the 

national level I have been working at the National Guard Association running resolutions and became certified as a legislative liaison. So I have a broad perspective, but a 

person is also impacted by whom you have in reach, and my brother-in-law is Director 

of Mission with USAID (United States Agency for International Development) down 

in Mozambique most recently, and in Guatemala. So I have a lot of reach out there. 

All of that comes into play in what I am discussing here today on US Northern Command. 

Our primary focus is Homeland Defense. Homeland Defense is the number one 

mission, but we tend to spend most of our time and I will tell you I just disengaged 

yesterday from our response from working with Hurricane Ike, and before that Hannah 

and Gustav. But those are our two primary missions. 
As you can see here (Slide 1) the focus of our mission is “anticipates.” On the 29th 

of August as Hurricane Katrina had roared across the tip of Florida in Miami and was 

working its way up through the Gulf, General Rich Rowe was the Director of Operations. I was running the command center. We were trying to anticipate what would be 

needed, knowing that this storm was gathering up to huge levels, very similar path to 

what Gustav did. We tried to anticipate. We tried to look forward and see what was out 

there. We tried to pull forces in. We reached out to the services and what we got was, 

“The military does not respond until we are asked for something.” FEMA (Federal 

Emergency Management Agency) and DHS (Department of Homeland Defense) were 

relatively new, coming together as an organization, and we could not get anything out 

of them as to an assessment as to what we were going to do. I will tell you that has 

changed today. It is significantly different and we have pre-scripted mission assignments out there that we have worked. We have coordinated with all of the services. 

We have the interagency partners that work with us every single day that say, “Here 

are what our gaps are.” Here are the capabilities we do have that we know we will not 

need, and we reached out, as I will cover a little bit later on, with over 120 entities to 

do that coordination. 

Our area of responsibility (Slide 2) will expect a little bit of a change here with 

the 2008 Unified Command Plan (UCP), but here today we cover Canada, the United States, Mexico, Bermuda, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon Island, which is a little 

French territory just off the east coast of Canada. We are going to pick back up the 

Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands and that will give 

us a bit more expansion into what we now call our third border and that is the Caribbean. We see a significant growth there in our relationship in reaching out to them as 

we have done with Canada with over 50 years with NORAD. We have a very strong 

relationship with them at the North American Aerospace Defense Command. They just 

celebrated their 50th anniversary on May 12th. We also have, and I am very proud to 

have worked on that team, a bi-national team that will help Canada Command stand 

up their command, something very similar to our Northern Command and we have 

developed that relationship where we have a civil assistance plan that was just signed 

by both nations where if they have a disaster or we have a disaster, that we can offer 

military support to that Federal response. In fact, for Gustav we had some aircraft and 

some ships from Canada that were en-route and ready to be shared with us. With Mexico we work with the army SEDENA (Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional) and with the 

navy SEMAR (Armada de Mexico) on a regular basis. In fact, my boss, General Miller, 

is down representing General Renuart there right now for a meeting with their senior 

leaders and he will be headed back up tomorrow. These relationships are expanding on 

a regular basis. We also have quite a bit of an interagency side where we work with our 

Department of Homeland Security that reaches out to Canada’s Public Safety and then 

to Mexico’s Protecciớn Civil. 

This gives you a little bit of an idea of the spectrum that we deal with (Slide 3). 

Starting over here on your left, we work with national special security events such 

4 
as the space shuttle. We have a team that goes down and coordinates with them, our 

Standing Joint Force Headquarters–North and then that mission is being handed off to 

our Joint Force Air Component Commander, which I will cover in a little bit as we lay 

out the distribution chart. We also work with the United Nations General Assembly, 

which begins here this week. I cannot remember the number, but we will work and 

provide support and assets to the Secret Service as they stand up and protect those 

folks. We are operating in an area that the government calls a POHA (Period of Heightened Awareness), and we have a period from the last couple of months here through 

hurricane season and our response, the Republican National Convention, Democratic 

National Convention, United Nations General Assembly, we have a space shuttle that 

is getting ready; it was moving out to the pad in the last week or two. We also will be 

coming into the elections in November, and then the transition into the new government in January, the Super Bowl that we cover every year, and several other different 

major events where we have thousands of folks in the United States that could be 

impacted. That will carry forward into July of next year and then from there we start 

working and coordinating with the 2010 Olympics that we are working with Canada in 

providing them support in that area. But we also work down here in the middle as you 

slide across the spectrum, which is the wildfires that we worked last year and the year 

before significantly in California and the southeast area. We monitor these throughout 

the country, but we had a huge response to those on the military side. We had immediate response from agreements and memorandums of understanding that we have with 

the local bases to be able to provide firefighters, either aircraft with buckets of water 

or flying folks around. We had a much larger response this last year with doing assets 

that are typically used for surveillance that we did for assessment and aerial views 

that we were provided that were hyper-spectral for the chemical side to the ultraviolet 

to be able to show where the fires were starting to pick up and we found that the fire 

chiefs, being able to send information down through a Blackberry or through a Rover 

P3 or full-motion video for this ultraviolet, infrared image that they could tell that they 

had their forces in one area of the nation and they could move and relocate it and be 

ahead of the fire. They never had the opportunity to do that before. So then everybody 

knows with the devastation that we have had and the stand up as I talked earlier of 

Hurricane Katrina, and then rolled into Hurricane Rita where we had First Army east 

of the Mississippi and Fifth Army west of the Mississippi and realized that we needed 

to have an Army element to be able to work that whole piece so we now have Fifth 

Army that works the whole nation for any response. We have 1st Air Force at Tyndall 

that works the air side and Fleet Forces Command that works the naval asset side, of 

course, linking into the Coast Guard. We have found that as we build those responses 

and work it that this becomes almost a day-to-day operation. So while Homeland Defense is our number one mission, the coordination with the interagency, coordination 

with nations in our area, coordination with the services and providing those assets is 

where we spend most of our time in this type of response. Now we can also get over 

into the homeland defense side. One of the areas I work quite a bit is nuclear weapons 

accidents, but also new NUDETS (Nuclear Detonations) as we work out there. We 

have two major exercises every year. One that focuses in on Homeland Defense, which 
is coming up here this November, VIGILANT SHIELD, and then ARDENT SENTRY, 

which focuses on the consequence management for any kind of a Homeland Defense 

response. We know that we are going to have a significant civil support response, no 

matter what that is, whether it is a 10-K NUDET that occurs, which we practiced last 

year in Indianapolis, or whether it is a pandemic influenza. As we reach out and try to 

work with all the different agencies that are there, it is very critical to our response to 

be able to work that whole piece. And this can extend all the way up to dealing with an 

actual force that attacks the United States. 

This is our command and control chart (Slide 4). It gives you an idea. We just made 

a change. We conducted an organizational mission analysis in the Plans, Policy and 

Strategy Directorate and we just made a move effective this year. But I would like to 

start at the top and you can see where it is very important that we have our coordination 

with the Department of Homeland Security and with the National Guard. For those of 

us in the military, C2

 always meant command and control, but we have changed that 

definition of C2

 because we are in support always of others in that while we may have 

command and control within the service elements, command and control stands for coordination and collaboration, and with collaboration that means that you are sitting at 

the table as even partners. So as we work with the Department of Homeland Security, 

we have their liaison officers and senior officers that exchange and work with us. As 

we get into the chart on the Department of Homeland Security and the different agencies I have a huge list of folks that we work with, but with the National Guard it is more 

than just the National Guard Bureau because that is not a command and control entity. 

It is reaching out to the states; it is reaching out to the Adjutant Generals that are with 

each of those 54 states and territories. It is reaching out to 12 of them that are triple- or 

dual-hatted as their Officer of Emergency Management or their Office of Homeland 

Security. So we reach out and coordinate and collaborate with those folks giving us our 

own definition of C2

. We have Joint Task Force Alaska that works the homeland defense and civil support missions up in Alaska. They also are a little bit dual-hatted with 

the Alaska Command. They work with the Pacific Command out of that area of our 

world. Then we have Joint Force Headquarters National Capitol Region. You might 

know them as the Military District of Washington, the Army element. In day-to-day 

operations they coordinate and work our equities in the National Capitol Region. They 

are leaning forward and we turn them into a Joint Task Force for different events. For 

example, the elections, or the inauguration, or when the President gives his State of the 

Union Speech, they will stand up and operate as our lead element. Here we have the 

services representatives. Air Force North becomes a Joint Force Air Component Command when we stand them up for a response. Army North, Fifth Army, becomes our 

Joint Force Land Component, or JFLC. We have Marine Forces North, which works 

the Marine forces that would respond to an event in support of the Navy or the Army. 

And then we have the Fleet Forces Command, which today is a supporting command 

but there have been discussions that they would become a Navy North. Then when we 

stand them up as we have in the past, they would become a Joint Force Maritime Component Command. Each of those component commanders would also be responsible 

6 
to be prepared to stand up a Joint Task Force should we need it. For right now, regarding our response into Florida, the required response was not as strong as it could have 

been. Florida has a significant response force so all we sent in there was 1 of our 10 

Defense Coordinating Officers. But had we needed a larger response there or a larger 

response in Louisiana or in Texas, we could have stood up the Joint Task Force that 

all of those elements of the services would have coordinated through. We also work 

through, if the state stands up their own Joint Task Force in a Title 32 capacity or a 

Federal funded—but under the State’s control—Task Force, the Defense Coordinating Officer could coordinate and collaborate with them. We also have some laws on 

the book that allow us to have a National Guard officer, as in my case, become dualhatted and to become a Title 10 officer as well. Also we could have a Title 10 Active 

Duty officer get a commission into the National Guard and then he would have the 

responsibility of Title 32 National Guard forces or Title 10 Active Duty forces to work 

that total response. Where that would come into play more than likely for the National 

Guard is if you had four or five different states, particularly in one state where there is 

significant response. Let’s use Texas as an example. If they did not have the capability 

that they needed, we could add a lot of forces, a significant number. During Katrina we 

had 50,000-plus National Guard folks from different states that came down to Louisiana and Texas and over 22,000 Active Duty. About 10,000 of them were boots on the 

ground. So when you get that large of a force, you need to be able to develop unity of 

effort, a clear command and control piece of those operations, but all of that is in support of our nation. Then as I said, just recently we moved Joint Task Force North out of 

El Paso, formerly known as JTF-6. Those folks work the counterterrorism efforts that 

we have along both of our borders north and south. And then we have Joint Task Force 

Civil Support. They work the CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, 

High-Yield Explosive) effort that we have if we need to stand up a Joint Task Force. 

They are in fact today working with Army North at Fort Stewart, running a validation 

exercise for the first assigned forces that will be given over to Northern Command. 

On 1 October we have a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force or CCMRF. You may have heard of it by different names. We are actually hosting a contest. 

General Renuart has offered $100 to anyone who comes up with a better name than 

CCMRF. They are out there being validated today. That is a force that has been built 

up of about 6,000 folks and right now the plan is to stand up three of those CCMRFs. 

JTFCS (Joint Task Force Civil Support) would be the element that would work with 

them on a regular basis. The next two elements as they stand up over the next few years 

will be a mix of Active, Guard, and Reserve as we work out there and then several of 

them across the services so it will end up being a joint entity. 

We typically run this slide when we are doing a one-on-one with folks (Slide 5). 

We do it as the build slide. You can see the whole picture, but typically you start right 

down here in the middle when an event actually happens. In this case you can see that 

it is depicted as a hurricane. We also discuss it where we have a NUDET or some kind 

of chemical response. As the hurricane begins you start off with your local responders, that fireman, that police chief, that first response down on the ground. So these 
are the folks right here as they go out and work that effort. Then as they see the storm 

or the response is within the national response framework, they see that response is 

larger than they can handle, then the governor may declare a disaster, either statewide 

or by different counties. In June in Iowa, my home state, we had 89 out of 99 counties 

that were declared state disasters, 85 that received Federal assistance. But we have the 

local responders that are out there working. The governor activated the National Guard 

to State Active Duty and sent the folks out to respond. Typically for a hurricane highwater vehicles are needed, search and rescue capabilities are required, and planners are 

needed to be able to help the State and locals put their efforts together. Sometimes it is 

just having a body to go out and fill sandbags or to direct traffic. The National Guard 

folks are also allowed to do security, law-enforcement type duties legally when they 

are in State Active Duty or Title 32 under the governor’s control. So they are able to 

provide that kind of benefit. As they went out during Katrina, they were able to go 

through the houses, break in the door to make sure if someone was alive or not in 

the areas that were flooded. We have another valuable resource, EMAC (Emergency 

Management Assistance Compact). That has really grown over the past few years. It 

used to be just a few states in one area would help another state within their area—the 

northeast quadrant, the southeast quadrant, southwest quadrant—all these different 

compacts out there. Now we have all of the states and territories that have signed on 

to this. You can have the need for 100 ambulances down in Texas . . . you put out a 

call and coordinate and they will provide those folks. You can have any assets in that 

regard that can show up. Where it really has come into play is in the National Guard 

response. During Katrina, General Blum, Chief of the National Guard, had a video 

teleconference and had all the Adjutant Generals out there and said, “You know the 

kind of forces we need. Send us what you can. I need 1,000 folks from each of you. 

This is how big this is going to be. We need to get down there.” Then the paper work 

caught up. Typically what happens is, for example with Louisiana, Texas was short of 

aviation assets so they put out the call to and coordinated through the Emergency Management, NEMA (National Emergency Management Association) (we will get into all 

the different acronyms). It is an entity that helps work that for us and coordinates it. 

They coordinate through the National Guard Bureau, through the states and all these 

assets started flowing down into Texas. But as you look at that, as you look at the 26 

different hurricane states, which also includes Hawaii, and the capabilities that they 

have based off of what level of storm that they are responding to they have identified 

different gaps that are out there and that is where we need to work before a disaster to 

be able to identify what assets might be needed—medical, aviation, incident awareness 

and assessment, transportation, search and rescue. So as those folks start getting out 

there and the Governor asks for a Presidential declaration, that is what is in his request 

up here, he asks for a Presidential disaster declaration. If the President does declare 

that, it invokes the Stafford Act. The Stafford Act then allows us to be paid for what we 

will be responding to in those different states. He reaches out and typically puts into 

the Department of Homeland Security as the primary Federal agency in that regard, 

but not always. Everyone knows the I-35 up in St. Paul/Minneapolis that fell in. The 

Department of Transportation was the primary Federal agency for that response. So 

8 
we provided Navy divers. Those different requests for assistance become a mission assignment as they pass through the Secretary of Defense for his approval and then work 

their way down. Then US Northern Command works that response for any of those 

Title 10 assets. As I mentioned earlier, we have a group of pre-scripted mission assignments that we identified from Katrina, different assets that they needed—communications teams, field housing and sheltering support, clearing debris, incident awareness 

and assessment, transportation, critical care patient evacuation. So as we identify those 

we put them on, for lack of a better word, a canned flight plan so that the primary 

agency working down to the state, with their State Coordinating Officers collaborating with the Defense Coordinating Officer. In the past they were reaching out during 

Katrina and saying, “I need, because I have been told that the U-2 is the best aircraft 

to give me a flyover to be able to tell what the roads, the power lines, and the roofs 

look like so that we know what we have to respond to, whether it is tarps or food, or 

whether people are stranded.” We need to have that U-2 and that is what they asked 

for. That was a 900 and some thousand dollar request yet we had aircraft with better 

assets, better capabilities, or equal capabilities that could go out and do it for significantly less. For example, the Civil Air Patrol or the P-3 Orion from the Navy could fly 

out and take pictures and give us full-motion video. All of those assets we were using 

so they now ask for a capability and as you work in that capability that allows us to 

develop it. But within that they still need to have an idea of what we need to know, the 

five Ws—what, where, when, why, and where are we going to put them. So they now 

know what they have to give us. What location do you want them in, how long do you 

want to have them, are you going to provide the support or are we going to provide the 

support? So we send those entities out there as we work through Northern Command, 

the Defense Coordinating Officer, the Federal Coordinating Officer in the Joint Field 

Office and the State Operations Center. Later on I will have some slides that will cover 

what we did for Gustav regarding interagency coordination, several different agencies, 

and how that worked into this response. The big thing here on the take-away end is that 

support has to be requested and that we are always in support of that primary Federal 

agency as they respond. It does not mean we do not put forces out there to be prepared 

to deploy. We have the ability to have a group of Tier-1 level, Category One Forces 

that General Renuart can put out there as the Defense Coordinating Officer, some assessment elements that can go out there and give us some idea of what the situational 

awareness is. We are not going to send forces forward. We are not going to send boots 

on the ground into the State of Florida when they know that they have it under control, 

but we are going to be positioned and ready to go and with a lot of those assets that I 

will discuss later on. 

The next slide (Slide 6) really focuses in on the main part of what you are here for 

today, the interagency piece. You can see within the military services the folks that we 

have, but we have over 60 different organizations that work with us from the American 

Red Cross to the Department of Transportation all the way to the Central Intelligence 

Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration). We have over 60 of those folks represented at US Northern Command; 45 of them are full-time. The rest of them are either liaisons and available in the 

area or we may have a liaison out to work with those folks. As we work with those, 

that has grown. Secretary Rumsfeld was the one who first put out the Joint Interagency 

Coordination Group and I will talk about it a little bit later, what its mission and role is, 

but all these folks work through that Interagency Coordination Team. 

The next slide (Slide 7) focuses in . . . you can see that we work in a joint and combined environment, the joint being the different services that are there, the combined 

when we do a response that includes the different nations. Below the surface is where 

our success is. That is where we see the piece that we work every single day that we 

would not be able to do the mission and tasking that we have been given for homeland 

defense or civil support without those folks. 

The next slide (Slide 8) will focus just a little bit on what is interagency. We work 

within the military. We have our Operations, our J3, we have our Plans, the J5, we have 

Training and Exercises, J7. Those are directorates; those are functions, so the communications, the logistics, the operations, the plans. Interagency is a process and as that 

process works through it is important that we reach out and facilitate that. Well, that 

Interagency Coordination Group does just that. As necessary, they reach out and they 

focus in on those different areas. So you can see who we reach out to. Most folks do 

not realize that we work with the tribal nations as necessary. But it starts with the local, 

tribal, state, and then the Federal side. You can see a couple of them that are up there, 

the different agencies that we work with on a regular basis—the Department of Homeland Security for a typical Consequence Management type of response for a disaster, 

the Department of Transportation for something with the highways, Health and Human 

Services would be more along the lines of pandemic influenza where they might be the 

primary agency, the Department of Energy for homeland defense with a civil support 

tag on for a NUDET of some kind. On the nongovernmental agencies it is very important that we work with those—Red Cross, other international humanitarian groups 

that are out there. We have an entity, and I will bring it up later on, that just handles 

the donations. The Department of State reaches out and handles donations from other 

nations, but from local faith-based, nonfaith-based folks that just want to do good. And 

they start up often before we see something coming. So for a no-notice response, a 

NUDET, an earthquake, that response starts after it kicks in. But for a hurricane . . . we 

started working Hurricane Ike as a pressure system off the coast of Africa. I always like 

to say it started when the butterfly fluttered its wings, but as we came across and had 

Hannah and Gustav and Ike and were watching them and where they were going, and 

doing the gap analysis and assessment as to what we do if it was a Category 2, which it 

finally did even though it had a Category 4 type of impact. What if it hit Florida? What 

if it hit the Gulf? What if it made a turn and went up and hit in North Carolina or the 

National Capitol Region? So as we worked those things, these are the folks we have to 

really reach out and work with. In the private sector we have a lot of different conferences, a lot of different preplanning events, a lot of after-action reviews (AARs) that 

we do, and we bring folks in just as you are doing now to be able to discuss these types 

10 
of things. So we work with those. We have one organization, BENS (Business Executives for National Security) that are significant contributors in holding these types of 

entities out there, but we also focus in on the whole of government and the whole of 

society. And on here, what is missing are the international partners. Each of these different entities through the Department of State really do reach out and get that piece. 

During Hurricane Rita when it went into Texas, for the first time Mexico provided us 

some forces that came across the border and one of my division branch chiefs worked 

with them, was working out of Mexico, brought this team across with some food and 

some doctors and folks to be able to provide a response. That was one of the first times. 

During Katrina, with the levees and that piece, we had the Dutch that flew in with experts to advise us on working with the levees. It does cross the entire spectrum. 

Folks say, “Why do you need to have that?” (Slide 9). Well, in the military as we 

are learning, as your group is doing here today, reaching out and looking at the interagency coordination that needs to take place are very critical. In the United States it 

works down into a lot of the things that carry all the way back to our Constitution. The 

states have their rights; the mayors have their rights, and you can see up here the mayor 

does not necessarily work for the governor and the governor does not necessarily work 

for the President. We need to be able to have that coordination across the entire spectrum to be able to do that response. The challenges here—there is no one department 

that can handle all of this, there is not one that has all of the assets, all the capabilities, 

and so it does require us to reach out and do this. And again, the key here is that we 

work as an integrated team, that unity of effort and that there is collaboration taking 

place across it. And the idea here is that everybody wants to do good, but not everyone, 

or not any one entity, is going to be in command so it does take several different lines 

of effort to be able to go out and work this piece. 

Again, on the why (Slide 10), I actually have my sheets here in front of me because 

even though I am one of the weak users of acronyms I have to carry it around and look 

them up on a regular basis. We think in the military we have a lot of acronyms, but it 

is just like having a translator for several of these different things. There are so many 

duplicate acronyms out there that are two different meanings so as we work through 

that, that is what we are looking at, the language piece. Everyone from their foxhole 

has a different perspective. They think they know what they need, but they do not necessarily know how to make it work and get it coordinated and focused in on a response. 

So that piece is very important. And then the experiences, as I led off with the different 

experiences that I have had, I am sure General Caldwell has different experiences, I am 

sure everyone in the audience has different experiences of where you have come from, 

and that makes a difference. What we have found is that the military are great planners. 

When it is time to get in, get the mission completed and get back out, we are able to do 

that. But we do not look at it from a different perspective. I like to use the definition 

of what is a disaster and what is a catastrophe? A disaster is something that happens to 

someone else. A catastrophe is something that happens to you. So as you are there and 

you are looking at that, your experience shapes what you see. We all wonder why do 
folks live in “Hurricane Alley?” Why do folks live in earthquake zones in California or 

the Madrid Fault? Why do folks live where they know they are going to have fires every year? Those experiences, that knowledge is what we reach out to gather and to pick 

up. The National Response Framework has done wonders in bringing together that 

entity, the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System 

as we work out, that puts a set of rules, a set of guidelines out there for us to follow to 

be able to coordinate and work those efforts through and then within the interagency 

they obviously have their own hierarchy that they work through. One of the things that 

has been very important to me, this has been my fourth hurricane season working at 

NORTHCOM, and as we go through everybody wants to do great, everybody wants 

to get out there and get the job done, help those that are suffering, help save lives, and 

help sustain those lives, and work in that regard, but we in the military typically have 

come in and we know that we are in charge and we can go in and run it. In this case, 

we are in support, it is a different role for us so we need to be able to go out and work 

through that. It also requires significant understanding of each other’s capabilities, 

each other’s way that we operate. 

This is what the Interagency Coordination Directorate looks like (Slide 11). Mr. 

Bear McConnell, a very good friend of mine with quite a bit of experience in USAID, 

State Department, SCS-5 (Senior Executive Service). I understand he is equivalent to 

a three-star; he leads it. He has a civilian government service executive officer, Jim 

Castle. He is authorized 6 different military folks and 13 civilians in his directorate, but 

it is all those other 45 different full-time folks that reach out to a of 60 different agencies. Broken down into four different divisions, the Operations and Training Division, 

you can see just what that does. They do the training, but they also respond to ongoing operations that are out there, and they work to integrate NORTHCOM personnel 

into those different agencies. The Emergency Preparedness and Plans Division reaches 

out to the FEMAs. They reach out to the EPA (Environment Protection Agency), to 

the Health and Human Services, and then they focus on defense support of civil authorities. They are the ones that will stand up the Crisis Action Team, the Interagency 

Coordination Group, the Joint Interagency Coordination Group that we have stood up 

here today, and I will have slides later on that cover a little bit more of where that coordination comes from. Most of us only deal with those two divisions. The Law Enforcement and Security Division is in the bullet with NORAD, for NORAD’s aerospace 

and maritime warning and aerospace control. They also work with our Customs and 

Border Protection folks. Concepts and Technology Division reaches out with different capabilities that are available. They co-chair the innovation and technology panel. 

They work with Sandia Labs. They work across the spectrum of different capabilities 

so that we become aware of what is out there and where we could possibly provide 

them a linkage into the Defense Department to be able to work that. So Operations, the 

Preparedness Division works planning, and then obviously focuses in on capabilities, 

and then the idea is that we have those resident agents that we can reach out to and we 

will get into some of those a little bit more. 

12 
The Interagency Coordination Directorate responds to the commander (Slide 12). 

As I said, every different agency talks with a different group of acronyms so to be able 

to provide that interpretation to the commander, be able to provide the staff with the 

understanding of how that works is invaluable. That is primarily what they do. The 

Battle Staff works the current fight in the Command Center while the Future Operations Center works what is next. We have the Future Planning Center, plans folks that 

work for me, and we work or lead the fight and hand it off then when it becomes a 

current operation. We have the logistics folks to do a support group. We have the communications folks that work that piece. Interagency has a representative to each of 

those groups so as we work through they can provide us that right person to contact, 

that right person to reach out to and grab, but it gives us a link into that entire group of 

60 folks that are out there. We deal with over 150 different operation centers on a dayto-day basis. And as we do that most people think of Northern Command, most people 

think of the Department of Homeland Security, most people think of FEMA only when 

it is time to do that response for a Hannah or a Gustav. They think of us only when it 

is the Department of Transportation or something and they need that support. But it is 

a lot more than that. We have 30 to 50 different incidents that we monitor every single 

day. They do not always turn into something, but it is something we are reaching out 

and as we work that there is always, everything we do there is a linkage out there to interagency. And more important than that is the fact that we need to reach out in support 

of those. We are not the lead. So as we work through that, that is where we focus. 

Again, the Joint Interagency Coordination Group is a little bit more (Slide 13). 

Every other week we have speakers come in. They provide us with information. We 

have anything from the Office of Secure Transportation that comes out and brings 

equipment and shows us what they actually do provide when they are transporting 

nuclear assets around the country. We had the Customs and Border Protection folks to 

come out. They did not bring their horses along with them, but they came out and told 

us about their mission, where they operated, how they are growing, how they coordinate with the locals and states to be able to be able to go out and do their mission. We 

bring these folks in on a regular basis and all focused in on a lot of different areas of 

interest. Not too long ago we had an expert come in and talk about the Madrid Fault 

so that gives us an idea on where to focus some of our plans in that regard. I discussed 

the Interagency Coordination Group. That is our Battle Cell, Crisis Action Team that 

you can kind of think of. They are stood up today. They have been stood up for 24 days 

and we have been nonstop 24-hour operations in response to following through for 

Gustav, Hannah, and now Ike. Fortunately, Josephine fell off to the wayside and got 

blown away. We are still watching one other little pressure system out there. So we are 

continuing to work. Then as we continue the response we also need to do the transition 

back to where we hand everything off. They are the ones that are doing that coordination and they provide us, and again I have a set of slides that will kind of cover all the 

different areas that they give us information so that we know what the . . . the cell towers, how they are standing up so that the emergency responders are doing good. So they 

reach out and find out what the loop down in Louisiana is that has the ships that come 
in and pick the oil rigs up. They reach out and provide us with that information so that 

we can know that we can start transitioning, standing down, or disengaging out there. 

And we have started doing that. That is a significant part of my directorate, preparing 

to go in and then also preparing to bring us out. 

We could not do it without . . . the next slide here (Slide 14) shows a lot of those 

different interagency partners. So you can see where it has two asterisks up there that 

we have a liaison officer that is resident with that and we are continuing to grow those 

on a regular basis as we take our manpower and put them out there and work through 

them. I will give you a second there to kind of look through them and see what is out 

there. 

The next slide (Slide 15) gives you an idea of the nontraditional interagency 

partners that are out here working with us, as I mentioned earlier, Mexico with their 

Protecciớn Civil and then all the way down to the BENS that I mentioned, the Red 

Cross, the different governors. There is a big effort right now with the 2010 Olympics, 

but that is a Canadian response and while the states along the borders can reach out we 

have to work with those governors and ensure what piece they are working and we help 

them coordinate that, the National Guard or any other asset that we might be able to. 

The next one (Slide 16) shows several different events that we have been doing 

here this last year or more. You can see here from pandemic influenza tabletop exercises, and we do a little bit more than that. I am part of a pandemic influenza team and 

we are working with South Korea and Japan knowing that is more than likely where 

something is going to initiate if it is a pandemic, the NH5N1 strain of virus that could 

come over so we work with those folks. Well, we have this tabletop exercise here. We 

have had tabletop exercises that discuss the constitutional law piece of pandemic in responding to germ warfare. We have improvised explosive device conferences. Defense 

Coordinating Officer, Federal Coordinating Officer conferences, all the way up into 

weapons of mass destruction conferences with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the border regions. They have started reaching out to interagency in Mexico 

significantly more for us all the way to California wildfires and humanitarian. 

This gives you a couple of more that we are continuing to work (Slide 17). Some 

of them are ones that occur every year. Obviously, with the National Conventions, support is worked into there. You can see here we have a Transportation Security Conference coming up. 

These are the few slides that I was talking about that really gets us into what our Interagency Coordination Directorate does (Slide 18). This is the one where you need the 

translation to get through some of the acronyms up here. The top one up here is FEMA 

(Federal Emergency Management Agency) and you can see the different things they 

work through. The US Geological Service that helps us with imagery that we coordinate that through with our assets that we have for the Incident Awareness Assessment 

14 
piece. The Customs and Border Protection has a Predator that they have had out there 

flying and was able to give us some imagery and share it across to all those that are 

responders. For the fire fighting down in California, we coordinated to have a Global 

Hawk fly over and focus imagery down to the folks on the ground. Obviously with the 

Coast Guard working the cutters that are out there, they also worked going through the 

harbors. Right now Houston’s main harbor was just cleared. They had to go out with 

the vessels to do the side scanning sonar to be able to make sure that the depth and 

width was there for folks to get into it. Health and Human Services has the Medical 

Assistance Teams out there. The Army Corps of Engineers, while we think of them 

as a Department of Defense entity, and they are, but they work Emergency Support 

Function Number 3 for the Department of Homeland Security and so they are out there 

working the levees. They are out there doing debris removal where we, NORTHCOM, 

are only allowed to do debris clearing. So they go out and look at that. They look at the 

power side so they work with the Department of Energy in working through that piece. 

But one of the big ones up there, you can see the Joint Task Force Unwatering. When 

we get flooding the Corps of Engineers are the ones responsible for putting together 

the plan and monitoring that piece. So with New Orleans, and actually going on right 

now in Texas, they are looking at what the process will be and how long that will work 

on the watering side. Fortunately, we have some winds that turned around last night 

and will be coming out of the north so we are expecting to start drying out pretty well 

down there. The American Red Cross does the coordination across the different states. 

And again, this slide was put on the table the 1st of September so these are things that 

we were working across. The American Red Cross coordinates what is out there and 

again, the reason we do all of this is to look at any gaps that we would have to fill. The 

American Red Cross or FEMA have commodities that they need to deliver; I remember in Hurricane Dennis that we were working to get the commodities water, ice, and 

Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) down to Homestead, putting together the transportation 

plan working with TRANSCOM (United States Transportation Command) to be able 

to work that and get those delivered down there. It took four of five different agencies 

to be able to coordinate and work that. 

The next slide (Slide 19), as I mentioned before, the Customs and Border Protection had their Predator that they used. Aidmatrix is a private sector, nongovernmental 

organization that coordinates donations as they come in. Typically, as we start seeing 

the Katrinas, the Ikes, the Hannahs, or the Gustavs start and get an idea of where they 

are going to land, they start coordinating that type of support. They have 50 different 

field organizations that offer a one-stop system. You probably are not surprised at the 

number of on-line groups that started up accepting donations, but not a single dime 

goes toward a response. So we focus in on this piece. I know Secretary Chertoff put 

out a call to folks to do strategic communications plans to discuss how you go about 

picking and choosing the right entity to be able to respond with your donations so they 

work through there. And they help register volunteers. We had some live feed yesterday during FEMA’s and DHS’s video teleconference. Friday the President walked into 

the meeting, but typically the last few days Secretary Chertoff has been in there and 
we had a live feed down to one of the points of distribution. They had folks lined up 

with their cars for miles each way, but they had just as many people showing up and 

saying, “I am okay. What can I do to help?” So this type of organization helps work 

that piece. 

This is really what we are all about focusing here on (Slide 20), as I said, the military is there to support. We are there to coordinate and collaborate. We are there to be 

able to use that interagency group to be able to support unity of effort. We are focused 

on being part of the team, not running the team and that is a significant challenge for 

many of us in the military to be able to step up and do that, but then at the end of the 

day, I can tell you that being there for four years from where we had to fight just to get 

anyone to pick up the phone to even think about anticipating that support to the folks 

that are out there, that today we are prepared, that we have done the planning, that we 

are ready and able to get out there. And a lot of that really focuses in on the practice 

side so with those exercises that we run from the national level to the tabletops that we 

run, it is more important to have the interagency perspective, the interagency reach so 

that they could pick up the phone and knew the right people to talk to to get the answer 

so that we could determine what asset we needed to get out there, to anticipate and to 

be able to respond to save lives and mitigate suffering and that is what it is all about. It 

is a pleasure to be able to present this to you today. I am very fortunate to have worked 

first in operations and now in the plans, to have been General Renuart’s representative 

for events like this and to be able to carry that message out to you. It was very important to him. I do know that General Webster expected to be your speaker; he was looking forward to coming back here for a visit. Both send their regards and wanted me to 

pass their thanks on to you for taking this subject on. Thank you very much. 

16 
Brigadier General Robert J. Felderman Slide Addendum:
 

Interagency Coordination
 

Slide 1
 

Slide 2
 
Slide 3 

Slide 4
 

18 
Slide 5 

Slide 6
 
Slide 7 

Slide 8
 

20 
Why Interagency Coordination? 

•	 Many organizations have a common goal, but not a common boss 

•	 Multiple authorities, jurisdictions, levels of government Multiple authorities, jurisdictions, levels of government 

(Constitutional underpinnings) 

•	 Mayors don’t work for Governors, who don’t work for the 

President 

•	 Private sector has responsibilities, obligations and capabilities 

•	 NGOs have their own objectives 

•	 21st Century security challenges are far too complex for any one Century security challenges are far too complex for any one 

department/agency – at any level of government 

•	 Meeting these challenges requires integration and 

collaboration amongall instruments of US national power 

•	 Operations inevitably require close cooperation between 

various organizations with military, political, economic, public 

safety and other forms of expertise and resources 

Slide 9 

Why? (cont’d) 

• Common goal(s), but not common: 

•	 Languages 

•	 Approaches 

•	 Experiences 

•	 The NRF, NIMS, ICS standardizes some things, but... 

•	 Interagency diversity – differing cultures, hierarchy, 

biases, and misperceptions makes unity of effort 

difficult 

•	 In decision-making, non-DOD Departments/Agencies 

rely more on cooperation and consensus building 

•	 Understanding plans, capabilities and limitations of 

other stakeholders is key to building your own plan 

Slide 10 
t t t

Slide 11 

IC Directorate 

•	 Provide Interagency context to Commander Provide Interagency context to Commander s decision ’s decision 

making processes 

•	 Provide Interagency p erspective to N-NC staff and 

Department of Defense (DoD) perspective to external 

Agencies 

•	 Anticipate NORADand USNORTHCOM d USNORTHCOM requests for

assistance through National Response Framework (NRF) 

•	 Administer Commander Administer Commander s Joint Interagency ’s Joint Interagency

Coordination Group (JIACG) 

•	 Operate the Interagency Coordination Group (ICG) 

“Battle Cell” 

Slide 12 

22 
t t t

 

JIACG and ICG 

JIACG – Supports operational planning & initiatives day to day Supports operational planning & initiatives day to day 

• Provides interagency situational awareness, Interagency 

assessments, Interagency reach back (Resident and ‘Virtual’ 

memb hi ) d h i f I i f i bership), and synthesis of Interagency information 

• Working Groups formed for issues of interest.... 

Law Enforcement, DCO/FCO, Pandemic Flu, Earthquake, 

ICG – The Interagency Coordination Group (“Battle Cell”) 

Pre-scripted Mission Assignments, Private Sector, etc 

• Interagency coordination focus point for Agency reps during 

contingency operations or exercises 

• P id th JIACG A t t th C d d t ff Provides the JIACG Assessment to the Commander and staff 

• Anticipates gaps/seams that may lead to DOD missions 

Slide 13 

Slide 14
 
Slide 15 

Slide 16
 

24 
t

t tt t t

t t t t

Slide 17 

Hurricanes 

Coordination 

• FEMA 

• notification/alerts/pre-movement of assessment, communications, and LNOs 

• gap anal i i h S (LA TX) ( i h d d ) lysis with States (LA, TX) (nursing homes and med evacs) 

• medical and general population Air Evacuation 

• USGS 

• remote sensing/imagery TELCON 

• post-l df ll i landfall imagery 

• host unclassified, Global Hawk and U2 ortho rectified imagery and products, on a 

restricted portal 

• USCG 

• preparedt i l o sortie cutters, close commerci l d al port and pre-positi SAR ition SAR assets 

• USACE 

• levee assessments, Prime Power assessments, TF Unwatering 

• ARC 

• coordi tina on teams to AL MS LA TX (3 000 di k d i ) AL, MS, LA, TX (3,000 disaster workers moved to region) 

• shelter/kitchen trailers 

• staged 750K pre-packaged meals in area; capacity to provide 650K meals per day; 

prepared to shelter 150K in 4 states 

• HHS 

• 32 DMATs deployed for LA/TX; ambulance contract in place for TX (500) & LA (300) 

Slide 18
 
t t t t

t t t t t t

t t

t t t

• actively working with dozens of NGO partners to help faciliate awareness of needs and direc

LA 

Hurricanes 

Coordination 

• CBP 

• monitor border operations pre / post landfall 

• P d UAV il bl f IAA Predator UAV available for IAA 

• DOT 

• MS/LA contraflow operations FEMA 

• PS/NGO 

• Aid i d th l h f AL FL LA MS d TX St l Aidmatrix announced the launch of AL, FL, LA, MS, and TX State portals to manage 

unsolicited donations 

t 

sources to affected areas. 

• Th h bli h d k N Through an established network, N-NC/ICG PS/NGO bl NC/ICG PS/NGO was able to support two sh l i LA helters in 

who were in need of critical supplies and resources. 

x DOI/MMS 

• tracking oil industry off-shore platform evacuations and shut-downs 

• E dvacuated: Pl tf 518 f 717 Ri 86 f 121 Platforms: 518 of 717; Rigs 86 of 121; Sh iut n: oil 96 26% G 82 3% il 96.26%; Gas 82.3% 

• DOE 

• activated Strategic Petroleum Reserve Emergency Operations Center 

• suspended on and offshore ops as 1100 AM EDT 8/30 

• track d i i LA ed power restoration in LA 

• USDA 

• LA request for infant formula & baby food funded & delivered 

Slide 19 

Slide 20
 

26 
Day 1—Keynote Speaker
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Brigadier General Robert J. Felderman
 

Deputy Director J5, Plans, Policy & Strategy
 

NORAD and USNORTHCOM
 

LTG Caldwell 

Yes, I will start off. Bob, I have a question for you. I thought your comment about the 

fact that they are going to dual-hat military officers so they can be Title 10 and Title 32 

simultaneously was interesting. Is that accurate? 

BG Felderman 

Yes, it is. 

LTG Caldwell 

Is that something we could have always done or something that has been passed and 

required a legislative type of action from Congress to do and they have approved it? 

Can you just talk that for a second? 

BG Felderman 

Yes, I can. It has actually been on the books for quite a while. 525 is the law that goes 

into that effect. It requires an agreement to be signed between the governor and the 

President. Both signatures go on the block. We actually looked at it in Katrina, the 

five different states having five different dual-hatted commanders. The requirement 

is that you have to be a general of the line. You have to have been trained and been 

through the certification process and to have been a Joint Task Force Commander. It is 

authorized to go both ways. Right now I am Active Army, but if I were in a National 

Guard role then I could be dual-hatted. Then you are the only person, that one person 

has command and control of the National Guard forces because you are working for 

the governor and the Adjutant General, and you have control of the Title 10 forces that 

roll in. We have done it several times. The G-8 Summit. We just did it for the Democratic National Convention in Denver with Tom Mills out of Minnesota, we worked the 

parallel effort and depending on the event it can go both ways. We actually offered up 

General Honoré to be given a Title 32 commission in several different states, but particularly in Louisiana and he would have had the command and control of the National 
Guard forces and the Title 10 forces. But dual-hatted means he has to respond back to 

two different leaders, the governor and the President. While we have not yet used that 

for a crisis response for Consequence Management Response, we are getting closer to 

that effort when we do more of these. But the law is out there. We do train. We do a 

course of instruction and certify folks through US Northern Command. We now have 

Active and Guard folks that have been through the training. About five or six hundred 

folks have been through it, but it has been going on long enough that as people retire 

and move on we have a stable of a couple of hundred folks that we can work with 

right now. It is very tough to be able to go and work through that. You need to have 

someone who has an understanding of the Active Duty forces. You need someone who 

understands how to work within the state and someone that can sit on the fence and 

work both sides. 

Audience Member 

When you send your liaisons out to these agencies that do not provide them to you, do 

you send them with communications, computers, all their support equipment or do you 

expect that they are provided those things when they get to their higher agency that 

they are supporting? 

BG Felderman 

Two different ways—on the day-to-day we have those liaisons that are out there, the 

Department of Homeland Security, we expect them to give them an office, computer, 

space, access and then we provide that access back. No different than when we send 

our officers down to Mexico or Canada. We do the same thing. But the Defense Coordinating Officers have a team that we send out to each of the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) regions, all 10 FEMA regions. And we send those folks 

out with a team of six folks, themselves and six folks. Some of them have a few more. 

Some have a few less when they are doing transitions. But we send them out with vehicles, communications capabilities, and support capabilities to be able to go out. They 

have trailers and satellite reach so we can do video teleconferences with them so as 

they go out and colocate with that Federal coordinating officer at the Joint Field Office 

and reach out to the principal Federal official or Federal coordinating official. They can 

bring them in and do a video teleconference right back to Colorado Springs and then 

from there feed it to wherever it needs to go—the Department of Homeland Security or 

we have had it where the President has been online and asking direct questions to them. 

So you can kind of work both packages. That is a good question. Thank you. 

Audience Member 

We understand or recognize that there is a different perspective on training that a soldier or military person would have versus what an interagency member would have. 

Their view of training is much different than ours. What successes can you point to in 

28 
your relationship with the interagencies in building up a training partnership with some 

of these groups? Clearly it is mutually beneficial to prepare for this before actually 

executing it; it is in all of our best interests. 

BG Felderman 

Absolutely. I just recently attended an earthquake exercise in Osaka, Japan—two and 

a half hours where they had over 5,000 folks responded to this area about the size of 

three or four football fields that they stepped in and had trained and prepared to be 

able to go and work it. And I looked at that and I thought to myself and wondered if 

we could do that here. And I think we have done it to a different level. That is a tactical-level type of response. Spoke last week to New York emergency managers. They 

have one of the larger response forces and they do these exercises themselves at the 

state level. Jack Colley who is in Texas every day in his video teleconference talks 

about the training that they have done at the state and local level and so that is with 

the National Guard, the Reserve, and then the Active forces, this Defense Coordinating Officer. They work with him on a regular, daily basis. But you get into some areas 

where we need to expand that training. That is where the tabletop exercises come into 

play. We do several of those. There is one quarter that is at the presidential level where 

we have the senior leadership, and we do the national level. ARDENT SENTRY and 

VIGILANT SHIELD—one is for homeland defense and one is for civil support. So 

the training piece comes in when you trade those business cards before you get in 

the foxhole. We also hold pandemic influenza training. FEMA holds exercises with 

emergency managers. Mr. Gene Pino, a retired Marine, is our SES (Senior Executive 

Service) that works our Plans Division at NORTHCOM. He reaches out and gets us 

fit into where we need to be, where we provide folks instruction. It is very long term. 

We just had the Worldwide Planning Conference that Mr. Pino attended and presented 

several different opportunities for us to expand into the military side. So as Fifth Army 

is reaching out and working that, we are doing that in depth. Good question. 

Audience Member (Blogosphere) 

With regard to cyberspace, Sir, the recent attacks that were preemptory fires for the 

Russia-Georgia conflict and General Renuart had mentioned that he believes that cyber-domain is one of the biggest threats in the 21st century. Could you comment on the 

interagency coordination that you have done for that? Who has the rose pinned on them 

specifically within the interagency? 

BG Felderman 

Thank you. That is a very good question. We have actually identified several different 

challenges that are out there, cyber being one of them and the arctic being one of the 

future. Cyber is relatively new for all of us and working with the Strategic Command 

is where we expect to have the lead for the military side as they work through that. So 
they are just at the ground floor now of working that coordination. We have our J6, 

communications, and then our J2 on the intelligence side has reached out and collaborated with the right folks. Off the top of my head, I do not have the specific agency that 

they are working with right now, but it is growing every single day. It is moving further 

up the level, and we do know that after observing what happened with Georgia . . . we 

know what happened with one other nation where they went in and did basically a 

cyber attack, a cyber influence impact. We know what we go through every single day, 

the day-to-day hackers that are out there. As we expand we know that is going to be a 

continually growing requirement for us at Northern Command to be able to work that. 

We like to say we have 42 number one priorities, I see that as moving up into one of 

the top priorities. Great question. 

Audience Member 

My organization is the Army’s experimentation venue for the command and control 

warfighting function. I noted on one of your slides that within the Interagency Coordination Directorate, I think in the Concepts and Technology Branch, you have an 

experimentation capability or interest of some type. Might this be an entity that the 

Command and Control Laboratory here at Fort Leavenworth could interact with and 

network with to achieve some common experimentation objectives? 

BG Felderman 

I think you probably hit the nail right on the head with that because we are seeing that 

reach to be able to do that. Working with the cyber realm, working with nuclear weapons, recapture and recovery, working with the [inaudible], all of that, anything that 

contributes toward that command and control, that is what these folks do. They do that 

linkage so absolutely. I will give you a business card afterwards and we will get you 

hooked up with the right folks. 

Dr. Robertson 

Sir, with regard to change over time, Katrina was not all that long ago. Some might 

even call it not history, but more recent events. I tend to take the view that what is in 

the past, if it happened yesterday, it is a part of history. You had a response to Katrina. 

You are now having responses to Ike and those that will come after. Could you possibly 

characterize for us the change over time in that just short number of years, how things 

have improved and what we are learning from the past? 

BG Felderman 

It is such huge leaps and bounds from there that every single day it still surprises me. 

I have a list that I brought with me that I talked about that anticipation piece. That 

was not part of our mission. That is probably the biggest one. The prescripted mission 

30 
assignments that we worked. The process to get the Secretary of Defense to approve 

the use of an asset. We used to present him his book on Thursdays. You would work 

your way through and if you needed something you got it on Thursdays. There was no 

such thing as a vocal approval. There were processes that had to be vetted at so many 

different levels. Now we have it almost instantaneously. We have it . . . it is a defense, 

a very long acronym, and it is a computer portal page that the Defense Coordinating 

Officer talking with someone down on the ground that says, “We think we are going 

to need this.” We start then putting together a list of asset potential and start looking at 

analysis and assessment. First off, if the state has it, and second if the National Guard 

has it. If they do not, we do have it and work with JFCOM (United States Joint Forces 

Command) to be able to coordinate that. This is all on a portal page that you can 

look through and see that the request has happened and it is being worked. We have 

a signature. It is green. By the time it is signed and agreed, it means it went from the 

Federal Coordinating Official to the primary agency whether it be . . . in this case the 

Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and then goes to the SECDEF (Secretary of 

Defense) and then back down to us. I saw it take 72 hours. It is a matter of, in several 

cases, from minutes to hours. The anticipation piece where we were not allowed to 

commit, General Renuart was not allowed to commit any forces. We have a relationship, as I told you, with Fleet Forces Command, with the Navy. They are allowed to, 

in a training mode, to have a ship start heading down behind a hurricane. Typically, 

we have had to prepare to do that from Bermuda or the Bahamas. But they will come 

in behind the storm. We are working the USS Nassau [LHA-4] right now that left two 

days ago from Norfolk and started its way around, swung past Jacksonville, flew out 

and gave some assets that they needed, capabilities that they needed, swung around, 

and as of last night was down by Key West ready to go either to Panama City to pick up 

another capability to deliver over to help with the national interests for the energy or to 

get into Galveston and provide whatever support they need. That asset now, last night 

in the video teleconference was determined to send it to Galveston and they could do 

medical and food because they can generate so many gallons of food and water every 

day, and then they have the food piece, and they are also a platform because Galveston 

was devastated that they can then have aircraft come and stage off of there. The video 

teleconferences that I mentioned, in the past we would first stand up the domestic 

warning center, not a Command Center, not a Joint Operations Center, and would just 

monitor things. We now have two to three senior leader video teleconferences and that 

is typically General Renuart with the representative from OSD (Office of the Secretary 

of Defense) Joint Staff. Several times it has been the Deputy Secretary of Defense, 

Gordon England, on that video teleconference with similar partners from FEMA, the 

Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy, all those different interagency folks that are there. And then we have three different video teleconferences that 

has just dropped down to two a day, that we do coordination and we get the information 

as to where everybody is and while we are at those, we can sit and make decisions and 

talk and be able to have an asset diverted as we did with the Nassau, get another one 

ready that was out on a training mission. You can get it diverted. You can take an asset 

we thought maybe needed to do a full-motion video of one area, then we can change 
it. It is a little bit of a reach into some of the tactical area, but we did not have any of 

those before, and to get an assessment of what we needed in Katrina took 72 hours. 

Now we have an idea of what any response is going to need so we can have it ready to 

go and then the assessment piece can be done because instead of waiting to talk in two 

or three days, when you found it we are out along side of you, helping you, supporting 

you to be able to get that, feeding that assessment back. My planners and operators are 

already coordinating to be able to get that asset ready to go so that 72 hours to a week 

process to get an asset is minutes to hours, so significantly shorter. That probably is the 

biggest improvement that I have seen, and just to give you an idea and it is tough to see, 

these are assets that we had, some on “be prepared to deploy” in that anticipation mode 

and now, most of them were for search and rescue, and we took about 50 percent. We 

do not need them now so we started standing them down. But we also, because of that 

communications, coordination, collaboration where we were starting to stand some 

of them down, we got a feeling from Texas that it is going to take another day so we 

stopped and kept those assets going. We would not have had that situational awareness 

to do that. We did not have that for Katrina for several days into it. Great question. 

32 
Panel 1—The Difficulties in Interagency Operations
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

The Interagency Process and the Decision

To Intervene in Grenada
 

by
 

Edgar F. Raines, Jr., Ph.D.
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

In October 1983 at a time when Cold War tensions between the United States and 

the Soviet Union were at their highest in years, the United States invaded the Caribbean Island of Grenada. This paper examines the workings of the interagency process 

in the days leading up to the decision by President Ronald W. Reagan to intervene. 

Interagency process in this instance is considered to be the definition, analysis, coordination, and evaluation of an issue across organizational lines leading to a presidential 

decision.1 

The Army as an institution, of course, was not one of the agencies involved in 

the decision to intervene in Grenada in 1983. Ever since President Eisenhower had 

signed into law the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, the Department of Defense 

had completely superseded the military services in the development of policy relating 

to issues of war and peace. Individual Army officers often were, on the other hand, key 

participants in the formulation of policy, because they were members either of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff or of the Joint Staff. At the level below policy making, the preparations 

of Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units selected to participate in the incursion 

were vitally affected by the timing, sequence, and context of the decisions made or 

avoided in the days leading to the final presidential decision to land troops.2 

The individuals involved worked in no ivory towers. They made judgments on the 

fly based on partial and sometimes incorrect information using their own store of personal experiences to weigh the relevance and significance of presumed “facts.” Real 

world events intervened to distract them or spur them to greater efforts. They worked 

in a technological environment very different from our own, in which personal computers were still a rarity and most of the papers produced in the Pentagon were, in their 

final versions, the products of word processing pools. As always, the personalities and 

decision-making styles of key players had an enormous impact on the outcome. 

This paper, after briefly discussing the origins of the Grenada crisis, lays out a narrative account of the decision-making—with emphasis on the interagency process— 

from the first realization on 13 October 1983 that there was a potentially dangerous situation developing in the eastern Caribbean until 24 October when the president made 

the virtually irrevocable decision to go ahead with the operation. Next there is a brief 

account of what the US government knew, but didn’t know it knew, about the Americans on the island, a matter of some importance because the need to rescue them triggered the intervention. Fourth, the paper considers the impact of President Reagan’s 

style of decision-making and his relationship with his key advisors on the operation. 

Fifth, it hazards an evaluation of the interagency process during the Grenada operation 

on the admittedly incomplete information available at present. Finally, it considers 

what students of the Reagan era don’t know yet but need to know to better evaluate the 

national security apparatus’ performance during the Grenada crisis. 

The island-nation of Grenada, located in the eastern Caribbean, became a diplomatic and security problem for the US government in March 1979 when a left-wing 

coup overthrew the authoritarian but western-leaning government of Sir Eric Gairy. 

The leader of the revolutionary government, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, kept the 

island in the British Commonwealth but actively sought closer ties with Cuba and the 

Soviet Union. At the same time, the United States became the source of all the calamities, both large and small, that befell the island—at least in Bishop’s rhetoric. Grenada 

thus became one small point in the “arc of crisis” that National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski discerned stretching from Afghanistan through the Horn of Africa and 

the Caribbean to Central America.3 

In response, the administration of President James Earl Carter began a modest 

military build-up in the region. It established a standing joint task force in Miami under US Atlantic Command. The new organization was to monitor Soviet and Cuban 

activity in the northern Caribbean, draw up various contingency plans, and conduct 

exercises when needed. At the same time, a second subordinate unified command, also 

under Atlantic Command, US Antilles Command, performed the same functions for 

the southern Caribbean. Atlantic Command also staged a series of military exercises as 

a show of force. None of these initiatives, however, involved any great influx of forces 

on a permanent basis. With world-wide commitments, the US military was stretched 

too thin for that.4 

Initially, the administration of President Ronald W. Reagan did little more than 

continue the Carter approach of correct but cool relations with the Bishop government. Military exercises continued to demonstrate US interest in the Caribbean. Atlantic Command consolidated its subordinate organizations into one more robust headquarters, US Forces Caribbean, with headquarters in Puerto Rico. Behind the scenes, 

however, Grenada received much more high-level attention than it ever had before. 

The Grenadians, with Cuban assistance, had begun building a modern international air 

terminal capable of servicing the largest trans-Atlantic jets. Its purpose, said the Grenadians, was to revive the local economy by luring tourists to their beaches. In Washington, however, analysts worried that the airport when complete would provide a base for 

projecting Soviet and Cuban power through the region while serving as a staging area 

34 
for the Cuban expeditionary forces fighting in Africa. President Reagan made this very 

clear in a televised address to the nation on 23 March 1983 that was otherwise devoted 

to unveiling his Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars” in the words of his critics).5 

Shortly thereafter, the administration adopted a two track policy. On the one hand, 

it would seek to engage the Grenadians constructively, but if that failed it would bring 

economic, political, and military pressure to bear to induce better behavior. An offshore medical school owned, operated, and largely attended by Americans, the St. 

George’s University School of Medicine, was the largest source of foreign exchange 

for the Grenadians. If all else failed, the Reagan administration proposed to encourage 

that institution to move elsewhere. The first track produced a Bishop visit to Washington and a meeting with National Security Advisor William P. Clark but resulted in no 

discernable change in Grenadian behavior as far as the administration was concerned. 

The president’s decision to launch track two was sitting on the desk of Clark’s successor, Robert C. McFarlane, awaiting implementing instructions, when events on the 

island rendered it superfluous.6 

On 12 October 1983 an emergency meeting in Grenada of the Central Committee 

of the revolutionary party—the New Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, and Liberation Movement Party, most commonly referred to by its acronym as the New JEWEL 

Party—deposed Bishop and substituted his sometime deputy and finance minister, 

Bernard Coard, as prime minister. When the party announced the leadership change 

the next day in the capital of St. George’s, a near riot ensued. Coard then withdrew, but 

he remained very much a power behind the scene, although this was not clear to party 

outsiders. Just who was in control became, suddenly, ambiguous not only for foreign 

observers but also for ordinary Grenadians. The central committee, meanwhile, placed 

Bishop under house arrest. He was held incommunicado.7 

Events in Grenada, as did those of all countries in the Western Hemisphere south 

of the United States, fell under the purview of the Restricted Interagency Group of the 

National Security Council. Upon taking office, the Reagan administration had mandated an elaborate, formal hierarchy of coordinating groups between all the departments 

and agencies involved in formulating and implementing US national security policy 

with the State Department at least nominally serving as the lead. At the top of the hierarchy was the National Security Council and the president. The Restricted Interagency 

Group was at the bottom. Consisting of mid-level officials from agencies involved in 

national security, it was chaired by the assistant secretary of state for inter-American 

affairs. It was also a surprisingly influential group, considering the rank of its members 

in their respective departments.8 

The Reagan administration considered both the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and the insurgents in neighboring El Salvador as proxies for the Soviets and the 

Cubans and thus the number one national security threat to the United States in the 

Western Hemisphere. Over the first almost three years of the administration, the Restricted Interagency Group had served as the primary forum for developing US policy 

toward Central America. Recently, however, consensus had broken down. Some members of the State Department advocated a diplomatic approach while a loose coalition 

of National Security Council staffers, officials at the Department of Defense, and the 

Central Intelligence Agency pursued a military solution. In these circumstances, representatives of the State and Defense Departments were both territorial concerning their 

prerogatives and suspicious of the intentions of their counterparts.9 

It was in this inauspicious setting that, as the meeting broke up, Assistant Secretary 

of Staff Langhorne A. Motley spoke to the representative of the Joint Chief of Staffs, 

Colonel James W. Connally, US Air Force, Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division 

of the Plans and Policy Directorate (J5) of the Joint Staff. Grenada had not even been 

on the group’s agenda that day, and Connally’s relatively low rank indicated what 

the Chiefs’ nominal representative, the assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, Vice Admiral Arthur S. Moreau, Jr., thought of the importance of the topics 

that were. Ambassador Motley told Connally that there was apparently some unrest on 

Grenada and that it might become necessary to evacuate US citizens. He asked that the 

Joint Chiefs review their plans to support such a contingency. Connally thanked him 

and promised to pass his concern on to his superiors. This apparently was noted, but 

no further action followed.10 

That same day, the senior Latin American specialist on the National Security 

Council staff, Constantine C. Menges, reacted to the same reports of a Grenadian power struggle by proposing military intervention to rescue Americans on the island and 

restore democracy. Menges had a reputation as an ideologue at odds with the pragmatists who dominated the staff. His proposal appeared so far-fetched that his superiors 

ignored him for the remainder of the crisis.11 

Menges’s intervention did alert the senior members to the Grenada crisis, but this 

was more than off-set by the turmoil into which the staff was thrown at 1000 that same 

day. Without warning, National Security Advisor Clark announced he was stepping 

down to accept the post of Secretary of the Interior in the president’s cabinet. His deputy, Robert C. McFarlane, would succeed him. This development probably slowed the 

staff’s response to the Grenada issue. Not until 2000 did a low-level staffer on the Latin 

American desk contact an officer in the Joint Operations Directorate (J3) of the Joint 

Staff. The staffer wanted to know what resources were available if it became necessary 

on short notice to safeguard the evacuation of Americans there.12 

This query brought a quick response because the National Security Council was 

an agency of the Office of the President. At 0800 the next morning, the director of 

operations on the Joint Staff, Army Lieutenant General Richard L. Prillaman, activated 

a crisis response cell in the National Command Center to monitor the Grenada situation. The officers assigned to the cell were to assess the situation and prepare possible 

courses of action. One of them placed a “what if” call to the headquarters of US At36 
lantic Command at Norfolk, Virginia. Spurred by the inquiry, officers in the operations 

directorate there began reviewing contingency plans for noncombatant evacuation and 

a show of force. They also began drafting options specifically related to the situation 

in Grenada. Initially these efforts were interspersed with the normal business of the 

directorate and proceeded at a somewhat leisurely pace.13 

That same day the Restricted Interagency Group held another meeting. This time 

Grenada did appear on the agenda as a minor item. Ambassador Motley repeated for the 

entire group much of what he had told Connally the day before. In his view, Bishop’s 

arrest opened the possibility of further radicalization of the revolutionary movement. 

This development might pose a threat to the safety of the large number of Americans, 

estimated at 1,000, living on the island. Motley informed the group that the State Department was reviewing its standard evacuation procedures and formally requested 

that the Joint Chiefs review its plans for such a contingency.14 

Grenada at this point was still a potential crisis rather than a full-blown one. The 

14th was a Friday, and if any of the members of the Restricted Interagency Group 

missed part of their weekend, it was not because of Grenada. The military staffs, of 

course, continued working although at reduced levels of activity. Both the planners at 

the Pentagon and those in Norfolk knew that any noncombatant evacuation involved 

one major inherent risk—that the intended evacuees could become hostages instead. 

With this in mind, the planners at Atlantic Command made three assumptions. First, 

the National Command Authority would make available all the forces listed in the existing Caribbean concept plan, 2360, last updated the preceding March. From this pool 

of units, the commander of US Atlantic Command would draw whatever appeared appropriate given the situation on the island. Second, neither the Soviet Union nor Cuba 

would intervene. Third, the bulk of the resident Americans were medical students who 

lived on the True Blue Campus of the St. George’s Medical School, just off the east 

end of the runway at Point Salines. Based on scanty intelligence, the third assumption 

would prove to be incorrect.15 

On Monday, 17 October, Motley convened a special meeting of the Restricted Interagency Group devoted solely to Grenada. This agenda testified to the State Department’s rising concern. Colonel Connally’s continuance as the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative in attendance, however, indicated the rather less serious view with which 

his superiors contemplated the situation. At the meeting Motley made a strong case 

for armed intervention. He began by reviewing the State Department’s standard procedures for dealing with a country where American lives might be at risk. The more 

moderate courses of action involved negotiating with the government in power. Motley 

rejected them because in his view Bishop’s arrest and Coard’s resignation meant that 

no legitimate government remained in Grenada. The only alternative was an evacuation of noncombatants during which the US military would be prepared to use whatever force was necessary to protect them. Motley wanted the Joint Staff to begin planning 

immediately for such an operation.16 
Connally dutifully carried Motley’s concerns back across the Potomac. The director of the Joint Staff, Army Lieutenant General Jack N. Merritt, found them overblown. 

In Merritt’s opinion, the crisis was “just vibrating”—the situation on the island was 

neither deteriorating nor improving. Nevertheless, he directed the Joint Staff to join 

the Atlantic Command staff in developing a full range of options extending from a 

peaceful evacuation to the use of force. In response to the renewed flurry of planning 

activity, Atlantic Command activated its own crisis response cell the next day.17 

On the morning of 19 October, the crisis stopped vibrating. In the Grenadian capital of St. George’s, a crowd, estimated at from 3,000 to 4,000, broke into the prime 

minister’s residence and released Bishop, who had been strapped to his bed. Observers 

reported he appeared dazed, reputedly because he had refused all food and water for 

several days, fearing that his former comrades might poison him. Bishop and some of 

his supporters moved to army headquarters at Fort Rupert, where they easily overpowered the guards. Bishop, however, had failed to gauge the depth of Coard’s resolve to 

retain power. Three Soviet-supplied armored personnel carriers rolled up to the fort 

and without warning fired into the crowd. To prevent a massacre, Bishop surrendered. 

A firing squad of soldiers loyal to Coard then executed the prime minister and his 

leading supporters. Over Radio Free Grenada, the Minister of Defence, General Hudson Austin, announced the formation of a 16-man Revolutionary Military Council to 

govern the island until a new government could be formed. Bishop, he said, had died 

in the fighting at the fort. During the present emergency, he imposed a 24-hour curfew. 

Anyone violating it would be shot—words that carried grave import given Bishop’s 

fate.18 

The first news of disturbances in St. George’s prompted a strong response from 

the US Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados. Reports of Bishop’s rescue by the crowd 

prompted Ambassador Milan D. Bish to report, long before he learned of Bishop’s 

death, that conditions on Grenada “posed an imminent danger” to US citizens resident 

there. In Washington, his assessment prompted yet another meeting of the Restricted 

Interagency Group. This time Admiral Moreau attended in person. Although junior in 

the bureaucratic pecking order to Ambassador Motley, he was in many ways the most 

influential person in the room. A nuclear submariner noted for his keen intelligence, 

Moreau was very close to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General John 

W. Vessey. Vessey, a low key unflappable soldier with a droll sense of humor and a 

military career that stretched back to before World War II, was a favorite with both the 

secretary of defense and the president. Moreau’s ideas thus had a way of reaching the 

very highest echelon of government. It made him a force with which to reckon.19 

All the members of the interagency group agreed with Bish’s analysis and further 

concurred that the military needed to begin immediately to plan for a noncombatant 

evacuation. Moreau stated that the Joint Chiefs understood the situation and would 

instruct the relevant commands to monitor events on the island. At the same time, he 

emphasized that only the vice president in the Special Situation Group, which was the 

National Security Council when presided over by the vice president, or the National 

38 
Planning Group, which was the National Security Council when presided over by the 

president, could direct the Joint Chiefs to prepare invasion plans. Moreau did not add 

to this statement the phrase “not the State Department,” but that implication was clear 

from the context of his remarks.20 

Later that same day, following an intelligence briefing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

held its first formal meeting on the situation in Grenada. The Chiefs decided to dispatch a warning order for a possible evacuation of Americans to US Atlantic Command. Issued at 2347 local time on 19 October that instruction directed the commander 

of Atlantic Command, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, to prepare by dawn of the next 

day an estimate of the courses of action available to protect and evacuate US and designated foreign citizens. The Chiefs envisioned a three- to five-day operation. Possible 

scenarios included a show of force, seizure of evacuation points, combat operations 

to defend the evacuation, and postevacuation peacekeeping. This list encompassed a 

range of political objectives that extended from minimal involvement in the internal 

affairs of the island nation to creation of a posthostilities democracy. The amount of 

combat power envisioned for each increased in line with the scale of the objectives. 

US Readiness Command, as a supporting command that might have to provide forces 

to Atlantic Command out of the strategic reserve, received an information copy of this 

warning order. Shortly thereafter, the Joint Staff gave the operation the code name 

URGENT FURY.21 

In the early hours of 20 October, Admiral McDonald replied to the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff warning order with his estimate of the situation. Later that morning, General Vessey flew to Norfolk where McDonald’s staff briefed him. Atlantic Command’s 

plans envisioned both the possibility of an uncontested evacuation and a contested one. 

There was about a battalion’s worth of Cuban construction workers on the island, all of 

whom had military training. If the Grenadians and Cubans permitted a peaceful evacuation, McDonald outlined two possible courses of action: the use of either chartered 

commercial passenger planes or Military Airlift Command aircraft to fly the evacuees 

out of the country. The use of military aircraft would include stationing a small security 

detachment at the departure airfield. Either approach would require extensive negotiations with the Grenadians.22 

If the Grenadians refused to permit a peaceful evacuation, McDonald proposed 

four options involving military forces. The first was a show of force with warships 

from the Atlantic Fleet. Each of the other three involved landing about one battalion’s 

worth of ground troops. The first used the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit supported 

by the aircraft carrier USS Independence and its accompanying battle group. Some 

of these forces were already at sea en route to the eastern Mediterranean; others were 

preparing to embark for that destination. All could reach the eastern Caribbean in five 

days. The second substituted another Marine amphibious unit, but that force would 

require nine days to arrive on station. Finally, McDonald might use an Army airborne 

battalion. Depending on the unit the US Readiness Command provided, it might be 

ready for action even before the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit.23 
McDonald stated very clearly that he preferred to use Marines for both the assault force and any stay-behind occupation force. The second Marine option, however, 

dropped out of the discussion very early because of the unit’s late availability. The first, 

employing the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit, became what the Joint Chiefs referred 

to as Atlantic Command’s “small option.” Vessey focused on the third option involving an Army airborne battalion. He proposed that McDonald use Army Rangers in the 

initial assault force because they specialized in seizing airfields. The potential hostage 

situation also suggested to him that this operation required the special skills possessed 

by the Pentagon’s hostage rescue specialists—the special operations units controlled 

by the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. Vessey envisioned elements 

of the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg serving strictly as the occupation force. The 

Joint Chiefs referred to this course of action, which General Vessey clearly preferred, 

as Atlantic Command’s “large option.”24 

Vessey’s hands-on style of revising Atlantic Command’s plans suggested that he 

was less than impressed with that headquarters’ product. Ever since the creation of the 

command almost 40 years earlier, its primary mission had been to keep the sea lanes 

open to Europe and to transport large numbers of ground forces there in the event of 

war with the Soviet Union. Given this mission, the headquarters had been a single-service “blue water” organization throughout its history. It had no permanently assigned 

Army or Air Force units. The general’s concern that Admiral McDonald and his staff 

lacked the knowledge and skills to conduct a ground operation was thus no reflection 

on those individuals. It was the product of the Unified Command Plan and the assumptions upon which it rested.25 

Upon his return to Washington, Vessey took the first of two key actions that day. 

He directed the Joint Staff to analyze the impact of executing Atlantic Command’s 

large option on the world balance of forces between the United States and the Soviet 

Union. Throughout preparations for URGENT FURY, the Joint Chiefs would have as 

their primary concern keeping any conflict localized—and that meant deterring any 

Soviet or Cuban inclination to intervene. They proposed to accomplish that goal by 

massing enough land- and sea-based air power to dissuade the Soviets and Cubans 

from attempting to reinforce the Grenadian People’s Revolutionary Army and the Cuban construction workers.26 

While Vessey reviewed McDonald’s plans, news of General Austin’s 24-hour 

shoot-on-sight curfew prompted the newly appointed National Security Advisor, Mr. 

McFarlane, to decide that the crisis required White House oversight. The National Security Council replaced the State Department as the lead agency in the decision-making process. With the shift came a change in the name of the coordinating group. At 

McFarlane’s direction his deputy, Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter, convened a Crisis 

Pre-Planning Group at 0800 on 20 October. Institutional representation remained the 

same as in the Restricted Interagency Group but with an expanded number of often 

more senior representatives.27 

40 
As the attendees discussed the deteriorating situation, a member of the National 

Security Council Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, US Marine Corps, mentioned that the USS Independence battle group and the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit 

had recently sailed for the Eastern Mediterranean. Ambassador Motley wanted the 

Defense Department to divert them to the Eastern Caribbean until the crisis eased. Admiral Moreau refused to entertain the idea short of a written presidential order. In the 

end, Poindexter’s committee urged that the Special Situation Group, a committee of 

the most senior policy makers chaired by Vice President George H. W. Bush, assume 

responsibility for managing the crisis. The president accepted this recommendation.28 

At 1645 that same day, just as the vice president prepared to enter the first meeting 

of the Special Situation Group, a staff member handed him a copy of a message from 

Ambassador Bish reporting that Barbadian Prime Minister J. M. G. M. “Tom” Adams 

had requested American assistance in overthrowing the Austin junta. The vice president had just returned from a four-day visit to Jamaica, where he had received an indepth analysis of the crisis from the Reagan administration’s favorite Caribbean leader 

and free-market advocate, Prime Minister Edward Seaga of Jamaica. Seaga believed 

that the coup and Bishop’s murder posed a threat, by example, for all the democratic 

governments in the Caribbean. If the Austin-Coard clique remained in place, every 

adventurer in the area would have a working model for how to take power. Bush led 

off the meeting by reading the Bish cable and then summarized his own conversations 

with Seaga. “These people” he concluded, “are asking us to do something.”29 

Detained because he was testifying on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Shultz entered midway in the meeting and outlined the State Department’s plans to evacuate 

American citizens. He also noted that US forces would probably have to protect the 

evacuation. If that became necessary, Shultz advocated disarming the Grenadian armed 

forces as a safety measure. This was only one step short of outright regime change.30 

General Vessey briefed the attendees on the risks of using force and the possibilities of Soviet or Cuban intervention. The Joint Chiefs “. . . were determined,” he said, 

“to make sure that [Fidel] Castro got the message that interference was not an option 

for him and that the message was clear and early.” If the president decided to intervene, 

they wanted to send a very clear message to Cuba: “Hands off!” A representative from 

the Defense Intelligence Agency informed the group that the People’s Revolutionary 

Army would oppose any evacuation but that force was militarily ineffective. On the 

other hand, he added, the Cubans and Soviets simply lacked the means to intervene in 

sufficient strength to affect the outcome.31 

The Special Situation Group anticipated that conditions on Grenada would continue to deteriorate and that at some point events would compel the president to rescue 

the Americans on the island. As a result, Bush and his associates decided that the Joint 

Chiefs should prepare a detailed operational plan for this contingency and directed 

McFarlane to begin drafting a decision directive covering such a circumstance for 
Reagan’s signature. The committee also recommended the immediate diversion of the 

Independence Battle Group and the Marines. Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Defense 

Caspar W. Weinberger ordered the change of course for these ships without waiting for 

the White House to issue the order.32 

Late that evening, about 2100, General Vessey contacted the commander of the 

Joint Special Operations Command, Major General Richard A. Scholtes, on a secure 

line and informed him that military intervention in Grenada was possible. He directed 

Scholtes to develop a plan and to come to Washington and brief him early the next 

morning. Specifically, Vessey wanted to know what targets Scholtes considered essential and how in general terms he would envision the operation taking place. At that 

time, Scholtes assumed that his men would be working directly for the chairman as 

they had done often in the past.33 

On Friday, 21 October, President Reagan formally directed the Department of Defense to continue contingency planning, enjoined the State Department to contact allies and regional governments to determine both their assessment of the situation and 

their willingness to participate in a multilateral intervention if one became necessary, 

and confirmed the diversion of naval and marine elements to the Eastern Caribbean. 

Early that same day the director of operations on the Joint Staff, General Prillaman, 

telephoned General Scholtes and indicated that the Secretary of Defense and the Joint 

Chiefs had decided to make Atlantic Command the supported command. Prillaman 

directed Scholtes to brief Admiral McDonald on the concept of operations and the 

outline plan Scholtes’ staff had developed the night before.34 

At this point three different military commands were preparing for an invasion of 

Grenada. Because Admiral McDonald could not be certain that the Grenadians would 

wait until the special operations forces or the Marines were ready, he had the 82d Airborne Division preparing to seize both the airport under construction at Point Salines 

and the only operational field on the island at Pearls. The Joint Special Operations 

Command had its planners working on the same objectives along with several others. 

Even though both organizations were located on the same post, rigid compartmentalization prevented either from having more than a very general idea of what the other 

was doing. Finally the officers of the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit were looking at 

the same objectives. Neither the Joint Chiefs nor Admiral McDonald deemed coordination between these groups necessary or even useful because they were developing 

competing plans for the operation. Still the distances involved and the need to feed 

these organizations information from Washington led General Vessey to direct that 

everyone involved take special security precautions. These directions came too late to 

prevent first CBS News and then the Associated Press from breaking the story of the 

diversion of the Independence Battle Group, a fact confirmed by a “Defense Department official” during a briefing of Pentagon correspondents the evening of the 21st. 

The intended destination of Amphibious Squadron Four made the front pages of both 

the Washington Post and the New York Times the next day. Whatever the origins of the 

report, whether an unintended “leak” or calculated indiscretion designed to influence 

42 
the president’s decision, it produced intense concern in the White House about operational security.35 

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration attempted to maintain a public facade of 

“business as usual.” On Friday afternoon, President Reagan and Secretary Shultz and 

their wives departed for a scheduled weekend of golf at the Augusta National Golf 

Course. Because the situation in Grenada appeared to be heading toward a crisis, the 

new national security advisor, Mr. McFarlane, joined the party at the last moment. 

That evening, also conforming to his previously announced itinerary, General Vessey 

left to deliver a speech in Chicago. At the same time, “two senior presidential aides” 

accompanying the president to Georgia assured the press pool that the Independence 

Battle Group was in the area only to protect Americans and that no invasion was contemplated.36 

After Vessey departed for Chicago, the acting chairman, Admiral James Watkins, 

the new Chief of Naval Operations, attended a second meeting of the Crisis Pre-Planning Group. New intelligence reports suggested that the Cubans as well as the Grenadians might resist. The Cubans, according to one inaccurate report, might have introduced 240 combat troops onto the island when the freighter Vietnam Heroica docked 

at St. George’s on 6 October. At this point senior leaders were inclined to believe that 

Cuban machinations lay behind the Coard coup. The intelligence reports hardened the 

consensus that the United States would have to use military force to protect the evacuation and might have to disarm all Grenadians and Cubans, even those well removed 

from the evacuation point.37 

For both decision makers and planners, the available information about Grenada 

was seriously flawed. The figures on Grenadian and Cuban defenders given to the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff, for example, represented an overestimate on the order of 190 percent. 

In the same way, Bishop and his supporters were more closely associated with Cuba 

than Coard and his faction. The intelligence was the best available, but it rested largely 

upon inferences rather than hard data.38 

This lack of accurate and up-to-date information was the product of major structural problems in US intelligence agencies and misguided policies in the local American embassy. The United States had drastically cut back its intelligence assets in the 

wake of the Vietnam War. In an attempt to economize, for example, the Department of 

Defense failed to assign a defense attaché to the American embassy in Barbados during most of the period following the Grenadian Revolution. Finally, in 1982 Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence N. Reiman, US Army, opened a one-man shop. As the Grenada 

crisis began, intelligence assets in the region were skeletal at best. All the agencies 

involved had to play catch-up.39 

So did the State Department. From the US embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados, 

Ambassador Bish, a Nebraska businessman with no previous experience in government, had quite reasonably concluded that the Bishop regime was communist shortly 
after taking up his post. Rather than seeking to obtain more information about what 

was transpiring on Grenada, however, he had arbitrarily directed his staff to drastically reduce even routine visits to the island. (This meant that Reiman, for example, 

concentrated on establishing contacts with friendly forces in the region.) The reporting 

from Bridgetown on events in Grenada during the crisis thus consisted of a composite 

of interviews with American citizens recently there, summaries of local press reports, 

transcripts of Radio Free Grenada broadcasts, and whatever information friendly governments with better sources chose to pass along to the embassy. Policy makers in 

Washington consequently received little if any special insight into the events or psychology of the key figures in Grenada that high quality diplomatic reporting could 

have provided. Even more important, because the policy makers in Washington were 

unaware of Bish’s embargo on Grenada visits, they assumed that the embassy reports 

were much more solidly based on first person observation than they were.40 

Reaction in the eastern Caribbean to the diversion of the Independence Battle Group 

was emphatic. The same day as the Department of Defense announcement, the heads 

of government in the region met in Barbados. They unanimously agreed to intervene 

in Grenada to restore order and, because the forces at their disposal were minuscule, 

to request the assistance of both Barbados and Jamaica. The prime ministers delegated 

the chairman of their organization, Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, a 53 

year-old woman of keen intellect and forceful personality, to approach Great Britain 

and the United States for additional forces. They also prepared to make their case to the 

larger Caribbean community for still more local assistance. Attempts the following day 

to enlist other nations from the Caribbean proved largely unsuccessful.41 

In Barbados the American embassy struggled without avail to find a peaceful solution to the problem of US citizens on the island. The whole thrust of the post coup diplomatic offensive by the members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States was 

to isolate the Austin regime. Ambassador Charles A. Gillespie, Motley’s new deputy, 

interrupted an orientation tour of the Caribbean to provide Bish with on-the-scene advice. Neither he nor Bish wanted to undercut this promising diplomatic development, 

but, at the same time, they had to start a dialogue with Austin, Coard, or whoever was 

in charge to ensure a peaceful evacuation. In short, the Americans had to negotiate 

without seeming to negotiate.42 

Initially, Gillespie and Bish used the vice chancellor of the St. George’s University 

School of Medicine, Dr. Geoffrey Bourne, as a go-between. They conducted conversations via teletype with the school, and then Bourne conveyed their views to representatives of the Military Council. Sometimes Austin personally came down to the campus. 

After much discussion they convinced the Grenadians to allow a consular party headed 

by Kenneth Kurze, an officer in the Bridgetown embassy, to visit the island to check on 

the resident Americans. Kurze and one other embassy official landed at Pearls Airport 

on 22 October.43 

44 
Kurze confirmed that the Americans on the island were unharmed, but his efforts 

to negotiate a resolution to the crisis floundered upon Grenadian intransigence. While 

General Austin proclaimed the Revolutionary Military Council’s readiness to allow all 

foreign nationals to depart peacefully, the Council’s negotiator in this matter, Major 

Leon Cornwall, found “technical objections” to each course of action proposed. When 

the Cunard Lines, for example, offered one of their ships to evacuate free of charge 

all foreign nationals who wished to depart, Cornwall denied the vessel docking privileges and said that the Grenadian Army would fire on it if it entered Grenadian waters. 

(Grenadian antiaircraft guns did fire on the ship when it appeared on the horizon.) 

Cornwall’s behavior convinced the senior officers at the Bridgetown embassy that the 

Grenadians were already attempting to use the Americans on the island as bargaining 

chips.44 

One officer of the Central Intelligence Agency entered Grenada during this period 

of limited access. Ms. Linda Flohr spent over two days dodging Grenadian Army patrols while reporting on the situation via clandestine radio. The Grenadians, she noted, 

had confined the students to their dormitories and had posted sentries to keep them in 

and everyone else out. In her view the students were already hostages. She urged an 

immediate invasion.45 

So, too, on the 22d did the Governor General of Grenada, Sir Paul Scoon, regarded 

by the regional governments as the only legitimate source of authority remaining on 

the island. Scoon confided to a British official resident on the island that he desired an 

intervention to overthrow the Austin clique. The State Department learned of the appeal early the next morning.46 

During the night of 21–22 October, Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica, 

acting in her capacity as chair of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, formally petitioned the United States to intervene in Grenada. US Ambassador Bish in 

Bridgetown immediately forwarded her oral request to the State Department. On 22 

October, this message precipitated a very early morning meeting of the Special Security Group of the National Security Council and a call to McFarlane. Shortly afterwards, 

the president, dressed in slippers and robe, met with McFarlane and Secretary Shultz 

in the living room of the Eisenhower Cottage at Augusta National where he and Mrs. 

Reagan were staying. They briefed him on the latest developments. The president’s 

reaction, recalled Shultz, was emphatic: The US had to respond positively to such a 

plea from small “democratic neighbors.” And then there was the danger posed to resident Americans. Reagan telephoned Washington at 0558 and spoke with Vice President Bush, who had been chairing the Special Security Group to develop options and 

recommend a course of action for the president. Next Reagan spoke with Secretary of 

Defense Weinberger, who had also participated in the meeting.47 

The president made no irrevocable decisions either then or at an 0900 teleconference with all the senior members of his National Security team. It was, as one scholar 
has observed, at best a 75 percent decision, but it certainly gave a military intervention 

decided impetus. Everyone now agreed that there was no longer any possibility of a 

peaceful evacuation of the American residents in Grenada, and Reagan ordered the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans to seize the country.48 

Back from Chicago and anticipating such a request, General Vessey, had plans 

already in hand. Since his meeting with McDonald, the Joint Staff, working with the 

US Atlantic Command, had prepared two force packages for the operation that were remarkably similar in size. One, originally Atlantic Command’s small option, consisted 

of a Marine Battalion Landing Team with Navy SEALS attached; the other, the socalled large option, included two battalions of US Army Rangers and a contingent of 

special operations forces from the Joint Special Operations Command. Each package 

numbered about 1,800 men and could be reinforced by two or more airborne infantry 

battalions from the 82d Airborne Division. The Chiefs anticipated, however, that the 

airborne units would function primarily as occupation troops in either scenario.49 

Two of the president’s counselors, both veterans of fighting in the Pacific during World War II, Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger, expressed concern that 

these elements were too light for the mission. Weinberger insisted that the United 

States should apply overwhelming force to minimize casualties. He was determined to 

avoid the sort of mistakes that had led to the costly failure in 1980 to rescue American 

hostages held in Iran, the DESERT ONE disaster, and so he told the Joint Chiefs to 

double whatever strength the theater commander considered adequate. On his own, 

using a similar rationale, Shultz advised Reagan to double the number of troops the 

Joint Chiefs recommended. At this time, the president did not appear to make any final 

determination on the matter.50 

The president did decide to send a special envoy, Ambassador Francis J. McNeil, 

a career foreign service officer, to the meeting of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to gauge just how committed the heads of government were to intervention 

and to obtain their request in writing. Reagan wanted an independent evaluation of the 

situation “before making a ‘go/no go’ decision.” As the Assistant Secretary of State for 

Inter-American Affairs, Ambassador Motley, remarked to McNeil, “It isn’t everyday 

that we get a request like this.”51 

As these more detailed preparations began, Reagan, Shultz, and McFarlane debated whether Reagan should remain in Georgia and adhere to his schedule. They decided 

ultimately that an early return to Washington would lead to intense press speculation 

that might precipitate hostage taking on the island. While the president continued his 

golf, Shultz and McFarlane monitored the Grenada situation using a satellite telephone 

to call Washington. Even the efforts of an emotionally disturbed gunman who crashed 

the security fence at Augusta National in a Dodge pickup truck and barricaded himself in the pro shop with five hostages—including two members of the White House 

Staff—failed to shake the president’s resolve to maintain a facade of normalcy. The 

46 
Secret Service did insist that the president leave the course while the pro shop crisis 

gradually moved toward a peaceful resolution.52 

Reagan did not allow the excitement of the day to divert him from his Caribbean 

concerns. On the evening of the 22d, shortly before 1700, the National Security Planning Group, the highest level of the National Security Council presided over by the 

president (in this instance using a secure telephone), formally directed the Joint Chiefs 

to dispatch an execute order to the responsible theater commander. The order authorized, but did not require, Admiral McDonald to combine the troops in both options. 

Earlier in the day using a secure phone, General Vessey had suggested this possibility 

to McDonald. The chairman had told McDonald that the chiefs thought he needed to 

beef up the landing force to “intimidate” the Cubans. In the order, the Joint Chiefs estimated that the earliest possible time they could stage the operation was Tuesday, 25 

October. They told the admiral to use that date as a target.53 

On Sunday, 23 October, Admiral McDonald accompanied by General Scholtes 

flew to Washington to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his concept of operations. 

At this meeting the Joint Chiefs decided to consolidate the two options. The chiefs 

planned a nighttime assault by Rangers and special operations forces using night vision 

devices against the Point Salines airport and various military and political objectives in 

and around the capital of St. George’s. The Marines would land at dawn near the town 

of Pearls, which had the one fully operational airfield on the island. After he returned 

to Norfolk, McDonald chose the commander of the US Second Fleet, Vice Admiral 

Joseph Metcalf III, to command the overall Grenada operation. In the process, he set 

aside US Forces Caribbean, the headquarters responsible for the region. He did not 

think it was robust enough to conduct an actual operation.54 

Another early morning telephone call, this time at 0239 on Sunday, 23 October, informed the president of the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. 

The news convinced all concerned that Reagan needed to return to Washington immediately. Throughout the day, as information accumulated, the scope of the disaster 

became clearer: 241 American servicemen were dead and another 70 wounded. Much 

of official Washington was in shock. Ambassador McNeil, who had arrived in Washington early on Sunday, thought that the Beirut crisis would abort the whole Grenada 

enterprise. Nevertheless, after a briefing on the situation in the eastern Caribbean at the 

State Department, he and a representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Major General 

George B. Crist, US Marine Corps, left for Barbados that afternoon. Crist, whose normal post was vice director of the Joint Staff, was to make arrangements for military 

participation by the Caribbean governments.55 

Upon arrival in Washington, the president and his advisors embarked on a round 

of almost non-stop National Security Council meetings that alternated between Lebanon and Grenada. As Grenada appeared to be progressing without problems, General Vessey concentrated on Lebanon and delegated most of the Grenada briefings to 
Admiral Moreau. The ghastly news from Beirut dampened everyone’s spirits. At one 

point the president hung his head in his hands and wondered aloud if his administration would suffer the same fate as that of President Carter, undone by the hostage crisis 

in Iran. His advisors believed that a Grenada operation would only detract from his 

popularity. General Vessey, who like his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs did not think an 

intervention was necessary at this point, ventured that with the 1984 presidential election only a year away, perhaps Reagan should call off the invasion. The president shot 

back that he intended to consider this operation strictly on its merits.56 

The president might have temporarily lost his ebullience but not his resolve. The 

key issue for him was that American citizens were at risk. As soon as he heard that 

hostages were involved, he made up his mind that he would use military force if necessary. He carefully refrained from telling anyone of that decision, however, because 

he intended to keep his options open until the very last minute. Periodically he asked 

Vessey if he had made any decision that had irreversibly committed him to a military 

operation. Vessey always assured him that he had not reached that point.57 

That evening, 23 October, in the White House residence, after his advisors had 

departed, the president signed a National Security Decision Directive for the invasion of Grenada. “The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff . . . will land US and allied Caribbean military forces in order to take control of 

Grenada, no later than dawn Tuesday, October 25, 1983.” Reagan carefully stipulated 

that the State Department would not notify the Organization of Eastern Caribbean 

States of his decision until after 1800 on 24 October. The president did not inform his 

principal advisors of his action until sometime the next day. The explanation for this 

reluctance appears to have been more personal than political. He was very much aware 

that a decision to intervene would cost lives, and he refused to make that determination 

until he absolutely had to.58 

The news from the Caribbean continued to pressure the president toward military 

action. Ambassador McNeil arrived in Barbados on 23 October and immediately went 

into a meeting with the Caribbean heads of state that lasted almost three hours. Probing their rationale for intervention, he found their advocacy thoroughly grounded in 

the realities of the situation and concluded that they were deeply committed to action 

as the only way to preserve democracy in the area. Following instructions, he gave the 

prime ministers no hint as to what his recommendation would be.59 

McNeil also spent some time reviewing all locally available intelligence on Grenada with particular emphasis on the medical students. He concluded that they were 

not hostages yet but that this well might be the Grenadians’ next step. He believed the 

situation was deteriorating daily and was dangerous. With the fate of his colleagues in 

Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 takeover of the American embassy very much in mind, 

he recommended that the president should order immediate military intervention. His 

one qualification was that it had to be quick, before surprise was lost.60 

48 
The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States heads of government joined by 

Prime Ministers Adams of Barbados and Seaga of Jamaica knew nothing of these developments and frankly doubted American resolve. Ambassador McNeil had brought a 

list of State Department concerns about the repercussions of American military action. 

Based on the discussion of these points, the group drafted a formal request for American intervention. The chairperson of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, 

Prime Minister Charles of Dominica, signed it on the evening of 23 October. She declined to forward it to Washington, however, until she received a “final positive US 

decision . . . .”61 

Although the president signed the National Security Decision Directive for the 

intervention in Grenada on the evening of 23 October, he remained less than totally 

committed to the operation. Shortly after 1200 on 24 October, he met with the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff to ask each member individually to give his personal assessment of the 

plan. Did he agree with it? Was something more needed? The chairman and the chiefs 

of service were unanimous on two points. First, they preferred a negotiated, peaceful 

evacuation of the students to armed intervention. Second, if the situation required intervention, they were satisfied with the plan and the forces committed to its execution. 

The meeting broke up with the president reassured about the plan but with his option 

of whether to execute still open.62 

Listening to this exchange, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger became 

convinced that Reagan had concluded to invade the island barring a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough. That afternoon, the president confirmed that this was his decision 

and gave the secretary the signed National Security Directive. Weinberger immediately 

returned to the Pentagon. With a military operation looking ever more likely, he delegated to General Vessey, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, full power to conduct 

the operation in the secretary’s name. This decision reflected both the president’s and 

the secretary’s confidence in Vessey’s professional abilities and their affinity for his 

low–key operating style. With this decision, Vessey gained more control over a major 

American military operation than had any uniformed officer since the Korean War.63 

That evening Weinberger, Vessey, and the chiefs went to the White House for a 

meeting with the president, the other members of the National Security Council, and 

the House and Senate leadership. At that time President Reagan asked Secretary of 

State George P. Shultz to describe the situation in Grenada for the group. General 

Vessey followed with a briefing on the rescue plan. In the discussion that followed, 

the Speaker of the House, Representative Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill, and the Senate 

Minority Leader, Senator Robert C. Byrd, expressed their unhappiness with the idea 

of military intervention but could offer no alternative. The president observed that it 

looked as if it had to be done and that he would do it.64 

As the meeting broke up, Reagan took Vessey aside and asked him what his decision times were. When did he need to decide to launch the operation? What was the 
latest time at which he could abort? Vessey told him that if he wanted to stage the 

operation the next day, 25 October, he had to make the decision immediately. Planes, 

ships, and troops were already deploying to launch positions. Vessey said that the latest time for an abort would be shortly before 0500 when US aircraft would first enter 

Grenadian airspace. With that information in hand, the president said: “Go.”65 

Just at that moment the new national security advisor, McFarlane, walked over 

and told Reagan that he was activating the White House situation room. The president 

could come there at any time during the night and receive a briefing on the latest information from Grenada. Reagan turned to Vessey and asked what he intended to do that 

evening. The general responded that first he was going to make a call to the Pentagon 

to set the operation in motion. Once he had made that call, there was nothing further he 

or the president could do that evening, unless the president decided to call off the operation. That being the case, Vessey said he intended to go home and go to bed. In the 

morning, once the troops were on the island, he might be able to do something to assist 

them. He wanted to be well rested and alert when that time came. President Reagan 

replied that he intended to do the same.66 

At the time he issued his “go” order, President Reagan and the other decision makers and planners in Washington, Norfolk, and Fort Bragg believed that almost all the 

Americans on Grenada could be found on the True Blue Campus of the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine. This assumption was incorrect because it overlooked 

the even larger Grand Anse Campus located just south of St. George’s on the west 

coast of the island and the sizable collection of students and tourists living near Prickly 

Point, a peninsula east of True Blue. The misapprehension was due to the failure by 

Atlantic Command to double-check the information about the Americans’ location. 

Their whereabouts was hardly a state secret. Because US Forces Caribbean had 

the mission of conducting operations in the Caribbean, intelligence officers at Key 

West had already developed detailed information on the location of Americans living 

on Grenada as a precautionary measure in case their evacuation became necessary at 

some future date. When Admiral McDonald decided not to use this headquarters to 

direct Operation URGENT FURY, however, he cut these intelligence assets out. Even 

before that, when the Joint Chiefs first raised the possibility of evacuating Americans 

and other foreign nationals from the island, McDonald’s senior intelligence officer 

should have requested all the information that US Forces Caribbean had compiled and 

distributed it to the participating headquarters, but there is no evidence that he ever 

attempted to do so.67 

Despite Ambassador Bish’s prohibition on routine visits to Grenada, his staff at 

Bridgetown also knew the general location of the students. On 20 October 1983 Bish 

outlined to the State Department where the students lived, but he never sent an information copy to the national command center, so the message never reached military 

intelligence. A copy did eventually come to rest in the records of the State Depart50 
ment’s Grenada Working Group. The military liaison officer from the Pentagon with 

this group should have passed on the information, but there is no indication of when the 

working group received the message. It may have arrived after the fact or with a mass 

of other cables. Although Bish devoted considerable space to describing the students’ 

domiciles, his subject line only referred to their attitudes about evacuation. Given the 

short time available, members of the working group could easily have overlooked this 

buried information.68 

Intelligence agencies also overlooked two other obvious sources of information 

about the students. Most of the Americans at the medical school received federally 

guaranteed student loans. The Department of Education, which mailed the checks, had 

the street addresses of these students, including those who lived off-campus. Because 

the department was reviewing the school’s accreditation, it had prepared a chart that 

listed all the students by name with their addresses alongside. The administrative office 

of the school had even more information, but no one went to Bay Shore, Long Island, 

to collect this material.69 

At the very last moment, the Defense Intelligence Agency learned of the Grand 

Anse campus quite by accident. In a casual conversation, one of the secretaries working with the agency mentioned that she had a brother attending the medical school in 

Grenada, who lived at the Grand Anse Campus. She had recently visited him there and 

even had photographs. She had nothing to do with tracking events on Grenada, but the 

person with whom she was talking did and immediately recognized the significance 

of her remarks. A flurry of research confirmed the existence of a second campus. At 

1800 on 22 October an intelligence analyst from the Joint Special Operations Command picked up a package containing the new material and flew with it to Fort Bragg, 

arriving there late that evening. At the same time, the Defense Intelligence Agency 

dispatched similar packages to three other intelligence offices, including that of the 

Atlantic Command’s director of intelligence. In the end, for reasons that remain obscure, no plans were changed, and the information never reached the units preparing 

to invade the island.70 

* * * 

Accounts of the Reagan administration often comment on the president’s unusually passive style of decision-making coupled with a general lack of curiosity about a 

wide range of policy areas. At times his advisors were reduced to reading his body language to determine whether he approved or disapproved of a particular option. Historians have suggested that his age and his philosophy of focusing his time and energy on 

a few big issues on which he had well developed opinions contributed to this style of 

decision-making. Granting the truth of both these observations and mixing in a personal predisposition to allow an issue to ripen before taking action—Calvin Coolidge was, 

after all, one of the president’s personal favorites among his predecessors—there still 
remains room for a political explanation for his behavior. Like all administrations, the 

Reagan team represented a coalition of constituencies in power. It was an assemblage 

of movement conservatives, who saw the federal government as the cause of most 

problems in America; business conservatives, who espoused less government regulation; social conservatives, who had abortion and homosexuality at the center of their 

concerns; and national security conservatives, who saw the United States failing to 

keep up militarily in its world-wide competition with the Soviet Union. None of these 

groups agreed entirely with the others, and they competed with one another to set the 

administration’s agenda. The coalition was new—previous Republican administrations 

had not reflected this particular mix of groups—and some of its members had never 

even been in power before. All these factors contributed to making the political consensus buttressing the administration fragile with Reagan the one figure around whom 

all could rally. In this setting, the president’s adoption of a passive posture allowed his 

supporters in their own minds to endow him with their own hopes and desires. If he 

ultimately adopted a position at variance with their own, they could always blame it on 

bad advisors and recite the mantra “Let Reagan be Reagan.”71 

The Grenada crisis, of course, fell within the general area of national security—a 

topic on which Reagan had decided and long-standing opinions. At all the big decision points, he expressed his views in a clear and straight-forward way, except, that 

is, until he had to sign the presidential directive actually launching the forces. Then he 

temporized. He may have concluded that it would be easier for some of his supporters 

to accept a negotiated end to the crisis—should one become possible—if they did not 

know he had already signed an execute order than would be the case if they knew he 

had drawn it back at the last minute to accommodate a deal. This analysis is based not 

on the president’s words but on his actions. 

While Reagan gave every indication that he meant exactly what he said about his 

own motives—that his highest priority in addressing the crisis was securing the safe 

return of the Americans and any other foreign nationals who wanted to leave—this was 

almost certainly not the stance of everyone involved in the decision-making. Advisors 

who approached the crisis from a geo-political perspective saw the Americans on the 

island as a convenient pretext for a demonstration of American power and purpose 

that would cheaply send a message to the Soviets and the Cubans about the danger of 

meddling in a US sphere of influence. For these counselors, the ultimate fate of the 

potential hostages counted for little against this larger purpose. In the end, Reagan’s 

coyness did not in any way retard military preparations, which were developing on a 

track parallel to the policy making, but it did allow him to be certain in his own mind 

that he was making the right decision for the right reason.72 

By law and the president’s inclination, Reagan’s two senior advisors during the 

Grenada crisis were the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Secretaries 

Shultz and Weinberger shared several traits—both were Californians, had served in 

World War II, had first come to national prominence in the administration of President 

Richard M. Nixon, and were strong-minded men with considerable bureaucratic skill. 

52 
Unlike Shultz, however, Weinberger had originally opposed Reagan in California politics, and some of the original Reaganites still considered him tarnished by a liberal 

patina. As a consequence, Weinberger tended to restrict his advice to the president to 

issues that he considered to have major import and in which he had developed personal 

expertise. He was also careful not to allow any of his subordinates to get publically to 

his right. He believed that his main responsibility was to manage the defense buildup, 

ensuring that the administration retained the political support necessary to sustain the 

effort. Generally, he regarded Third World military adventures as unnecessary expenditures of the political capital he needed for that larger project. Shultz, lacking Weinberger’s history, was more uninhibited in his advice. He believed in diplomacy backed 

by military power. At the time when Grenada became an issue, he and Weinberger were 

engaged in a dispute over whether military power could usefully support US diplomacy 

in the Middle East. Neither man had any previous personal involvement with the eastern Caribbean. Both came to the Grenada issue late in the process and, when presented 

with the available evidence, recommended intervention. Their primary contribution to 

the operation had to do not with whether to go but with the size of the force.73 

Two other senior advisors, Vice President Bush and General Vessey took diametrically opposed views as to the wisdom of the Grenada operation. Bush, based on his 

recent Caribbean trip, was decidedly in favor of the invasion. Scholarly research on 

the first president Bush is just beginning and most of it has focused on his four years 

in the White House. The impression conveyed by the existing literature is that before 

his meeting with Prime Minister Seaga he had very little first-hand knowledge of the 

eastern Caribbean. This assumption needs testing by in-depth research. At the same 

time, his world view, particularly in regard to the portion of the Western Hemisphere 

south of the United States, might help explain his readiness to act upon Prime Minister Charles’ appeal. In contrast to the vice president, Vessey was consistent in saying 

that the Chiefs preferred a negotiated settlement. By implication that meant that in 

the Chiefs’ view all the military rationales used to justify seizing the airfield at Point 

Salines, premised upon the outbreak of war with the Soviets in Europe, did not suffice 

because the possibility of such a conflict was remote. Vessey, who normally handled 

himself with aplomb in the higher counsels of government, made one misstep when 

he advanced a political rather than a military reason for not intervening—but this may 

simply represent how well he fit into the relaxed and convivial air that Reagan generated among his senior officials. There is something to be said for military advisors not 

becoming too comfortable in such surroundings. 

The interagency process was designed to provide a thorough airing of issues at 

low levels so that those that survived to rise to senior levels would receive a thorough 

vetting from many points of view. In that light, several questions arise concerning 

the process’s performance during the Grenada crisis. How well did the system work? 

How thoroughly did lower level participants consider a range of options before senior 

policy makers became engaged? To what extent did the time compression affect the 

decision-making? 
The Restricted Interagency Group became aware of a potential problem on 

13 October. Eleven days later, the president ordered US forces to intervene. In such a 

time frame there was a tendency for events to overtake careful deliberation of alternatives. This compression of time between the first flickering awareness of the problem 

and the use of force suggests that Grenada was not a fair test of the interagency process. 

Any system of decision making—good, bad, or indifferent—might be overwhelmed 

under similar circumstances. Moreover, for participants the sense of that a succession 

of events cascading into a torrent was heightened by the unfamiliar speed with which 

they learned of occurrences. Grenada was one of the first crises in which the State 

Department used tactical satellite radios developed by the Army Signal Corps to communicate between its Washington headquarters and its embassies overseas. The new 

technology meant that policy makers in Washington could dispense with the elaborate 

memoranda with which they (or at least their subordinates) had analyzed past crises. 

This shift in procedures had at least four consequences. First, it made the record of 

decision-making much sparser and complicated the job of anyone seeking to render 

any definitive judgment upon what happened. Second, it meant that policy makers 

lost that “second look” which the discipline of writing imposes by requiring a writer 

to consider the inner logic of his or her subject. Participants relied on the “first look” 

alone—reading the messages as they arrived and reacting ad hoc to their contents. 

Third, the speed with which information arrived accelerated decision cycles increasing the psychological pressures that accumulate on the individuals involved when an 

organization is called upon to process and act upon information received in greater 

quantity and with greater frequency than anticipated. Finally, the increasing speed of 

the decision cycle meant that whatever information or misinformation that was immediately at hand became relevant with little time for checking—or at least that was how 

the individuals in the process acted.74 

All of the above was certainly true, but to halt the analysis at this point would 

give the national security bureaucracy too much of a free pass. Grenada was a subject 

in only four Restricted Interagency Group meetings spread over five working days if 

the Motley-Connally exchange at the end of the 13 October meeting is included in the 

total. Ambassador Motley thus used the first two sessions to simply broadcast to key 

agencies the fact that a potential problem existed on the island. Over the weekend, 

15–16 October, at a time when the situation on the ground did not appreciably change, 

he concluded that a full-blown crisis existed and that the only solution was US military 

intervention and the restoration of democratic government on the island. It would be 

interesting to know how, why, and when the ambassador reached these conclusions. 

Bishop’s assassination implicitly validated his approach, but this event occurred two 

days later. On the surface, at least, it appears that Motley thought he knew the answer 

before the question was asked. 

There is no evidence that the Restricted Interagency Group ever debated a range 

of options with discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The 

record, such as it exists, of the meetings consists of the recollections of participants. 

54 
No notes, minutes, or memoranda of record have surfaced to date. Once Motley called 

for intervention, the debate appears to have polarized into a binary exchange for and 

against intervention. Even that description may suggest too much coherence in an exchange between two feuding bureaucracies. Motley argued for intervention. No one, it 

appears, argued against it on its merits. Connally was too low ranking to do anything 

more than carry the mail, while Moreau slow pitched the process by appearing to drag 

his feet. (Actually, more military planning was going on than he cared to share with 

Motley.) The admiral balked at the appearance of State Department direction, although 

that was the official purpose of instituting the formal interagency process. 

Of course, Moreau and Connally faced a dilemma. As uniformed members of the 

military, they were responsible for carrying out policy, not making it. Deciding to intervene in Grenada was definitely a policy decision, a responsibility of the State Department, the senior civilian leaders in the Department of Defense, and the president. The 

military’s role in the government thus precluded Connally, Moreau, and at a higher 

level, Vessey from open debate on the merits of an intervention. They were supposed to 

deal with the question of how, not whether. Vessey’s suggestion that the president defer 

landing because of domestic political considerations—totally inappropriate given the 

traditions of US civil-military relations even if induced by the warm fellow feeling that 

Reagan induced among his senior advisors—does suggest the depth of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff’s opposition to Operation URGENT FURY. 

The student of the Grenada decision-making process is left with the disquieting 

conclusion that the issue appears to have received its most thoughtful consideration 

when the president took his own counsel. This observation speaks volumes for the 

president but is also an indictment of the advisory process supporting his decisionmaking. The feckless actions of the post-Bishop Grenadian leaders and their minions 

justified the decision that Reagan ultimately reached, but much of that behavior occurred after rather than before Motley made his recommendation. 

Serious, in-depth research into the Reagan years has just begun, so it may well be 

that future discoveries of personal notes or other records contemporaneous to events 

or prepared immediately afterwards will clarify some of the puzzles sketched above. 

While this account is only a first cut at the available evidence, it does suggest several 

fruitful lines of inquiry. One approach would be a series of in-depth studies of the 

roles of particular individuals. Political scientist Robert J. Beck has already provided 

a model for this kind of research with his excellent article focusing on the activities of Ambassador McNeil. Similar accounts on Ambassador Motley, Vice President 

Bush, General Vessey, Admiral Moreau, Secretary Weinberger, Secretary Shultz, and 

President Reagan that considered not only each man’s participation in the crisis but 

his previous experience with, interest in, and knowledge of the Caribbean region in 

general and Grenada in particular might substantially alter the conclusions presented 

in this paper.75 
The proposals above are micro studies, but there is also room for broader ranging 

works. The collection, analysis, distribution, and use by decision-makers of intelligence about Grenada, utilizing the records of all the intelligence agencies involved, 

would greatly clarify a great many issues. Possibly in the days of our great-grandchildren, the records will become available for such an inquiry. Equally distant but equally 

useful would be accounts based on archival research in Cuba and Russia that would 

analyze Soviet and Cuban intentions and actions with regard to Grenada from at least 

the point at which the island gained its independence but with emphasis on Bishop’s 

years in power and the final crisis of the regime. A monograph grounded in primary 

materials that focused on the US Department of State’s role in the crisis would make 

clear many things currently out of focus. Finally, someone needs to write a history of 

Grenada based upon archival and manuscript sources that firmly sets the Grenadian 

revolution and its denouement in the context of local traditions. 

Notes 

1. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US 

government. There is no official definition of the “interagency process.” The Department of 

Defense defines interagency coordination as “within the context of Department of Defense 

involvement, the coordination that occurs between elements of Department of Defense and 

engaged US government agencies for the purpose of achieving an objective.” US, Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 12 April 2001 

(As Amended Through 30 May 2008), Joint Pub 1-02 (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

2008), p. 273. 

2. Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, 6 Aug 58 (72 Stat. 514), in Alice C. 

Cole et al., The Department of Defense: Documents on Establishment and Organization, 1944– 

1978 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, 1978), 188–231. 

3. For background, see Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, “Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Regional Study,” DA Pam 550–33 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, 

Department of the Army, 1989), pp. 349–52; Tony Thorndike, Grenada: Politics, Economics, 

and Society, Marxist Regimes Series, Bogdan Szajkowski, ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 

1985), pp. xvii–xx; and Frederic L. Pryor, Revolutionary Grenada: A Study in Political Economy 

(New York: Praeger, 1986), pp. 201–06. On Communist influence, see Jiri and Virginia Valenta, 

“Leninism in Grenada,” Problems of Communism 33 (Jul–Aug 84): 2–4. The “mood setter” for 

US-Grenadian relations was in an early Bishop speech: Maurice Bishop, “In Nobody’s Backyard,” in Maurice Bishop Speaks: The Grenada Revolution and Its Overthrow, 1979–83, Bruce 

Marcus and Michael Taber, eds. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1983), pp. 26–31. On Grenadian 

views of US destabilization, see Chris Searle, Grenada: The Struggle Against Destabilization 

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), pp. 53, 68–70. Bishop explicitly endorsed these accusations 

in Kwando M. Kinshasa, “Prime Minister Maurice Bishop: Before the Storm,” Black Scholar 

15 (Jan–Feb 1984): 41–59, the transcript of an August 1983 interview with Bishop, see especially pages 47, 50–51. 

56 
4. Burton I. Kauffman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., American Presidency Series, Donald R. McCoy et al., eds. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), pp. 151–166; 

Robert A. Pastor, Whirlpool: US Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean 

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 42–64; Ronald H. Cole et al., The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946–1993 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, 1995), 

pp. 70–71. 

5. Speech, Ronald Reagan, 23 Mar 83, sub: Address to the Nation on Defense and National 

Security, in Public Papers of the President of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1983, 2 vols. 

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1984), 2: 440. On the strategic importance of 

Grenada, see Issues Paper, [Interagency Core Group], [18 May 83], sub: Grenada, Chairman, 

Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Files (Vessey), 502B (NSC Memos), Ronald Reagan Presidential 

Library (RRPL) Simi Valley, California. 

6. Issue Paper, Interagency Core Group], [18 May 83]; Memo, Charles Hill, Executive Secretary, Interagency Core Group, for William P. Clarke, National Security Advisor, 18 May 83, 

sub: Grenada; Memo, William P. Clark, National Security Advisor, for George P. Shultz, Secretary of State, 15 Jun 83, both in CJCS Files (Vessey), 502B (NSC Memos), RRPL.; Memo, William P. Clark, National Security Advisor, for President Ronald Reagan, 4 Oct 83, sub: Grenada; 

National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 105, President Ronald Reagan, 4 Oct 83, sub: 

Eastern Caribbean Security Policy; both in NSDD 105, Box 91,291, OAPNSA, RRPL. 

7. Minutes, CC, NJM Party, 14–16 Sep 83, sub: Extraordinary Meeting of the CC of NJM, 

in Michael Ledeen and Herbert Romerstein, eds., Grenada Documents: An Overview and Selection (Washington, DC: Department of State and Department of Defense, 1984), p.112. See also 

“The Alienation of Leninist Group Therapy: Extraordinary General Meeting of Full Members 

of the NJM,” Caribbean Review 12 (Fall 1983): 14–15, 48–58; Notes, no date, sub: CC Meetings; Resolution, PRA Branch, NJM Party, 12 Oct 83; Ltr, Nazim Burke to Maurice Bishop, 11 

Oct 83; all in US, Departments of State and Defense, Individual Documents Released (IDR), 

Nos. 000136, 100103, 100270, Historians files, US Army Center of Military History (CMH), 

Washington, DC Frank J. Prial, “Grenada Curtails Communications to the Outside,” New York 

Times (16 Oct 83): Sect. I, 22; R. S. Hopkin, Grenada Topples the Balance in West Indian History: A Day To Day Report of the Grenada Episode (Grenada: Mr. Merlin, 1984), p. 8, a journal 

kept by one of the protestors. Thorndike, Grenada, pp. 153–56. Ltr, Vincent Noel to CC, 17 Oct 

83, in Paul Seabury and McDougall, eds., The Grenada Papers (San Francisco, Calif.: Institute 

for Contemporary Studies Press, 1984), pp. 329–339, on the emotional climate. 

8. National Security Defense Directive 2, President Ronald W. Reagan, 12 Jan 82, sub: 

National Security Council Structure (Ms., Armed Forces Staff College Library, Norfolk, Va.). 

9. William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America 

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 72–146, 188–96, 356–57, provides 

a detailed account of the Reagan administration’s Central American policy. 

10. Interv, Ronald H. Cole with Connally, 25 Jul 84. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, 

Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 141508Z Oct 83, sub: Report of a Marxist Coup by 

DPM Bernard Corad, 83 Bridgetown 06209, State Dept. See also, Stephen E. Flynn, “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and a ‘Proactive’ Crisis: Models of Crisis Decision-Making” (Ph.D. diss., 

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1991), pp. 103–05; and Ronald H. Cole, Operation 

URGENT FURY: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Grenada, 12 October– 
2 November 1983 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, 1997), pp. 11–12. Cole’s account 

provides an excellent description of the crisis from the perspective of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff. 

11. Constantine C. Menges, Inside the National Security Council: The True Story of the 

Making and Unmaking of Reagan’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 

pp. 60–62. The judgment about Menge’s subsequent role in the operation is in Robert J. Beck, 

The Grenada Invasion: Politics, Law, and Foreign Policy Decisionmaking (Boulder, Colo.: 

Westview Press, 1993), pp. 120–21, note 56. 

12. Robert C. McFarlane and Zofia Smardz, Special Trust (New York: Cadell and Davies, 

1994), pp. 258–60, describes the impact of Judge Clarke’s departure. On the approach to the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, see: Chrono, 140000Z [Oct 83], JCS, URGENT FURY Miscellaneous 

Scenario Events List, Planning/Execution Systems, p. 84, Historian’s Files CMH; Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 12. 

13. Chrono, 141200Z [Oct 83], JCS, URGENT FURY (hereafter UF) Miscellaneous Scenario Events List, Planning/Execution Systems, p. 84, Historians’ files, CMH. See also Cole, 

Operation URGENT FURY, p. 12. 

14. Flynn, “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and ‘Proactive’ Crisis,” p. 105, provides the only available account of this meeting. 

15. Chrono, Atlantic Command (hereafter LANTCOM), sub: Operation (hereafter Op.) URGENT FURY, encl in Ltr, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald to General John W. Vessey, Jr., 6 

Feb 84, sub: Op. URGENT FURY Report, in Historians’ files, CMH; Msg, Amb Milan D. 

Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec State, Washington, DC, 200739Z Oct 83, sub: Grenada: 

Attitudes of the Grenadian Medical School Toward the Possible Evacuation of Their Students/ 

Staff, DOS. Msg, Admiral Wesley L. McDonald, CINCLANT, Norfolk, Va., to JCS, Washington, DC, 200616Z Oct 83, sub: Commander’s Estimate of the Situation, Grenada Evacuation, 

encl in Memo, LTG Jack N. Merritt, Director, Joint Staff, for Directors and Heads of Agencies, 

OJCS, 30 Jan 84, Joint History Office (JHO), Washington, DC; Interv, Major Bruce R. Pirnie 

with Tony Nelson, DIA, 9 Dec 85, Historians’ files, CMH. 

16. Statement, Langhorne A. Motley, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, before 

the House Armed Services Committee, 24 Jan 84, sub: The Decision To Assist Grenada, in 

US, Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Current Policy, No. 541 (24 Jan 84): 1. 

Flynn, “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and ‘Proactive’ Crisis,” pp. 105–07, provides the most detailed account of the interagency meeting. 

17. Interv, Cole with LTG Jack N. Merritt, USA, 21 Jun 84, JHO; JCS, Chrono, 180000Z 

[Oct 83], URGENT FURY Miscellaneous Scenario Events List, Command and Control—Task 

Organization, p. 1, Historians’ files, CMH; Chrono, LANTCOM, sub: URGENT FURY Op. 

18. “Leader of Grenada Is Reported Killed by Troops,” New York Times (20 Oct 83): A1, A3; 

V.S. Naipaul, “An Island Betrayed,” Harper’s 268 (Mar 84): 61–72; Alister Hughes,“Island 

Bloodshed ‘Started with Army Rockets,’ Journalist Says,” Washington Post (30 Oct 83): A11; 

Transcript, Tape Recording by Alister Hughes, Market Square, St. George’s, Grenada (GJ), 

19 Oct 83, in US, Congress, Senate, Congressional Record, 27 Mar 84 (Washington, DC: 

Government Printing Office, 1984), pp. S 3278–S 3279; Transcript, Broadcast by BG Hudson 

Austin over Radio Free Grenada, 19 Oct 83, approximately 2230, in Ibid., S 3729–S 3780. 

Statement, [BG Hudson, Austin], 19 Oct 83, sub: Rev. Soldiers and Men of the PRA, IDR, No. 

58 
000091, CMH; “Military Council Says It Now Rules Grenada,” New York Times (21 Oct 83): 

A8. Mark Adkin, URGENT FURY: The Battle for Grenada (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 

1989), pp. 47–81, provides the fullest reconstruction of these events. 

19. Msgs, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec State, Washington, DC, 

192356Z Oct 83, sub: Planning for Possible Emergency Evacuation of AMCITS, 83 

Bridgetown 06387; 200409Z, sub: Grenada: Bishop Dead; Army Takes Over Fully; Imperialism Warned To Keep Hands Off, 83 Bridgetown 06388; both in DOS. Richard Halloran, “Reagan as Military Commander,” New York Times Magazine (15 Jan 84): 61; Richard Halloran, 

“A Commanding Voice for the Military, New York Times Magazine (15 Jul 84): 18–25, 52. 

For Moreau’s background, Memo, 1 Jul 86, sub: Transcript of Naval Service for Vice Admiral 

Arthur Stanley Moreau, Jr., US Navy, Naval Historical Center (hereafter NHC) Archives, 

Washington, DC. On the Vessey-Moreau relationship, see Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: 

The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua, 1981–1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 

1988), p. 138. Interv, Cole, with Connally, 25 Jul 84. 

20. Intervs, Cole, with Connally, 25 Jul 84; with V Adm Arthur S. Moreau, Jr., Assistant 

to the CJCS, 12 Jul 84, JHO; Flynn, “Grenada as a ‘Reactive’ and ‘Proactive’ Crisis,” pp. 

107–08. 

21. Msg, Gen John W. Vessey, CJCS, to USCINCLANT, Norfolk, Va., USCINCMAC, Scott 

AFB, Ill., and USCINCRED, MacDill AFB, Flor., 200347Z Oct 83, sub: Warning Order— 

Grenada NEO, attached to Grenada Timeline, JHO Archives; Chrono, JCS, UF Miscellaneous 

Scenario Events List, Command and Control—Task Organization, p. 1; Chrono, LANTCOM, 

sub: Op. UF; Historians’ files, CMH; Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, pp. 13–14. 

22. Msg, McDonald, to JCS, 200616Z Oct 83; Cover Sheet, LTC Daniel E. Staber, Office of 

the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans (hereafter ODCSOPS), Department of the 

Army (hereafter DA), for DCSOPS, 21 Oct 83, sub: Grenada Evacuation (UF), JHO. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Ibid.; Interv, Cole with General John W. Vessey, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 25 Mar 

87; Ltr, GEN John W. Vessey, US Army (Ret.), to BG David A. Armstrong, US Army (Ret.), 

Director, Joint History, no date, JHO Archives, Washington, DC; Cole, Operation URGENT 

FURY, pp. 14–16; Pirnie, URGENT FURY, pp. 63–66. 

25. Unclassified portions of Anon., Annual Historical Report for Calendar Year 1983, Commander in Chief, US Atlantic Command (Norfolk, Va.: US Atlantic Command, 1984), pp. 

vii–ix; Interv, John T. Mason, Jr., with Admiral Charles K. Duncan, USN, Ret., 3 Nov 76, US 

Joint Forces Command Historical Office, Norfolk, Va.; Memo, [Dr Leo P. Hirrel, Command 

Historian, US Joint Forces Command], for author, [22 May 07], Historians files, CMH. 

26. Cover Sheet, Staberfor DCSOPS, 21 Oct 83; Interv, Cole with General John W. Vessey, 

chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 25 Mar 87; Ltr, GEN John W. Vessey, US Army (Ret.), to 

BG David A. Armstrong, US Army (Ret.), Director, Joint History, no date, JHO Archives, 

Washington, DC; Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, pp. 14–16; Pirnie, URGENT FURY, pp. 

63–66. 

27. Menges, Inside the National Security Council, p. 68; Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, 

p. 16; Don Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” Washington Post, 6 

Nov 83, A1, A21. 

28. Interview Cole with Moreau, 12 Jul 84; Agenda, 20 Oct 83, sub: CPPG Meeting, NSC 
Crisis Management Center (hereafter CMC) Records, file “Grenada I (9), Box 90, 931, RRPL; 

George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, (New York: Scribner Publishing 1993), pp. 326–27. 

29. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec State, 201945Z Oct 83, sub: 

Barbadian PM Tom Adams Pleas for US Intervention in Grenada: Believes Leadership of the 

Region Would Strongly Support and Fully Associate with US, 83 Bridgetown 06430, DOS; 

Flynn, “Grenada as a Reactive’ and ‘Proactive’ Crisis,” p. 111, has the fullest account of the 

Vice President’s role in this meeting. 

30. Statement, George P. Shultz, 25 Oct 83, sub: Secretary Shultz’s News Conference, in US, 

Department of State, Bulletin: The Official Monthly Record of United States Foreign Policy, 

83 (Dec 83): 69; Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 16. 

31. The quotation is from Ltr, Vessey to Armstrong, no date; Info Paper, Dan Landers, Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, Army Staff, 21 Oct 83, sub: UF; Memo, 

COL Peter Cummings, Assistant Deputy Director for Current Intelligence, DIA, [c. 20 Oct 

83], sub: Evaluation of the Threat, all in JHO. Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, pp. 16–18. 

32. Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New 

York: Warner Books, 1991), p. 109; Statement, Shultz, 25 Oct 83, Bulletin, p. 69; Interv, Cole 

with Moreau, 12 Jul 84. 

33. Interv, Lawrence A. Yates with MG Richard A. Scholtes, 4 Mar 99, Historians files, 

CMH. 

34. National Security Decision Directive (hereafter NSDD) 110, Ronald Reagan, President, 

21 Oct 83, sub: Grenada: Contingency Planning, in NSDD, 1–250, RRPL, Box 1; Interv, Yates 

with Scholtes, 4 Mar 99. 

35. Edward Cody, “Cuba Condemns Grenada Coup, Will Review Tie,” Washington Post 

(22 Oct 83): A1, A12; New York Times (22 Oct 83): B. Drummond Ayres, Jr., “US Marines 

Diverted to Grenada in Event Americans Face Danger,” New York Times (22 Oct 83): Sect. I, 

1, 12.; Interv, Cole with GEN John W. Vessey, Chairman JCS, 25 Mar 87, JHO. 

36. R. Drummond Ayres, Jr., “US Marines Diverted to Grenada in Event Americans Face 

Danger,” New York Times (22 Oct 83): Sect. I: 1, 5; Fred Hiatt, “US Says Situation Still Unclear as Naval Force Nears Grenada,” Washington Post (23 Oct 83): A24; Statement, Langhorne A. Motley, Assistant Sec. State for International Affairs, before the HASC, 24 January 

1984, sub: “The Decision To Assist Grenada,” in US, Department of State, Current Policy No. 

541 (24 Jan 84): 2. On the trip, see: Ronald W. Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon 

and Schuster, 1990), p. 449; McFarlane and Smardz, Special Trust, p. 261. 

37. Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 19. 

38. Log, [Grenadian GS], 24 Oct 83, sub: Strength of the Armed Forces in Terms of Permanent, Reserve, and Party Comrades, GDC, MF 005213, NARA. 

39. For an overview of US intelligence history, see: Christopher M. Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only : Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush 

(New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995), pp. 350–502. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New 

York: Touchstone, 1996), pp. 56–63, is perceptive on the weakening of the CIA in the 1970s. 

On the situation at Bridgetown, see Msgs, Amb Frank V. Ortiz, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. 

State, 151010 Mar 79, sub: Query re Gairy’s Activities, 79 Bridgetown 0924; 191444 Mar 

79, sub: Grenada: US Presence on the Island, 79 Bridgetown 1013; both in State Dept. Interv, 

60 
COL Walter M. Loendorf with LTG James A. Williams, USA, Ret., 14 Dec 1990, Senior Officer Oral History Program, US Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa. (hereafter MHI). 

General Williams was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time of the Grenada 

operation. 

40. This evaluation of the quality of diplomatic reporting is based on the author’s reading of 

all the Bridgetown cables pertaining to Grenada between 12 and 25 October 1983. See also 

Shultz, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 327. Sally A. Shelton, “Comments,” in Grenada and Soviet/ 

Cuban Policy: Internal Crisis and US/OECS Intervention, Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison, 

eds. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 236–37. Shelton was US Ambassador to 

Bridgetown between Frank V. Ortiz and Bish. Interv, Loendorf with Williams, 14 Dec 1990. 

41. Edward Cody, “Caribbean Nations Discuss Response to Violence in Grenada, Washington Post (23 Oct 83): A24; Frank J. Prial, “American Envoys Going To Grenada,” New York 

Times (23 Oct 83): Sect. I, 1, 13. Statement, Motley before the HASC, 24 Jan 84, p. 2. On the 

call to Austin, see Lewis, Grenada, p. 95. 

42. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 333–34. Msgs, Amb, Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 211558 Oct 83, sub: Embassy Officers’ Travel, 83 

Bridgetown 06476; 222219Z, sub: More Discussion with Eastern Caribbean Leaders, Unity 

Prevails, 83 Bridgetown 06544; both in DOS. 

43. Ibid.; Msgs, Amb, Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 

212046Z, sub: Apparent Invitation from General Hudson Austin to Send USG REP to Discuss 

the Situation, 83 Bridgetown 06490; 212354Z Oct 83, 83 Bridgetown 06500; Second Telex/ 

Phone Contact Oct 22 with Medical School Authorities, 83 Bridgetown 06524; all in DOS. 

44. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 

230442Z, sub: Travel of Political Counselor and Vice Counsel to Grenada, 83 Bridgetown 

06548; 241740Z Oct 83, sub: Possible Evacuation of American Citizens; Strong Media Interest as Well as Concern by Parents, 83 Bridgetown 06597; both in DOS; Statement, Motley, 24 

Jan 84, Current Policy, p. 2. 

45. Duane R. Clarridge and Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New 

York: Scribner, 1997), pp. 250–51. Clarridge was chief of the Latin American Division in the 

Directorate of Operations. 

46. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish,, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 

241659Z Oct 83, sub: Grenada: Meeting with Seaga and Adams, 24 Oct, Morning, 83 

Bridgetown 06594, DOS; Mark Adkin, URGENT FURY: The Battle for Grenada (Lexington, 

Mass.: DC Heath, 1989), pp. 97–99, has the fullest account of the Scoon appeal although it is 

wrong in one key detail. Ambassador William J. McNeil did not carry a draft letter for Scoon’s 

signature to Barbados on 23 October. Robert J. Beck, “The ‘McNeil Mission’ and the Decision 

to Invade Grenada,” Naval War College Review 44 (Spring 91): 103. 

47. Msg, Ambassador Milan D. Bish, American Embassy Bridgetown, Barbados, to Secretary of State, 220735Z Oct 83, sub: Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Officially, Formally Resolves Unanimously To Intervene by Force if Necessary, On Grenada and Pleads for 

US Assistance, 83 Bridgetown 06514, Department of State; Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To 

End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” p. A–21; PDD, 22 Oct 83; Reagan, An American Life, pp. 449–52. 

Shultz and McFarlane agree as to the major decisions in this meeting but differ about some of 

the details. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 329–30; McFarlane and Smardz, Special Trust, 
pp. 261–62. See also Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, Douglas Brinkley, ed. (New York: 

HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 188–89. In his diary entries, the president was more certain than his 

subsequent actions would seem to indicate. 

48. Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 23. The scholar mentioned in the text is Robert J. 

Beck, “The ‘McNeil Mission’ and the Decision to Invade Grenada,” Naval War College Review 44 (Spring 91): 101. 

49. Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, pp. 23–26. 

50. Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, pp. 108–12; Intervs, Caspar W. Weinberger 

with Alfred Goldberg, Maurice Matloff, and Stuart Rochester, 12 Jan 88; with Alfred Goldberg and Maurice Matloff, 21 Jun 88; both in Office of the Secretary of Defense (hereafter 

OSD) History Office, Washington, DC; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, p. 329. 

51. Msg, George P. Shultz, Sec. State, to Am. Emb., Bridgetown, 231833Z Oct 83, sub: 

Instructions for Dealing with Caribbean Friends, 83 State 302418, DOS. Robert J. Beck, “The 

‘McNeil Mission’ and the Decision to Invade Grenada,” Naval War College Review 44 (Spring 

1991): 93–112, the “go/no go” quotation is from p. 99. Francis J. McNeil, War and Peace in 

Central America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 173, is the source for Motley’s 

observation. 

52. Shultz has a concise discussion of the debate over whether to stay in Augusta. Shultz, 

Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 329–30. Bernard Gwertzman, “Steps to the Invasion: No More 

‘Paper Tiger,’” New York Times (30 Oct 83): 1, 20; Reagan, American Life, p. 451; Francis X. 

Clines, “Reagan Unhurt as Armed Man Takes Hostages,” New York Times (21 Oct 83), pp. A1, 

A28. 

53. Intervs, Frasche with Akers, 22 Nov 83; Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 87; Cole, Operation 

URGENT FURY, pp. 26–27. 

54. Intervs, Yates with Scholtes, 4 Mar 99; Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 87; Matt Schudel, 

“Joseph Metcalf: Led Grenada Invasion,” Washington Post (11 Mar 07): C7. Chrono, 16 Apr 

84, sub: Chronology [Operation URGENT FURY] in Department of the Navy, Operation 

URGENT FURY Lessons Learned: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 1984), p. III–3, gives the time of Metcalf’s selection. 

55. President’s Daily Diary, 23 Oct 83; E–Mail, Danny J. Crawford, Head, Reference Section, History and Museums Division, Headquarters, US Marine Corps (hereafter cited as 

HQMC), to author, 18 Nov 2003, 0938, sub: Beirut Casualties, 1983; Paper, Hqs, USMC, 

Division of Public Affairs, 2 Dec 88, sub: General George B. Crist; both in Historian’s files, 

US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC (hereafter CMH). Beck, “McNeil Mission,” p. 99; Interv, Dr Ronald H. Cole, JCS History Office, with Maj Gen George B. Crist, 

USMC, 16 Feb 84, Grenada Files, Joint History Office (hereafter JHO) Archives, Washington, 

DC. 

56. Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 87; Memo, Oliver L. North for John M. Poindexter, 

9 Jan 85, sub: Revised Presidential Correspondence, Executive Secretariat, National Security 

Council (hereafter NSC), “Grenada, Vol IV” file, RRPL, Box 91, 370; Oberdorfer, “Reagan 

Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” A21. Clarridge and Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons, p. 254, 

is the source for Vessey’s suggestion. 

57. Memo, North for Poindexter, 9 Jan 85; Oberdorfer, “Reagan Sought To End Cuban ‘Intervention,’” A21; Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, p. Ltr, Ronald Reagan, President, to Greg62 
ory W. Sanford, 8 Jan 85, Executive Secretariat, NSC, “Grenada, Vol IV” file, RRPL, Box 91, 

370. 

58. Memo, North for Poindexter, 9 Jan 85. The quotation is from NSDD 110A, Ronald 

Reagan, President, 23 Oct 83, sub: Response To Caribbean Governments’ Request To Restore 

Democracy on Grenada, NSDD 1–250, Box 1, RRPL. 

59. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, 

252203Z Oct 83, sub: Uncleared, Informal Minutes of Meeting between Ambassadors Bish 

and McNeil with West Indian Heads of Government To Discuss the Grenada Situation, 83 

Bridgetown 06654, DOS; Beck, “McNeil Mission,” pp. 100–109. 

60. McNeil, War and Peace in Central America, pp. 174–75; Beck, “The McNeil Mission 

and the Decision to Invade Grenada,” pp. 100–01. Prime Minister Charles laid out the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States’ rationale in Statement, Eugenia Charles, [c. 25 Oct 83], 

DOS, Accession 59–99–0424 (10/13). 

61. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec. State, Washington, DC, Grenada: Text of Final Draft OECS Invitation, 83 Bridgetown 06574, DOS; Ltr, Eugenia Charles, 

Chairman, OECS, to Ronald Reagan, President of the US, 23 Oct 83; DOS, Accession No. 

59–97–0323 (4/6). 

62. Cole, Operation URGENT FURY, p. 39. 

63. Msg, Milan D. Bish, American Embassy, Brigdetown, Barbados, to Secretary of State, 

Washington, DC 241659Z Oct 83, sub: Grenada: Meeting with Seaga and Adams, 24 Oct, 

Morning, Msg, McDonald to Cavazos et al., 24 Oct 83, 0007Z; Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 

Mar 87; Halloran, “A Commanding Voice for the Military,” p. 18. Cole, Operation URGENT 

FURY, pp. 28–40, provides a much more detailed discussion of the events leading up to these 

decisions. 

64. Interv, Cole with Vessey, 25 Mar 87. 

65. Ibid. 

66. Ibid. 

67. Interv, author with Daly, 30 Jul 86. 

68. Msg, Amb Milan D. Bish, Bridgetown, Barbados, to Sec State, Washington, DC, 200739Z 

Oct 83, sub: Grenada: Attitudes of the Grenadian Medical School Toward the Possible Evacuation of Their Students/Staff, DOS. 

69. Interv, author with Joseph M. Hardman, Chief, College Eligibility Unit, Department 

of Education (DOE), 31 Jan 84, Historians’ files, CMH; Ltr, Joseph M. Hardman, DOE, to 

Charles R. Modica, Chancellor, St. George’s University School of Medicine, Bay Shore, NY, 

22 Jul 83, Roger W. Fountaine Files, “Grenada–1983 (1),” RRPL, Box 90,118. 

70. Interv, Major Bruce R. Pirnie with Tony Nelson, DIA, 9 Dec 85, Historians’ files, CMH. 

71. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 

1991), pp. 120–42, 172–205, is especially perceptive and even handed. See also Sean Wilentz, 

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (New York: Harper, 2008), pp. 3, 137–39. Alan 

Greenspan provides a revealing anecdote in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New 

World (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), pp. 87–88. 

72. Clarridge and Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons, pp. 207–55, is revealing in this context. 

73. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, pp. 8, 26; Caspar W. Weinberger with Gretchen Roberts, In 

the Arena: A Memoir of the 20th Century (Washington, DC : Regnery, 2001), pp. 147–153. On 
Weinberger and the crisis in Central America, see Leo Grand, Our Own Backyard, pp. 140–42, 

152, 202, 209, 316–17. 

74. Dennis E. Showalter, “Even Generals Wet Their Pants: The First Three Weeks in East 

Prussia, August 1914,” War and Society 2 (September 1984): 60–86, provides the classic account of such a situation. This is not to say that the Reagan administration at any level broke 

down the way the German system did, but that there was an unaccustomed strain for all the 

participants. 

75. Robert J. Beck, “The ‘McNeil Mission’ and the Decision to Invade Grenada,” Naval War 

College Review 44 (Spring 91): 93–112. 

64 
Panel 1—The Difficulties in Interagency Operations
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

The Interagency Non-Process in Panama:

Crisis, Intervention, and Post-Conflict Reconstruction1
 

by
 

John T. Fishel, Ph.D.
 

National Defense University
 

Introduction 

Nineteen years have passed since Operation JUST CAUSE was executed in Panama. Twenty-one years ago, the Panama crisis began when General Manuel Noriega 

forcibly retired his only remaining rival for the leadership of the Panama Defense 

Forces (PDF) and, therefore, the nation. Because that rival would not go quietly, events 

were set in motion that resulted in US intervention. With respect to the interagency 

process—or non-process—one has to consider both time and place. 

The time was June 1987. The landmark Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense 

Reorganization Act had passed the Congress only the previous year. Its effects were 

still to be felt. The Washington interagency process was still changing its structure with 

every new administration. Not until George H. W. Bush took office on 20 January 1989 

would today’s familiar structure of a Principals’ Committee, a Deputies’ Committee, 

and a series of subordinate committees or working groups be put in place. Instead, the 

interagency committee structure was very much in flux with roles of key players in the 

National Security Council staff very much works in progress. 

The place was the Republic of Panama, born in a rebellion against Colombia in 

1903 and midwifed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy built the Panama Canal 

and, according to the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty, occupied a ten mile swath of Panamanian territory on either side of the Canal where the US could “act as if it were sovereign 

. . . in perpetuity” or, at least until a new treaty was negotiated. That happened in 1977 

and it went into effect in 1979. In 1987 the US found itself with three separate, largely 

independent US government institutions located in Panama; two of which were in the 

former Canal Zone where the US had acted as if it were sovereign for 76 years. Those 

institutions were: the American Embassy, located in Downtown Panama City, the US 

Southern Command, located at Quarry Heights and other “Defense Sites” in the former 

Zone, and the Panama Canal Commission, located in the Canal Administration Building on the slope of Ancon Hill in the former Zone. 
US Institutions in Panama 

The American Embassy in Panama, like all American Embassies, contains all 

the elements of the US government that operate in Panama and all work under the 

direction of the Ambassador. In Panama, in the 1980s, these included the standard 

Embassy sections (Political, Economic, Consular, Security, USAID, USIS, and others), a CIA Station, a Defense Attache Office, and with regional responsibilities, the 

Drug Enforcement Administration, and the USMC Latin America US Embassy Guards 

command and control office. Leading the Embassy in 1987 was Ambassador Arthur 

Davis, a political appointee who had, however, acquitted himself well as Ambassador 

to Paraguay. His Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), John Maisto, was a career Foreign 

Service Officer who would later go on to several Ambassadorships and the post of Senior Director for Latin America on the National Security Council Staff. Neither Davis 

nor Maisto had particularly good reputations within the Embassy or with the other US 

institutions in Panama.2 

The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) was the second US government institution located in Panama until the late 1990s. It consisted of the SOUTHCOM commander and staff, located at the Quarry Heights Defense Site, halfway up 

Ancon Hill, the several service components: Army South operating out of Fort Clayton 

and other Pacific side sites and several sites on the Atlantic side, Southern Air Force 

(SOUTHAF) operating out of Howard AFB and Albrook Air Force Station on the Pacific side, Navy South (NAVSO) and the Marines (MARSOUTH) at Rodman Naval 

Station on the Pacific side, and the sub-unified command, Special Operations Command South (SOCSOUTH), at first located on Quarry Heights and later on Albrook. 

As part of the senior staff, under the Commander-in-Chief (CINC), General Fred F. 

Woerner, Jr., was a senior Foreign Service Officer (FSO) called the POLAD, a senior 

CIA officer called the Regional Affairs Officer, the SOUTHCOM Treaty Affairs Directorate, and the several Staff Directorates. As CINC, General Woerner was responsible for all US military activities in his Area of Operational Responsibility (AOR) 

which ran from the Mexico-Guatemala border south to cover all of Central and South 

America plus the seas out to 200 miles from land. Panama, of course, falls within the 

SOUTHCOM AOR. 

The last major US government institution in Panama was the Panama Canal Commission’s Administration. The Administrator was former SOUTHCOM CINC, LTG 

(ret.) Dennis P. McAuliffe while the Deputy Administrator was a Panamanian, Fernando Manfredo. The PCC administration was responsible for running the Canal and 

conducting business with the Panamanian government regarding the Canal. 

Neither SOUTHCOM nor the PCC Administration felt any obligation to coordinate with the Embassy when conducting its core business. For SOUTHCOM, core 

business included all activity in the AOR except that which dealt directly with Panama, 

except those activities expressly stated in the Panama Canal treaties as being between 

66 
the US military and the PDF (which was nearly everything related to the treaties). This 

meant, as well, that there would be more coordination between SOUTHCOM and the 

PCC than with the Embassy. 

Stovepipes to Washington 

As Ambassador David Passage tells it, every agency working in an American Embassy communicates by stovepipe with its Washington DC headquarters.3 Even though 

the CIA Station, for example, is supposed to be subordinate to the Ambassador, the 

Station Chief receives orders directly from CIA Headquarters—some of which are 

not shared with the Ambassador. Nor is CIA alone in this. Each agency has both communication and command channels to Washington that are simply not shared with the 

Ambassador. In Panama, this problem was compounded by the existence of independent entities such as SOUTHCOM and the PCC Administration. The CINC worked 

for the Secretary of Defense and normally communicated through the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Staff sections communicated with their counterparts in the Joint 

Staff. Service Components communicated with their Service Chiefs. For example, the 

Army South commander, Major General Bernard Loeffke, was in regular communication with Army Chief of Staff, General Carl Vuono. Similarly, the PCC Administration 

communicated with the Commission in Washington. So, each institution, and nearly 

every component within those institutions, had its own lines to somewhere in Washington both for normal communication and to receive direction. Lateral communication—that is, between components and institutions—was haphazard, at best. Indeed, 

interagency coordination in Panama was only a sometime thing. 

Issues & Efforts Requiring Interagency Coordination During the Crisis 

In these circumstances, there were any number of events that produced issues that 

clearly begged for interagency coordination, both in Washington and on the ground in 

Panama. These issues will be addressed in this section. 

Indicting Noriega 

The Panama crisis began with Noriega’s firing of his second in command, Colonel 

Roberto Diaz Herrera, in June 1987. Diaz Herrera struck back with allegations of drug 

trafficking by Noriega as well as far-fetched accusations that he had been responsible 

for the death of Omar Torrijos in 1981. These allegations provoked the opposition National Civic Crusade (NCC) to mount street demonstrations that Noriega suppressed 

ruthlessly. In response, the Reagan Administration approved some minor economic 

sanctions including withholding US military assistance to the PDF and cancelled the 

annual combined defense of the Canal exercise, KINDLE LIBERTY. For the most part, 

however, the conflict was internal to Panama with the US supporting the NCC’s goals. 

At the same time, both the CIA and DEA continued their cooperative relationships 

with Noriega and the PDF. The DEA chief in Panama, Alfredo Duncan, was reported to 
 

 

 

 

have acknowledged that Noriega had some “questionable” drug trafficker associations 

but he also said that Noriega’s cooperation was of much greater value.4 Nevertheless, in the fall of 1987 two US Attorneys in Florida—one in Miami and the other in 

Tampa—began Grand Jury investigations of Noriega’s involvement in drug trafficking.5 There is no evidence that these Grand Jury investigations were coordinated with, 

or even known to, the US Attorney General, Edwin Meese. There is solid evidence that 

the investigations were totally unknown to the State Department. 

On 5 February 1988, while General Woerner was visiting Assistant Secretary of 

State Elliott Abrams, the latter received a phone call. As Woerner recalls it, “Abrams 

turned white as a sheet.” When he hung up the phone, he turned to Woerner and said, 

“They just indicted Noriega!” The General was completely convinced that Abrams 

was as clueless as he was.6 As a result, Woerner immediately directed his staff to begin 

planning for operations in Panama where the PDF was the enemy. 

Economic Sanctions: The “Battles” of the Electric Bills 

As the Panama crisis deepened throughout the spring of 1988, the US government 

chose to keep tightening the economic screws on Noriega through more sanctions. 

Interagency battles in Washington resulted in policy decisions for ever greater sanctions.7 The sanctions did raise the pressure on the PDF and, on 16 March 1988, a group 

of officers attempted a coup. It failed. On 8 April the Reagan Administration invoked 

the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to put Noriega under new 

and greater sanctions. The Presidential Executive Order prohibited “American citizens 

and companies operating in Panama from paying any taxes or fees owed the Panamanian government.”8 This sanctions policy was opposed by American businessmen in 

Panama as well as by the US Treasury Department which put up bureaucratic obstacles 

to its implementation.9 

Nevertheless, the American Embassy was fully supportive and immediately decided not to pay the electric bills on the apartments it rented for all US government 

personnel assigned to the Embassy. In addition to those official Americans, there were 

any number of US citizens who worked for SOUTHCOM and its components as well 

as the PCC who lived in apartments and houses, rented or owned, in Panama City. 

These Americans also owed the Panamanian government for their electricity. Unlike 

the Embassy, these Americans simply ignored the order.10 

The Embassy, on the other hand, chose to ignore the electric bill when it came.11 

The Ambassador, DCM, and Administrative officer apparently believed that there was 

no way the government electric company would cut off so many individual apartments 

rented to the Embassy for assigned personnel. When the due date came and no payment 

was forthcoming, the electric company issued a warning—pay by 21 April or electricity would be cut off. 21 April 1988 was a Friday. It came and went. Electricity was not 

cut off so there were celebrations by the Embassy leaders; nothing would happen until 

68 
 

Monday. Early Saturday morning, however, electric company trucks were observed 

outside the luxury apartments in Punta Paitilla where Embassy personnel were housed; 

the crews were removing electric boxes cutting power to the appropriate individual 

apartments! 

The Administrative officer moved quickly to get all the Embassy personnel rooms 

in the best hotel in Panama, the Marriott. Then, he began work on a longer term solution. He found an apartment hotel (Aparthotel) that would rent small suites and he paid 

a month’s rent up front. Personnel were notified and went to check the place out—they 

were appalled. Personnel from agencies other than State Department complained to 

their parent agencies and were told that they could remain in the Marriott. Then, the 

State Department personnel objected to the double standard and the Embassy backed 

down and paid for rooms at the Marriott for a month! At that point, the Embassy and 

the US government capitulated and agreed to pay the electric company, figuring that it 

would take some time to restore the electricity to the apartments. Of course, Noriega’s 

electric company restored the electricity within 24 hours and the US government was 

stuck with bills for two hotels—already paid—and the sanctioned electric bill, now 

paid! Clearly, this was evidence of a failed interagency process, at best, and no process, 

at worst. 

Planning for Intervention 

When General Woerner returned to SOUTHCOM from his meeting with Elliott 

Abrams where they were stunned with the news that Noriega had been indicted, he 

directed his Operations Directorate (J3) to begin planning for action against the PDF. 

At the same time, he requested from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) 

direction to begin the same planning. On 28 February he received the order to plan and 

to do so using the Crisis Action Planning process of the Joint Operational Planning 

System (JOPS), then in effect. This gave the planning process a sense of urgency that 

the Deliberate Planning process did not have. The J3 planners produced a four phase 

plan which they briefed to General Woerner on the first Saturday in March. When the 

briefing ended, Woerner asked where Phase V—the postconflict phase was. Phase V 

planning was initiated the following day by the Civil Affairs section of the Policy, 

Strategy, and Programs Directorate (J5).12 The resulting five phase plan was codenamed, ELABORATE MAZE. The only coordination done was internal to DOD—especially between SOUTHCOM and its subordinate components and SOUTHCOM and 

the Joint Staff. 

By summer, the Joint Staff decided that the five phase plan should be divided into a 

series of separate individual plans that Woerner directed be capable of execution sequentially, simultaneously, or independently, or any combination of these—as he had done 

for the phases of ELABORATE MAZE. Collectively, the plans were referred to as THE 

PRAYERBOOK; it was made up of POST TIME—the buildup of forces; KLONDIKE 

KEY—a noncombatant evacuation operation or NEO; BLUE SPOON—defensive and 
 

 

offensive operations (Phases III and IV of ELABORATE MAZE); and KRYSTAL 

BALL (later changed to BLIND LOGIC)—postconflict operations. Of these, only 

KLONDIKE KEY was coordinated and shared with the Embassy.13 This was because 

Embassy personnel were among those Americans who were to be evacuated in the 

event of a NEO. 

On 18 May 1989, General Woerner was briefed on the status of BLIND LOGIC. 

This briefing had become necessary due to a reorganization of the SOUTHCOM staff 

which had transferred the Plans Division from the J3 to the J5 and the Civil Affairs section from the J5 to the J3. Discussions among staff officers had resulted in the proposal 

to leave BLIND LOGIC in the J5 under the Chief of the Policy and Strategy Division 

where it would be revised and updated.14 Upon reviewing the plan, it immediately 

became clear that BLIND LOGIC was, in the words used at the time, “treading all over 

State Department turf.” As a result, he requested from his superior, one of three Deputy 

J5s, permission to brief BLIND LOGIC to the Embassy Political Counselor and discuss its implications with him. In his opinion, this was a “no brainer”—not only did 

the Political Counselor have a need to know but he was also a personal acquaintance. 

The answer was a surprise; he was told, “Not only no, but hell no!” and informed that 

the plan was held exclusively within JCS channels. The planner persisted and extracted 

permission from his boss to visit the Political Counselor, sound him out on some of the 

issues, but always talking “around the plan.”15 One positive result of the conversation 

was that the planners incorporated the Embassy assumption that the PDF would be disbanded. What they did not know, and, therefore, could not include was the intention to 

inaugurate as President and Vice Presidents the winners of the elections of early May 

1989, an intention that vitiated a principal planning assumption for postconflict, short 

term military government. 

Fissures, the Kozak Mission, and Fissures II 

Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak began a series of shuttle trips to Panama in mid-March 1988, shortly after the coup attempt on 16 March. Kozak had a long 

history of involvement with Panama dating back to the successful Panama Canal treaty 

negotiations in 1977 during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Indeed, Mike Kozak had 

developed a good relationship with then Panamanian dictator, General Omar Torrijos, 

and had come to know then Colonel Manuel Noriega. As a result, Kozak became the 

point man for the Reagan Administration’s diplomatic efforts to get Noriega to resign 

and go away, thereby ending the crisis. On his first visit, there was no effort to coordinate in any way with SOUTHCOM. Indeed, the command was kept completely in the 

dark. On his second trip, however, in mid April, SOUTHCOM had been sent a classified message with US policy goals for Panama that had originated with White House 

Chief of Staff Howard Baker.16 Those policy goals were: protect US citizens, defend 

the Canal and US installations, make certain the US was in the best possible position to 

deal with a post Noriega government, and the removal of Noriega from power.17 

70 
 

With this guidance, such as it was, General Woerner convened a series of interagency workshops at his headquarters in Quarry Heights. Attending were people from 

the Embassy, CIA, State, and SOUTHCOM staff. The purpose was to develop an interagency strategy that would assist US efforts to achieve those goals in the event that 

the Kozak-Noriega negotiations failed, as seemed likely.18 The discussions at Quarry 

Heights produced a degree of consensus among the participants on actions to take that 

would most likely wean the PDF officer corps away from Noriega in the interest of 

saving their institution. General Woerner and his staff worked the agreed upon actions 

into a plan that the General called Fissures. When Kozak’s negotiations with Noriega 

failed, as expected, Woerner sent the Fissures plan through JCS channels with the 

admonition that it needed to be executed as a fully coordinated effort. If it were to be 

executed in pieces, it would fail. When orders to execute were finally received, they 

came in exactly the piecemeal manner that General Woerner feared.19 Indeed, because 

those orders came from JCS, they were military only—there is no indication that the 

JCS had made any effort to coordinate the Fissures plan outside the Joint Staff, let 

alone the civilian side of DOD or its interagency partners. 

A little over a year later, General Woerner decided to try again with his Fissures 

concept. Revising the Fissures plan to take account of the changes of the past year, 

he forwarded Fissures II to Washington. Fissures II suffered the same fate as its predecessor, no interagency involvement and direction to implement individual pieces.20 

Apparently, neither Washington, under both Reagan and George H. W. Bush, nor the 

interagency players in Panama were able or willing to work together at the decision 

maker level to produce a coordinated strategy to address the disparate issues of the 

Panama crisis. 

An Issue of Perception—Drugs 

The indictment of General Manuel Noriega in February 1988 for drug trafficking 

changed the Panama crisis from being primarily internal to one between the US and 

Panama. But it also revealed deep rifts within the US government over Noriega’s and 

the PDF’s roles in the illicit drug trade. Interestingly, these rifts were not entirely closed 

until approximately the end of Operation JUST CAUSE on 31 January 1990—41 days 

after it had begun. The positions of the most relevant US agencies with respect to 

Noriega’s drug dealing are detailed below. 

The State Department position from the perspective of the American Embassy in 

Panama was that Noriega was intimately involved with the Colombian drug cartels. 

However, this was merely one more count in the Embassy indictment of the General. 

In addition, the Embassy was convinced that the entire senior leadership of the PDF 

was dirty, and it was not far off the mark. Still, drugs were seen as a tool to move the 

Reagan Administration and its successor toward active opposition to Noriega’s continued dominance of Panama’s government and politics. The drug issue was instrumental 

as far as the Embassy was concerned. 
For the CIA Station, the drug issue was something that got in the way of their real 

business. CIA was concerned with Cuban and Nicaraguan involvement with the insurgencies in Central America. Noriega was obviously a less than sterling individual but 

he had been a paid source for many years. From the time he became G2 of the Panamanian Guardia Nacional through to his current tenure as Commander of the PDF, he was 

head of a Liaison Service. CIA funding went to the PDF G2, not personally to Noriega. 

Clearly, nobody in the Station believed for a moment that Noriega did not take his cut 

(and give out cuts to other PDF leaders) but he was not directly on the payroll any longer and had not been since soon after the coup in 1968 that brought General Torrijos to 

power. That said, the CIA valued Noriega’s cooperation in providing both information 

and assistance in conducting other intelligence related operations from Panama. What, 

then, was a little drug trafficking when there were bigger fish to fry? 

Within the regional DEA office in Panama there was considerable debate and 

disagreement regarding Noriega. The DEA chief, Alfredo “Freddie” Duncan, had expressed the opinion that despite his culpability in drug trafficking, Noriega was worth 

far more to the US as a source of information on the Colombian cartels’ activities than 

in jail as a convicted trafficker. Moreover, Duncan remained of this opinion long after 

Noriega had been indicted. Others in the office were not so sure as their boss. While 

they all agreed that Noriega was dirty and that he cooperated with DEA, these agents 

believed that the General was basically feeding them information about those cartels 

that were not cooperating with him. Thus, he was playing DEA (and, not coincidentally, Duncan) for fools. 

SOUTHCOM, despite having been tasked during the Reagan Administration with 

the conduct of an interagency counterdrug mission in Bolivia—Operation BLAST 

FURNACE (1986)—and by the Bush Administration with the monitoring and interdiction of drug smuggling from Colombia to the US, generally took the position 

that addressing Noriega’s and the PDF’s roles in the drug trade was not its job. The 

SOUTHCOM staff was well aware that Noriega was up to his ears in the drug trade but 

SOUTHCOM’s mission did not involve what Noriega was doing on that front. Rather, 

SOUTHCOM had to address the PDF as, first, an ally in the defense of the Canal and 

the support it gave to the command’s activities in other parts of Central America, and, 

then, as a potential threat to the Canal, US defense facilities and personnel, and the 

US civilian community in Panama. With all this, as long as Noriega was not directly 

engaged in drug smuggling, his other drug trade activities simply were not part of the 

command’s portfolio. 

Finally, the PCC Administration was focused exclusively on the effective and neutral operation of the Canal. What Noriega did, or did not do, with regard to the drug 

trade just was not the business of the PCC. Its attitude was, “Hey, leave us out of this!” 

In short, finding common ground, or even common perceptions, regarding the drug 

trade among and within the US government agencies in Panama was a losing proposition. 

72 
 

 

Operations JUST CAUSE and PROMOTE LIBERTY 

Operation JUST CAUSE began at 2345 hours on 19 December 1989. Operation 

PROMOTE LIBERTY began at 1000 hours on 20 December 1989. Even before JUST 

CAUSE was launched, an event of critical importance took place at Quarters 25 on 

Fort Clayton, a US Defense Site. That was the swearing in as President of Panama, 

Guillermo Endara, his First Vice President, Ricardo Arias Calderon, and the Second 

Vice President, Guillermo “Billy” Ford, by a Panamanian Justice of the Peace. This 

event trampled on a primary assumption of the postconflict plan, BLIND LOGIC, 

which had assumed that the CINC would be the military governor of Panama for a period of about 30 days following a US intervention. Clearly, the decision to inaugurate 

the new government had been made sometime prior to the decision to execute; clearly, 

the State Department was aware. Who in the military knew prior to the evening of 19 

December is an open question. Even more intriguing is the question of who in SOUTHCOM knew prior to 17 December when the decision to execute BLUE SPOON/JUST 

CAUSE was made by President Bush. As of 15 December, nobody with responsibility 

for BLIND LOGIC had any idea that there would be a new Panamanian government 

sworn in before the operation began.21 As was true throughout the crisis, there was a 

dearth of interagency coordination even on the eve of launching an invasion. 

The immediate question for President Endara and his Vice Presidents was how 

they were supposed to begin governing the country. While they had won the 7 May 

1989 elections, Noriega had stopped the official count and annulled the vote. The last 

gasp for the winners was the street demonstration on 10 May where all three had been 

attacked by Noriega’s thugs in the Dignity Battalions and the PDF. Endara and Ford 

had been injured while Ford’s bodyguard was killed. From that moment on, these three 

had no expectation of governing Panama. Then, nearly 10 months later, they were 

informed that they would be sworn in and were expected to begin governing Panama 

the next day. Early on the morning of 20 December, the government of Panama opened 

for business in the Legislative Assembly building. It was constituted by three men, one 

the President and two Vice Presidents. Advising the government was the new DCM/ 

Charge d’Affaires at the American Embassy, John Bushnell. At 1000 hours, General 

Thurman told his J5, Air Force Brigadier General Benard Gann, to “Get down to the 

Legislative Assembly and keep Mr. Bushnell out of trouble.”22 That, in effect, was the 

order to execute OPORD BLIND LOGIC as Operation PROMOTE LIBERTY. 

One of the most important parts of Operation PROMOTE LIBERTY was providing security to the Panamanian public. This was achieved by reconstituting the Panama 

National Police (PNP) and its sister institutions of the Panama Public Force. To advise 

and assist the new police force in becoming organized, trained, and operational, Army 

Major General Marc Cisneros, Commander of US Army South, established the US 

Forces Liaison Group (USFLG). The FLG was treated by the Charge d’Affaires, Mr. 

Bushnell, as a member of the Country Team at the Embassy. Early on, Bushnell requested the members of the FLG to stop wearing their uniforms and to work in civilian 
 

clothes in order to influence the PNP’s self perception that it was to be a civilian, not 

a military, police force. Overnight, the uniforms disappeared at the offices of the FLG. 

At another meeting of the Country Team, Mr. Bushnell asked the FLG to determine 

whether there were Reserve Component soldiers who were police officers in their civilian jobs who could be assigned to Panama. The answer was positive, and what were 

called the “RC Cops” began arriving in short order where they were teamed with Army 

Special Forces as advisor/monitors in the PNP precincts. Clearly, Bushnell’s decision 

to treat the FLG as a member of the Country Team had the effect of significantly improving interagency coordination in Panama during the first six months of Operation 

PROMOTE LIBERTY. 

In February 1990, the US Congress passed the Emergency Assistance to Democracy in Panama Act. This legislation gave the interagency State/Justice Department 

International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) full responsibility for training the PNP and other police entities. ICITAP arrived in Panama 

with three USG employees, its Director (a senior FBI Agent), his deputy (also an FBI 

Agent), and the State Department representative on its Directorate. All its “worker 

bees” were former FBI Agents (to include retired Assistant Directors of the FBI) now 

employed by ICITAP’s contractor, Miranda Associates. The ICITAP Director had been 

an Army Special Forces officer as a young man and had worked with a junior officer 

in the Panamanian Guardia Nacional, who now was the Director of the PNP. In anticipation of a smooth hand off to ICITAP, the FLG established an office for the ICITAP 

Director to share with the Chief of the FLG. Since the nominal chief of the FLG was 

General Cisneros, for practical purposes, the office would belong to ICITAP. 

From the moment they arrived, ICITAP tried to have as little to do with the FLG 

as possible. They never occupied the office prepared for them, preferring to commandeer other space to do their business when it was necessary to be at PNP headquarters. 

Otherwise, ICITAP operated out of the Marriott Hotel.23 At the hotel, they held classes 

for some of the PNP in classical lecture format with interpretation—only one of the 

Miranda contractors was a Spanish speaker. They also launched plans to establish a 

model police precinct; the model precinct never got off the ground. Meanwhile, it 

was essential to have the new police take to the streets. The FLG found them interim 

uniforms, ordered new khaki police uniforms through the Army/Air Force Exhange 

System, arranged for a purchase of trucks from US military stores, and developed and 

implemented a 20-hour course that was given to every member of the PNP by April of 

1990. Not until July would ICITAP have a training course in place. From February until July, ICITAP was represented in Panama by its Director for two weeks and then by 

his deputy for two weeks. Only in July did ICITAP bring permanent government staff 

down and begin their training program. After six months, the FLG was finally able 

to hand over police training responsibilities to ICITAP. The conclusion to be drawn 

from these episodes is that where there was the will, on both sides, to make something 

work —as there was with the FLG working with the Embassy—then interagency coordination and cooperation could be effective. Where the will to make it work was 

74 
one sided —despite good will at the worker level—there was little or no interagency 

coordination or effective systemic cooperation. 

Is There Any Evidence That We Learned Anything In Panama? 

The status of interagency coordination during the Panama crisis and Operations 

JUST CAUSE and PROMOTE LIBERTY was practically nonexistent. The process in 

Washington was very much in the same state of flux that it had been in since the passage of the National Security Act in 1947. Only in 1989 did the new Bush Administration begin to institutionalize what has become the current NSC system of interagency 

coordination. During the last parts of the Panama crisis, that system was just beginning 

to take hold. In Panama, by contrast, there was even less of a system of interagency 

cooperation and coordination—as this paper makes clear. In short, the glass (as they 

say) was very nearly empty. 

Two decades later, depending on one’s perspective, the glass is only half empty or 

half full. The Washington process has been relatively well institutionalized. However, 

the process in the field still has a long way to go. Although mechanisms, often “work 

arounds,” have been developed to address issues of interagency concern, they still depend, far too much, on the personal chemistry of the principals. If it is good, as it was 

in the case of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Iraq, it can 

be very, very good. If, on the other hand, it is bad, as it was in the case of Lieutenant 

General Ricardo Sanchez and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Administrator, 

Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, also in Iraq, then it is horrid! While we have 

clearly learned from the Panama experience, we still have much more to learn. 

Notes 

1. The author wishes to acknowledge here an intellectual debt to two friends and colleagues, 

Gabriel Marcella and Larry Yates. Gabriel, as International Affairs Advisor to USCINCSO, 

General Fred F. Woerner, played a major, if largely unsung, role in these events. His writing, 

both alone and with General Woerner, has given me the benefit of insight from levels above my 

position. Gabriel has been generous with both his advice and friendship. Larry Yates’ recently 

published official history of the Panama crisis is likely to be the definitive work on the subject. 

Suffice that I have benefited greatly from Larry’s knowledge and insights over the last 19 years 

where we have shared data and experiences—at least once over pizza which he brought to an 

interview. 

2. Author’s conversations with several individuals assigned to the Embassy at the time and 

with senior staff at USSOUTHCOM. 

3. Ambassador David Passage has described this process in a number of lectures given on 

regular occasions to the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS, throughout the 1990s. 

4. Author’s conversations with several DEA agents assigned to Panama in 1987 and 1988. 
5. One of those US Attorneys was Dexter Lehtinen, husband of then Florida Legislator and 

now US Congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. 

6. Author’s interview with General Fred F. Woerner, Jr., Boston MA, 

7. See Lawrence A. Yates, The US Military Intervention in Panama: Origins, Planning, and 

Crisis Management June 1987–December 1989 (Washington, DC, 2008: Center for Military 

History), pp. 40-43. 

8. Yates, p. 63. 

9. Ibid. 

10. The author writes from personal experience; he was not going to be without electricity for 

cooking, hot water, or air conditioning with daytime temperatures in the 90s. 

11. The source for the paragraphs that follow is the author’s observations at the time and 

contemporaneous conversations with friends in DEA and the USMC who were stationed at the 

Embassy and lived in Embassy rented housing. 

12. See the author’s, The Fog of Peace: Planning and Executing the Restoration of Panama, 

(Carlisle, PA, 1992: Strategic Studies Institute). 

13. Several years later, the author confirmed this with Ambassador John Maisto who had been 

DCM in Panama at the time. 

14. The author was the Chief of Policy and Strategy at the time; his civilian education and 

experience made him particularly well qualified to take charge of the plan. 

15. Later, in an interview with the former Political Counselor, Mike Polt, the author asked 

him if he recalled their strange conversation prior to JUST CAUSE. When Polt said he did, the 

author told him that this (postconflict planning) was what it had been all about! 

16. Yates, p. 98. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. Yates, 99-100, Woerner interview. 

20. Yates, 192-195, Woerner interview. 

21. The author can make that statement with absolute certainty because up until 15 December 

1989, he was responsible for OPORD BLIND LOGIC. There is no evidence that any changes 

were made before the afternoon of 17 December because the review of the plan began on the 

morning of that day. 

22. The official version of this statement, which the author published in his monograph, The 

Fog of Peace (Carlisle, PA: 1992, SSI) read “support Mr. Bushnell.” The reason was to avoid 

embarrassment to all concerned, but nearly 20 years later, it is hard to imagine any lingering embarrassment for the individuals involved. General Thurman long since has passed away 

and General Gann retired. So, the time has come to tell the story exactly as it was without the 

gloss. 

23. This is not to say that good relations were not established with members of ICITAP’s 

contractor team. Indeed, they were, but relations between the two organizations per se were 

anything but harmonious. Author’s participant observation. 

76 
Panel 1—The Difficulties in Interagency Operations 

(Submitted Paper) 

Interagency Actions and the US Intervention in Lebanon, 1958 

by 

Lawrence A. Yates, Ph.D.
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

In mid-July, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered nearly 15,000 US 

combat troops into Lebanon in an effort to prevent that country from falling to what 

Washington perceived as radical Arab elements operating in the Middle East. What 

I would like to do this morning is examine certain policies and decisions affecting 

the intervention in Lebanon from the perspective of interagency processes within the 

executive branch of the US government, starting with the National Security Council 

(NSC). 

In the American experience prior to World War II, what later came to be categorized as national security issues had been addressed mainly by the President working 

with the State, War, and Navy departments; or with various advisers, specialists, and 

friends. This interaction occurred in cabinet sessions, personal meetings, and interdepartmental correspondence and communications. The scope of the Second World 

War, the complex issues it left in its wake, and the great power responsibilities it thrust 

upon the United States caused several high-ranking officials to advocate supplementing these methods with a formal, statutory organization that would advise the President 

on national security matters and promote interagency coordination and cooperation on 

a systematic and ongoing basis, in a way the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee 

had sought to do during the last year of the war.1 

The result was the National Security Act of 1947, which established the National 

Security Council, together with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Military Establishment (later renamed the Department of Defense), and the short-lived 

National Security Resources Board. After amendments made to the act in 1949, NSC 

membership included the President and Vice President, the Secretaries of Defense and 

State, and the NSRB (later the Office of Defense Mobilization) director. Also attending meetings as advisers were the director of Central Intelligence and the chairman of 

the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS), with Eisenhower adding the Secretary of the Treasury, 

the Mutual Security Administration director, and others, when needed, to the list. The 

legislation establishing the NSC called on it to “advise the President with respect to the 

integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security 

so as to enable the military services and the other departments and agencies of the 

Government to cooperate more effectively in matters involving the national security.” 
In this capacity, the NSC was to “assess and appraise the objectives, commitments and 

risks of the United States in relation to our actual and potential military power.”2 

Under Harry Truman, the NSC produced coordinated policy papers (for example, 

the landmark NSC-68 of 1950 that charted a new course for America’s containment of 

“international communism”), but the President himself rarely attended its meetings until the Korean War compelled him to seek the council’s advice. In contrast, his successor, President Eisenhower, in the words of one historian, “came closer to implementing 

the NSC as it was originally conceived than any of the Presidents who followed him.” 

The staff process embedded in the council’s operations readily appealed to the former general’s military mindset, even though he believed the organization had become 

“moribund” under Truman’s stewardship.3 

To revitalize the NSC, Eisenhower made lawyer and businessman Robert Cutler 

his special assistant for national security (the forerunner of the national security adviser position created by President John F. Kennedy). Cutler addressed his assignment by 

developing “Policy Hill,” a process that would permit the NSC to perform its advisory 

mission in a systematic and efficient way. At the bottom of the “hill” were officials in 

each of the participating departments and agencies, writing policy recommendations 

that were then forwarded to a Planning Board that generally included departmental assistant secretaries and officials of equivalent rank from other agencies, with the group 

chaired by the NSC’s executive secretary. The board tried (though not always successfully) to resolve interagency differences before moving the revised papers up the 

hill to the NSC, which, during Eisenhower’s second term, generally met once a week 

around 0900. NSC members and others present would discuss and debate the papers, 

with the President—who chaired well over 300 of the 346 NSC meetings during his 

two terms—then approving a policy or authorizing follow-on actions he wanted taken. 

His decisions then moved back down Policy Hill to departmental deputies and assistant 

secretaries on the Operations Coordinating Board, a bureaucratic umbrella for over 

forty interagency working groups based on countries, regions, and subjects. The job 

of the OCB was to ensure that NSC decisions were properly coordinated and implemented at all levels of government. While the board never lived up to Ike’s expectations in this respect, it did serve as another venue for interagency communication and 

the sharing of information.4 

This, in general, was the NSC setup in effect during the Middle East crises of the 

mid- to late-1950s, and during the Lebanon crisis of 1958, in particular. Time constraints and the focus of this paper do not permit an in-depth assessment of these crises,5

 save to say that, from the administration’s perspective, the ramifications of each 

could be felt at three levels: international, regional, and local. The Cold War, which by 

the 1950s was defined in general terms as the struggle between the “free world” and 

“international communism,” provided the international context for the crises. From 

1945 to 1954, this ideological and geopolitical struggle had been largely confined to 

Europe and Asia. In the mid-fifties, the Middle East entered the picture, as the Soviet 

Union sought to extend its influence into the area, first, by taking the Arabs’ side in 

78 
their conflict with Israel and, second, by offering military and economic aid on a selective basis. At the regional level, the principal Middle Eastern recipient of Soviet 

largess was the Egyptian government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the few 

years since 1952, when he had been one among the group of “Free Officers” that had 

overthrown the pro-Western government of Egypt’s King Farouk, Nasser had become 

the country’s strongman and a popular and vocal proponent of Pan-Arab Nationalism, 

a position saturated with anti-Western, anti-colonialist sentiment. Some early efforts 

by the Eisenhower administration to work with Nasser had proved productive, but 

were soon overshadowed by the Suez war of 1956 and Nasser’s efforts to undermine 

the region’s remaining pro-Western governments in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and 

Lebanon. Neither Eisenhower nor his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, believed 

Nasser to be a communist, but both saw him as a destabilizing influence in an area of 

strategic importance to the United States, and as a conduit for Soviet penetration of 

that area. 

Of the governments Nasser had targeted, some were already unstable, as was the 

case with Lebanon in 1957 and 1958. There, a tenuous political structure had fractured 

along confessional, geographical, and family lines. In accordance with the National 

Pact of 1943, the Lebanese president was a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a 

Sunni, and the president of the parliament a Shiite. Demographic changes over fifteen 

years, president Camille Chamoun’s use of electoral fraud in 1957 to deny his rival 

zuama (strongmen) the seats in parliament essential to maintaining their patronage 

systems, his openly pro-West positions, and his attempt to amend Lebanon’s constitution to allow him a second term in office combined to produce a volatile situation that 

exploded into open violence in May 1958. Sides in the fighting generally—but not entirely—reflected the country’s Muslim-Christian divide. While Eisenhower and Dulles 

had qualms about Chamoun, the fact that many of his opponents embraced Nasser’s 

Pan-Arabism concerned them more. To prevent a radical, anti-Western Arab regime 

from taking power in Beirut, the administration was prepared to use military force, but 

only as a last resort. 

Against this backdrop of ominous change and upheaval in the Middle East, Eisenhower turned to the National Security Council in February 1957 and, again, in July 

to review US policy in the region. In January 1958, he approved the coordinated recommendations presented by the NSC’s interagency Planning Board. Designated NSC 

5801/1, the policy paper, which reflected Washington’s perception of the new realities 

in the Middle East, set forth four US objectives: (1) maintaining the availability of resources, strategic positions, and passage rights of the Near East, and denying these to 

Soviets; (2) maintaining stable and friendly governments in the region; (3) achieving 

an early resolution of Arab-Israeli dispute; and (4) limiting Soviet influence. With respect to Nasserism, the United States would seek to avoid confrontation while hoping 

to guide “revolutionary and nationalist pressures” into channels not hostile to the West. 

In the process, pro-Western governments might fall, but a “neutralist orientation” by 

Arab states would be acceptable, provided that it was “reasonably balanced” by relations with the West.6 
At the outset of this policy review, the NSC had called on the Pentagon to assess 

the military implications of the US position in the Middle East. Specifically, the Joint 

Chiefs were directed to report on the status of planning for three scenarios: global war, 

another Arab-Israeli war, and other contingencies. In June 1957, the Joint Chiefs responded that it was impossible to plan for the latter scenario—there were just too many 

possibilities. In general, however, they declared that small, mobile, nuclear capable 

forces from Europe could handle contingencies in the Middle East, short of a major 

war, requiring the introduction of US troops.7 

At one point in the Middle East review process, the President demonstrated how 

he could use an NSC meeting to modify the Policy Hill process to suit his needs. The 

meeting in question took place on 18 July 1957, with Ike expressing concern that the 

NSC Planning Board was inappropriately getting involved in contingency planning. 

To elevate that effort to a higher interagency level, he instructed the Secretaries of 

Defense and State, the chairman of the JCS, the CIA director (Foster Dulles’ brother, 

Allen), and Cutler to meet to discuss the range of possible US military operations in 

the Middle East. Soon thereafter, this group of principal advisers met and considered 

six courses of action, from deterrence to all out intervention. On 8 August, the NSC reviewed the group’s findings, then passed them to the Planning Board for incorporation 

in subsequent drafts of what would become NSC 5801/1. It is possible that the meeting of the small group from State, the Pentagon, and the CIA also opened the door to 

further interagency cooperation on contingency planning, such as when Dulles queried 

the relatively new JCS chairman, Air Force General Nathan Twining on 17 October 

1957, as to what forces the United States could put into Lebanon or Jordan in 24, 48, 

and 72 hours, respectively, for the purpose of establishing “the authority of the friendly 

local government and to help maintain order.” Twining’s response provided Dulles 

with all the information the Secretary had requested.8 

The following May and June, as the political crisis in Lebanon escalated into armed 

conflict and president Chamoun made his initial request for US military intervention, 

CIA Director Allen Dulles included updates about the worsening situation in his regular 

briefings to NSC attendees. But the NSC was not designed to deal with crisis management, as opposed to policy issues and military planning. Thus, as the conflict became 

more acute, almost all of the interagency activities and operational decisions related 

to it took place outside the NSC in more traditional modes that included a myriad of 

personal meetings, interdepartmental memoranda, cables, and telephone calls. This 

limited utility of the NSC in a crisis was no better illustrated than by the decision itself 

to intervene in Lebanon. 

On 14 July, a group of “radical” army officers in Iraq overthrew the pro-Western 

government there, in the process killing the royal family and the prime minister. As 

word of the bloody coup reached Washington early that morning, Eisenhower conferred repeatedly with the Dulles brothers, General Twining, and others over the telephone. The weekly NSC meeting was already on the President’s schedule for 9:45 

that day, with the main item on the agenda being a discussion of some NSC-directed 

80 
Civil Defense studies. Over the phone, Foster Dulles made the obvious observation to 

Eisenhower: the Iraqi coup and the possibility that it would trigger the downfall of proWestern governments in Lebanon and Jordan were “more important” issues than the 

topics before the NSC. Ike agreed, but rather than alter the council’s agenda or cancel 

the meeting, he simply sat through the Civil Defense reports until Dulles arrived at the 

White House from the State Department, where he had been meeting with State, Pentagon, and CIA officials. At that point, the President adjourned the NSC and convened 

a meeting with his principal national security advisers in the Oval Office. That was the 

forum in which he would make one of the more critical foreign policy decisions of his 

second term.9 

During the Oval Office session, the Dulles brothers, General Twining, and others 

briefed the President. From the outset, all agreed on the need to accede to Chamoun’s 

renewed request to send US troops into Lebanon. As more than one person noted, US 

interests in the region would suffer more from inaction than from intervention, even 

though the President’s key advisers acknowledged that they did not know precisely, 

or even generally, what US forces would need to do to stabilize Lebanon, or when 

and under what circumstances the troops would be withdrawn. That notwithstanding, 

Eisenhower made his decision, and the next afternoon, Lebanon time, the first US 

Marines began landing south of Beirut. A few days later, Army units from Germany 

would join them.10 

In the weeks that followed, Allen Dulles continued to include Lebanon updates in 

his briefings that opened each NSC meeting. On 24 July, in the first council meeting 

after the intervention, both Dulles brothers gave detailed reports, which resulted in 

extensive discussion and a directive for the Planning Board to prepare “a list of relevant policy issues arising out of the present situation in the Near East, together with 

arguments for and against taking various possible courses of action.”11 Still, despite 

this use of the NSC as a forum for discussing the crisis, the critical interagency actions 

taken to effect an acceptable resolution to the intervention continued to take place 

outside the council. 

In retrospect, one of the most important decisions during the intervention was 

Eisenhower’s approval of Foster Dulles’ recommendation, made during an Oval Office meeting, to send diplomatic trouble-shooter Robert Murphy to Lebanon. Ironically, both the President and the Secretary of State believed it would be a short visit, 

about one week, designed to patch up some serious problems caused by the perceived 

failure of US personnel on the ground to implement a State Department-Department of 

Defense agreement reached in Washington the previous month. The problem surfaced 

when the lieutenant colonel commanding the first Marines to land south of Beirut confronted not Lebanese rebels but two uniformed US defense attachés from the American embassy who conveyed to him Ambassador Robert McClintock’s instructions for 

the troops to get back aboard their ships and disembark at the port of Beirut instead. 

The Marine officer refused the order, citing that the ambassador was not in his chain 

of command. Unfortunately, the US military commander for the operation, Admiral 
James A. Holloway, Jr., was still en route to Lebanon and without the communications 

needed to resolve the problem before his arrival. When he did arrive the next day, he 

and the ambassador crossed paths near a road to Beirut, where the Marines were about 

to engage in what would have been a politically disastrous firefight with the Lebanese 

army. In a meeting to break the impasse and defuse the situation, Holloway talked 

tough to the Lebanese commander, but ended up accepting the more conciliatory suggestions made by the ambassador. For McClintock, this incident reconfirmed his belief 

that the military was not going to honor the aforementioned agreement that, according 

to the ambassador, gave him the final word on any military movements that could have 

political consequences—meaning virtually all military movements. McClintock had 

already complained to Washington, and Dulles responded by dispatching Murphy to 

“establish better relations between our own military and diplomatic people, Lebanese 

military, and the Lebanese government.”12 

By the time Murphy arrived in Beirut, he found that McClintock and Holloway 

were working well together. The “interagency” crisis in the field had been resolved. 

Then, as Murphy’s “visit” turned into a full-scale diplomatic effort to end the crisis— 

an effort backed by US and Lebanese military force and the support of the administration in Washington—the harmonious relationship that these three US representatives 

on the scene developed over several weeks proved essential in facilitating the process. 

It was a highly coordinated undertaking: McClintock and Murphy kept Chamoun in 

line, while Holloway made sure that the actions of American troops ringing Beirut 

did not undermine negotiations but rather serve to further them. Murphy also traveled 

throughout the country, reassuring key rebel leaders that the United States was not trying to prop up Chamoun, a pledge that he redeemed by helping to engineer the election 

of the Lebanese army commander as Chamoun’s successor, thus effectively reconciling most of the warring parties in the country’s internal conflict. Toward the end of his 

mission Murphy visited the new leaders in Baghdad, and Nasser in Egypt, finding that 

the former posed no imminent threat to US interests and that the latter sought to play a 

constructive role after having failed to convince the Soviet Union to intervene militarily on his behalf. In October, the last of the US forces withdrew from Lebanon, leaving 

behind a relatively stable situation that would prevail for almost twenty years.13 

According to one historian, President Eisenhower and his staff insisted throughout 

his administration that “the President made his most critical national security policy 

decisions through the NSC.” The truth, she goes on to note, is that “We now know 

that Eisenhower’s NSC was just one part of a multifaceted foreign policy process.”14 

As that multifaceted process relates to the topic of this paper, it seems to have worked 

very well. While the NSC chaired by the President was instrumental in developing 

a sophisticated if ethnocentric policy toward the volatile Middle East that sought to 

employ resources from the various governmental agencies and departments associated 

with national security, outside the Policy Hill framework a plethora of interagency activity also produced positive results, at least so far as keeping Arab nationalism at bay 

and maintaining a fairly stable, pro-Western government in Lebanon. The question, 

82 
 

which must be answered briefly here, is “Was this success the result of interagency 

procedures that Eisenhower enacted? Or was it the result of other, less tangible factors 

specific to the time and the place?” The answer, as one might expect from a historian, 

is both. 

The Policy Hill process, in which the President regularly approved policy and authorized actions in the presence of his key national security advisers, not only made the 

NSC responsive to Ike’s needs in foreign policy, it also facilitated interagency activity in more traditional arenas. In the case of the Middle East crises, especially during 

1957-1958, the NSC setup worked well, even though it fell far short of eliminating 

all interagency disputes—a goal no one in authority considered remotely attainable 

anyway. In Washington, for example, the JCS believed the United States should be 

doing more to help end the Arab-Israeli dispute than John Foster Dulles’ State Department was prepared to execute. On the separate issue of contingency planning for an 

intervention in Lebanon, military planners tried to impress upon the State Department 

the need to arrange overflight rights with those countries within whose air space US 

troop transports would have to fly. State refused, arguing that any such approaches to 

these governments before the President actually made a decision to intervene could 

compromise any operation and create political problems within several of the affected 

governments.15 Yet, these and other points of contention that remained unresolved on 

14 July seem minor given the interagency consensus that surrounded the key issues, 

especially the far-reaching decision to intervene. 

That consensus, in its most general expression, was not formed by processes and 

procedures that allowed for interagency discussion and debate. Nor was it fortuitous. 

Rather it represented the thinking of most American citizens at the time on the subject of the Cold War. The confrontation with international communism appeared as a 

zero-sum game, in which, to avoid any significant setback, the United States needed 

to respond to virtually every Sino-Soviet threat with whatever means required, even 

nuclear war, if need be. Thus Eisenhower could order US troops into Lebanon with no 

idea of what they would do once there, and no idea of when and under what circumstances they would be withdrawn; and he could do so with little criticism, save for 

some partisan political fallout and the reservations of some officials like CNO Admiral 

Arleigh Burke, who questioned the wisdom of plans calling for placing US troops in 

the Arab Middle East, and UN ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who, following 

an informal interagency meeting at Foster Dulles’ home on 22 June, questioned the 

Secretary, his boss, several times as to what the troops’ mission would be and when 

they would be withdrawn, all the while offering Dulles reminders on the limited utility of military intervention. (Once Eisenhower decided to intervene, Lodge was on 

board, presenting the administration’s case at the United Nations.)16 The Vietnam War 

would shatter the rock-solid Cold War consensus of nearly twenty years, but, at the 

time Eisenhower acted in Lebanon, that development was still a decade in the future. 

In 1958, to repeat, the Cold War consensus itself facilitated interagency cooperation, 

coordination, and agreement. 
Related to the Cold War consensus was how the personalities of the men concerned 

tended to minimize interagency infighting or inaction. To begin with, John Foster Dulles was a strong Secretary of State—the last until Henry Kissinger during President 

Richard Nixon’s second term—and he had no intention of letting any other administration official usurp his role as the President’s principal foreign policy adviser. Dulles 

had his detractors in the administration—MSA Director Harold Stassen, for one—but 

they were in no position to challenge the Secretary, who had Eisenhower’s full backing. The fact that Foster’s younger brother ran the CIA facilitated interaction between 

the two organizations they headed, while, in the case of Lebanon, the JCS chairman, 

General Twining, was as much an advocate of intervention as the President and his 

principal civilian advisers. As for the special assistant for national security, Robert 

Cutler, his job was to manage the NSC agenda and direct the council’s discussions, not 

to formulate policy or offer operational advice. (The role of a strong national security 

adviser in the White House capable of eclipsing the Secretary of State and other officials would be crafted by Eisenhower’s successor.) Given this setup, only General 

Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower’s staff secretary and defense liaison officer, as well 

as close friend, was in a position to ignite an interagency turf battle, especially with the 

State Department, given his easy access to the President, but Goodpaster performed 

his duties in such a way that allowed him to assert his influence without running afoul 

of Foster Dulles. 

In conclusion, then, interagency activities in effect during the Middle East crisies 

of 1957-1958, of which I have only sketched the bare bones here, worked well for 

President Eisenhower, providing him with sound policy guidance and permitting him 

to introduce US armed forces into Lebanon in a timely way. After a rocky start, the 

success of that intervention owed much to diplomats and military officers working 

together, both on the scene and in Washington, to realize a peaceful outcome based on 

diplomacy backed by military force, but also diplomacy in which virtually all parties 

to the conflict felt they had achieved their objectives. Yet, if interagency cooperation 

was essential to resolving the Lebanese conflict, there were also reminders—the near 

shoot-out between the Lebanese army and the newly arrived US Marines being but 

one example—of the role also played in the outcome by what former Secretary of 

State Dean Acheson termed, in referring to the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 

as “pure dumb luck.” A discussion of that observation, however, must be deferred to 

another time. Thank you. 

84 
Notes 

1. Anna Kasten Nelson, “National Security Council,” in Encyclopedia of American Foreign 

Policy, edited by Alexander DeConde, Fredrik Logevall, and Richard Dean Burns (2d ed., New 

York: Scribner, 2002); “History of the National Security Council, 1947-1997,” at http://www. 

whitehouse.gov/nsc/history.html. 

2. The text of the National Security Act of 1947 can be found at http://www.intelligence. 

gov/0-natsecact_1947.shtml#s101. 

3. The quoted sentence is from Nelson, “National Security Council.” See also the section on 

the Eisenhower administration in the “History of the National Security Council” cited above. 

4. For Cutler’s own account of his service as special assistant for national security, see Robert Cutler, No Time for Rest (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1966), pp. 293-365. See also, Nelson, “National Security Council;” “History of the National Security Council;” Anna K. Nelson, 

“The Importance of Foreign Policy Process: Eisenhower and the National Security Council,” 

in Eisenhower: A Centernary Assessment, edited by Günter Bischoff and Stephen E. Ambrose 

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), pp. 111-25; John Prados, Keepers of 

the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William 

Morrow and Co., 1991). 

5. For a discussion of the Middle East and Lebanon crises, see William B. Quandt, “Lebanon, 1958, and Jordan, 1970,” in Force without War, edited by Barry M. Blechman and Stephen 

S. Kaplan (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1978), pp. 222-88; Lawrence A. Yates, 

“The US Military in Lebanon, 1958: Success Without a Plan,” in Turning Victory Into Success: 

Military Operations After the Campaign, edited by Brian De Toy (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press, [2004]), pp. 123-33; and Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

Press, 2004). 

6. For the complete text of NSC 5801/1, see US Department of State, Foreign Relations of 

the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1958-1960, Vol. XII, Near East Region; Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), pp. 17-32. For the NSC 

meeting at which NSC 5801/1 was approved on 24 January 1958, the JCS had submitted much 

of their input through the Planning Board. A JCS memo recommending “decisive political and 

diplomatic action to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute” was submitted directly to the NSC. There, 

the Secretary of State opposed it in favor of a vaguer statement, which the President approved. 

7. Robert J. Watson, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. IV, Into the Missile Age, 1956-1960 (Washington, DC: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997), 

p. 205. 

8. Ibid., pp. 205-6; Declassified and sanitized manuscript for JCS official history for 1957­

1960, Chapter VIII, “The Eisenhower Doctrine and Middle East Plans,” no date; Dulles’ 17 Oct 

57 memorandum and Twining’s response are contained in author’s notes for Lebanon lesson 

in A645: US Interventions since 1945. The Planning Board’s near excursion into contingency 

planning came as a result of reviewing the JCS response to an NSC request for information 

from the Pentagon related to the council’s consideration of policy toward Iran. 

9. Cutler, No Time for Rest, pp. 362-65; FRUS, 1958-1960, Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan 

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 211. 
10. FRUS, 1958-1960, Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan (Washington, DC: Government Printing 

Office, 1992), pp. 211-15. 

11. Ibid., 382-86. The Planning Board paper was considered at the NSC meeting on 31 July. 

Prados, Keepers of the Keys, p. 85 

12. Italics mine. For an account of the Marine-Embassy standoff and the near firefight with 

the Lebanese army the next day, see Yates, “The US Military in Lebanon, 1958,” pp. 128-29. 

On Murphy’s mission, see FRUS, Lebanon and Jordan, p. 256; Dwight D. Eisenhower, The 

White House Years: Waging Peace, 1957-1961 (Doubleday book club edition; Garden City, 

NY: Doubleday & Co., 1965), p. 279. Another reason for dispatching Murphy seems to have 

been some doubts harbored by Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon concerning 

McClintock’s luke-warm response to the intervention and his interference in the Marine landing. In a phone conversation with the Secretary, Nixon “indicated the need for people who can 

stand up better than that.” He then suggested sending Murphy to Lebanon in order to address 

“the political problems involved in the crisis.” FRUS, Lebanon and Jordan, pp. 251-52, n3. 

Prados, Keepers of the Keys, p. 83, includes Allen Dulles among those in Washington who had 

doubts about McClintock. 

13. On the Murphy mission, see Robert D. Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (Garden City, 

NY: Doubleday & Co., 1964), pp. 394-418; FRUS, Lebanon and Jordan, passim. 

14. The quotations are from Nelson, “The Importance of Foreign Policy Process,” pp. 112, 

113. Prados, Keepers of the Keys, pp. 81-85, also examines the limited role of the NSC in decisions surrounding the actual intervention in Lebanon. 

15. On the dispute over overflight rights, see Watson, History of the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense, p. 209. 

16. On Lodge’s concerns, see FRUS, Lebanon and Jordan, pp. 168-69; Memorandum, Telephone call [to Secretary Dulles] from Amb Lodge, June 18, 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. 

86 
Panel 1—The Difficulties in Interagency Operations
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Edgar F. Raines, Jr., Ph.D.
 

John F. Fishel, Ph.D.
 

Lawrence A. Yates, Ph.D.
 

Moderated by Richard Stewart, Ph.D.
 

Audience Member 

I was struck by your closing comments about the glass being totally empty at the beginning of JUST CAUSE because later on this afternoon we are going to have a panel 

that features a paper, actually two papers, one of which talks about the CORDS (Civil 

Operations and Rural Development Support) Program in Vietnam. So there were some 

things that were learned in the 1960s. And I suppose Larry would also add that there 

were some things learned in the 1950s, so what occurred do you think between 1973 

with our exit from Vietnam and then what happens in the 1980s? Do those people move 

on, is the knowledge forgotten? I am curious as to what your perspectives are. 

Dr. Fishel 

Can I take that for starters? I have wanted to write an article that steals from a Bob 

Dylan line that says, “When will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn?” The 

thing is, I think we have learned something. We do remember CORDS. We do remember the lessons. Some of the guys at the Joint Center for International Security Force 

Assistance here on post keep making a point that it took us far less time in Iraq to learn 

what to do right than it took us in Vietnam and some of the other places. I think the 

point I was trying to make was that in Panama itself, on the ground in a non-war situation but pre-war, we were not really doing much coordination. The only piece of planning that we really coordinated with the Embassy on was the Non-Combat Evacuation 

Plan (NEO) which directly involved them. I talked with John Maisto a couple of years 

later. We were on a panel together and I took him to the airport and we were chatting. I 

asked him specifically, “What did you know?” “Well, I knew about the NEO.” That is 

all he had been told because we would not talk and we could not talk, but that is why I 

said there were some drops at the bottom of the glass and that was just our experience 

there. I hope that answers at least some of it. 
Dr. Stewart 

We do tend to learn occasionally but then empty the glass out every few years just to 

make sure we can start all over again. 

Dr. Yates 

Given the dates you mentioned, one, the consensus I talk about is gone that you had 

during the 1950s and 1960s. The Cold War consensus ends with Vietnam. Someone in 

foreign affairs said it was something like Humpty Dumpty. You are not going to put it 

back together again. After 9-11 it looked like we might have a consensus on foreign 

affairs, but that went away with Iraq. You have a proliferation of agencies that are 

brought into the interagency arena that you did not have back in the 1950s or even the 

early 1960s. Then the role of personalities, again, without that consensus, you see that 

emerging to some degree. It has always been there . . . NCS-68, one of the most significant documents of the Cold War, 1950, was an interagency blood-letting between the 

Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson and the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson. They 

could not even talk to one another in putting this together. But you got it and you had a 

policy that most people could sign off on. You do not see that that often after Vietnam 

even though the Cold War goes on. Ed, in talking about Grenada, you made that point. 

Constantine Menges, in his memoirs, always talks about . . . he is an ideologue. He is 

a right-wing conservative, I do not mean a conservative, but a right-wing conservative 

on the Reagan National Security Staff. He has Ollie North along with him who is also a 

right-winger. Well, North is a reactionary. You have the pragmatists like Admiral Poindexter and Bud McFarland, a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, they are the pragmatists and these people are at each other’s throats. Eagleburger was another pragmatist. 

You see this coming in once the consensus is gone, these issues can arise. And then 

finally, I agree with what everyone else has said, we study the case studies and then 

we forget. Who knows where this is going to end up? My guess is on a lot of library 

shelves collecting dust. It should not. It deals with crisis management, interagency, it 

deals with SOF, conventional, all sorts of things. Stability operations which is another 

thing that I felt, and John has as well, every time we go into it it is re-learning and taking the time to do it. We learned things quickly in Iraq. That is nice, but we should have 

known them going in. The idea of dropping Chalabi, and I am grossly simplifying, 

Colonel Benson would take me to task if I said there was no plan. Of course there is a 

plan, but we really have not learned the lessons of Panama for Iraq. Even though we 

talked about using the Panama model, very few knew what it was, and you can go back 

from Panama. Most people do not even realize there was a stability operation in Grenada, for example, and there was. And back to the Dominican Republic, my favorite, 

as Richard just said, we keep re-emptying the glass. We need to make a commitment to 

study it more. We pay lip service to it. 

88 
Audience Member 

President Truman was the last president that publicly called his Secretary of State his 

senior secretary, promoting him above, if you will, the other secretaries in the cabinet 

and making him the de facto Chief of Staff, if you will, for his advice that he got from 

his cabinet members. That seemed to work well then and that was the last time, arguably, that interagency worked like it should I suppose, so why do you suppose ten 

presidents after President Truman chose not to do that and to level the playing field, if 

you will, amongst the cabinet members and sort of watered down in a sense the advice 

that he gets? 

Dr. Yates 

I would agree with the first part about Truman. First of all Truman had very little experience in foreign affairs. He has been in World War I as an Artillery captain and he 

cited that as his experience. He had a tremendous commitment to the United Nations. 

He had seen the failure of the League of Nations and was determined to have a United 

Nations that worked which is one of the reasons that we went into Korea because he 

felt the UN could not be allowed to fail. But he realized his shortcomings there and 

so did his staff, Clark Clifford, among others. Some would argue that he should have 

used the Embassy more than he did. He did not, but to the extent that it was used, he 

put the Secretary of State pretty much in charge of it. But he had two strong Secretaries of State, one of whom he idealized, George Marshall. This is the man of the 

century; that is a Truman-esque marginal note in his handwriting, the man of the century. Dean Acheson was equally up to the task. So he had two very strong individuals 

who Truman had no problem in delegating certain foreign policy issues to. Marshall 

threatened to resign over, he told Truman he would not vote for him over the issue of 

Israel, recognizing Israel. So Truman turned over the NSC (National Security Council) essentially to the State Department, its interagency, but there is the first among 

equals. Eisenhower changed the system, but he still had a strong Secretary of State in 

whom he had complete confidence that always had the first and the last word before 

Eisenhower made a decision. And because the two were in such synch, Eisenhower 

talked about that in his memoirs about how they sat around at the end of the day, he 

and Foster Dulles just in the Oval Office talking. Kennedy comes in, Eisenhower says 

keep the NSC pretty much the way it is. By that time you had the Jackson Committee which said all that the NSC is doing is turning out a lot of paper. We need a more 

dynamic National Security Council, one that is run from the White House, not by the 

State Department, and Eisenhower put the Vice President in charge of the meetings, 

not the Secretary of State, but one that is more run from the White House and you get 

the rise of the National Security advisors so that is where I disagree. It does not level 

the playing field. You elevate someone in the White House over the Secretary of State. 

Dean Rusk is considered a weak Secretary of State compared to McGeorge Bundy 

who was the first National Security Advisor, followed by Walt Whitman Rostow under 

Johnson. And then under Reagan, Brzezinski was very strong. Reagan tried to diminish the role, but it keeps popping up. Initially Truman and Eisenhower relied on very 

strong Secretaries of State. 

Dr. Fishel 

And part of that is that the Secretary of State is the senior cabinet official, regardless. 

Another part of what is going on is the constant Congressional whittling down of State’s 

budget and the building up, over time, of the defense budget and other agencies so that 

the resource space available so far outweighs it on the defense side, the military side of 

things, that you get this very high-powered juggernaut on one side that has been doing 

its best in this administration, including time with Secretary Rumsfeld, to build back 

up some of the other agencies, and it does not work because again, it is underfunded. In 

the Truman era the policy planning staff of the State department did the things the NSC 

staff does now, and was created by Secretary Marshall largely to do what a Joint Plans 

and Policy element of a Joint Staff does. It worked kind of that way under Secretary 

Marshall, and then it started slipping because you did not have people with that kind 

of experience. [Inaudible] was the originator of it. So you have this larger scale thing 

that is creating diversifying power and concentrating power in the defense. 

Dr. Yates 

In 2005, my last year on the job, I was part of a task force that started at the Chief of 

Staff, went through TRADOC (United States Army Training and Doctrine Command), 

down to the CAC (Combined Arms Center) commander, and then to the college and it 

was on elevating stability operations to an equivalency with combat operations. I think 

that was what it was about. We had a big conference to start it off with and we all gave 

presentations. Someone was talking about how the State department needed to kick 

in more and do more and that the military was taking over and the State department 

representative says, “We cannot send you anybody. We do not have the money. We do 

not have the personnel. If you are going to get the job done, you are going to do it, the 

military. You have the people; you have the money.” 

Audience Member 

Just a comment if I could because I am going to present this afternoon, but in fact, 

it is my understanding since I have dug into the history of this, the State department 

willingly gave the policy planning functions over to the NSC and it is in that 1949 to 

1951 time frame which I think is incredibly important and then also to agree with the 

presenters on this, but to go back further, that shift in resources really began after the 

1947 National Security Act and then in the 1949 reforms. And what happened was a lot 

of the key committees wound up having seconded military officers even then coming 

over and filling the functions and the third piece, and I think it will be interesting when 

Mr. Kimmitt is here on Thursday to raise this question because we have discussed this 

before too, is how much the State Department as an organization, whether for orga90 
nizational culture, bureaucratic momentum, and so on has also continued that process 

of not stepping up to the plate when the opportunities were there. Again, it is my understanding in the reading of the history of this that the State department was offered 

coordination of intelligence role back when it was still seen as the entity that would 

be the primary coordinator in that 1947 debate and they said, “Thanks, but no thanks 

because it will make our State department functions more difficult.” So there are some 

interesting pieces there in terms of the State department also doing things along the 

way that helped put it on that path. 

Dr. Yates 

The politics of the National Security Act of 1947 are incredibly intricate and fascinating and you wonder how Forrestal got to be the first Secretary of defense. It was because he was one of them that complicated things and Truman said, “Okay, you made 

this mess, you can deal with it.” But you are absolutely right. 

Audience Member 

Gentlemen, just a comment. Not speaking for the Department of State or their ability 

to take on that increased role for stability and reconstruction, but it was kind of formalized within the last year or so with National Security Presidential Directive #44 in 

which he designated the Department of State as the lead for stability and reconstruction 

operations taking that whole of government approach to the interagency, kind of like 

what Goldwater-Nichols did for the whole of DOD approach. There are some growing pains with that. It is not fully fleshed out, but there is an Office of Stability and 

Reconstruction Coordinator at the Department of State and working closely with a lot 

of DOD agencies. 

Dr. Stewart 

And of course the first year after they created that, Congress zeroed out the budget to 

get back at them. It has gotten better, yes, but Congress is not thrilled with the whole 

idea. 

Audience Member 

Would you care to comment on one, Panama being a very strange case because you 

have the CINC (Commander in Chief) fighting for its own headquarters company. You 

do not normally have the CINC in the middle of the war zone. And the other problem 

is that there is no State department operational-level. It is either strategic-level or the 

Embassy which, in that country, is the tactical-level for us. So the missing operationallevel, which in Panama you really have because it is right there, but in the other cases 

you do not. Do you care to comment on those thoughts? 
Dr. Yates 

One thing in Panama, given the CINC’s regional responsibilities, with some reluctance 

they set up the Joint Task Force Panama (JTF Panama) to run the crisis on a day-today basis and to some degree, I would see that as an operational-level headquarters 

because under it you have various task forces that you would look for at the tacticallevel, but it was doing . . . the problem with that was you had SOUTHCOM ten minutes 

away micromanaging it and there was a lot of friction there, especially between the J3 

at SOUTHCOM and the J3 in JTF Panama. But that was the solution there. In terms 

of Washington, John has already mentioned that General Woerner dealing with Elliot 

Abrams who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, not the 

Secretary of State. 

Dr. Fishel 

And the other thing, Jeff, is as Larry certainly knows, the operational-level headquarters JTF Panama became largely overwhelmed by the crisis and even before Fred Woerner was relieved they had gone to the 18th Airborne Corps and asked for the creation 

of a JTF based around the Corps. Little known, but JTF Charley was in fact activated 

prior to General Woerner’s relief and then General Thurman re-activated his JTF side 

so that the operational-level headquarters actually was sitting at Fort Bragg for most of 

the time. I am not sure I would agree that an Embassy is really a tactical headquarters. 

I think it probably is, in and of itself, typically operational to regional strategic headquarters. That said, there is certainly something missing. The assistant secretaries for 

the regions in Washington simply cannot perform the function and part of that has to 

do with the fact that the Ambassadors do not work for the State department. They are 

personal representatives of the President and if they happen to be Foreign Service Officers, they technically resign from the State department for their period as an Ambassador. So essentially it is like dealing with the Chairman. You say you are in the chain of 

communication when you are talking to State, but not quite in the chain of command. 

92 
 

Panel 2—The Interagency Process: Southeast Asia
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

Counterinsurgency, the Interagency Process, and Malaya:

The British Experience
 

by
 

Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Ph.D.
 

University of Arkansas
 

In his seminal work Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya 

and Vietnam, Sir Robert Thompson laid down what he called the five basic principles 

of counterinsurgency. Rather than offering operational advice, each of Thompson’s 

five principles concerned governance: first, the government must have a “clear political 

aim” in defeating insurgencies; second, the government must “function in accordance 

with the law;” third, the government must have an overall plan; fourth, the government 

must “give priority to defeating the political subversion, not the guerillas;” and finally, 

during the guerilla phase of an insurgency a government must “secure its base areas 

first.”1 In the attainment of each of these principles, it was essential that there should 

be a “proper balance between the military and the civil effort, with complete coordination in all fields.”2 At the heart of any counterinsurgency strategy, the interagency 

process must function flawlessly. This was Thompson’s central message. 

If there was an individual in the western world qualified to determine such, it was 

Sir Robert Thompson. When he published Defeating Communist Insurgency in 1966, 

Thompson had only returned from South Vietnam a year earlier, in March 1965, where 

he had operated since September 1961 as head of the British Advisory Mission to 

Vietnam (BRIAM).3

 Prior to that, he had worked in various guises in British counterinsurgency in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, eventually reaching Permanent Secretary of 

Defence with the acting rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He had begun his time in the region as one of the legendary Chindits of Britain’s 3d Indian Infantry Division in Burma 

throughout the Second World War. 4 It was through his experiences in the Malayan 

Emergency that Thompson first developed his principles of counterinsurgency. It was a 

conflict which, unlike Vietnam, Thompson believed he had achieved considerable success in. Indeed, of all Britain’s small wars at the end of empire, from Palestine, Malaya, 

and Kenya to Cyprus, Aden, Dhofar, and Oman, it was in Malaya that the interagency 

process was most advanced, and in Malaya that the British were most successful at 

countering an insurgency. 

Malaya had been of interest to the British government since the earliest days of 

empire, when in the first years of the seventeenth century the newly formed English 
 

East India Company opened a trading post at the mouth of the Kedah River. Such 

trade was increased a century later, when between 1765 and 1800 the British government signed a number of treaties with the Sultan of Kedah that provided the British 

Penang Island and a strip of land opposite in exchange for an annual income payable 

to the Sultan. Following an invasion from Siam in 1821, the British were temporarily 

expelled from the island, but in 1894 a British consul returned with permission of the 

Siamese government and in 1909 Kedah was once again brought under direct British control with the signing of the Anglo-Kedah Treaty. Meanwhile, the British had 

captured Malacca from the Dutch on Malaya’s western coast in 1795. Expansion on 

the peninsula continued and in 1819 the British government signed a treaty with the 

ruler of Johore that gave the British the right to settle on Singapore Island. In 1867, 

Singapore was united with the west coast of Malaya to form the Crown Colony of the 

Straits Settlement.5 

From the Straits Settlement Colony, the British government was able to exercise 

considerable informal control over the ostensibly independent Malay States, signing 

treaties with Perak, Selangor, and Sungei Ujong in 1874 and Pahang in 1888, treaties 

through which a British Resident was appointed in each state whose mission was to 

replace the traditional feudal structure of Malay society with western law and political 

and economic norms. In 1895, these four states merged to form the First Federation 

of Malaya, with a central government in Kuala Lumpur. Further treaties establishing 

British Residents were signed with Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, and Perlis in 1910, 

followed by Johore in 1914. In each of these states, British engineers, doctors, and civil 

servants were seconded alongside the British Residents, each responsible to the British 

High Commissioner in Singapore.6 

Although unlike the Straits Settlement, the Malay States were not technically British colonial possessions, they were nonetheless an integral part of the British Empire, 

with the British Residents opening a Malayan railway system in 1884, clearing the 

swamps to prevent the spread of malaria in the late nineteenth century, introducing 

domestic and international flights with Empire Airways in the early twentieth century, 

and replacing coffee with rubber as the staple crop of the Malay economy. By the eve 

of the Second World War, Malaya (including the Straits Settlement and the Malay 

States) was exporting a quarter of a million tons of rubber, two and a half million gallons of latex, and 80,000 tons of tin and tin ore each year.7 The British and Malays 

were not the only peoples to inhabit the peninsula, however. To find workers for the 

rubber plantations and tin mines, the British had embarked upon a large-scale immigration scheme from China and India, the result being that by 1945, Malaya’s population of 5.3 million people included 49 percent Malay persons, 38 percent Chinese, 

and 11 percent Indians, together with 12,000 Europeans, most of whom were British. 

While the Chinese were willing to work for the British, they were indignant about being employed by Malays. Ethnic conflict thus became an ingrained aspect of Malayan 

society in the twentieth century.8 

94 
This Chinese separation from Malay culture and economics was further increased 

by the formation of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in 1930. Led from 1939 

by Lai Tek, the MCP played a decisive role against the Japanese army following the 

latter’s invasion and occupation of Malaya in December 1941. By 1945, the Malayan 

People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), as the communist guerilla force had become 

known, had grown to a strength of 7,000 men and was being directly supplied by the 

British from December 1943 onwards. Throughout these final two years of the Second 

World War, the British held numerous meetings with Lai Tek and provided the MCP 

with £3,000 a month to aid their anti-Japanese insurgency. Following the Japanese surrender, however, Lai Tek and the British war leaders had very different conceptions of 

what Malaya’s future would look like. 

Lai Tek had pledged to establish a communist republic, free of both Japanese and 

British control. The British, in contrast, were determined to regain control of their colony. Before they could do so, the MPAJA launched a final push against the Japanese. 

On September 8, 1945, they reoccupied Singapore and on September 28 they took 

from the Japanese the rest of the Malayan Peninsula. When the British government cut 

off funding for the MPAJA, staged a disbandment ceremony, and installed a British 

High Commissioner in December 1945, the MCP refused to acknowledge its authority 

to do so. The grounds for a communist insurgency were therefore laid. It was just three 

short years after this ceremony that the British government was once again embroiled 

in conflict in Malaya.9 

The Malayan Emergency, officially declared in June 1948, was at first waged by 

the British as a conventional war, with soldiers seeking to hunt down and contain the 

Chinese Malayan guerillas, now reconstituted as the Malayan People’s Anti-British 

Army (MPABA). The Malayan police force was not considered to have an operational 

role and the civil administration was left ignorant of military affairs. This was a campaign led by and carried out by the British Army, with limited support from the Royal 

Air Force and no input whatsoever from the various layers of civilian governance. 

By 1950, however, these methods seemed to be failing, with the MPABA holding its 

strength, its base of operations steadily increasing, and its having killed 850 Malay and 

European civilians, 325 Malay policemen, and 150 British soldiers. The British were 

not winning the war, they were losing it.10 It was time for a radical shake up of the way 

Britain’s counterinsurgency campaign had been run so far. 

The idea of a coordinated interagency command in Malaya was first proposed on 

February 23, 1950, when Sir Henry Gurney, the British high commissioner in Malaya, 

sent a telegram to Arthur Creech Jones, the colonial secretary. He suggested that he 

had “for some time” been considering appointing a single officer to “plan, co-ordinate 

and generally direct the anti-bandit operations of the police and fighting services.”11 

The reason, Gurney argued, was now that the conflict in Malaya had reached the stage 

of “protracted guerilla warfare” the civilian police commissioner was ill-equipped to 

direct operations, yet there was no other civil officer other than Gurney himself who 
had the authority to give directions to the army’s General Officer Commanding (GOC) 

and the air force’s Air Officer Commanding (AOC). Gurney therefore recommended 

that the government second to Malaya a high ranking military officer who could be 

appointed in a civil post with the following duties: 

He would be responsible for the preparation of [a] general plan for offensive action and 

the allocation of tasks to the various components of the security forces. In consultation 

with heads of the police and fighting services he would decide priorities between these 

tasks and general timing and sequence of their execution. He would exercise control 

through heads of police and fighting services and aim at achieving co-ordination and 

decentralisation by this means. . . . He would work directly under myself [British High 

Commissioner] and within the framework of the policy laid down by this Government. 

He would be in close touch with civil authorities responsible for essential features of 

the campaign, such as settlement and control of squatters, propaganda, immigration 

control and settlement of labour disputes, and would have [the] right to make representation to me in such matters affecting the conduct of [the] anti-communists campaign 

as a whole.12 

It was a position that was without precedent in British imperial experience, yet 

one that had been carefully thought through and had been designed by a man with the 

appropriate authority and experience; prior to taking the post of British high commissioner in Malaya in September 1948, Gurney had served as chief secretary in Palestine 

from 1946 to 1948, as colonial secretary in the Gold Coast from 1944 to 1946, and as 

chief secretary to the Conference of East African Governors from 1938 to 1944. There 

were few men in the British Empire with his experience of colonial governance, particularly during periods of insurgency such as had dogged his years in both Palestine 

and Malaya. 

Nonetheless, it was an inopportune time for Gurney to send his telegram. That day, 

a General Election had been held in the United Kingdom and Creech Jones had lost 

his parliamentary seat, at the same time automatically ceasing to hold his cabinet position. While the telegram had been copied to the prime minister, the war secretary, and 

the first lord of the admiralty, in the scramble of a tightly fought election in which the 

governing Labour Party performed poorly, the message of Gurney’s telegram was lost. 

Despite this, Gurney persevered, and on March 9, less than three weeks after the election, he telegrammed to the new colonial secretary, James Griffiths, outlining his plan, 

suggesting that a lieutenant-general (serving or retired) be appointed for a minimum of 

one year, and recommending that this position be titled the Director of Operations with 

the same civilian rank as the chief secretary. Gurney was even so bold as to suggest to 

Griffiths the wordings of the press release that could be issued to announce the post. 

Significantly, the final line of the proposed announcement read: “His primary function 

will be to secure full and effective co-ordination.”13 

Field Marshal Sir William Slim, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, suggested 

to the cabinet that they approach his good friend Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs, 

who had been in retirement in Cyprus since 1948. Briggs seemed the perfect candidate 

96 
 

 

for the position. Only fifty-five years of age, he had followed a distinguished military 

career spanning thirty-four years and culminating in command of the Indian Army’s 

5th Infantry Division in Burma from early 1944 to June 1945, where he had gained 

familiarity with jungle warfare.14 After initial hesitation, Slim managed to persuade 

Briggs to take up the post and on March 21, the government announced that the first 

Director of Operations for Malaya had been selected. Following a whirlwind series of 

meetings in London to explain and discuss the position, Briggs arrived in Kuala Lumpur on April 3, 1950.15 

The retired general wasted no time in coming to grips with the situation in Malaya. 

After a two-week tour of the colony, meeting with military, police, and civilian authorities, on April 16 Briggs issued Directive No.1, which laid out the future direction of 

his proposed policy, eventually becoming the cornerstone of British strategy in Malaya 

for the next decade. Effective June 1, a Federal War Council would be formed, chaired 

by the director of operations and including in its membership the chief secretary, the 

GOC, the AOC, the commissioner of police, and the secretary of defence. The role of 

the Federal War Council was to produce policy. Each state was then required to form a 

State War Executive Committee (SWEC), chaired by the resident commissioner of that 

state and with a membership of the British advisor in state, the state’s chief police officer, and the state’s senior army commander. The role of the SWEC was to implement 

the policy laid out by the Federal War Council. In each district within the state, a District War Executive Committee (DWEC) would be formed, mirroring the composition 

of the SWEC only with lower-level officials. In addition to the SWECs and DWECs, a 

Federal Joint Intelligence Advisory Committee was set up. Its purpose was to examine 

“ways and means of strengthening the intelligence and Police Special Branch organization to ensure that the mass of information which exists in the country becomes 

available and is sifted and disseminated quickly and at the right levels.”16 

The idea of the administrative hierarchy, as articulated by Briggs in Directive No.1, 

was that this “joint conception” would be “followed at all levels, with the Civil Administration, Police and Army working in the closest collaboration and using combined 

joint operations and intelligence rooms wherever practicable.”17 A smooth functioning 

of the interagency process lay at the heart of Briggs’ scheme for Malaya and was, in 

his mind, crucial for the successful operation of a counterinsurgency campaign. As 

such, within the SWECs and DWECs there could be no ranking of army and police 

personnel, with one claiming superiority over the other. Briggs made this very clear 

in his second directive, issued on May 12, where he explicitly stated: “It is immaterial 

whether the local military commander is a lieutenant-colonel and the local police officer is a sergeant or whether they are respectively a major and a superintendent; in each 

case they will establish a joint headquarters and will work in the closest cooperation 

also with the local administrative officer.”18 

Having established the administrative framework of the counterinsurgency campaign, Briggs—in coordination with the Federal War Council—turned to strategy and 
tactics, issuing on May 24 the “Federation Plan for the Elimination of the Communist 

Organisation and Armed Forces in Malaya,” referred to at the time and by historians 

since as the Briggs Plan. At the core of this plan was the idea that the British government needed to demonstrate “effective administration and control of all populated 

areas” and wrestle the initiative away from the communist guerillas. Essentially, the 

British had to demonstrate that the western way of life was more appealing and could 

offer a higher quality existence than the communist way of life. This would be done 

through a six-step process. First, security would be maintained on the ground and the 

British government would demonstrate through the use of the police and armed forces 

that it was firmly committed to protecting Malaya against both external and internal attack and disorder. Secondly, Malayan squatters would be resettled into compact 

groups, where they could more easily be protected by the British security forces and 

given social welfare. Thirdly, local administration would be strengthened, so that it 

would become more effective and efficient than anything the communists could offer. 

Fourthly, road communication would be provided in isolated areas to link all Malayan 

subjects to the British administrative structure. Fifthly, police posts would be set up in 

these isolated areas, both to protect the population and to show the flag. And finally, a 

concerted propaganda campaign would be launched to highlight the negatives of the 

communist insurgency and the positives of British governance.19 

Within this general framework, Briggs laid down four further objectives for his 

strategy: first, within the populated areas a “feeling of complete security” had to be 

built up, which would in turn lead to a “steady and increasing flow of information from 

all sources;” secondly, the MCP had to be broken up within the populated areas and denied access to greater Malayan society; thirdly, having been ejected from the populated 

areas, the insurgents would be isolated from their food and information supply; and 

finally, the insurgents would therefore have to attack the British security forces on their 

own ground, where they could be defeated without inflicting pain or inconvenience on 

the general population. With regards to the tactics used to implement this strategy, the 

police and army were tasked with working in coordination under the leadership of the 

SWECs and DWECs to create the feeling of security within populated areas, the army 

was tasked with establishing strike forces that could dominate the jungle within five 

hours journey either side of the populated areas, and the civil administration, supported 

by the police and army, would regroup or resettle a large number of Malayan squatters, 

with the resettlement program anticipated to be completed by the beginning of 1952. 

Briggs closed his plan with a warning that even when each of these successes was outwardly achieved, and when the population was securely resettled and under effective 

British administration and control, there could be a “rapid recrudescence of terrorist 

activity,” and therefore “the danger of relaxing security precautions and of prematurely 

withdrawing troops must be realized.”20 

Briggs stressed throughout that any operations undertaken by the army or police 

had to be under civil control, had to be within the law, and the purpose for which they 

were being conducted had to be clearly articulated to the local population. For that 

98 
 

reason, on July 4, 1950—just six weeks after the Briggs Plan had been formulated—he 

instructed the acting chief secretary in Malaya, M.V. Del Tufo, to articulate whom the 

enemy was in the Federation of Malaya Government Gazette with an explicit definition of terrorism. Following its publication, there could be no doubt of the British 

government’s target. A terrorist was any person who: 

(a) by the use of firearms, explosives or ammunition acts in a manner prejudicial to the 

public safety or to the maintenance of public order; 

(b) incites to violence or counsels disobedience to the law or to any lawful order by the 

use of firearms, explosives or ammunition; 

(c) carries or has in his possession or under his control any firearm, not being a firearm which he is duly licensed to possess under any written law for the time being in 

force; 

(d) carries or has in his possession or under his control any ammunition or explosives 

without lawful authority thereof; 

(e) demands, collects or receives any supplies for the use of any person who intends to 

or is about to act, or has recently acted, in a manner prejudicial to public safety for the 

maintenance of public order; and ‘terrorism’ shall have a corresponding meaning.21 

Briggs made it absolutely clear that the enemy was not only he who pulled the trigger, 

but also he or she who supplied the bullet for the gun, the food within the belly, or the 

bed at night. In so doing, he put the Malayan civilian population on notice that there 

could be no cooperation with the communist insurgents. 

The Briggs Plan was set into action immediately, with the senior police, army, and 

civil representatives of the SWECs and DWECs meeting daily and the whole membership of the committees meeting weekly.22 Their first task was to resettle the Malayan 

squatters, of whom there were upwards of 300,000. This was begun without delay and 

at the British cabinet’s Malaya committee meeting of July 14, the colonial secretary 

Arthur Griffiths was able to report that already 20,000 squatters had been resettled, 

and the SWECs, working in “complete coordination” with the police, military and civil 

authorities, had laid the groundwork for many more resettlements.23 By September 

22, half of all squatters in the populated South Johore province had been resettled,24 

and by February 15, 1951, the job of resettlement in the priority areas was more than 

half done, with 67,000 squatters resettled and 52,500 remaining.25 Once resettled, the 

squatters were incorporated into so-called “new villages,” where they were brought 

under British administration and given social welfare, such as housing, health care, and 

education. These new villages, run in the short-term by resettlement supervisors and in 

the long-term by assistant district officers, were protected by the Malayan police force 

so that their residents could be shielded “against Communist physical and intellectual 

attack and helped to become contented communities.” Once protected in this way, the 

superiority of British mores and administration would be self-evident and the communist menace in the colony would be defeated.26 
These new villages were the epitome of the Briggs Plan and demonstrated clearly 

the importance of the interagency process in countering insurgencies. The Federal War 

Council determined which areas of squatter populations were high priority for resettlement, based on their perceived vulnerability to communist ideology. Within these 

areas, the SWECs and DWECs selected the exact site for the new village. The army, 

supported by the police, cleared the site and ensured that there was no communist 

guerilla influence within five hours of the area. Once cleared, the army took a lesser 

role and the police became the lead agency in keeping the perimeter secure. The squatters themselves were moved by the police, with army protection and directed by civil 

administration, into the villages, to which new and modern roads were built. Within 

the villages, the civil administration worked with the villagers to establish schools, 

hospitals, cooperatives, and businesses. As the villagers began to trust British administration, and were in turn trusted by the British administrators, they were incorporated 

into an unarmed Home Guard that served alongside the Malay police force. Following 

an unarmed period of time in the Home Guard, the villagers were allocated shot guns 

for defense of their settlement and were considered loyal subjects of the British crown. 

At this point, the insurgency—in every sense of the word—had been broken.27 

On June 4, 1951, at the one year anniversary of the implementation of the Briggs 

Plan, Briggs, together with the high commissioner Sir Henry Gurney, composed for the 

cabinet’s Malaya committee a combined appreciation of the progress of the counterinsurgency campaign. They wrote that after a long, hard year, British success in Malaya 

had finally reached a “turning point,” with 240,000 squatters now resettled into new 

villages and generally doing well. In particular, the British policy of “committing them 

to our side by getting them to join our Home Guard organization, which they are doing 

in very great number[s], is bearing good fruit.” Furthermore, in the first six months of 

1951, there had been an 180 percent increase of communist guerilla surrenders and a 

42 percent increase of guerilla casualties, compared to only an 11 percent increase in 

security force casualties. Civilian deaths had been reduced by 3.5 percent and civilian 

injuries by 33 percent. The strategy of drawing the insurgents away from the civilian 

population was working and, as a consequence, those resettled were becoming more 

cooperative with British rule each day. The Briggs Plan was succeeding and the British 

were winning the war. Although the Emergency would continue for another nine years, 

interagency cooperation had been shown to be the only path forward for a successful 

counterinsurgency campaign.28 

The true test of this new approach came later that year, when on October 6, 1951, 

the communist guerillas killed Gurney in an ambush.29 Less than three weeks later, a 

new Conservative government came to power in Great Britain under Winston Churchill, 

following the defeat of Clement Attlee’s Labour government in a General Election held 

on October 25. With Gurney dead and a government run not by Attlee but by the more 

belligerent Churchill, the question was whether the interagency process would still be 

front and center of British strategy, or whether the army would once again be given 

primacy, with tougher measures called for against the communist insurgency and a corresponding drop in the input from the civil administration and police. 

100 
 

Shortly after Gurney’s murder, representatives from the Federal War Council, the 

SWECs, and the DWECs met on October 17 to discuss future British policy in Malaya. 

Briggs suggested that full executive authority in Malaya be delegated from the high 

commissioner to the director of operations, negating the position of chief secretary and 

placing the director of operations in complete charge of civil administration, the military, and the police force.30 To all intents and purposes, if Briggs’ advice was followed, 

Gurney’s successor as British high commissioner would be a mere figure head with no 

governmental responsibility, and the position of chief secretary would cease to exist. 

The new conservative colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, approved Briggs’ suggestion on November 1, just four days after taking over at the colonial office.31 

The director of operations now had full and undivided control of all emergency 

policy, strategy, and tactics in Malaya. It would not be the architect of this development, however, that was its main beneficiary. Briggs grew ill in November and retired 

on the twenty-seventh of that month, overcome by exhaustion. Within a few weeks, he 

was dead.32 His deputy, Sir Robert Lockhart, temporarily took on the new powers. The 

colonial secretary, arriving in Malaya on November 29 for his first visit, was dissatisfied with what he found. He believed that the figure-head high commissioner, by his 

very presence, undermined the authority that was vested in the director of operations. 

The only solution to this problem, he concluded, was to merge the two positions into a 

single all-powerful high commissioner, who would take on all the responsibilities and 

the position of the director of operations.33 

Lyttelton returned to the United Kingdom on December 21 after a month in Malaya and immediately met with Winston Churchill to persuade him of this viewpoint. The 

two men then discussed the new position with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, 

currently acting as the inspector-general of NATO’s European forces, who suggested 

General Sir Gerard Templer would be ideal. Templer, like Briggs, had a notable military career before him, being first commissioned in the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1916, 

becoming the army’s youngest lieutenant-general in 1942 in command of II Corps and 

eventually rising to become the director of military government in the British zone of 

occupied Germany. Churchill, leaving for his first official visit to the United States as 

the new prime minister, requested that Templer fly out to meet him, which he did on 

January 11, 1952. After a short and informal interview, Churchill invited Templer to 

take on the task in Malaya, which he immediately agreed to. Following a few weeks of 

preparation, Templer arrived in Kuala Lumpur on February 7 as the new British High 

Commissioner of Malaya and Director of Operations.34 

Templer had dictatorial powers in Malaya but he used them with caution. Following Briggs’ lead, he kept in place the administrative hierarchy of the Federal War 

Council, the SWECs, and the DWECs, and continued to hold the resettlement of squatters into new villages as the government’s highest priority in the fight against the insurgency. He went further than Briggs and Gurney, however, quickly determining that the 

key to an effective counterinsurgency strategy was sound intelligence and this could 

only be obtained through a coordinated approach. On February 13, therefore, after less 
than a week in Malaya, Templer wrote to Lyttelton, informing him that a new position, 

the director of intelligence, would be appointed, who would have “the right of direct 

access at any moment to [the] High Commissioner.” He would be given no executive 

control of any one intelligence agency, but would instead be responsible for coordinating the activities of police intelligence, naval intelligence, army intelligence, air force 

intelligence, and political intelligence. His role would include giving advice to each of 

these organizations, as well as being “completely responsible for collation and evaluation of all the intelligence available and for its presentation to those concerned in the 

proper form.”35 

By March 1952, at all levels of command in Malaya, in civil, police, military, and 

intelligence matters, the British High Commissioner had achieved absolute interagency 

coordination. Gurney, Briggs, and Templer had each realized that the key to defeating 

the communist insurgency was not an aggressive military offensive but rather a careful 

campaign to win over the civilian population. As Templer famously observed in 1952, 

“The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds 

of the people.”36 In Malaya, the British government took these words to heart and 

made them a creed. The consequence was that it was able to erase all communist influence and declare the Emergency over on July 31, 1960. Three years earlier, on August 

31, 1957, the British had granted independence to the Federation of Malaya in an orderly transition of power which kept Malaya in the British Commonwealth. Six years 

after independence, and three years after the close of the Emergency, the Federation of 

Malaya joined with the British colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore to 

form Malaysia, which like Malaya before it was an independent state within the British 

Commonwealth. Although Singapore was to secede in 1965, Malaysia has remained a 

stable state to the present day. For the remainder of the Cold War, it never again turned 

hot and British troops never again returned after their final departure in 1960.37 In 

Malaya, the British government had combated an insurgency and had won. It had done 

so, in large part, through an effective use of the interagency process. 

Notes 

1. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and 

Vietnam (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), 50-58. 

2. Ibid, 55. 

3. For more on Thompson’s time leading the British Advisory Mission to Vietnam, see Ian 

F.W. Beckett, “Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961­

1965,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, Volume 8, Issue 3 (Winter 1997), 41-63; and P. Busch, 

“Killing the ‘Vietcong’: The British Advisory Mission and the Strategic Hamlet Programme,” 

Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 25, Number 1 (March 2002), 135-162. 

4. For a firsthand account of Thompson’s life and career, see Sir Robert Thompson, Make 

for the Hills: Memories of Far Eastern Wars (London: Leo Cooper, 1989). 

5. Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth’s Wars, 1948-1966 (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 3-4. 

102 
6. Ibid, 4-6. 

7. Ibid, 6. 

8. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 60. 

9. For the origins of the communist insurgency in Malaya, see Richard Clutterbuck, Conflict 

and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia, 1945-1983 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 37­

41. 

10. Michael Dewar, Brush Fire Wars: Minor Campaigns of the British Army since 1945 (New 

York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 33. 

11. The National Archives [TNA], Foreign Office [FO] 371 / 84477, Telegram from Sir Henry Gurney, British High Commissioner to Malaya, to Arthur Creech Jones, Secretary of State 

for the Colonies, February 23, 1950. 

12. Ibid. 

13. TNA, FO 371 / 84477, Telegram from Sir Henry Gurney, British High Commissioner to 

Malaya, to James Griffiths, Secretary of State for the Colonies, March 9, 1950. The full text of 

the proposed announcement read as follows: “The Government of the Federation of Malaya has 

appointed (blank) as Director of Operations to plan, co-ordinate and generally direct anti-bandit 

operations of Police and fighting forces. The post is a civil one. The Director of Operations will 

be responsible for the allocation of tasks to various components of the Security Forces available for operations and for deciding, in consultation with heads of the Police Force and fighting 

services, the priorities between these tasks and general timing and sequence of their execution. 

His primary function will be to secure full and effective co-ordination.” 

14. Edgar O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948-1960 (Hamden, CT: 

Archon Books, 1966), 106. 

15. Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948-1960 (New York: Crane, 

Russak & Company, Inc, 1975), 235. 

16. TNA, Cabinet Office [CAB] 21 / 1681, Directive No. 1, Director of Operations, Malaya, 

April 16, 1950. 

17. Ibid. 

18. TNA, CAB 21 / 1681, Directive No. 2, Director of Operations, Malaya, May 12, 1950. 

19. TNA, CAB 21 / 1861, Federation Plan for the Elimination of the Communist Organisation and Armed Forces in Malaya, May 24, 1950. 

20. Ibid. 

21. Colonial Office [CO] 537 / 5984, Definition of Terrorism, laid down in the Federation 

of Malaya Government Gazette, July 13, 1950, No. 32, Vol. III, L.N. 302 in the Emergency 

(Amendment No 12) Regs, 1950. By command of M.V. Del Tufo, Acting Chief Secretary, July 

4, 1950. 

22. O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 107. 

23. TNA, CAB 21 / 1681, “Various Matters Discussed with the Authorities in Malaya,” memorandum by Arthur Griffiths, Secretary of State for the Colonies, circulated to the Malaya Committee of the Cabinet, July 15, 1950. 

24. TNA, CAB 21/ 1681, “The Present Situation in Malaya,” memorandum by Arthur 

Griffiths, Secretary of State for the Colonies, circulated to the Malaya Committee of the Cabinet, September 22, 1950. 
25. Progress was significantly slower in the nonpriority areas, where 50,000 squatters had 

been resettled but 280,000 remained. CAB 21 / 2884, Sir Harold Briggs, Director of Operations, “Progress Report on Situation in Malaya,” February 15, 1951. 

26. TNA, CO 1022 / 32, Sir Harold Briggs, Director of Operations, Malaya Directive No. 13: 

Appendix A: “Administration of Chinese Settlements,” February 26, 1951. 

27. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, 75. 

28. TNA, CAB 21 / 2884, Sir Harold Briggs, Director of Operations, and Sir Henry Gurney, 

British High Commissioner in Malaya, “Combined Appreciation of the Emergency Situation,” 

circulated to the Malaya Committee of the Cabinet, June 4, 1951. 

29. Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs: The Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 (New 

York: Weybright and Talley, 1971), 130-132. 

30. TNA, CO 1022 / 7, Telegram from the Federation of Malaya (unsigned) to Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, November 1, 1951. 

31. Ibid. Lyttelton was named as Colonial Secretary on October 27, two days after the General Election had taken place. 

32. Barber, The War of the Running Dogs, 141. 

33. Ibid, 141-143. 

34. John Cloake, Templer: Tiger of Malaya: The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer 

(London: Harrap, 1985), 201-209. 

35. TNA, CO 1022 / 51, Telegram from General Sir Gerald Templer, High Commissioner, to 

Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, February 13, 1952. 

36. Quoted in the page of Barber, The War of the Running Dogs. 

37. For more on the aftermath of the Malayan Emergency and the formation of Malaysia, see 

Clutterback, Conflict and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia, chapters 15-20. 

104 
Panel 2—The Interagency Process: Southeast Asia
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

Counterinsurgency, the Interagency Process, and Vietnam:

The American Experience
 

by
 

Jeffrey Woods, Ph.D.
 

Arkansas Tech University
 

The American military and civilian officers involved in the counterinsurgency effort in South Vietnam, represented a myriad of bureaucratic cultures and interests. Some 

were conventional soldiers, trained to fight the North Vietnamese regular army. Others 

were special forces, proficient in counterguerilla tactics. Some were diplomats who 

had language skills and a deep understanding of the Vietnamese history and culture. 

Others were spies, skilled in intelligence trade craft. Some were agricultural, medical, 

or propaganda experts. Many were a mix of all of the above. Some served huge bureaucracies, others small. Some had their funding subject to strict public oversight; others 

spent money with little supervision. Some worked in contested areas, others in regions 

almost completely pacified. 

Communication, cooperation, and coordination of these men and their agencies 

proved difficult from the beginning of the American advisory effort in Vietnam. Though 

they shared the common goal of defeating the Communist insurgents and building a 

viable non-Communist South Vietnamese government, their means often ran at such 

cross purposes that they were conveyed to their Vietnamese counterparts as fundamental, even irreconcilable political differences. A formal structure to better coordinate the 

activities of the various agencies implemented in 1967, helped to unify the message, 

but by that point the rifts were already entrenched and the opportunity for a war changing, unified effort had past.1 

Mao Zedong famously tutored his guerillas that they were fish that depended on the 

water of the population for their survival. The Viet Cong (VC) adopted Mao’s wisdom. 

Their primary goal throughout the war was to win the people, especially the majority 

rural peasantry, to the Communist cause. From the beginning, American counterinsurgency experts recognized this “people’s war” as the conflict’s center of gravity, and 

stressed the need to establish the authority of the South Vietnamese government in the 

countryside. They would deprive the VC of the water in which they swam. Establishing government authority, however, proved no easy task. Though recruited, trained, 

and supplied by the North, the VC were Southerners with kinship and friendship ties 

within the communities in which they operated. The South Vietnamese government, 
on the other hand, routinely deployed forces from the outside. Government officials, 

in addition, were often corrupt and unpopular. The exposing, capturing, and killing of 

VC by the government or its allied forces was, therefore, a complicated and potentially counterproductive activity. Security measures had to be offset with economic 

and social programs and carefully balanced for each of the various local, regional, and 

national South Vietnamese political environments.2 

From the first days of the American involvement in the Vietnam conflict, counterinsurgency and pacification went hand in hand. Civic and political action had to be 

coordinated with military operations. The group originally deployed to oversee that coordination was the Saigon Military Mission (SMM). SMM was led by pacification and 

counterinsurgency guru Ed Lansdale who was fresh from helping Ramon Magsaysay 

build an army, suppress the Huk insurgency, and establish a government in the Philippines. Lansdale’s SMM was CIA funded and administered, but it was independent 

of the Saigon Station. The members of the small twelve man SMM team, including 

Lansdale, were seconded to the CIA from the military or were given positions in the 

military as cover. 

From 1954 to 1956, the overall American advisory mission was small enough that 

interagency coordination of counterinsurgency and pacification operations could be 

handled by the SMM; nevertheless, even then it was clear that serving the missions of 

the CIA and United States Army in support of a new leadership under Ngo Dinh Diem 

was politically complicated. Diem was Catholic in a country that was 90 percent Buddhist. He was virtually unknown as a public figure, especially when compared to Ho 

Chi Minh. He led a government that favored the urban affluent classes over the rural 

peasantry. He was an anti-French nationalist, but his army’s officers were recruited 

from the ranks of soldiers who had served under the hated French. And he faced a 

possible North Vietnamese invasion as well as the stay-behind Viet Minh insurgency. 

SMM drew on Lansdale’s experience in the Philippines, established PSYOP and intelligence commands, set up a civic action campaign, and began training programs to 

make the Vietnamese army and civil administrators more responsive to the peasants’ 

needs. Lansdale also confronted or co-opted Diem’s rivals in the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, 

and Binh Xuyen sects. In the process, however, Lansdale alienated the French, who, 

though defeated by the Viet Minh and in the process of withdrawing from the country, 

hoped to retain some of its influence in Vietnam. France used its leverage as a key 

American ally to convince American embassy officials that Diem was too weak a reed 

to rely on. Lansdale ultimately had to exploit his friendship and direct communication 

channel with CIA head Allen Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster 

Dulles, to convince the Eisenhower administration not to abandon Diem as he consolidated power through 1955. 

With Diem firmly established as the American backed leader of South Vietnam, 

the SMM was disbanded in 1956. The CIA continued to run counterinsurgency and 

pacification operations but mainly in small scale experiments like the Civilian Irregu106 
lar Defense Group (CIDG) in the central highlands. This experiment and others like 

it were ad hoc and relied on local forces rather than the South Vietnamese Army. The 

army had been trained by American military advisors as regular conventional forces 

capable of withstanding an invasion from the North. With CIA help, Diem launched 

his version of counterinsurgency in the strategic hamlet program, where communities 

were moved to barbed wire enclosed compounds that could be cut off from the VC, 

defended, and controlled. Strategic hamlets, needless to say, made as many enemies 

as friends for the government. CIDG and the other local projects initiated by the CIA, 

on the other hand, were generally better received. They relied on what Saigon Station 

Chief Bill Colby called the “three selfs:” self-defense, self-development, and self-government. In the case of CIDG, specifically, the montagnard tribesmen of the central 

highlands, who resented the South Vietnamese government intrusions almost as much 

as the VC, were allowed to keep arms to defend themselves and maintain their relative 

political autonomy in exchange for their loyalty to Diem in fighting the VC. CIDG 

fought well against the VC, but as their military prowess grew, the regular army became suspicious of their motives. Diem eventually downsized the program. Like the 

SMM, the CIA backed CIDG program revealed underlying competing loyalties among 

the American advisory agencies that translated into political rivalries for the South 

Vietnamese. Where the CIA invested in irregular force programs like CIDG that bolstered local autonomy and decentralized power, the Army invested in regular military 

programs that bolstered a national sovereignty and centralized government. 

The American presence in Vietnam increased from a couple of thousand advisors 

in the late Eisenhower era to over 20,000 in the Kennedy era. In those years, counterinsurgency and pacification efforts were divided among a number of different agencies. They were an alphabet soup of abbreviations and acronyms. The MAAG (the US 

Military Assistance and Advisory Group) and then MACV (the US Military Assistance 

Command, Vietnam) continued to provide the regular force training of the Vietnamese 

army and also from time to time supplemented their firepower needs. Political and economic components, irregular force training and the intelligence programs that provided 

the crucial links between combat and civil action planning, were continued by the CIA 

but were also taken up by several other agencies. USAID (the United States Agency for 

International Development), and its various iterations from IVS (International Volunteer Services) to USOM (United States Operation Mission), provided money, training, 

and logistical support for building economic infrastructure, roads, bridges, schools, 

hospitals, agricultural training centers, and the like. USAID also provided civil administration training for police forces and other civil administrators. USIS (United 

States Information Service) which became USIA (United States Information Agency) 

and eventually, in Vietnam, JUSPAO (the Joint US Public Affairs Office) provided 

communications as well as information, propaganda, and education programs. Counterinsurgency and pacification workers increasingly came from USAID and USIA after 

1963 when the CIA was forced to withdraw from many of its covert operations and 

refocus on intelligence collection under Operation SWITCHBACK. The State Department contributed its share of key embassy personnel as well. 
Each of the agencies provided much needed expertise, but cooperation could be 

sporadic and again the different organizational cultures, the different ways the agencies 

defined means and ends, often resulted in complications for the Vietnamese, sometimes 

even disaster. Mike Benge, a former Marine and agricultural expert who worked for 

IVS and then USAID in the central highlands, remembered in 1964 working with some 

nuns building a church near Loc Tien. He received word that some nearby villages had 

been bombed, so with the nuns’ help, he picked up some food and medical supplies 

and went to the villages to distribute it. Visiting the province chief, Benge found out 

that the local USAID representative had had some success providing the district with 

money for rice, salt, fish and other supplies as part of the pacification effort, but that 

the villages had been bombed not by the VC but by allied aircraft acting on three month 

old reports of a VC PSYWAR team operating in the area. The lack of coordination 

between the intelligence, military, and civilian pacification components was tragic, but 

worse yet was USAID’s reaction when Benge reported the incident. Instead of rewarding Benge for his identification of a clear communication breakdown, USAID banned 

him from the region. His complaints had made too many political enemies in the GVN 

province hierarchy.3 

The struggle for a coordinated counterinsurgency and pacification was at its most 

difficult as the American military presence grew exponentially in the mid-1960s. The 

American military’s advisory roll had been from the beginning larger than the civilian, but with the rapid military escalation from just over 20,000 in 1963 to some half 

a million in 1968, the American armed forces further dwarfed all the other agencies. 

MACV gained substantial control over the transportation systems, the buildings, the 

money, the guns, and the influence within the government in Saigon. Furthermore 

General William Westmoreland’s attrition strategy relegated the counterinsurgency 

and pacification effort to a secondary role. The number and kinds of irregular forces 

grew overall from 1964 to 1966 but did not gain in proportion to the regular military. 

Neglect and mismanagement threatened to take the “other war” completely out of the 

strategic equation. 

It was at this low point, however, that the push for coordinated national political, 

economic, intelligence, and political campaign was renewed. While agency cooperation under a unified pacification and counterinsurgency strategy had been hard to come 

at the national level, there were some important examples of success at the province, 

district, and village level. Led primarily by the civilian agencies and the local Vietnamese they supported, experiments in Long An, Kien Hoa, Hau Ngia, and Quang 

Ngai became models for new national programs. In Long An a USIS official named 

Frank Scotton organized survey teams that went from village to village learning about 

the community’s particular needs and mapping its unique political environment. Team 

members lived and slept in the villages and questioned every family so as not to make 

any one a target for VC or GVN reprisals. Teams then coordinated CIA, USAID or 

MACV resources to provide the village with resources and security in the most politically sensitive way. Scotton had learned on a previous tour in Binh Dinh, while working with a Vietnamese army officer Nguyen Thuy, that it was most effective if his men 

108 
helped the peasants plant crops, treat the sick, and build new schools, leaving it to the 

VC to condemn those projects and initiate hostilities. Communities that came under 

attack invariably rallied to denounce the VC and in many instances even helped repel 

the enemy. On some occasions VC even defected. In 1966 Scotton’s methods became 

one of the cornerstones of the training curriculum for the Rural Development Cadre, a 

new national South Vietnamese force used for civic action and political indoctrination 

in the countryside.4 

Boasting its own successful programs, certain members of the American military 

joined the civilian irregulars in calling for new national pacification and counterinsurgency efforts. Perhaps the most famous of the military efforts were the Marine 

Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) that helped pacify several areas of I Corps near the 

border between North and South Vietnam. CAPs lived and worked in the communities 

they were helping to pacify and, as a result, like Scotton’s teams, came to know the 

unique problems of the village and were better able to coordinate efforts to provide for 

specific needs. The success of CAPs and other pacification programs eventually led 

Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson and then General Creighton Abrams, Westmoreland’s deputy, to advocate a major reassessment of America’s Vietnam strategy. 

Johnson and Abram’s study, “A Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam,” known as PROVN, was published in March 1966. PROVN declared that there was “no unified effective pattern” to American actions and called for 

a greater emphasis on pacification in the allied war effort. Under the advice of returned 

counterinsurgency and pacification guru, Edward Lansdale, Ambassador Henry Cabot 

Lodge quickly added his support and helped persuade President Lyndon Johnson to 

make the PROVN arguments to the South Vietnamese leadership at the 1966 Honolulu 

Conference. The most important force behind the new initiative, however, was Robert 

J. Komer a smart, intense, ambitious man who had been running the Middle East shop 

in the NSC. Komer and CIA Far East Division chief, William Colby, made sure that 

field reports from counterinsurgency and pacification officers like Scotton made it to 

Washington around the MACV command who typically weeded such reports out.5 

Shortly after the conference in Hawaii, President Johnson named William J. Porter 

to be deputy ambassador to Vietnam and head of the revitalized pacification program, 

but in the latter half of 1966, Komer persuaded the White House to turn the operation 

over to him. Komer gave the program a new title, CORDS, short for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, and began building the first combined 

civilian-military command in US history. CORDS encompassed all of the typical pacification activities: economic improvement, security, and political development, and its 

officers held both military and civilian ranks. Province and district level advisors were 

recruited from MACV, USAID, USIA, CIA, and the State Department, and CORDS 

acted as a liason between those agencies. Special forces were also heavily represented, 

especially in the Provincial Reconaissance Units and Phoenix programs that were designed specifically to root out the VC infrastructure. By early 1967, the coordination of 

the American counterinsurgency and pacification effort had reached its apex. 
CORDS offered many solutions, but it was never the panacea its supporters had 

hoped it would be. First, the organizational cultures of the military and civilian agencies continued to cut divergent paths in the Vietnamese political landscape. Coordinating pacification forces and regular military forces remained particularly difficult. Second, the 1968 Tet offensive changed everything. Tet left the VC decimated, but it also 

sapped the political will of the United States to continue the war. With tragically bad 

timing, Washington made its first steps toward Vietnamization at the same time Hanoi 

chose to deemphasize the guerilla insurgency in favor of a purely political campaign in 

the South that would be backed by conventional North Vietnamese regular army operations. CORDS officials recognized the opportunity to fill the political vacuum while 

the Viet Cong were weak, but Saigon refused to act quickly enough. Thus CORDS was 

never really tested in the context in which it promised the most success. 

As much as some would have liked it to, CORDS could not replace the existing advisory agencies in Vietnam. The best it could offer was a bureaucratic overlay 

that facilitated better communication. Personnel from USAID, USIA, CIA, State, and 

MACV seconded to CORDS experienced generally improved coordination, but the different agency cultures, their varied means of fighting the Communists, still remained 

a barrier to unified action. The rift between regular military forces and the civilians 

and irregulars focusing on counterinsurgency and pacification, in particular, remained 

a problem. Ken Quinn, a foreign service officer with no military training who served 

four tours with CORDS in the Mekong Delta, posed the dilemma this way: “There was 

always a little cultural difference between civilian and military [agencies], but one of 

the great lessons of CORDS was that it was not just the different colors of your clothes 

but where you sat that made a difference in your attitudes. The army guys who were in 

the MACV team and I generally saw eye to eye, but it was a different view than army 

guys in same town who were advisors to the ARVN 9th division. The two groups saw 

different wars from different perspectives with different counterparts.”6 

Bruce Kinsey, a foreign service officer working for CORDS in Long An, recalled 

similar problems. Despite generally good relations between personnel working for 

CORDS, he remembered miscommunications with the regular military that had very 

real and tragic consequences: 

There was a village that I worked with like crazy. I had a cadre team in there. We 

strung up barbed wire and threw down tin cans on the perimeter so if the guerrillas 

came in you could hear them more easily. And we set up a school and the VC blew it 

up. It was fighting tooth and nail. The third brigade of the ninth division came in and 

set up at the end of the road that went through this hamlet. They ran these huge deuceand-a-half trucks through there full of garbage, and ammunition, and god knows what 

else. They were scared to death, so they ran them at fifty miles an hour. They killed like 

eleven Vietnamese kids. I talked to those people until I was blue in the face. And I put 

up signs saying, “US Drivers—Friendly Hamlet—Slow Down” and they wouldn’t.7 

Despite these ongoing issues, CORDS successfully unified the various agencies’ 

efforts in many key regions, especially in the months following Tet. In Tay Ninh Prov110 
ince, Terry Lambacher, an ex-Green Beret who served a combat tour in Vietnam before 

joining USAID, was among the many CORDS district representatives who took advantage of the post-Tet political vacuum. When the local VC leadership exposed itself 

in the Tet attacks, Lambacher’s teams, including CIA, Special Forces, and Phoenix 

personnel, were able to pinpoint the top ten VC leaders in the district and target them 

individually. In each case they used the technique that effectively neutralized the enemy while still maintaining community support. In some cases they embarrassed family 

members into turning in VC relatives. In other cases they deployed national police to 

make arrests. In others still, they lured the Communists into firefights. In all cases they 

made sure the South Vietnamese government took the credit for the operations and 

government officials justified their actions to the community. Lambacher made sure 

the district chief, in particular, received most of the accolades. That favor could then 

be used as leverage in convincing the chief to limit corruption. As Lambacher remembered it, CORDS went beyond “coordination,” and even beyond “joint” action. It was 

a unified counterinsurgency effort that was winning the war in his district.8 

Larger political forces, however, intervened. Nguyen Van Thieu, who had joined 

with his political rival Nguyen Cao Ky to wrest control of the government in 1965, had 

been chosen chief of state in September 1967 having gained only 35 percent of the vote 

in an election that was only marginally free and fair. Just months into his presidency, 

Tet constituted an early referendum on Thieu both in South Vietnam and in the United 

States. Thieu was slow to act, showing more concern for his urban constituency and 

his personal power than for the “people’s war.” It took American leaders one hundred 

days to convince Thieu just to move his forces back into the countryside after Tet, and 

when he finally did, the soldiers arrived as occupiers rather than pacifiers. A full six 

months after Tet, Thieu finally accepted a CORDS proposal to initiate an Accelerated 

Pacification Campaign (APC), a plan designed to pacify 1000 new hamlets and meet 

new Phoenix quotas for eliminating VC infrastructure. Once implemented, though, the 

Accelerated Pacification Campaign bypassed real rural political development for short 

term security and control measures. The government’s return to the countryside became just a land grab to be used as leverage in negotiating a settlement with Hanoi and 

creating a decent interval under which American withdrawal and Vietnamization could 

take place. Thieu effectively abandoned the people’s war just as the Communists, so 

weakened militarily by Tet, could only mount political operations in the South. The 

South Vietnamese government had belatedly gained a greater physical presence in the 

countryside, but the VC were filling the political vacuum.9 

CORDS continued through 1972, but Thieu’s continuing reluctance to launch political operations devastated morale. A small group of American pacification and counterinsurgency experts that included Ed Lansdale, John Paul Vann, and Daniel Ellsberg 

advocated finding a leadership alternative to Thieu, one that could negotiate a compromise that might save South Vietnam. They found a champion in Vietnamese national 

assemblyman Tran Ngoc Chau. Chau had long experience studying guerilla tactics. 

He had been a guerilla himself with the Viet Minh, studied American tactics based on 

Ed Lansdale’s experience in the Philippines at Ft. Benning, and saw firsthand British 
counterinsurgency on two trips to Malaya during the Communist crisis of the 1950s. 

As a province chief in Kien Hoa, he had collaborated with Rufus Phillips, a Lansdale disciple and USOM advisor, in systematizing a pacification formula that became 

among the most effective in Vietnam. Chau’s Census-Grievance program was at the 

heart of the formula. It was a formal census consisting of interviews with the heads of 

households about local social, economic, and security conditions. Census-Grievance 

teams, recruited from the local population, elicited complaints about both the VC and 

the GVN, which allowed Chau to custom design civic action, encourage citizen loyalty 

through responsive government, and leverage intelligence for surgical strikes against 

the VC. Chau brought his Census Grievance program to the national Rural Development Cadre training center at Vung Tau where he briefly served as head of instruction. 

Returning to Kien Hoa to begin a career in politics, Chau was elected a national assemblyman and mounted a significant opposition to Nguyen Van Thieu. In the words 

of Historian John Prados, Chau would be “among the first to understand the impact 

of Tet would be to move the United States to search for a way out of the war.” Chau 

would push for “reasonable negotiations and a settlement while Saigon still retained 

bargaining power.” Thieu, of course, worked to prevent any such settlement. The president eventually had Chau arrested for treason on trumped up charges that Chau was 

conspiring with his brother, a Communist agent, to overthrow the government. Ironically it was CORDS head Bill Colby, CIA Saigon Station Chief Ted Shackley, and 

Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker who signed off on Chau’s arrest. For Chau’s supporters in CORDS, it was the last and most disastrous of the American political choices. 

As Doug Ramsey, a USOM worker who would be captured in 1966 and spend seven 

years in a VC prison camp, put it, the United States ultimately supported “traditional 

bribe-soliciting and patronage dispensing military politicians like Nguyen van Thieu . . 

. instead of socialist-leaning counterinsurgency and village administration experts like 

Tran Ngoc Chau.” They had lost the key ingredient in winning over the rural peasantry, 

a “solid, honest, civilian democratic modernizer” in the presidency.10 

One of the crucial things we can learn from the Americans who were on the front 

lines coordinating the counterinsurgency war in Vietnam is that success and failure 

is sensitively dependent on political conditions. That is no revelation in and of itself. 

The inherently political nature of warfare has been recognized in military doctrine 

from Sun Tsu to Clausewitz to Mao. But the front line American counterinsurgency 

warriors in Vietnam offer us a glimpse at the mind boggling complexity of the political contexts in which they had to operate. Though they all shared the common goal 

of defeating the Communist insurgents and building a viable non-Communist South 

Vietnamese government, the bureaucratic cultures of the agencies they served and the 

varied tactics they employed translated into fundamental, even irreconcilable political 

differences when applied in country. Where some encouraged bottom up, rice roots, 

local self defense, and decentralized control, others supported top down, national army, 

and centralized authority from Saigon. Both approaches were necessary in fighting the 

insurgency in the South and preventing an invasion from the North. But the separate 

paths fostered factionalism that in part prevented South Vietnam from achieving a 

112 
decisive political victory in the countryside. When the American advisors achieved a 

new level of pacification and counterinsurgency coordination with CORDS, it was too 

little, too late. For all its potential, CORDS could not completely erase pre-existing 

agency rivalries, could not overcome the new strategic reality caused by Tet, and could 

not find the crucial balance of local and national government. 

Notes 

1. The secondary literature on the counterinsurgency and pacification campaigns in Vietnam 

is extensive. Most important for this study were Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2006); Richard 

Hunt, Pacification: The Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder: Westview Press, 

1995); Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (New York: Random House, 1988); Zalin B. Grant, 

Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam (New 

York: W. W. Norton, 1991); John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya to Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); William Colby and James McCargar, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year 

Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989); John Prados, Lost Crusader: 

The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); 

Lewis Sorley, Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command 

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999); Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet 

American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988). 

2. “Insurgency” is most often defined as a revolt against an established authority or government. Definitions of established authority and government could vary wildly among different 

people at different times and in different regions in South Vietnam. In some areas of the South, 

it could be argued that the Viet Minh and then the Viet Cong held more authority for a longer 

time than the GVN. 

3. Author Interview with Mike Benge, Telephone, 10/30/06. 

4. Author Interview with Frank Scotton, October 12-14, 2007, Deland Florida; Author Interview with Frank Scotton, April 8-9, 2008, Fayetteville Arkansas. 

5. Author Interview with Jean Sauvageot, January 5, 2008, Washington, DC; Lewis Sorley, 

Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 238. 

6. Author Interview with Kennth Quinn, November 7, 2007, Telephone. 

7. Author Interview with Bruce Kinsey, September 20, 2007, Telephone. 

8. Author Interview with Terry Lambacher, October 16, 2007, Telephone. 

9. Merle Pribbenow, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002). 

10. Tran Ngoc Chau, Unpublished Memoir Provided to the Author; Interview with Jean Sauvageot, 1/5/08, Washington, DC; Douglas K. Ramsey, Moth to the Flame (unpublished memoir, 

2006), IID, 3, IVC 11-15, 31-35, 45-49, IVD 22. 

Panel 2—The Interagency Process: Southeast Asia
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Ph.D.
 

Jeffrey Woods, Ph.D.
 

Moderated by Donald P. Wright, Ph.D.
 

Dr. Wright 

I will start off with the first question. What came to mind, as I was listening to both 

of your papers, has something to do with the work that we do at CSI and all the attention paid to both Afghanistan and Iraq. I am curious to know, when you looked at the 

interagency processes, both Malaya and Vietnam, to what degree did these processes 

feed into a better intelligence effort? There is a lot of discussion right now about the 

creation of fusion cells in Iraq and the ability to pull in the CIA, coalition intelligence 

agencies, you name it, all kinds of acronyms together, and unless you do this you are 

not going to really be able to create a coordinated effort against insurgents as well as a 

larger, something they call a “pacification effort,” if you will. So any comments on that 

as you looked at your particular cases? 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

One of my favorites, which I had to cut. The time restraints led to that. Briggs actually 

became ill in November 1950 and had to leave his position as Director of Operations. 

He died shortly thereafter and Gerald Templer came in. Templer looked at the situation 

in Malaya and said what Briggs has started is fantastic as far as the new villages are 

concerned and Briggs is spot on as far as drawing the commies and insurgents away 

from the villages to take on the British Army and isolate the position so that the civilian 

inhabitants would be spared the warfare, but he said there was no consideration given 

in Briggs’ plan to intelligence coordination. So shortly after Templer took over in 1952 

he established intelligence centers throughout Malaya with the intention being that they 

had army representatives, RAF (Royal Air Force) representatives, navy representatives 

in coastal states, police representatives, civil administration representatives, and those 

intelligence networks would have liaisons throughout the Malaysian community where 

information would be brought into the same building with police officers sitting next 

to an army officer sitting next to a civil servant sitting next to an RAF officer where 

they would all be reading the same intelligence and sharing the same information, and 

it could then be taken out to the plans on the ground. 
Dr. Woods 

I hate to be flippant and too general about this, but Vietnam was about families. Families are so important so this local-level approach, interagency approach, you do something good for the community, build them a road, build them a school. You make the 

Viet Cong into the enemy by having to attack that. It makes you friends. It makes you 

people that you would talk to and chances are they are going to be related to somebody who is a communist, like Chau himself. This guy who was championed by some 

of these CORDS officials; his two brothers were communist intelligence agents. He 

spoke with them a couple of times, in 1965 and 1966, and Thieu used that as evidence 

that he was conspiring to overthrow the government when really it was just the opposite. He was gaining information from those guys. He was using it against them so it 

was getting into that family structure and I think you cannot do that just with what he 

can do with guns. You can provide security for people which they can appreciate, but 

it is almost like you have to become part of the family. You have to be there with them. 

You have to know enough about them to have a relationship that allows that kind of 

intelligence to happen. So you need CIA, you need USAID, and you need those other 

agencies that have expertise in doing that, and plus who have the language skills and 

know the historical culture well enough to be able to do that. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for Dr. Woods. I understand your approach to Thieu. He is not exactly 

a lovable character, but at the same time, after Tet he did, with some prodding, move 

out into the countryside, and I am not sure, you may be overstressing the fact that he 

abandoned the people’s war. This was after all the man who, on our advice, set up the 

People’s Self-Defense Force Militia going beyond the regional forces, popular forces 

sending, literally, hundreds of thousands of small arms out to the countryside. Again, 

not entirely trusting them, but willing to take the chance with them and by the end of 

about two years the People’s Self-Defense Forces were fairly strong, fairly trained, and 

fairly well armed. This is not the act of somebody that fears that all those people are 

going to come up and rally against him. So I think he was willing to take a few more 

risks than you have given him credit for, a combination of that program and the Revolutionary Development Program which continued to expand dramatically in 1969 and 

1970, I think, indicates that he was continuing to see the possibilities in mobilizing the 

people. Any thoughts? 

Dr. Woods 

I think that is fair. I am generalizing a bit from having to do the paper in this context, 

but it did take him a hundred days just to get out of the cities after Tet. And it took 

him a full six months to approve something like the APC (Accelerated Pacification 

Campaign) which could have been done immediately afterwards. Well, maybe not im116 
mediately, but faster than six months for sure. What I think is that that time was crucial, 

particularly if you are going to have an influence both on Vietnamese public opinion 

and American public opinion about those things. If you can fill that gap quickly you 

might have an effect on the political ramifications of Tet. Now, maybe not; we do not 

know. We did not test that. It did not happen. 

Audience Member 

Well, attacks continued into May. So he was still on the reaction side of the house, but 

I understand your point. 

Dr. Woods 

Not quite as severe attacks. 

Audience Member 

Thank you. 

Audience Member 

If I got it right, this guy Briggs shows up, a retired military guy. Things are not going 

well. He runs around for two weeks, comes up with a structure which seems to work 

until the end. Then they do some studies and then within a month or two he comes up 

with a plan which pretty much works until the end. 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

Yes, that is correct. 

Audience Member 

I think that is pretty amazing that that happened. 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

We have to be careful because, of course, the war did not end immediately after Briggs 

came in. 
Audience Member 

That is where I was going actually. You said by 1952 the coordination was absolute and 

very good, and I do not doubt that, but even given all that, the right structure and the 

right approach, it still took another seven or eight years to make it happen. 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

Yes, absolutely, and when Briggs actually became sick and then died, he was extremely 

pessimistic upon his death bed because out of the 300,000 Malayan squatters that were 

present when Briggs’ plan was implemented only 25,000 had been resettled and he 

had originally laid down that the Briggs Plan would be completely implemented by 

the end of 1952. As it was, the settlement did not take place until the end of 1954 so it 

was almost double the time frame that Briggs had expected because of the usual sort 

of delays every general imagines with implementing that sort of plan. But what we did 

have, and I can give you the exact information if you need it. Again, I skipped over this 

part for the sake of time. Although the emergency did not end until 1960, we do have 

a gradual betterment of the situation in certain provinces. So by 1957, the Federation 

of Malaya was granted independence so we still have a counterinsurgency coming and 

going for another three years after that. From a British perspective there was an emergency going on, but from which the command of the forces and interagency processes 

were transferred over to the Malayan government. That was six years after the Briggs 

Plan was implemented. But again, you are absolutely right. The British forces and the 

British administration found a hierarchical structure that worked and found a way to 

coordinate them. Even within that coordination, as Briggs himself said, this is going 

to take time, even when it appears that the Malayan populations are settled, are peaceable, or are in favor of some sort of British administrative structures, we cannot at that 

moment let up our guard because we have to ensure that the ideology on the line of 

insurgency has been defeated before we can give way on some security measures. 

Audience Member 

Dr. Woods, I will use a Thompson sort of quote, a version of it, but basically, looking at 

Vietnam a little later, he said that in Vietnam the counterinsurgency had three components—nation building, pacification, and military affairs, and that nation building was 

the most important because it built the capability of the nation to do what it needed to 

do. Pacification provided the linkage between the central government and folks in the 

countryside, and of course, the military component for security was always essential. 

And then he added that the Americans, when they did those, if they did them all, tended 

to do them in the reverse order. And while you are talking about CORDS and pacification there, I understand that, but do you have any insights about the interagency on 

the nation building side of that? Not just the pacification program that came in 1967 

through the CORDS program. 

118 
Dr. Woods 

I wish I did. That is actually the side that I am working on right now. Vietnamese 

politics is very complicated and the literature on it is not real sophisticated right now. 

So that is the area that I am going into. We do run into problems. I focused a little bit 

in my research on Bill Colby and trying to get some insight and what is he doing in 

Saigon and the current influence he is building, particularly in the CORDS years and 

his relationship with the Interior Ministry and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I do 

not have access to documentary evidence and things like that so I have to do it through 

an interview kind of process. All I can tell you is that I am picking away at it. I do not 

know at this point, but you are right. That is the fundamental question. 

Audience Member 

You can get some hints of that, at least from the American perspective, by going to the 

foreign relations documents, but again, that is just from the US side. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for both of you gentlemen. In the interagency process, given that both 

nations had a consensus as we heard earlier from Dr. Yates, maybe one that has not 

returned, but a consensus nationally that these were emergencies and needed to be addressed. Both nations have their focus on NATO and the central front and both of these 

operations were supporting efforts. Did either nation have an advantage over the other 

in the process? What is the difference? 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

That is an excellent question. Let me think on that for just a minute. 

Dr. Wright 

At least your paper, Benjamin, argued that one of the advantages that the British commissioners brought was their times in other colonies. I think Palestine and some of the 

African nations. 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

Yes, I think there are a couple of advantages. I think that is one, that the British had been 

running an empire whereas the Americans had not. So, when somebody like Gurney 
comes in he is not approaching how to deal with colonial subjects fresh; how to deal 

with some type of occupation policy. He is somebody who has been in Palestine for 

two or three years and dealt with the Palestine insurgency or Jewish insurgency against 

the British. He has been in Africa. He has been in Burma. So you have this tradition, 

if you will, of colonial administration which I think is a sizable advantage for the British. I also think in the situation in Malaya, what you have is that the British have been 

in Malaya in some aspect since 1608 and certainly controlling certain Malayan states 

and colonies since the 1800s. So what that does is the majority of the Malayan population, when the emergency begins in 1948, are familiar with British rule, are familiar 

with certain British officials. They already have British administrative structures established there. So rather than seeming as occupiers in that land, it is a certain minority of 

Chinese who seem to be rebelling against the system that was already in place rather 

than a system being imposed on the population which was never there previously; so a 

combination of what you brought up and that experience of the British in Malaya for a 

long period of time. I also think the British in the 1950s were not any way shy or embarrassed about being an empire, actually having long-term control over Malaya so I 

think for the British in 1951, 1952 to say that they were bringing civilization to Malaya 

and that the western way of life was self-evidently better than the colony’s way of life. 

It was perfectly fine in the moral aspect of foreign policy to compel Malayan entities 

into these villages to give them British administrative structures, to give them British 

social health, education, and that sort of thing. It was fine. That is what the Brits had 

been doing for 250 years. I think to the Americans the whole idea of, I know we like 

to spread our values, but the idea of actually obtaining a colonial situation was almost 

squeamish in this country. 

Dr. Woods 

Is that answering your question? 

Audience Member 

It does. I understand that the British do have a colonial tradition. Obviously, we are 

both speaking the same language, sort of. The point is we had been, the United States, 

had been in Vietnam really since 1944 and so by 1964 this was not a new process. We 

had administered the Philippines and parts of China and Cuba. This is not a new process, but yet it seems continually just in the short period say from 1962 until 1968 to 

be an incredible thrash, although we had as you said, political consensus earlier and I 

do not understand why that process was not there. 

Dr. Woods 

Part of the problem is that the specifics of all the situations are so different. You can 

help control what happens in say Japan and Germany in the late war because you have 

120 
a big occupying force and they have admitted to defeat and that sort of thing. Vietnam is a limited kind of conflict by nature. I think that is part of it. The Philippines, 

it depends on what you think of the interpretations of this kind of stuff, but Lansdale 

thought it was all about [inaudible]. You had to find the right person who could be both 

in touch with the people and provide a coordinated national leadership and that was the 

success for [inaudible]. In terms of the larger issues that Ben is talking about, yes, we 

have this kind of . . . our anti-imperial culture is as prominent as anything in all of this. 

You do not want to go in and tell people exactly what you want them to do. Lansdale’s 

approach to it is that you are bringing people to realize what is good for them already. 

There is sort of this anticommunist assumption there, but that is kind of what he is 

arguing now and he is an advertiser. What you do in advertising is not sell people 

stuff; you give them access to the things they already want. So it is a different kind of 

process, and there is a real reluctance to be that heavy-handed. And I think that in some 

ways constricts the interagency process. We want it both ways. We want to be able to 

go in and help and control the thing, and provide control, but at the same time we do 

not want to be imperialistic about it. That may be the fundamental conflict there. 

Audience Member 

I have a comment and then a question. Again, one of the things that I came across that 

is interesting in the National Security Act of 1947 and during the war looking to the 

British model for some of the interagency coordination, military and civilian-military, 

but what emerged, and came out afterwards, was also the distinction between the parliamentary or the cabinet system and the presidential US system where you have one 

executive and a cabinet that has a built-in political coordination capacity on the American side and I just throw that out. That is probably a challenge and I will hit on it a little 

bit for us now too, not contradicting anything either one of you have said, but puts it 

kind of in that bigger shell that we have this problem in terms of the political organization and the apparatus. 

Dr. Woods 

I keep going back to the Federalist Papers for some reason. I do not know why. 

Audience Member 

So the comment and question, if I may, I think I understand from both of you, but I just 

wanted to put this question out, how much of it, if this is a fair question, how much of 

it then on the back of the envelope sketch could you say is the result of individuals that 

were at the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time as opposed 

to structures and processes that were, in fact, survivable even in both cases, as ongoing 

institutions and institutional processes? Thank you. 
Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

I am a big believer in personalities in history so I would certainly subscribe to that 

interpretation. In the case of Malaya the choice of Briggs was very fortuitous in that 

he came along and he had the idea and the forceful personality to push that through. 

And of course, when Templer comes in he is even more of a forceful character and I 

think throughout the British imperialist experience you see the impact of personalities 

and recognition of that impact. My larger work expands beyond Malaya to other counterinsurgency operations in the empire, and you see time and time again whether it is 

Malaya, Cypress, Kenya, Aden, Dhofar, memorandum cautioning against the lessons 

learned in an organization or an apparatus fashion because what they say is that in each 

of these campaigns, whether it be Cypress, Kenya, Malaya, what have you, the situation on the ground was so completely different, the context so completely different that 

they need to be managed in a different manner and the type of government, whether 

you use strict interagency processes in Malaya where we used more dictatorial power, 

in Cypress where we used the local sector population, and in Kenya that was determined by the situation on the ground so you could not take the DWEC/SWEC model 

and put that on Kenya or put that on to Cypress. You also could not take somebody like 

Templer and put them using the same methods of management in Cypress or in Kenya 

because that would not work. But again, throughout all these memorandum, back to 

what Jeff was saying, you see a patronizing attitude, if I may call it that, that I think 

brought American history to be somewhat uncomfortable with what the British have 

always, right through to the 1970s have been quite convinced that their way of government and life were superior to all others, including the American system, and that it 

was their right and duty to compel others to take them. 

Dr. Woods 

I think the heart of your question is the really important thing and that is, what of these 

things can you control? When you start to bring up personality, does that become more 

a sense of chance and luck, like you said, right person, right time? You cannot make 

that happen most of the time. The people I interviewed were mostly civilians from the 

various civilian agencies. They have the hardest time, I think, talking about this kind 

of thing. They want to make a champion of somebody like Lansdale because he was 

in there early and seemed to have a good idea. It seemed to have worked in the Philippines. Why could it not work in Vietnam? But then he is pulled out of there. Then you 

wait for someone like Komer and I hear people talk about how crucial Komer was 

to the CORDS project. Yes, that is true, but there are a lot of other people who are 

pushing for it as well. He just happened to be, how should we put it, very vocal about 

his . . . “Blowtorch Bob.” So yes, it was sort of a good circumstance that he was in 

there, but could Bill Colby have done the same thing? He has as much influence, but he 

is not the spokesman that Komer was. So there is a degree of chance, but the problem 

with that is that you lose control. In a way, I am more interested in things that you can 

122 
control, I guess. I think there is a lot you cannot, and a realization of what you cannot is 

vitally important, but that said, I think control is what we are all searching for, right? 

Audience Member 

I want to press this issue of causation because I think there is a danger here in concluding that interagency cooperation worked in Malaya because it worked, and in Vietnam 

was, as you argue, it was too little too late because it obviously did not work. In one 

mission it succeeds; in one mission it fails. And I wonder if I could press both panelists 

to talk about how we can look at these events historically and determine not whether 

or not these succeeded or failed, but whether they were decisive or how they were decisive or whether there are alternative explanations, things that have to do for instance 

with the internal coherence of the insurgency or take your pick of any number of other 

factors. So it is obvious, I think, that cooperation is, in and of itself, a good thing. My 

question is, how can we test historically to see if it was a decisive thing? Thanks. 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

I think in the case of Malaya we have a nice breakdown in emergency and ask historians to study it before the Briggs Plan was implemented and after the Briggs Plan 

was implemented. We have the years from 1948 until 1950 where a particular military 

approach was taken where the British essentially considered this to be a continuation 

of the campaign that we fought during the Second World War, just delayed by about 

three years and with a slightly different enemy, but essentially the tactics to use against 

Malayan communists were safe to use against the Japanese, and that was actually a 

misunderstanding of the situation because the Japanese had been viewed by the Malayan people as occupiers and thus the British fighting the Japanese occupiers were not 

really the enemy, but ethically the Chinese guerillas were somewhat less occupiers. 

Then Briggs comes in and implements his plan and again, I think he as a person is as 

important as his ideas and plans, but he is actually only on the ground managing that 

for seven or eight months before he moves, yet it is his idea which continues. Prior to 

interagency coordination the British were losing ground in Malaya, the communist organization was growing which attracted more members, numerous states were falling 

into a status—security-wise—which would be considered close to anarchy, the British 

not really having control, and then once the Federal War Council was established according to policy, and once the SWECs are established, once the DWECs are established, although it is going to take another nine years, we do see a gradual regaining 

of ground by the British and gradual ostracization of the Malayan Communist Party 

within Malayan society. So whether that is answering the first question which you 

cautioned against as to whether it was success or failure, I think it does answer the 

question as to how decisive was the British plan. Certainly the situation on the ground 

changed greatly after 1950, yet the Malayan Communist institution itself did not have 
a dramatic restructure and they did not get any leadership in 1950, none of the other 

variables were changed. 

Dr. Woods 

Cause and effect in history is incredibly complicated and I tell my students the one 

thing you can learn from history is that things cannot be simplified. You cannot break 

it down, and unfortunately, when we come in here to conferences and things that is 

kind of what we do. We break down elements and things like that, but there are always 

other causations. There are always other things going on. In this particular case, my 

instinct is to look at implementation on the ground, at the local level and how it affects the people that you are dealing with. So when I juxtapose somebody like Bruce 

Kinsey’s experience and his problem in trying to conduct pacification efforts at the 

same time the military seems to be killing civilians in his region versus somebody like 

Terry Lambacher who is taking advantage of Tet and getting great cooperation. Both 

of those are under CORDS. Both of those are supposed to be under a kind of cooperative environment. They are different places with different cultures and influences, but 

that is the juxtaposition that I am setting out. Like I said, CORDS is not a panacea. I 

cannot make the statement that it is going to save everything. I cannot. But it was one 

of those untested areas, one of those areas that was tried, but I think under different circumstances might have had a better opportunity. Again, that is a wishy-washy answer, 

but that is history. 

Audience Member (From the Blogosphere) 

Given the mixture of views on how effective interagency has been throughout the 

historical vignettes discussed during this symposium and our trend to backslide on 

war-time lessons learned in times of peace and tighter budgets, i.e., in World War II we 

had a Military School of Government in Charlottesville, Virginia collocated with the 

University of Virginia to train civil administrators. Is it finally time for legislation, a 

Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency? 

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon 

I know from the British perspective, they have always been hesitant to make any sort 

of formal lessons learned procedure, sometimes to their detriment. I know in Cypress 

in 1956, you still have the Malayan emergency going on, you have had the Kenyan 

emergency going on for five years, the NLF (National Liberation Front) in Aden, four 

or five insurgency campaigns being waged simultaneously and the governor of Cypress, who had himself been in Malaya just the year previously in an official capacity, 

wrote back to the Chief of Defense and said, we are doing this in Malaya and it worked 

124 
quite well, should we try to attempt an interagency system in Cypress? And he was 

shot down very quickly. He was told in no uncertain terms that Malaya is Malaya, and 

Cypress is Cypress. We get into situations and different wars and whenever we get involved in insurgency situations we have to look at the situation on the ground. We have 

to look at local contact and we have to develop a new form of plan. Now in saying that, 

does that mean that we should say that interagency works in some situations and not in 

others? I do not think so. I think we can look at situations of Malaya and central Kenya 

and other areas and say for each of them that interagency coordination of a certain type 

was attempted and a certain type worked. And in any situation where an interagency 

cannot promote the objective of the military only approach the British tended to do 

worse, but I think as far as any systematic we should always have a SWEC, we should 

always have a DWEC, we should always have a Federal War Council. I do not think we 

can bring that sort of certainty to the process. So any sort of legislation in recommending abstractly how insurgency campaigns should be run or how interagency processes 

should work, I would shy against them. 

Dr. Woods 

I certainly do not want to be a political advocate here. I do not want to advocate for any 

kind of legislation or anything, but I do understand the question though. We were talking about this actually before we came in here. This curious notion of lessons learned. I 

had a professor in graduate school who was very against that whole idea that you could 

get lessons learned from history. He was sort of willing to leave that to a political scientist and others, but he said what you could learn from history is instinct. And instinct 

was built on very particular knowledge and a very particular place to a very particular 

time. So you could use the methodology to gain that kind of instinct on the ground and 

it allows for adaptation, right? But if you do a strictly lessons learned kind of thing, you 

will run the mistake of repeating past failures in the wrong context. 

Dr. Wright 

Does anyone want to be a political advocate for an interagency Goldwater-Nichols 

Act? We have one. 

Audience Member 

I want to touch on some of that. It is not particularly an advocate for Goldwater-Nichols to the interagency. There may be other things much broader than that, but it comes 

back, I think, to the point that we need to look at structures and processes that we created most of what we have in 1947 and the years after. It is at least worth looking at 

whether or not what we created and that which we can legislate and change is worth 
looking at again. So whether it is Goldwater-Nichols, I will argue that taking all of that 

off the table is very dangerous because eventually it says that we have to deal with 

what we created ourselves from now into perpetuity whether or not the problems we 

are facing are at all relevant to the same structures and processes. 

126 
Panel 3—Interagency Efforts at the National Level
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

21st Century Security Challenges and the Interagency Process:

Historical Lessons About Integrating Instruments of National Power
 

by
 

Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D.
 

Strategic Studies Institute
 

Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. Indeed, I am going to take up 

somewhat indirectly at first, but I think then more directly toward the end of my presentation, the very question that came up with the person coming in from the streamed 

video world out there. I want to take a look, as the title suggests, to the 21st century 

challenges in the interagency process, and to do so in something of a historical approach which I will jump right in and say as a matter of disclaimer that first of all my 

views are not the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department 

of Defense (DOD), US government, or probably any other thinking human being. I am 

also a political scientist; therefore, I can violate all those good principles our fellow 

historians were telling us about—lessons that we should not try to learn from history. 

I can just jump right in there and make all kinds of mistakes and draw all kinds 

of wrong lessons and so on and that is just part and parcel to what we as political 

scientists do anyway. I will say also that I had hoped with this paper, and I will still 

have because hope is not a method as we all know, at least three historical cases—the 

National Security Act of 1947, the Goldwater-Nichols Reforms of the 1980s, and then 

the contemporary case. My idea was to begin with setting a framework for looking at 

the historical attempts to redesign, or to design and redesign and reorganize and see if 

there is anything we can learn there that would help inform this very relevant and current debate that we are having right now about integrating civilian military capabilities 

in a whole range of operations, but they change the names so fast. It was only recently 

SSTR (Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction). Stability and Reconstruction came first, and then SSTR. I think we are back to Complex Operations now. You 

know we are really in trouble when we come up with these large umbrella terms that 

can mean almost anything, but at least what we have now with the attempt of DOD and 

the State Department and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) to work together and create this consortium called Complex Operations suggests 

maybe that is the new term. But the idea was to how, if at all, looking at some of these 

cases might inform that. I will stick to at least part of that. I will introduce a very brief 

framework that will not be filled with social science jargon. I am sure most of you will 

be pleased to know that, but I want to use it to look especially at the National Security 
Act of 1947, and I will gloss over Goldwater-Nichols very briefly in hopes that I can 

spend a little bit more time on the contemporary, and end with that as something to 

draw our discussions. I will take a broad view of the interagency process, which is not 

only what I call at the strategic level, which would be in Washington, DC, but also on 

the ground and argue perhaps that in the end what is happening on the ground is often 

more important than what is happening in Washington, DC. I will make the argument 

that if what you are doing on the ground is not also supported and sustained at the 

strategic level, the likelihood that it is going to be sustainable over time and therefore 

successful in these complex operations is not very good. 

The paper is largely complete. The historical cases took up much more space than 

I had planned, probably stemming from practicing without a license as a political scientist in the history realm, but I am still trying to struggle to find the right balance 

between those. And let me say this up front, my interest here is not in describing the interagency process. So this is not a historical study of what it is and how it was created. 

I am really interested in looking at the role of the interagency process in integrating. 

This will become an important point later because I am going to make an argument 

that the difference between coordinating and voluntary coordination and the goal of 

integrated use of national instruments of power is one of the fundamental challenges 

that we face. And I will change a little bit from my planned presentation if time allows. 

I have some slides, especially on the contemporary challenges, which I will try to get 

to. So you are going to be staring at that one for a little while and perhaps I am going to 

conclude before you stare at any other slide. And you can ask yourself, “I wonder what, 

if anything, came behind that title slide?” All right, all of that aside. 

The impetus for this paper, some work I have been doing for a while now is, as 

I said, really in the recent calls for reform, reorganization, what have you of the interagency process. Certainly, a lot of us know that the attacks of September 11, 2001, 

caused a lot of rethinking in terms of who the enemy was, how we were going to fight, 

what we needed to do across the board in a number of different ways other than just 

simply military operations. And that certainly accelerated a debate about whether or 

not we are organized properly to conduct national security strategy and policy in the 

21st century. 

But my first point, as I have argued before that really fits with the historical framework, is that there were many arguments that long pre-dated 9-11 about the changes 

we needed to be thinking about in terms of how we are organized to conduct national 

security and defense policy. They go back at least to the end of the Cold War. Some 

go back even further than that, but they have their origins in some things that were 

personal interests of mine, notably arguing, I guess 15 years ago now, that one of the 

new strategic imperatives that we were really going to face is what I will come back 

to later and call the good governance deficit. That is the whole panoply of things such 

as failed, failing, fragile, and weak states, ungovernability, and a host of problems that 

grow out of them. We will come back to that, as I said, if time allows. I am going to do 

my best to make sure it does. 

128 
The point made earlier and I just want to mention this again. I am one of those 

that adheres to the view that there is no such thing as the interagency as a noun. It is 

not a person, place, or thing, but that is an important thing to say. It is not amorphous, 

often shifting and changing set of representatives from US government agencies, and 

increasingly, from nongovernmental agencies and nonagency organizations. I am sure 

my fellow panelists here will help us understand very importantly how international 

nongovernmental organizations play in this realm as well. Sometimes they meet formally. Sometimes they meet informally. Sometimes they meet in places as obvious as 

Washington, DC, or sometimes as obscure as a remote PRT (Provincial Reconstruction 

Team) setting in rural Afghanistan. I hope that, again, my remarks will address and 

cover those variations. 

Let me start then with the basic framework for looking at institutional change. 

There are really five components to this and I have stolen heavily and shamelessly 

from a friend and colleague, Doug Stuart of Dickinson College, who if you have not 

read, has just recently completed a book which is excellent. He has an article out 

ahead of it, but in the framework that I am going to be drawing on from him is not in 

that book Creating a National Security State, but it is an excellent historical study of 

the National Security Act of 1947. The article is “Constructing the Iron Cage,” which 

should be published by SSI (Strategic Studies Institute) by the end of this year or early 

2009. What he argues is that there is really a five-phase model of institutional design. 

It begins with an initial goal or problem. It is then followed by an impetus or a trigger 

event. There follows a period of tests and models, in which in response to that crisis 

or trigger event, you began to tinker around with things and try to find stuff that will 

work. I generally think of that as adapting and flexing on the fly. You then, on the basis 

of that and what things get through that testing and modeling stage, start to construct 

institutions and then you formalize those and move into the fifth phase which is the 

initial operation and adjustment phase. That is when you go back and try to fix and, 

again, tinker further with those and ideally fine tune them. Stuart goes on to explain 

that that initial goal or problem combines with a trigger event to create a public theory. 

And that public theory for our purposes is little more than an agreement, both in the 

public’s and in the policy-makers’ and leaders’ minds that this is a general explanation 

for what is going on. That then provides the framework for guiding the search for the 

tests and models piece, what you try, develop and use, and that then butts up against 

the reality of institutional creation, and you go into the final phase, as we said, also 

scientifically known as the shake-out period in which you basically find what works 

and what does not work and adjust accordingly. I would like then to use that as the very 

simple framework for this historical piece on the National Security Act of 1947. 

Stuart and others make the argument that if you really want to look at the thought 

processes that exist and the definition of the problem that occurred it certainly did not 

occur in 1945 and the immediate post-Cold War era. It also did not occur in December 

of 1941 with the Pearl Harbor attack. A lot of the thinking had already been expressed, 

written, spoken, and otherwise circulated in the 1930s. So a lot of that had to do with 

the rise of totalitarian states, obviously the growing power that Nazi Germany and Japan had, and the threats that those countries and their ways of life posed to the United 

States. The way they were organized, the powers that they had, and so on, seemed to 

be threats, and the concern was that the old concept of national interests needed to be 

rethought and there was a new concept introduced into the, at least policy, lexicon. The 

concept, of course, was national security, something broader than national interests. 

That then was the problem. The goal was to find out how to make the United States, 

in essence, more competitive with the totalitarian threats and the new technologies in 

their hands that we saw rising before us at the time. So we needed to be more competitive in foreign and defense policy realms. The trigger event, as we all know, was Pearl 

Harbor on December 7, 1941. More than just an impetus for change, as we will see we 

have had later, this one was a trigger event of grand proportions that would become 

both a symbol of what was wrong with the existing security architecture and what was 

needed to address it. So what we find in this period is that there was a confluence of 

the early thinking that had already gone on, a trigger event that really drove interest 

in doing something about it, and that forced thought into action. And the confluence 

created the public theory that I referred to, namely, that we needed to do some of these 

things, perhaps moving away from national interests and national security as a concept 

to drive it and to take a look at the four lessons that came out of it. The institutional 

design effort, this testing by the way phase, was one that we could then conduct during the actual war itself. So you could see the institutional design effort beginning in 

1941 in how the US organized to fight the war, how it developed and coordinated the 

immediate post-war policies, and then in the attempts to construct the actual post-war 

foreign and defense policy system. 

The four lessons, we will just go through these quickly because we all know them. 

Obviously, one was we needed new and better institutions for collecting and analyzing 

information so there could be no more Pearl Harbors. We also needed a permanent and 

more influential military voice in the peacetime making of foreign and security policy, 

something that was very new to US culture historically and would probably have been 

almost impossible were it not for the Pearl Harbor event. Third, the US needed to 

ensure the interservice as well as civilian-military cooperation would be seamless and 

ongoing in peace and in war time. And fourth, the US needed new procedures for integrating the capabilities of the domestic economy, especially industry and science in 

the new national security state. Now, as I said, the first elements as we got into that, the 

public theory was formed, the testing stage is really what we can see in how the United 

States organizes to fight the war. We created what one author has referred to as an accidental Joint Chiefs of Staff as we needed to coordinate with the Brits. As it turned 

out there was not a similar system so that we could communicate with their equivalent 

staff. Shortly thereafter an ad hoc Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emerged and 

as the issues of postwar reconstruction and occupation began to require attention, the 

need for improved civilian-military cooperation was addressed through the creation 

of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, and I cannot even pronounce this 

acronym since there is no vowel in there, SWNCC, which I am sure many of you are 

familiar with. It is interesting and I alluded to that in a comment earlier today, that 

130 
committee, again, according to at least a couple of historians was one that presaged a 

trend, and that trend was State was outnumbered two to one within that committee by 

the Armed Services and the institution itself became gradually to be dominated by the 

military. It was an institution that also foreshadowed this lesson learned and that is the 

application of a continued and strengthened military voice in US foreign and defense 

policy. Now, there is a lot more detail in all of this. I want to just fast forward a little bit 

to simply point out that with all of those changes as we fought the war, we came out of 

the war with what seemed to be a consensus, a very important term alluded to earlier, 

that we really had to institutionalize this for the new world. The experiments that were 

relatively easy to implement in war time, however, that test and model stage, now 

moved into the construction stage where concrete institutions and processes had to be 

proposed, debated, constituted, and eventually put into action. And as Stuart himself 

notes, “The fact that policy makers agreed on the need for institutional reform did not 

make it any easier for them to agree upon the details.” This could be words of wisdom 

for today’s ongoing debates. 

What ensued, and let me go through this very quickly. Many of you in here are 

familiar with it. From 1945 roughly until the 1947 Act was passed in late July of that 

year and signed into law, the effort to achieve military unification, a key point of that 

reform, clearly dominated in terms of time, energy and attention all of the other elements of that National Security Act of 1947. We know by now that Army leaders abdicated a full merger of the Army and the Navy, a problem that many of us in this room 

can probably see no problem with today, right? The creation of a Joint Chiefs of Staff 

with a Chief of Staff at the helm that would serve as the principal military advisor to 

the President. This idea which seemed to work fairly smoothly, probably because it 

was modeled a little bit after our Combatant Command model of today, was not going 

to survive very long after the conclusion of World War II. The Navy switched fairly 

quickly over to a system that emphasized coordination over merger, and I ask you to 

bear with me on that because it is a key word for all of what I am going to argue here. 

It emphasized coordination over merger. President Truman and his supporters of full 

unification and integration eventually got far from all of what they wanted. Forrestal’s efforts that I alluded to earlier today to stave off unification and the Secretary of 

the Navy was very successful and it points to the difficulty of forcing comprehensive 

change on a system designed to innovate at the margins, if at all. Forrestal’s victory is 

the result, and I quote, “of his ability to garner Congressional support and to channel it 

using tactics that frequently verged on insubordination.” And yet, according to Stuart 

the very institution that Forrestal had succeeded in creating in opposition to full and 

complete unification, the national military establishment which with amendments and 

new legislation and so on would later become the Department of Defense wound up 

with Forrestal himself serving as the first Secretary of National Defense, and it could 

not even stand the test of the first six months of operation. The initial operation and 

adjustment phase began almost immediately and it did so in earnest. What Forrestal 

had done using a friend of his and a well-known advisor at the time, Eberstadt, wrote 

a report that shifted the focus of the debate from the military per se to civilian-military 
coordination at the top of the Washington policy community. The central issue of all 

the organizational and reform efforts at that time and since then have been clear and 

consistent, improving civilian-military coordination. 

I will fast forward again, August 5, 1949, major amendments to the National Security Act were passed trying to fix the very first problem, I think, August 11th, 16 

days after the National Security Act was passed. I believe the Army circulated a memo 

having to do with significant military roles and missions that did not mention any offensive operations on the part of the Navy. That launched the first of the modern interservice rivalry battles. In August of 1949, the Department of Defense emerged from 

NME (National Military Establishment), the Secretary of Defense was created having 

more authority, direction, and control and fewer statements about how he would coordinate, and the service secretaries were eliminated from the cabinet and so on. Now, 

other entities created in that National Security Act, the National Security Council, the 

Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Resources Board are three. I 

will not dwell on them. The National Security Act has also been referred to in this because, and the CIA got so little attention compared to military service unification that 

the NSC almost emerged as something of an afterthought. I will make the point that 

in my readings of the history on this, that the original proponents of this system and 

the National Security Council envisioned it as the coordinator of the overall system. 

And what is interesting is that over time the NSC became essentially a presidential 

or executive tool for managing foreign and security policy. It never became, I would 

argue, the coordinator let alone the integrator of all these various national instruments 

as even some people today think that it is. The original language that had it specified 

as that never made it through the debate in the markup stage, and as I said, over time it 

became a presidential tool for executive management and the same legislation gave the 

CIA relatively clear guidance in terms of what it was supposed to do, here is the term 

again, coordination information, never gave it the authority over into other intelligence 

services to do so. So for the CIA, it never really got its intelligence coordination function off the ground, and the debates we had after 9-11 were nothing new if you look 

back on this. In fact, what the CIA did under very deft leadership and opportunistic, I 

think, use of resources was to go heavily into the covert operations role which was not 

anything that was mentioned in its original mandate and downplayed the intelligence 

coordination role which it simply could not do because it all was hinged on voluntary 

coordination among institutions that probably did a lot of that during the war but were 

less inclined to do so once the war ended. I mentioned the State Department in a comment I made this morning. It is interesting; again, there are several people that point out 

that the State Department seemingly made every choice it could to erode its own role in 

the still emerging and evolving Pearl Harbor system. Part of that was its own problem 

still seeing peace and war dichotomous and that the new postwar system would be very 

much the same. Quickly, let me mention that is the system we got. There were other 

changes; some of you have alluded to them earlier today. When I look to GoldwaterNichols, and I was going to apply the same framework, I could not see the trigger event 

and the same notion that we obviously had some failures or viewed failures in Vietnam 

132 
and others that were impetus to change. But the main point that I came away from here 

is first of all that most of what Goldwater-Nichols is not about integrating national 

instruments of power; it is really about unifying the Pentagon. It is almost exclusively 

operational and it is almost exclusively military operational. That does not mean it is 

not important, but it does mean that it is going back to one piece of the problem and not 

the problem that I said I am most interested in here. And even with that the cases that 

were mentioned this morning are very interesting. Panama, again, from my reading 

demonstrated how much we had improved in joint operations and unity of command, 

but equally, and I think John Fishel and others were alluding to this, there was little evidence of real effective postconflict planning and execution. So again, we fixed some 

things, but the bigger problem I am interested in was not. And Afghanistan, I think we 

could look at Haiti in much the same way. Afghanistan in the initial phases was a real 

joint warfighting success, especially at the small unit level, but again a postconflict, if 

not failure, at least something much less than a great success. Let me say that the problem to that then is, before we are casting blame everywhere, a lot of it is GoldwaterNichols. It was designed to improve civilian-military control. It was designed to give 

better professional advice to civilian leadership, and in many ways it did that and by 

empowering the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by strengthening the Joint Staff. Many 

critics then argued that the civilian control was actually weakened. Whether that is true 

or not, some of those same people say that the failure to act just as Elliot Cohen says, 

it is the civilians not the soldiers that have abdicated their responsibilities. So again, 

it is not so much the pointing of fingers; it is how do we get this integration. After 

Goldwater-Nichols I think if you look at this five-step framework I think it is surprising how with the end of the Cold War, maybe not a trigger event like Pearl Harbor but 

certainly a significant shift in the international system, and even with the dissolution 

of the Soviet Union no serious attempt emerged to really revisit the institutions and 

organizations and processes that we had. 

Let me fast forward now. I am probably already over my time; it is very close to 

the end. There is our institutional design model (Slide 1). If you come from the Army 

War College you have to have a Clausewitz quote in every presentation so here is mine 

(Slide 2). Actually, this one helps a lot because not only in applying to war, the fundamental premise that we begin with in getting institutions and structures and processes 

and so on right is understanding the nature of the security system that we are confronting. And that is how I would paraphrase Clausewitz for what we are doing here today. 

To get strategy right you have to understand the nature of the security environments 

correctly and then it is lining up your resources and using them, the right resource in 

the most effective and efficient ways to accomplish your objectives. I will skip those 

last two bullets. 

These are gaps and challenges that I want to cover very quickly, and let me do that 

right now (Slide 3). This is the contemporary setting that I am looking at. Many of 

you may disagree with this (Slide 4). I believe terrorism is certainly important, vitally 

important. I believe that insurgency is vitally important, but I am not convinced that 
terrorism in and of itself and insurgency in and of itself are really the kind of strategic 

kind of imperatives that we are dealing with. I believe that this is the new normal and 

that is a world in which it has all been spelled out. We have non-state actors empowered with all kinds of weapons. We have serious issues of, I still argue that a lot of 

the problems of terrorism and insurgency grow out of the various forms and fashions 

that failed in fragile and illegitimate states that we have, and we can talk about that in 

discussion if time allows. 

If you have not seen “wicked problems” I encourage you to go to Wikipedia and 

look this up (Slide 5). I heard Larry Sampler talk about this when he was speaking to 

the consortium on Complex Operations, but there are some interesting things in here. I 

love the second bullet there—every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore a part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems. I choose to call such 

a system a mess. The point here is that these are not Cold War problems with a single 

definable enemy. They are not just about winning the war. They are about winning the 

peace, but it is about winning the peace in ways that are very much more complex and 

complicated than I think we have dealt with in the past. 

We will come back to this. I think that therefore, and this is truly Robin Dorff’s 

view on this. I believe that our grand strategic objective should be promoting effective 

legitimate governance (Slide 6). To grow that community where you have effective 

legitimate governance and therefore the gaps that I want to just quickly toggle through. 

Gap one is a gap between the reality and the understanding of the strategic environment. If we are at war with terrorism, a war and certainly a concept in general I do not 

have a problem with except I do not think you go to war against a tactic, and I think 

that is what terrorism is. I want to know who the enemy is that wants to use terrorism 

against us. But if you define it only that way, my problem is that in the “wicked problems” world that we are dealing with in these complex operations we are going to miss 

a lot of the other important things that we need to be able to do. 

Here it was alluded to this morning, yes, we have NSPD-44 (National Security 

Presidential Directive) (Slide 7). The President does designate the State Department 

as the lead agency in coordinating these operations. Yes, we even have DoD 3000.05 

that equates SSTR in reconstruction operations, the equivalent of combat, but where 

is the strategy? What we have, and I can go back to Clausewitz on this, yes, policy 

must drive strategy, but right now we have a lot of policy, but we do not have a lot of 

strategy. Now, we have generated some doctrine at the counterinsurgency level, but a 

lot of that has really been about how we are going to operationally conduct things on 

the ground to deal with the problem at the moment. We have yet to see resources flow 

significantly from either NSPD 44 or 3005. 

Here is something I borrowed, I spent some time working as a senior advisor for 

a company that has done education and community development work internationally 

for 35 years, long before any of this stuff came out (Slide 8). They have now been on 

134 
the ground in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and many other places around the world and their 

strengths are working exactly on the community development, education, and local 

governance kinds of things and if time allows I will speak to that too. I think these are 

organizations that need to very much be brought into this integrating argument that I 

am making. The point here is that you need organizations that can operate effectively 

in both of those spaces—battle space and humanitarian space. You especially need organizations that can work in those areas that overlap the two. The implications then of 

those two operational spaces, here is the gap I am pointing to, the gap between policy 

and guidance and operations in the field. 

I will let you read these (Slide 9). The joint civilian military concepts—doctrine, 

training, and execution. I am a huge fan and this relates to the last slide and to this slide. 

We have been doing some great things in the field. I have friends that are very much 

involved in some training of soldiers about to deploy in PRTs and I think it is making 

great progress. The problem is, again, it is largely military only. And why? Because of 

some of the things we talked about earlier. The civilian organizations, the governmental organizations do not have the training float to pull people off and go through programs like some of you in this room I am sure have gone through or are going through. 

Somebody talked about the people problem that State has. I think the best statistic I 

heard about this, I assume it is true, I have not been able to go out and count it up, but 

I am told that there are more musicians that the Pentagon has access to than the State 

Department has deployable State Department people. That is kind of a worthless comment, but it does make a point. That whole aspect of I have been a big beneficiary of 

watching military officers be able to take 10 months off to do a senior service college 

rotation at the O-6, soon to be O-7 level. There is very little float in civilian agencies to 

even come close to that. A two-week course at the Foreign Service Institute is maybe 

all they can cram in. Who can work that stabilization piece? The whole of government 

is required, but we do not do it very well. When I say making it up in the field, we are 

learning great things about how to do things on the ground, but my earlier point, if we 

are making it up on the ground, but it is not getting back to the top, then it is not going 

to be resourced over time and it is not going to be sustainable. And if it is not coming 

from the top down and so on, then I am coming back to the cases that I have seen today 

and the question that I ask because the making it up on the ground then depends almost 

completely on who is on the ground at the moment. And it is not really in the kind of 

training and I make a vague reference here to training jointly. I mean jointly civilian 

military predeployment as well. 

The fourth gap here then is this gap in useable military civilian instruments 

(Slide 10). That gap exists and it is expanding. I just alluded to that. I mentioned the 

policy driving strategy that is not fully resourced. Executive and legislative branches, 

this is what the history piece learned. If you figure out where your allies are, you can 

prevent just about anything from getting through any kind of a redesign or design 

phase, and once again, making it up in the field, but is it sustainable? 
I will not talk to this one, but what we have also done to fill some of these gaps 

then is to go to contracting (Slide 11). And contracting raises at least these questions 

and a number more, so finally, the functions that we need in US government versus 

contractor functions. 

I have already noted that where this story began with the National Security Act of 

1947. (Slide 12) 

My last slide really on this piece and here are the things I think we need (Slide 13). 

And unfortunately, it is leadership, leadership, and leadership. And I am fairly confident of leadership in a couple of these areas. I am less confident in a couple of other 

areas. And that is as specific as I will get. 

This I will leave up there if we want to post these later (Slide 14). These are some 

of the major reform efforts that are being addressed out there. Some of them are Goldwater-Nichols II which is kind of Goldwater-Nichols for the civilian agencies. PNSR, 

the Project for National Security Reform. It talks about starting all over again and creating a whole new National Security Act of 2009 or 2010. Others talk about just a little 

better coordination and so on within the organizations that we already have. 

I think that is it (Slide 15). Yes. Let me wrap up then. I apologize. I believe that if 

we are not able to come to grips more fully with the requirements to integrate rather 

than stovepipe, to develop operators with multidimensional skills sense that cut across 

these traditional stovepipes, and by the way, we are now calling those, is anybody 

familiar with this one, cylinders of excellence, and engage the broader national community in these efforts the project is likely to resemble the sausage-making exercise 

that has all to often characterized that interagency process. I will leave you with this 

in terms of coming back to the framework for analyzing institutional change suggests 

that the ability of the US to adapt to these 21st century security environment challenges 

will be huge and perhaps insurmountable. While no structures and processes alone can 

ensure good decisions and outcomes really bad ones can make them almost impossible 

or very difficult to achieve. If we look back on the National Security Act as it was first 

proposed, as it was passed into law, as it has been modified and amended since then 

what we see is this principle of voluntary coordination dominates all of our thinking 

and we try to find ways to make us voluntarily cooperate better. What that fundamentally comes down to is we give agencies, people, czars in the White House, and so on 

responsibility without authority, or responsibility, a little authority, and no resources as 

SCRS (Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization) is in the State Department is today. 

My argument is not that we necessarily need to throw out everything we have and start 

over again. My argument is that we need to go back in terms of what the 1947 Act did, 

and that was to have a very serious debate and discussion about what the challenges, 

threats, and opportunities are, what we need in the way of capabilities to address them, 

and how we can best organize in order to use the capabilities we have, generate the 

ones that we need, and take our strategy and policy into the 21st century. 

136 
The last point, I promise. I will get that Bill Clinton “thank you” in conclusion. 

Wild applause. If we do not get this integration through some sustainable structures 

and processes, still relying on right people being in the right places at the right time, 

that is an interagency process for the 21st century, I believe that you in the military, 

and especially the Army, will continue to very, very busy and I also believe you will 

continue to be very, very under-resourced. And there is a whole debate to have in there 

about whether or not the civil affairs, especially civil military pieces, especially of the 

Army, if this is going to be a lot of the work of the future if 90-plus percent of it should 

reside in the non-Active Component of the military. I strongly hope that military leadership, and especially Army leadership, will play constructively in this debate, both on 

the need for taking this serious look at the problem and in terms of what the content of 

that should be. Thank you very much. 
Dr. Robert H. Dorff Slide Addendum:
 

21st Century Security Challenges and the Interagency Process
 

INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN 

Initial Problem or Goal=>Trigger Event=> 

PUBLIC THEORY=> 

Tests and Models=>Construction=> 

INSTITUTIONS=> INSTITUTIONS=> 

Initial Operation & Adjustment 

Slide 1 

Context Context 

•	 "The first the supreme the most far "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of reaching act of 

judgment that the statesman and commander have to 

make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which 

they are embarking.“ Karl von Clausewitz 

• Strategy is the calculated relationship among: Ends 

(Objectives), Means (Resources), and Ways 

(Concepts) 

• Interagency in Broadest Sense 

• My Personal Interests 

Slide 2 

138 
The Challenges and the Gaps The Challenges and the Gaps 

• The Strategic Environment

• Policy and Operations 

• Interagency: National and Field 

• Capabilities and R esources: Military and 

Civilian 

• US Government and Contractor Roles 

• National Security Organization National Security Organization 

• Leadership 

Slide 3 

The Strategic Environment The Strategic Environment 

• Terrorism is important b ut.... 

• Insurgency is important but.... 

• The “New Normal” and Good 

Governance Deficit Governance Deficit 

• Wicked Problems 

• A New Grand Strategy: Promoting 

Effective Legitimate Governance Effective, Legitimate Governance 

GAP I: Reality and Understanding of Strategic Environment 

Slide 4 
Wicked Problems 

•	 Wicked problems have incomplete, contradictory, and 

chang g in requirements; and solutions to them are often 

difficult to recognize as such because of complex 

interdependencies. Rittel and Webber stated that while 

attempting to solve a wicked problem attempting to solve a wicked problem, the solution of one of the solution of one of 

its aspects may reveal or create other, even more complex 

problems. 

•	 “Every problem interacts with other problems and is 

therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of 

problems I choose to call such a system a mess problems.... I choose to call such a system a mess. ”

•	 “a Social Mess is a set of interrelated problems and other 

messes. Complexity—systems of systems—is among the 

factors that makes Social Messes so resistant to analysis and, 

more importantly, to resolution.” Source: Wickipedia 

Slide 5 

The Strategic Environment The Strategic Environment 

•	 Terrorism is important b ut.... 

• Insurgency is important but.... 

• The “New Normal” and Good 

Governance Deficit Governance Deficit 

• Wicked Problems 

• A New Grand Strategy: Promoting 

Effective Legitimate Governance Effective, Legitimate Governance 

GAP I: Reality and Understanding of Strategic Environment 

Slide 6 

140 
Battle Space

Humanitarian

Space

Policy and Operations Policy and Operations 

• NSPD-44 

• DOD 3000.05 

• Where is Where is The Strategy ? “The Strategy”?

• Implications: Two Operational Spaces 

GAP II: Policy Guidance and Operations in the Field 

Slide 7 

Stabilization Challenge: 

The capacity to deliver results 

in non-permi i tti issive settings 

Slide 8 
Interagency: National and Field Interagency: National and Field 

• N d “j i t” i Need “joint” civ-mil t d t i il concepts, doctrine, 

training and execution (e.g. TRADOC and 

PRT t i i ) PRT training) 

• Who can work the “Stabilization Space”? 

• Whole of Government required—but we 

don’t do it very well. 

• “Making it up” in the field but sustainable? 

GAP III: IA Org & Process (DC) and On-the-Ground 

Capabilities Integration 

Slide 9 

Capabilities and Resources: Military and 

Civilian 

• G E i t d i E di Gap Exists and is Expanding 

• Policy drives a strategy that is not fully 

resourced (not just $)
 

• Executive and Legislative Branches 

• Reluctance of Civilian Agencies (historical, 

cultural, bureaucratic, etc.) cultural, bureaucratic, etc.) 

• “Making it up” in the field but sustainable? 

GAP IV: Useable Mil-Civ Instruments 

Slide 10 

142 
f

US Government and Contractor Roles US Government and Contractor Roles 

• Sourcing vs. outsourcing 

• If outsourced, how coordinated? 

• Can you “contract” functions without
 

“contracting” strategy?
 

• Sustainable? Sustainable? 

GAP V: USG and Contractor Functions 

Slide 11 

National Security Organization National Security Organization 

• The legacy of NSA 1947 The legacy of NSA 1947 

• The lessons of NSA 1947 

• Affects not only how we coordinate: 

– Define problem 

– Develop strategy 

– Imp lement strategy 

– Adapt and adjust 

GAP VI: USG National Security Architecture 

Slide 12 
e ca eo e

Leadership Leadership 

• Military 

• Civilian 

• Executive and Legislative 

• American People 

GAP VII: Leadership Across the Board 

Slide 13 

Some Current Reform Efforts Some Current Reform Efforts 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Executive Branch Key Players: Adjust the Balance of Roles 

and Responsibilities 

Interagency Coordination and Integration: Foster Horizontal 

Integration Integration 

Interagency Coordination and Integration: Create a New 

Coordination Body 

National Security Decision-Making: Require Greater Rigor 

National Security Strategy: Strengthen the Guidance 

Resources for National Security: Create a National Security 

Budget 

Congressional Oversight: Reorganize Congressional Oversight: Reorganize 

Start all Over Again: National Security Act of 2009 

Source: CRS Report for Congress RL34455 

Slide 14 

144 
these tensions.

Observations 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Assumes: 1) We really believe these are the strategic threats, challenges 

and opportunities we face, and 2) we really want to do something about 

them. Neither is a given. them. Neither is a given. 

If so, where is political will to lead, and convince the American public – 

and with them Congress—that this is what we face and we must resource 

the strategy. the strategy. 

Absent some significant changes in ability to integrate civ-mil 

capabilities, the mil is likely to continue having to do many of them. 

Implications? Implications? 

If mil continues in that vein, what about the respective roles and 

missions? And what about skill sets that may reside in the Reserve and 

Guard? 

Clausewitz Revisited: “...extension of politics by other means.” Neither 

“Deliberate planning” alone nor “flexibility above all” alone will resolve 

these tensions. 

Slide 15 

Panel 3—Interagency Efforts at the National Level
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

The Independence of the International Red Cross: The Value of 

Neutral and Impartial Action Concurrent to the Interagency Process
 

by
 

Mr. Geoff Loane
 

Head of Regional Delegation to the United States and Canada
 

International Committee of the Red Cross
 

Abstract 

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an exclusively humanitarian organization. Its mandate to help victims of armed conflict derives from international humanitarian law, of which the four Geneva Conventions are the foundation. 

In this paper, author Geoff Loane acknowledges the ever-expanding role of integrated approaches to furthering recovery and reconstruction efforts by combining military, political, and economic activities. Despite this trend, he argues that the delivery of 

humanitarian assistance to persons affected by armed conflict must be carried out in a 

strictly neutral and impartial way. He explains that this is the only way to provide help 

in a timely effective way and not place persons most in need at greater risk. 

The ICRC is able to work in such a way due to its strict adherence to the fundamental principles of the Red Cross Movement, of which humanity, neutrality, impartiality, 

and independence are paramount. In addition, the author explains ICRC’s operational 

approaches, including proximity, universal vocation, dialogue, and agreement among 

all parties to a conflict to ICRC’s role. In this way, the ICRC can secure the support and 

agreement of all the parties to a conflict and the acceptance of the ICRC as a neutral 

intermediary. 

Introduction 

Over the past two decades, the field of humanitarianism has experienced a seismic 

shift in terms of size, composition, and diversity. The hundreds of organizations now 

assisting persons in need, whether due to a natural disaster or situation of armed conflict, represent a disparate mix of actors. They include locally affected communities 

and individuals as well as governmental and nongovernmental, civilian and military, 

religious and philanthropic, and charitable and corporate agencies. Today, they collectively harness an unprecedented level of resources. Moreover, each actor brings its 

own particular vision, mandate, and working modalities into the common humanitarian space in which all operate. While the sheer growth of humanitarianism has enabled 

more people to access higher quality assistance more predictably than ever before, 

threats to aid effectiveness abound. Actors struggle with delineating their roles and 

boundaries, sharing information, coordinating activities, involving and empowering 

affected communities, and linking relief aid to development programs. This diversity 

of operating bodies with widely differing mandates poses a significant challenge for 

the community of actors that work based on a strictly humanitarian impulse, particularly that aim may conflict with other agencies’ goals linked to foreign policy or political objectives. 

As an agency whose raison d’etre remains exclusively humanitarian, the ICRC 

bases its action exclusively on the fundamental principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. The ICRC ensures that the delivery of assistance sends 

an absolutely neutral message. This both means and allows it to work on all sides of 

a conflict simultaneously, identifying needs first hand, and having the support of all 

arms carriers, on behalf of the largely civilian victims of conflict. 

Other agencies do not follow these precepts nor could they, and some might argue 

should they. Governmental agencies, for example, often deliver aid in accordance with 

the national priorities as determined by their political authorities. Within the United 

States Government (USG), the dialogue has increasingly focused on what is often 

referred to as the “interagency process.” This approach attempts to capture the combination of all the activities and resources of civilian entities like the US Department 

of State and US Agency for International Development (USAID) and military components of the US Department of Defense (DOD), including the regional combatant 

commands. 

The challenge for the ICRC is finding a way to relate to and coordinate with different interagency actors providing assistance, especially military ones, while safeguarding its fundamental principles, which ensure its acceptance by all arms carriers and 

access to all victims, on every side of a conflict. These principles are more than words; 

they are practical tools that enable the organization to reach communities in need. In 

any situation of armed conflict or political tension, actions by outsiders as well as 

by local agents, are systematically analyzed for any political content, and judged accordingly. The very act of providing emergency assistance to civilian communities in 

armed conflict will be carefully monitored and analyzed by political leaders and armed 

groups for any potential impact that act may have politically. The bombing of both 

the United Nations (UN) and the ICRC delegation in Baghdad in 2004 was also an attempt to intimidate those providing assistance. In general though, because it remains 

apart from political influences, can gain the trust of all sides, and serves as a neutral 

intermediary in the midst of hostilities, the ICRC is more often accepted in providing 

protection and assistance, on the exclusive basis of need. 

The following exploration will argue for the need to understand and respect the essential value of this neutral and independent form of humanitarian assistance, in order 

148 
to ensure effective access to and support of all victims, regardless of their location, 

political persuasions and beliefs. 

Law & Principles: The Basis for the ICRC’s Work 

One finds the legal basis for the ICRC’s work in international humanitarian law, 

of which the four Geneva Conventions are the foundation. These universally ratified 

treaties provide the ICRC1

 with a humanitarian mandate from the community of states2 

to help victims of armed conflict. The States also gave the ICRC the responsibility of 

monitoring the faithful application of international humanitarian law in armed conflict. 

As a guardian of humanitarian law, the ICRC takes measures to ensure respect for, to 

promote, and to reaffirm this body of law. 

This universal ratified legal basis thus provides ICRC with the authority and legitimacy to negotiate with state and non-state actors about its humanitarian role. The 

two primary objectives of this negotiation is firstly, the promotion of the faithful implementation of humanitarian law. The second is to ensure acceptance of the humanitarian 

role of the ICRC in providing assistance to conflict victims across all front lines and 

ceasefire lines to all communities. 

Central to this are the principles of neutrality and independence, which allow the 

ICRC to make its exclusive humanitarian decisions without the influence of political, 

financial, or other interests. These core humanitarian principles mean that for the objective of acting as a neutral intermediary or provider of assistance the ICRC requires 

acceptance from all arms carriers, irrespective of their ideologies or political persuasion, the freedom from external influence to choose where to go, who to assist, and 

how to operate. These operating principles are at once the strength of the ICRC, and 

the single hardest aspect to negotiate. States and non-state armed actors believe in the 

justness of their cause and are regularly distrustful of the provision of assistance to the 

enemy, ostensibly as it may be construed to support the war effort. The ICRC aims 

not only to reach needy communities, but also to distribute assistance in ways that are 

transparent and controlled by its own, often-expatriate staff, thus ensuring no misuse 

or diversion of aid commodities to the wrong persons. 

On this basis, the ICRC works actively to earn and retain the trust of all States, 

parties,3

 and people involved in a conflict or other situation of violence.4 This trust 

is based on an awareness of the principles and practices of the ICRC, and through 

an observation of how the ICRC acts in the field over long periods. The ICRC gains 

trust through continuity and predictability. Combining effectiveness and credibility irrespective of time, place, or range of needs is a continuous challenge for the organization, because it must be able to prove it can always meet the standard of assisting all in 

need, regardless of the context or circumstances. 

Experience has taught the ICRC that this approach offers the best, if not the only, 

chance of acceptance by all sides during an armed conflict or other situation of violence. Arms carriers and their political leaders would simply not allow an agency to 

travel freely across front lines distributing assistance with motives other than humanitarian ones. 

The Operational Aspects of ICRC Work 

In order to implement this policy of independence, neutrality and impartiality, the 

ICRC must build confidence with arms carriers and their leaders through its operational approaches. Primarily, the ICRC favors field-based engagement. It meets, works 

with, and lives in the midst of communities whose lives have been affected by conflict. 

The proximity of ICRC to those affected is of central significance for it helps to analyze 

and understand the particular needs of communities. Proximity also ensures access to 

local leadership, often the building block of political decision-making. In addition, the 

ICRC systematically consults local community members to establish their priorities, 

and to ensure that they are associated in the action taken.5 

The ICRC’s work has a universal vocation. It is not limited to certain places, or 

to certain types of people (such as children or refugees). It is present in all conflict 

zones, often for many years through successive changes of regime. This long-standing presence means that the ICRC interacts with armed opposition who may become 

political leaders, as well as with political leaders who may end up as armed opposition 

or security detainees. Such relationships, managed in nonjudgmental and humanitarian 

contexts often serve considerable value as roles change. Responding to the specificities of each context and working tightly in a needs-based approach are key aspects of 

analysis and strategy. 

The ICRC engages in dialogue with all those involved in an armed conflict (or 

other situations of violence) who may have influence on its course, whether those 

persons are recognized and/or acknowledged by the community of States or not. All 

those who may have an influence are consulted because multiple and diverse contacts 

are essential for assessing a situation and for guaranteeing the safety of ICRC activities and personnel. Such dialogue does not confer any formal status on anyone, as the 

discussions focus exclusively on the humanitarian situation. 

The ICRC requires the support and agreement of all the parties to a conflict, as well 

as access to all communities affected by the conflict before engaging in humanitarian 

operations. Any humanitarian operation can only begin if both (or all) parties to the 

conflict understand, accept, and support operations on both (all) sides of the conflict. 

One benefit of these operational approaches is ICRC’s ability to serve as a neutral 

intermediary. Because of its acceptance by all arms carriers, the ICRC has recently 

been able to negotiate a halting of armed activities by the armed opposition in Afghanistan to facilitate UN-led vaccination campaigns and secure the release of dozens 

of hostages in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Colombia. The ICRC has also acted as an 

150 
intermediary in the repatriation of mortal remains and detainees between sovereign 

powers. A current example is the ICRC-facilitated phone calls between detainees in 

Guantánamo and their families, often located in remote and inaccessible areas. 

While doing what it can to help people in need, the ICRC also considers the efforts 

of other agencies working in the humanitarian world. The main objective of interacting 

with other providers of aid is to make the best use of complementary efforts in order to 

meet needs. Interaction based on transparency, equality, effective operational capacities, and complementary, reality-based, and field-centered relationships is essential. 

The ICRC’s Understanding of the USG Interagency Approach 

The current tendency among many other actors, most notably in the governmental 

sector is to “integrate” or combine the military, political, and economic instruments of 

power to achieve a set of predefined political objectives, including conflict prevention, 

conflict resolution, and postconflict nation building. In the United States, this process 

is often referred to as the “interagency process.” Indeed, Provincial Reconstruction 

Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan and Iraq are the most visible representation in the field 

of this integrated approach. Such an approach is based on multiple objectives, many of 

which reach well beyond the humanitarian imperative into realms of good governance, 

strengthening civil institutions and reinforcing compliance with “good behavior.” Such 

an approach is not confined to western democratic states. Other actors such as Hezbollah and Hamas have incorporated civil society interventions, including the provision of 

social services, into their efforts to reinforce their relationships and influence over their 

constituencies. To the extent that such mechanisms exist in places of conflict, they will 

suggest a direct link between delivery of humanitarian assistance and political objectives. This linking of emergency assistance (development aid has long been associated 

with political conditionality) with political condition is a new departure for a system 

of assistance that long held the value that suffering in disasters merited absolute and 

unconditional assistance as soon as possible. 

The current developments stem from the US Government Interagency Initiative6 

in 1997 when President Bill Clinton approved Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 

56. This directive laid the foundation for “interagency planning of future complex 

contingency operations.” Focusing curricula, budgets, and exercises on interagency 

practices and procedures, PDD 56 called upon government agencies to institutionalize lessons learned from complex contingency operations in Haiti and Bosnia. The 

current impetus, it is understood, stemmed from National Security Presidential Directive 44 (NSPD 44), signed by President George Bush, which detailed responsibilities 

for governmental departments in supporting stability and reconstruction. NSPD 44 

also charged the State Department with developing “detailed contingency plans for 

integrated US government reconstruction and stabilization efforts” and to “lead US 

government development of a strong civilian response capability including necessary 

surge capabilities.” This has led to the establishment of the multidisciplinary and interagency structure housed in the State Department under the Coordinator for Conflict, 

Reconstruction, and Stabilization (State/CRS), whose primary objective is the harmonization and implementation of postconflict reconstruction efforts. 

DOD has also moved increasingly toward an interagency approach to deal with 

postconflict reconstruction, and in doctrine has elevated stabilization operations to the 

same as warfighting. By way of illustration, in 2001, the term “interagency” was mentioned 13 times in the QDR, whereas “interagency” is mentioned 47 times in QDR 

2006. Extrapolating lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, QDR 2006 places specific attention on stabilization and reconstruction efforts. This is a fundamental and 

categorical shift in the alignment of priorities if viewed over time and is likely to have 

a major impact on how the US military interprets and implements its role in the generation to come. The recent response of the US military to the conflict in Georgia and 

South Ossetia to distribute relief (on one side of the conflict) reflects this role DOD 

has identified for itself. 

The years to come will be instrumental in clarifying the architecture of the interagency process and its relationship to the humanitarian community. The results will 

have a significant impact on humanitarian operations in the coming generations. 

Problems of Interagency, Utility of Independence 

The overarching question that now persists is how to respond to the humanitarian needs of the civilian populations in situations of armed conflict in ways that are 

effective in terms of providing succor to affected populations, while guaranteeing the 

acceptance of humanitarian assistance as a neutral activity, aimed at supporting victims 

of conflict and without any political value. To what extent do different models of intervention, be they rooted in political interagency interests or in notions of independence 

and full access, prove mutually reinforcing and to what extent do they undermine each 

other? For clarity’s sake, the following line of questioning focuses exclusively on humanitarian assistance, as longer-term development assistance by its very nature is conditional to the political interests of States that fund and of States and communities that 

implement. 

Evidently, no one organization or agency can respond to the entirety of humanitarian needs. In the face of unmet needs resulting in the suffering of populations, who then 

is in a position to say how and by whom should humanitarian assistance be delivered? 

What are intervention criteria, given this reality? 

Second, how are humanitarian needs determined? And by whom are criteria designed? Are they based on what agencies consider to be needs, or what agencies have 

in warehouses and/or consider appropriate responses? Do staff actually listen to those 

in need or do agencies actually think on their behalf? 

152 
Third, what happens when agencies move on? What are residual obligations to 

the recipients of aid and how are they determined? Availability of resources? Mission 

mandates? Political interest? In every case, agencies must consider the expectations 

created when operations started. The aid community is accountable to its constituents 

for the aid it delivers and must ensure that accountability is managed with the rigor and 

control as in any professional field. 

Moreover, how does humanitarianism assistance relate to local government structures or foreign occupiers, who after all are responsible for the delivery of health, security, and welfare to all persons falling within their territory? Is that leadership role (as 

opposed to those who grant permission to foreigners to distribute aid) recognized and 

respected? For that matter, what are the obligations on agencies to provide sustainable 

resources to manage and run the programs they set up in an emergency? 

Lastly, in this debate is the question, who should provide assistance in situations 

of armed conflict, the most extreme manifestation of political disagreement between 

and within States? Is it possible to eliminate a conflict of interest between a military 

fighting a war and providing assistance at the same time? 

The answers to these questions are as complex, yet clarity around these core issues 

is vital to make humanitarian assistance effective and thus respected by governments 

and recipients alike. A one-stop shop for addressing humanitarian needs in times of crisis is unthinkable. Crises will generate extra needs for which the voluntary and external 

humanitarian community and its supporters are required. Responses to humanitarian 

emergencies therefore will be a function of complementary activities by agencies and 

the factors that will determine those activities and relationships will include the nature, 

scope, and size of the emergency and the agency capacity and motivation to address 

the problem. 

That being said, humanitarian agencies—and this includes the ICRC—should 

accept the idea that the USG interagency, with its politically motivated approach as 

epitomized by the PRTs, is not going to fade away, even if PRTs are unpopular in some 

quarters because they combine political and military objectives with the delivery of 

assistance. Many Western countries are adopting and developing this model. As with 

all systems, however, some risks are inherent in the linking of humanitarian assistance 

with this approach. 

Humanitarian action should not be used as a substitute for sustainable political 

action. This lesson has been learned through all major evaluations of large-scale emergency operations. The international community has tended in the past to overcompensate for its political shortcomings through an increased humanitarian response. This 

does not help address the underlying political issues which the international community has an interest in, if not a responsibility for, and also suggests that some humanitarian needs are more important than others. International political failures in Rwanda in 
1994, the Balkans in the 1990s, and in Somalia in 1992 all saw a surge in the provision 

of humanitarian assistance. At no time could such assistance address the root causes 

of the tragedies that encompassed those countries and failure to do so resulted in unacceptable levels of human suffering. 

Related to this is the acknowledgement that humanitarian and other problems in 

a country at war are primarily the responsibility of the parties to the conflict. Humanitarian action simply substitutes itself temporarily for the limits of governments 

to take care of its own population. This does not change the fact that governments are 

responsible for their populations and their decisions in all spheres must reflect their 

responsibilities towards their citizens. Such awareness, in contrast to that of responding to needs as a way of satisfying agency mandates or interests, would generate a very 

different assistance community. In the long term, only sustainable and proactive local 

government action will address the problems generated by conflict, and assistance resources need to consider this when looking at choices for intervention. While not all 

agencies should or indeed could adopt an independent and apolitical perspective like 

the ICRC, all agencies should acknowledge the primacy of responding to human suffering, irrespective of political interests. 

A further danger in adopting a political approach is that the armed opposition or 

parts of the population will perceive humanitarian agencies as instruments of a foreign 

and aggressive agenda. They will likewise consider them as legitimate targets in their 

war. Tragically, increasing numbers of humanitarian workers are killed in circumstances that suggest their role is perceived as promoting a conflicting political approach. 

Conclusion 

Humanitarian assistance addresses the basic needs of individuals and communities 

to cope in situations of extreme stress. Activities target those who are most in need 

and provide a range of life-saving, life-protecting, and recovery support to immediate 

victims of crisis. Actors who take on such work to benefit communities living in situations of armed conflict or political tension must provide such support unconditionally, 

whether or not a natural disaster exacerbates the level of suffering. Such contexts include the obvious countries like Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, but also 

more subtle contexts such as Abkhazia, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Nepal. 

In such situations, limiting delivery of humanitarian assistance to agencies that 

can demonstrate an absolute neutrality and independence is in the interest of all involved, as securing the support of all parties is the only way to ensure impartiality. 

Only agencies with strictly humanitarian objectives can assure access to all people in 

need regardless of differing political interest. This necessarily excludes representatives 

of governmental interests, who will have political and partisan interests. 

Security of agency staff requires an acceptance that all staff involved in humanitarian assistance operate with that agenda. If governmental officials represent other 

154 
interests in similar activities, then the security of humanitarians is compromised, as humanitarians may be perceived of pursuing interests that exceed humanitarian concerns. 

In a charged political environment, such concerns become security threats. 

The protection of the recipients of assistance depends on the perception that they 

are selected based on need alone. Should armed groups consider that certain communities receive assistance because of their collaboration with political or military entities, 

a real risk exists that they too will be charged as collaborators and their physical integrity can be compromised. Should this occur, then the ones suffering only suffer more, 

the least desirable outcome of any humanitarian effort. 

Placing conditions on the delivery of humanitarian assistance, as is likely with 

government-supported assistance, introduces a dangerous precedent when lives are at 

risk. In the post-9/11 world, a number of countries have attempted to limit distribution 

of assistance in case aid might reach communities who may support antigovernment or 

even terrorist-type activities. Great care must be taken, however, while respecting political realities, to ensure that urgent humanitarian needs during times of armed conflict 

can be met in a neutral and impartial as well as a timely and effective way. 

Notes 

1. The ICRC is often considered to be sui generis: legally, it is neither an intergovernmental 

nor a non-governmental organization. It is a private association under Swiss law with international mandates under public international law. 

2. International humanitarian law expressly confers certain rights on the ICRC, such as that 

of visiting prisoners of war or civilian internees and providing them with relief supplies, and 

that of operating the Central Tracing Agency (see Arts 73, 122, 123 and 126, GC III, and Arts 

76, 109, 137, 140 and 143, GC IV). In addition, international humanitarian law recognizes the 

ICRC’s right of initiative in the event of armed conflict, whether international or non-international (Art. 3 and Arts 9/9/9/10 common to the four Geneva Conventions). The ICRC’s role is 

confirmed in Art. 5 of the Statutes of the Movement. In situations falling below the threshold of 

international humanitarian law, this article of the Statutes alone recognizes that the ICRC has a 

mandate to take action. 

3. In this document, “parties” or “authorities” should be understood to mean all entities (de 

jure or de facto) having obligations. 

4. See Art. 5.3 of the Statutes of the Movement. In its capacity as a specifically neutral and independent humanitarian organization, the ICRC examines whether it is better placed than other 

organizations to respond to the needs arising from these situations, such as visiting security detainees in cases where information or rumour indicates there may be poor detention conditions 

or ill-treatment. 

5. They should contribute for example to decisions regarding priorities and regarding the 

implementation, management and assessment of programmes. 

6. Source for background information is taken from paper on “Interagency Leadership – The 

Case for Strengthening the Department of State by Lieutenant Colonel Shannon Caudill, USAF, 

Major Andrew Leonard, USA, and Sergeant Major Richard Thresher, USMC, 15 April 2008. 

Panel 3—Interagency Efforts at the National Level
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D.
 

Mr. Geoff Loane
 

Moderated by Mr. Kelvin Crow
 

Mr. Crow 

Mr. Loane, I would like to completely abuse my position as moderator and ask you 

about your recent trip to the North Pole, but instead I am going to ask Dr. Dorff if we 

have reached the trigger point that you were talking about with a change in our thinking to the new reality, the new stresses of the new normal? 

Dr. Dorff 

That is one of the things that concerns me a lot. I do not think we have, at least in terms 

of the trigger event. I certainly would have thought that 9-11 was that and I had every 

reason to believe at the time that it was. But I think if we look around right now, I am 

not sure that we still have that momentum to generate the kind of consensus that I think 

Dr. Yates referred to earlier. And part of that is because, I think, there is still some confusion to what 9-11 meant. I know that may sound strange, but if you think back, for 

some of us, including myself, cannot think back to Pearl Harbor, but through studies 

of Pearl Harbor you know that the American public really wanted just to go beat up on 

the Japanese right away. And it took some very astute political leadership, I think, to 

translate the trigger event into what led to the kind of action, both in the fighting of the 

war and how it was prosecuted, to then try to build the structures and so on afterwards. 

I think right now the challenge is that some of what got lost was in, I think, the focus 

on 9-11. In the short term that was fine, but in the longer term I think we had opportunities to broaden that into a trigger event that really could have generated that broader 

discussion about how we really need to be organized. We will see, but right now if I can 

make the observation looking around the campaign trail today at the Presidential level 

I do not hear a lot of discussion about any of this. There are some very good people 

out there working, I just flipped up that one quick slide on it, about the reforms and the 

reorganizations that are needed, but I am just not sure that the oomph is still there to 

translate that thought into the huge effort it is going to take. 
Audience Member 

I am observing that you suggest a trigger event. Your discussion of the National Security Act of 1947 really shows how marginally it changed the structure. Post 9-11 we get 

two major pieces of legislation that changed structure. One was the intelligence community. We used that to bring a number of ideas together, but more importantly was the 

one that created DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and that frankly, is an even 

greater structural change than the National Security Act. The National Security Act 

brought together essentially three institutions, two institutions, split off one and made 

a third, and brought them together under one roof. The Homeland Security Act takes 22 

agencies of completely different cultures—some police cultures, one military culture, 

some intelligence cultures, not as many people, but certainly a whole bunch and 22 

organizations and says, “Work together.” That strikes me as a really tough job and in 

some ways actually more revolutionary than anything the National Security Act did. 

Dr. Dorff 

We should talk about this because I think in some respects you are right in terms of the 

22 organizations that existed that you put together and cats and dogs and so on fights 

that you might have with this, but I take a strongly different view. Taking 22 existing 

organizations and throwing them into one pot and declaring them the Department of 

Homeland Security was the easiest way out. Instead of really taking a look at what the 

true functions and capabilities that were needed were, we essentially rearranged some 

organizational charts and I happen to work with then special advisor to the President, 

later Secretary Ridge, as he was going through that process, and that was one of the 

things that really troubled him greatly because there was a rush to take all of these 

existing organizations and throw them together instead of maybe, again, pausing for a 

moment and asking ourselves what is it we really need to be able to do? And I would 

point to that, and my feeling on that, in precisely the same way, not just because Hurricane Katrina was certainly the next disaster that brought that home, but the rush to 

figure out who is really in charge and what reporting line even. And after Katrina we 

have FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) having this direct line back to 

the White House that is supposed to fix it comes back to this problem, I think, of voluntary cooperation, and in many respects I think Secretary Ridge felt like he never was 

able to get completely through that, that it was still almost like 22 organizations within 

one voluntarily cooperating with others. That is not to say it was not, it was hugely 

significant in that it shook up a lot of people in Washington, but I am not sure it was 

the kind of process of really taking the strategic imperative and translating that into 

the organizational need. And intelligence, I am not an intelligence expert, but people 

who are tell me that just creating yet another Director of National Intelligence, all that 

is doing, again, is layering another layer on top of it. So clearly we did something, but 

I think that was one where it may have been a push from Congress especially which 

politics drives all of this. Clausewitz tells us that too, but . . . 

158 
Audience Member 

But how is this any different really from 1947? 

Dr. Dorff 

I think it is very different. Thanks for following up with that because in fact, the institutions that did wind up showing up in the National Security Act of 1947, there really 

were not any of them as such that did exist before the war. Now, I was making the point 

that yes, the War Department, but in effect there was no JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), 

there really was not a Central Intelligence Agency. I think the precursor of all of them 

were things that were created, some of them in collaboration with some of our British colleagues in the war effort itself, so I think that was fundamentally different. And 

probably coming back to this question too, the transformation of an American public 

to now be thinking about national security as a peace time, not just a war time. That 

to me was an even bigger transformation although that is more attitudinal than philosophical, but absolutely essential and why I am saying I do not think we have made 

the big transformation after 9-11 because other than the fear and everything that we all 

rightly had of being attacked again, has not really necessarily translated into dealing 

with some of the problems we both have been talking about which I think humanitarian 

and disaster relief in semi-, if not still non-permissive, environments, ones that are going to be caused by bad people who are every bit as much our enemies as some of the 

others are going to be the problems that almost all of us are really going to be dealing 

with in the future. 

Day 2—Featured Speaker
 

Why Interagency Operations and Reform Are Hard To Do1
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

Richard W. Stewart, Ph.D.
 

Chief Historian, US Army Center of Military History
 

Yesterday we heard from a number of panels and speakers about how interagency coordination actually worked, or didn’t work, in a number of instances. Certainly 

Washington these days is focused on this issue with Jim Locher of Goldwater-Nichols 

fame, among others, generating books and papers about the need to reform the entire 

National Security structure to improve the planning and conduct of interagency operations and more efficiently focus the elements of national power on today’s crises. I’ve 

been tangentially involved in this Project for National Security Reform for several 

years, contributing to this collection of case studies on interagency operations in the 

past that came out from Praeger a few months ago entitled, alliteratively, Managing 

Mayhem. One fact seems to stand out from this study and the others presented so far 

in this conference is: coordinating actions through the interagency maze as it currently 

exists is HARD! And changing the rules through interagency reform to make coordinating easier is, perhaps, even HARDER! So I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to discuss with you some of the reasons why I believe it is so hard to get things 

done in the interagency or to reform the process effectively and, at the same time, hold 

out hope for some eventual improvement in the interagency process. 

Two conferences ago here at CSI I presented my analysis of CORDS, an on the 

whole successful interagency experiment in Vietnam to coordinate all aspects of US 

support to pacification during the last five years of that war. I was asked in the question 

and answer session what I thought of the prospects of some kind of interagency unification act like the military’s Goldwater-Nichols act. My answer then was fairly brief. 

I stated that based upon what I had seen in the documents about the two-year struggle 

between Washington and Saigon, and between DOD and the State Department, and 

all the squabbling that it took to create that single manager headquarters in a foreign 

country despite the fact that there was a clear and present danger that we were going to 

fail in pursuit of a major policy of our government, that such institutional interagency 

reform in Washington seemed highly unlikely. In fact, I believe that I said something 

along the lines of, “a 20-year struggle with a lot of very political, savvy people in 

Washington who will die in many ditches” before that happens. Perhaps I was a little 

too emphatic, since change in Washington does occur, albeit slowly, and today there 

are some signs that politicians and think tanks are beginning to recognize that something needs to be done along the lines of interagency reform. Although, I submit that 

20 years for any major changes to occur is still not too far off as a guess. I wanted to 
take a moment in this setting today to step back from the fray and explain why I still 

think that finding a permanent interagency solution like a “Goldwater-Nichols Act for 

the Interagency” is, if not impossible, at least very, very hard. 

Why Is It Hard? 

First, we have to realize that our Federal government was established initially to 

perform only a few basic functions without being a threat to our liberty. One of the 

fundamental reasons why interagency cooperation and coordination is so hard is simply this: the founding fathers who established the basic structure of our government 

were more interested in preventing an efficient government than they were in creating 

something that would function smoothly, efficiently, and to their minds potentially tyrannically. The very concept of separation of powers ensures that the legislative branch 

checks the power of the executive branch and that the judicial branch watches both of 

them. And even within the executive branch the various cabinet officials do not report 

to any single powerful coordinating body but directly, as individuals, to the President. The National Security Council, an important organization that tries to coordinate 

policy and ideas through a series of policy committees, the deputies committee, and 

the principals committee, cannot direct a cabinet-level official—an official appointed 

by the President and confirmed by Congress—to do anything without the direct intervention of the President himself. That explains both why interagency coordination is 

so hard and why entire departments can so easily ignore policy initiatives with which 

they happen to disagree. And, of course, the art of “slow-rolling,” of public agreement 

and private noncompliance, is as much a Washington art form as the careful calibrated 

“leak.” Only the office of the President truly has the power to enforce policy across 

the executive branch. No cabinet officials, men and women of considerable personal 

power and experience, can be forced to fall in line and do what any other cabinet 

official might want them to do without knowing that they can use direct access to 

the President to slow a policy or initiative with which they disagree. I think that the 

founding fathers preferred gridlock to an overly powerful, efficient, and potentially 

oppressive governmental structure. (Remember, these are the same founding fathers 

that originally had the man who garnered the second highest number of electoral votes 

in a presidential election become the Vice President, thus ensuring some measure of 

conflict at the highest level of the executive branch.) This underlying dynamic ensures 

interagency friction and presents an institutional and cultural barrier to all well-intentioned attempts to force different parts of the interagency to work together. 

Those in favor of a “Goldwater-Nichols Act for the Interagency” are also deluding 

themselves somewhat in believing that what worked fairly well for the military services—remarkably similar cultures when you get down to it—will work for the other 

parts of government. Let’s take a quick look at the obvious success of the Goldwater 

Nichols Act. Looking back, it is easy to say what a great idea this was. Create more 

unity among the services, consolidate some functions, force them to pull together and 

fight joint, live joint, breathe joint, think joint: what a great idea. However, this Act was 

passed in 1987 against very strong opposition of almost all of the service chiefs.2

 And, 

162 
I submit, it is still a work in progress. Joint doctrine is still being written to implement 

the joint warfighting aspects of the Act. The services have begun, slowly, to fight a 

little more jointly, but even in IRAQI FREEDOM the Marine’s I MEF and the Army’s 

V Corps attacked toward Baghdad essentially on two separate avenues of approach. 

Cooperation between the forces is probably at an all time high (except at budget time in 

Washington) but even the two ground forces still basically fight their own campaigns 

with three separate air forces (the Air Force, Naval air, and Marine air—sometimes 

answering to a single-air asset manager; sometimes not) flying in support. 

Two other key aspects of changing separate military cultures are joint schooling 

and joint assignments. After 20 years we are just now starting to make a dent in unifying higher level staff work, and joint assignments are only now seriously being viewed 

as essential for promotion. The Navy up until 2005 was still being granted waivers 

every year on joint education and joint assignments required by Goldwater-Nichols for 

promotion to flag rank. They saw no reason, in their heart of hearts, to value “jointness” nearly 20 years after Goldwater-Nichols became law. And as for joint education, 

I can tell you after my year at the National War College, that the Army, Air Force, and 

Marines take such education seriously as part of a progressive and sequential joint education system with education opportunities throughout an officer’s career. The Navy 

still seems to send people to the premier strategic, joint, educational opportunities—the 

Senior Service Colleges—almost by default: they pick those officers who are between 

assignments and have nothing better to do. I submit that their culture is still a long way 

from truly valuing “joint” education. 

So we can see that the road to full implementation of Goldwater-Nichols has been 

slow. And this was merely an attempt to force more cooperation and unity of action 

upon military cultures that, when you get right down to it, are more similar than different. They were all uniformed services; with a deep emphasis on leadership skills; 

extensive career-long education and training programs; focused on mission accomplishment, self-sacrifice, and “can do;” with progressively challenging leadership and 

management assignments and with nearly identical pay, promotion, pension, and performance rating systems. Perhaps most importantly, the services were all within the 

same cabinet department. Nothing had to be enforced or negotiated across cabinet 

lines. So Goldwater-Nichols, despite fierce service opposition, was an overall successful attempt to harness and focus remarkably similar entities that were already within 

the same command structure and had been since at least 1948. And even then it still 

took years to pass the necessary legislation mandating change and decades to implement that change with much still undone. 

If accomplishing greater service unification was and is a challenge, how much 

greater is the challenge of coming up with a structure that can provide for unity of 

effort in national security from such wildly different cultures as that of the State Department, USAID, Justice, USDA, Treasury, and the hodge-podge that is Homeland 

Security, an organization still trying to straighten itself out? 
Look at the size of the resources differences. The State Department consists of a 

total of about 57,000 employees, of whom 37,000 are foreign nationals, 11,400 are 

Foreign Service Officers and 8,700 are Civil Service employees. Subtracting the foreign nationals, this means that the State Department has about 20,000 US national 

employees at most, less than 1 percent of the size of DOD’s 1.4 million Active Duty 

personnel and 700,000 civilians.3 The total State Department budget in 2006 was only 

$10.4 billion and of that $2.3 billion went to pay for dues to the United Nations and 

other international organizations and support to Peacekeeping operations overseas, 

leaving about $8 billion to conduct America’s foreign affairs and pay its employees. 

This is well under 2 percent of the $700 billion+ DOD budget.4 And number of employees and budget does matter when called upon to support unplanned contingencies 

or additional missions such as Provincial Reconstruction Teams or ministerial assistance teams whether in Haiti, Iraq, or Afghanistan. 

State has certainly never had the numbers of employees or the budget to be able to 

devote dozens, let alone hundreds of its personnel to support contingency operations 

or even planning cells. Nor has it had the culture, the organizational structure, or the 

mindset to plan extensively, organize large programs, manage extensive resources, or 

even to interact effectively with the well-staffed regionally oriented Combatant Commands.5 At the risk of over generalization, the State Department culture is one of small 

meetings and discussions, extensive negotiations, and one-on-one understandings, of 

compromise and nuance, intellectualizing problems, and sending “cables” of insights 

and observations in hope of influencing larger events. They are at home in embassies 

and consulates, at receptions and seminars, at fora and colloquia. (These are all valuable skills, and should not be discounted, but they are very different skills and reflect a 

very different culture than that of the military.) 

As Lieutenant General David Barno, former Commander of the Combined Forces 

Command–Afghanistan said in a recent interview: 

there’s a vastly different culture there. In the military, you kind of grow up in the 

teamwork culture where accomplishing a mission, which is to get something done, is 

the overarching order of the day. In the State Department, to caricaturize it a bit, it’s 

a culture of ‘observe and report,’ and the highest-value outcomes are the well-done 

reporting cables back to Washington. 6 

And those written cables are examples of highly individualized skills, not teamwork efforts.7

 Is it small wonder that numerous officers since 1998 have referred to this 

divide as: “Defense is from Mars, State is from Venus.” (I guess that leaves USAID 

and their NGOs and PVOs as intergalactic denizens likened by one military observer 

as “those guys . . . from that bar in Star Wars.”8

) 

As a symptom of those vastly different cultures, I know I was extremely struck by 

the now famous remark made in November 2007 by a State Department employee at 

a public meeting with the Foreign Service Director General during which a number 

164 
of employees were told that they might be directed to go to Iraq in conformance with 

their oath of office to serve anywhere in the world. The employee stated, in a horrified 

tone, that an assignment to Iraq was a “potential death sentence” and “Who will raise 

our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?”9 The implication was strongly that 

he didn’t sign up for this sort of thing! It doesn’t take many instances of that to shake 

the confidence of military personnel—whose every posting these days is a “potential 

death sentence” since soldiers don’t generally get sent in large numbers to serve in 

Luxembourg, Aruba, or Tahiti, but in some such “garden spots” as Somalia, Kosovo, 

Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 

If the State Department culture is somewhat different from the military one, then 

let us compare the truly different culture, training, and orientation of the US Agency 

for International Development (USAID). USAID is even smaller than the State Department (and has, for all intents and purposes, been rolled up under State although 

many don’t admit it) with an even smaller budget. USAID has only about 1,800 full 

time government employees, augmented with only 700 contractors and 7,500 foreign 

nationals working overseas in the 90 some odd missions. The budget for their various 

programs, separate from civilian salaries, is on the same scale as the State Department, 

a mere $10 billion, or less than 2 percent of the DOD budget.10 

Unlike their predecessors during the Vietnam War, many of whom were assigned 

directly to various postings in villages and districts involved in government capacity 

building and direct contacts, USAID representatives in foreign cultures now spend 

most of their time on development and humanitarian aid projects as contract managers 

by facilitating the operations of nongovernmental and private volunteer organizations 

(NGOs-PVOs) and other contractors. If they can be said to have an institutional culture, it probably would be one more closely characterized as “Save the Children” than 

either State or military cultures of national security. The people who make up USAID 

are often suspicious of, if not downright hostile toward, that 800 lb. DOD gorilla that 

shows up briefly in distressed countries that may have had USAID missions for 20 or 

30 years, throws around massive resources, establishes huge depots of supplies and 

armed camps, only to depart in a few months or years only having muddied up the waterhole, so to speak, leaving USAID and their associated NGOs and PVOs to pick up 

the pieces. The military’s often good intentions do not enter into their equations since 

good intentions or not, our military presence inevitably distorts and complicates any 

situation from perspective of aid-givers and development personnel. 

But there is little doubt that USAID people do live in a separate culture. To give just 

one example of, shall we say the lack of operational or planning “mindedness,” we interviewed a member of the staff of Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan in March 

of 2007 and asked him about his working relationship with USAID. He related to us a 

story of USAID planning for the Phase I Ring-Road opening ceremony in Afghanistan 

for which USAID was the lead. President Karzai, Ambassador Khalilzad, and USAID 

Chief Natsios were all to attend the ceremony in December 2003. USAID put together 
an elaborate ceremony with parking, speaking agendas, food, etc., and when asked by 

CFC-A HQ what they needed, the USAID planning staff responded that everything 

was squared away—no problem. The military staff officer later told us: “Hey it was 

all squared away, [but the] bottom line was, there was no security [planned] for this 

event. I mean, clearly a strategic level type event, but USAID had done no coordination for security. We essentially went into a crisis action mode several days before the 

ceremony.”11 There was simply no culture of planning, and no real understanding of 

how to conduct operations in hostile or semihostile environments. 

And as for other potential interagency partners—Justice, Education, USDA, Homeland Security or Treasury—one is hard-pressed to assign them “cultures” but—to perhaps again over general—each of them are very Washington-centric in their scope and 

programs, and focused more on policy generation, wrapped up with heaping doses 

of legalese, than on operational mission accomplishment in austere environments on 

extended deployments. (Pieces of Homeland Security are the exception, especially the 

Coast Guard, Customs, and Border control, but DSH, as a whole, is a confused mishmash of bureaucracy with a variety of mostly nonoperational cultures.) If one is looking for organizations filled with experienced planning staffs, deployable teams, and 

“can-do” action officers, one has trouble finding very many examples outside DOD. 

In addition to cultures that do not stress planning, deployments, and mission 

accomplishment in hostile overseas environments, there is the additional complication 

in the varying levels of training and education available to the military as opposed to 

any other parts of the government. The military structure for training its officers is well 

known to most in this room. Over the course of a 20-plus year military career, an officer—starting with a variety of sources of commissioning each of which stresses teamwork and leadership—returns every few years to an advanced course, or Staff College, 

or War College, or Pre-Command Course to gain months of peer contact, progressive 

education and training, and inculcation with doctrine. 

Compare the military training and education system—focused on career long 

training in leadership, staff development, doctrine, planning, etc.—with the civilian 

leadership and development structure. I will now discuss the leadership and education 

systems of the other players in the interagency . . . . (long pause) Well, that’s about it. 

No, it’s not quite that bad. State has the Foreign Service Institute although many of its 

courses focus on cultural studies and languages. But State and the other agencies have 

the twin problems of limited training dollars and, more importantly, the challenge of 

who will staff the empty slots in the agencies and embassies while the incumbents are 

going to school? Unlike the military with its hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, neither the State Department nor any other agency has a large training budget 

or a flexible personnel account. For example, let’s look at the Army’s TTHS (Trainees, 

Transients, Holdees and Students) account where, on average, at least 50,000 soldiers 

who are assigned to schools, in training, or on medical hold can reside for months and 

even years at a time. Think of it: a “float” of 50,000 soldiers in transit, awaiting as166 
signment, in schools, or on medical hold. You have fewer that 20,000 Foreign Service 

Officers and Civil Service employees to staff the Department of State headquarters 

in Washington and all of the embassies and consulates world-wide. It is very hard to 

siphon off even a few hundred a year to undergo a series of lengthy professional development and leadership programs that would in any way be comparable to the military 

system. In point of fact, the entire State Department, including Foreign Service Officers, Civil Servants, political appointees, contractors and foreign national employees 

overseas, is smaller than the 62,000 soldiers on average that were in the Army’s TTHS 

account in 2007.12 So, the Army has more soldiers in “limbo” than the State Department has employees. It is hard to overlook this dramatic brake on any attempt to expand the educational and training structure of the State Department that would help 

them be more effective interagency partners. And they probably have a better training 

system than many other Federal agencies outside DOD. 

In short, because of the actual structure of our government, our vastly disparate 

cultures, resources, missions, goals, focus, training opportunities, and size of the different players in the interagency process, getting them to coordinate anything is a miracle. 

Forcing them together into anything like a unified structure akin to Goldwater-Nichols 

is nearly unconstitutional and will be very difficult, if not actually impossible. Even 

if legislation occurs that generates better methods to manage the flow of plans and 

concepts through the National Security Council system, this will do little to change the 

actual management of operations or the blending of widely disparate cultures. 

Now, having pronounced interagency reform at the national level nearly impossible, 

let me take a moment and show some areas of light that may indicate that interagency 

operations can occasionally work. Perhaps the prime examples of this phenomenon 

are in instances of overseas operations where the various interagency partners—State, 

CIA, USDA, USAID, and DOD—are working together as a team, focused on an important mission, and are able to ignore or downplay many of the rigid lines of authority 

within the beltway. With the right personalities, in the right setting, focused on the right 

mission, interagency can work despite the lack of a true Washington consensus. Prime 

examples of this from history include CORDS in Vietnam and even, on a much smaller 

scale, the PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq. These small interagency and international 

teams—providing little more than band-aids for the gaping wounds of these countries 

due to the lack of a robust organization and limited resources—are managing to work 

together on the mission of providing some reconstruction aid to war-torn areas. However, cultural differences even then often create tension between military commanders 

and their civilian interagency counterparts working on their teams. 

Another example of where the interagency worked despite the lack of a formalized structure is that of Task Force Bowie in the early days of Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM (OEF) in Afghanistan. Though less well-known than Task Force Dagger 

or Task Force 11, the “White” and “Black” SOF task forces at that point in time in 

OEF, Task Force Bowie, commanded by experienced Special Forces officer Brigadier 
General Gary Harrell, was an experimental Joint Interagency Task Force, or JIATF. 

This JIATF, created at the behest of the CENTCOM commander, brought together 

CIA, FBI, NSA, and Special Operations personnel to focus on the generation of actionable intelligence in a “fusion cell.” This fusion cell, consisting of representatives of 

all the major intelligence and Special Operations players, sat in one room, and shared 

intelligence from a variety of sources with virtually no barriers in an attempt to put 

together timely, actionable intelligence in the search for high value targets (HVT) in 

Afghanistan from December 2001 through June 2002. This example shows that when 

the mission is critical enough, and the personalities mesh, interagency cooperation, indeed integration is possible. But successful cooperation and integration are still heavily reliant on just that: the right mission and the right personalities—personalities that 

won’t play the “I’m going back to Washington on this issue and you can’t stop me” 

game—and the right organization. The mission and personality issues, I submit, cannot 

be legislated, but the organization can, and in the future perhaps model structures can 

be developed where interagency individuals can actually be assigned to an organization, not just temporarily loaned, with all that means. The military officers would write 

the evaluations of the civilians assigned to them or, depending on the mission, the 

senior civilians would write the evaluations of the military personnel assigned to them. 

It must work both ways and the personnel assigned must have the right skills, the best 

training, and the right “bias” for action and mission accomplishment. Only then can 

an interagency task force be positioned for success on the battlefield or during crisis 

operations. 

So, in conclusion, what can we do in the next two decades as we wait for potential 

institutional change to begin the long process of cultural change within the various 

agencies of the government? We can start by focusing on improving the quality of people within all the agencies of our government by expanding training and educational 

structures, opportunities, and funding. We can then begin throwing personnel from 

all agencies of the government together more often in training and planning exercises 

and assignments, building more interagency task forces focused on specific issues and 

plans, and creating the modalities of working together effectively on the ground overseas to make up for a basic and continuing lack of interagency coordination back in 

Washington. This will require more resources (money and people) in agencies throughout the government outside of DOD, more formalized educational requirements for 

DOS, DOJ, the Treasury, etc., so that their people can be trained in leadership, management, and planning procedures on a par with their military counterparts. 

In short, we need to work on the practical workarounds that will force us to work 

more closely together and not wait until we have a “Goldwater-Nichols” for the interagency. Even if such legislation was passed today (highly unlikely) it would not have 

a serious impact on changing the cultures of government in any less than 20 years. The 

stakes of the current global struggle are too high to wait for legislative grand schemes, 

but we can focus on fusing the interagency cultures as we have done over the past 40 

years in DOD: create more interagency assignments, more interagency educational 

168 
opportunities, and recognize the need for more money and people for the other parts 

of the interagency outside DOD. Only then can we slowly create the functional structure that makes the interagency work during critical national security operations. The 

stakes are too high to do otherwise. 

Notes 

1. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official 

policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US government. 

2. See especially James R. Locher III, Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater-Nichols Act 

Unifies the Pentagon (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M Press, 2002), pp. 3–12. 

3. US Department of State Bureau of Human Resources Fact Sheet as of 09/30/2007, 

“Facts About Our Most Valuable Asset—Our People,” at http://www.state.gov/m/dghr/c24894. 

htm. 

4. US Department of State Budget Summary 2008, US Department of State Web Site, 

http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/bib/. 

5. For an interesting proposal about how to organize the State Department into regional 

bureaus to match Combatant Command theaters with a projected improvement in planning 

and working together, see Commander John M. Myers, “Singular Vision: A Plan to Enable 

CENTCOM and State to Work Together,” Armed Forces Journal, March 2008, 43–45. 

6. Enduring Voices: Oral Histories of the US Army Experience in Afghanistan, 2003–2005, 

Interview with Lieutenant General David Barno, unpublished manuscript, Christopher Koontz, 

ed. (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2008), p. 119. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Ibid. Interview with Colonel Tucker B. Mansager, p. 123. And see Rickey L. Rife, “Defense is From Mars State is From Venus,” Army War College Research Paper, 1998, p. 16. 

9. Jack Crotty, a senior Foreign Service Officer, as quoted in “Diplomats Decry Being 

Sent Against Will to Iraq: Hundreds Boo State Department, Liken Policy to ‘Potential Death 

Sentence,’” MSNBC, 1 November 2007. 

10. USAID Facts Briefing Charts provided to the author by Mr. Thomas Staal, Chief, 

USAID Iraq Office, 7 March 2008. 

11. Enduring Voices, p. 181, Interview with former Chief of Staff, CFC–A, Colonel Thomas 

J. Snukis, 1 March 2007. 

12. For more on the size and structure of the Army’s TTHS “investment”, see Scott T. Nestler, “TTHS is Not a Four–Letter Word,” AUSA Landpower Essay, Institute of Land Warfare, 

No. 04–7W, November 2004. 

Day 2—Featured Speaker
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Richard W. Stewart, Ph.D.
 

Chief Historian, US Army Center of Military History
 

Audience Member 

I found your discussion of the President having to play fascinating. I just call the attention of everybody to a book that first came out in early 1960 or maybe 1959 by Richard 

Neustadt called Presidential Power. In that he pointed out that not even the President 

has the power to order things to happen. In fact, it begins with an anecdote about President Truman waiting for President Eisenhower to take office and President Truman 

says “Poor old Ike; he’ll find it is nothing like the Army. He will say do this and do that 

and nothing will happen.” I submit it has not changed all that much. 

Dr. Stewart 

I also submit though that even in the Army, and here I look for correction from the senior folks in this audience, even in the Army the number of times when a senior general 

can say, “Do this and do that,” and instantly everything falls into place are few and far 

between. There is still a lot of consensus building of discussion of putting folks’ minds 

in the right place to not only get them to do what you want but for them to believe in 

doing what you want, which is a very different process. But you are right about Presidential power and yet, if he cannot do it, no one else can. If he is not actively engaged . 

. . we saw that in some of the case studies the other day. In Grenada it was Reagan who 

was involved not once or twice . . . but was involved in several parts of the process and 

pointed them each time in the right direction. With CORDS it was the President who 

over 18 months could not direct. He knew he was not going to get away with directing. 

He slowly built the consensus and allowed other people to try out their experiments 

first. They failed, then he began pushing until he finally got what he wanted. He did 

not direct; he built the consensus. The President has power; the only person who is the 

decider in the interagency. There must be a better way to give him a better staff so he 

can make better decisions perhaps. That comes down to the structure of the National 

Security Council. That is probably the best area for structural reform in my opinion. 

Audience Member 

Your initial remarks about the philosophical underpinnings of American government, 

the emphasis on constraining effective government led me to pause and think for a 
second. It seems that many other regimes, some with authoritarian philosophical underpinnings, do not do any better in the interagency. To what extent is it just about 

bureaucratic dynamics as opposed to philosophy? 

Dr. Stewart 

Good question. You can never discount bureaucracy. A lot of my doctoral work was 

done on ways in which an arms bureaucracy was created and tried to do things and 

it fell into the same bureaucratic traps you run into today. The power of bureaucratic 

structural organization, turf fights, budget wars, all of those things are there whether 

it is autocratic or, in our case, a more democratic state. But I am indicating that the 

founding fathers perhaps pushed more in that direction than authoritarian regimes who 

want to get things done after all, who want to have more efficient governments, and I 

am not sure that a lot of the players of our government are still that convinced of that 

efficiency. Because again, they have their own missions, their own focus, they know 

what is important, but according to law they have to do “X” and suddenly the military 

comes along and says, “We would like you to help us with ‘Y’.” That is fine but I do 

not have a lot of resources. I will help you a little bit with “Y,” but if it takes away from 

“X,” you are not going to get my full attention and “X” is mandated by a series of, not 

just the structure of government, but the laws that have been created since that time 

which always restrained the active players. 

Audience Member 

It would seem then that the US founders were closer to getting what they actually 

wanted and prescribed than some of their authoritarian counterparts who wanted effective regimes and were able to pull it off. 

Dr. Stewart 

Amazingly so, but remember these are the same great people that when they set up the 

electoral college had the person getting the largest number of votes becoming President, but the person who ran second becoming Vice President, even trying to guarantee 

gridlock in the executive branch. It was only after trying that a couple of times that 

they realized that this is not going to work at all that they backed away from it. So the 

default position was definitely that. 

Audience Member 

AFRICOM (United States African Command)—I would like to hear your thoughts 

on that. Do you see this as a forcing function to create a force interagency effort in its 

study or experiment? As we look at it and see it from where we stand we certainly see 

a lot a challenges it has. I would be interested in your thoughts on AFRICOM and how 

they are trying to organize that command. 

172 
Dr. Stewart 

I have only been watching AFRICOM from a distance. It seems like an interesting 

experiment with a lot of words that sound really good. Oh, we are going to have more 

interagency partners and all that. They have had trouble getting people to volunteer 

from the other interagency organizations, haven’t they? I wonder why? It is because 

they know they are going to be outnumbered 500 to 1, that they are going to end up 

being rated by some people of a very different culture, and that their own organization 

will then look upon them with a certain measure of suspicion when they return. Again, 

it is all things that we saw in the military culture back in the early 1980s when you were 

assigned to work for an Air Force officer or a Navy guy was assigned to work for you. 

You were supposed to defend your service and not get too carried away with this other 

organization having a mission. I submit that with AFRICOM they are going to have to 

be very careful to both provide good advice but not blend too much with that culture. If 

they increase the numbers of interagency players within their organization, that might 

help, but where are these numbers are going to come from? You need 100 USAID 

(United States Agency for International Development) people in your headquarters to 

make a difference in Africa. Okay. That is 1/18th of the entire staff of USAID. Are you 

going to get it? No, all good intentions but it founders upon the problem of different 

cultures, different resources, different numbers, different mission. A number of folks 

within USAID in State have not bought into the idea that a military regional command 

for Africa, which up until now has been pretty much their turf, is going to help the 

situation. Some of the African nations who initially said this sounds like a good idea 

are beginning to back away from that as well. So I think there is a lot of work; like 

every good historian, ask me in about 10 years and I will tell you how things are going 

today. 

Audience Member 

My question is, what capabilities would you like to see in the interagency? Let’s talk 

about State and USAID in particular. I am not sure DOJ (Department of Justice) is going to be sending a lot of folks out with muddy boots anytime soon. Do we just want 

State to be able to plan better and come to meetings on time or is there a specific set 

of capabilities that we are actually talking about there? I know my students very much 

enjoy complaining about the State Department. You can derail any seminar for a good 

hour with that topic. But the idea that there is something more important for them 

to do besides diplomacy, more important than maintaining relations with our NATO 

(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies or something, it strikes me as a bit of a false 

dichotomy. There is actually very important work that they are supposed to be doing, 

and the problem is that we do not have enough folks to dig wells which is, apparently, 

nobody’s job. So my questions is, what exactly are the capabilities in the interagency 

that we are lacking and you would like to see? 
Dr. Stewart 

You are raising an excellent point because we cannot go around making fun of the State 

Department and trying to say that the mission they are doing is not important; it is. And 

that is what their resources are focused on and that is an important thing for them to do. 

They have to continue to do that and, in fact, I submit they need more resources to do 

that mission. But planning and schooling and assignments would be a good start. Certainly, the difference between journalists and historians—with journalists three days 

is deep research, and with historians, three years you are just beginning to define the 

problem. With State a couple of days at a seminar, that is planning for them. That is 

all it is. Whereas military staff in Washington and out here as well, can spend months 

and years updating plans, revising, coming up with new assumptions, new facts. So 

there is a difference in perception about what planning is. But more planning, more 

in-depth planning, having enough people trained and skilled in planning and the planning methodology that are able to set aside 10 of them with widely varying skills in a 

room in the State Department for six months and work on various local and regional 

plans. And remember, with every local plan you have, you are going to have a number 

of ambassadors who will deny all knowledge that this will at all be helpful or work. 

You need more people doing that, more training in how to do that, more appreciation 

within their own organization from their senior folks that this is an important thing to 

do which at the moment is not there. Even if you start the planning cells today it will 

take 10 or 20 years for a change of culture. During Vietnam, having State and USDA 

and USAID people ready to go out on various missions in the countryside, check on 

facts, deal with people, and attempt to build government capacity—who better to set 

up a village development program than maybe a State Department person who knows 

about how government is supposed to work? That would be useful, but at the moment 

they do not have the people, they do not have the time, and they do not have the training to teach those particular skills. We keep talking that building government capacity 

is a great thing; we ought to be doing more of that. Okay, who is going to do that? The 

captain and major had a civics class in high school, but he is not trained on how all 

elements of putting together a government work, or someone from State Department 

or USAID even who have at least a notion of participatory democracy and structures. 

You will not find too many of the old State Department types like an ambassador I ran 

into at Fort Bragg who will go out to the landing zones during Operation DRAGON 

ROUGE in the Congo with a .45 strapped to his hip, an operational State Department 

guy ready to take on all comers in pursuit of his diplomacy. That is not going to work 

probably. But a little more operational mindedness and mindset will help as well, but 

that too comes in time and through assignments and through exposure. You cannot 

expect someone to jump in on a hot landing zone right from day one from the State 

Department and expect them to function. Does that answer your question? It is sort of 

rambling a bit. Thank you. 

Audience Member 

We hear a lot on the subject from Thomas P. M. Barnett who talks about the SysAdmin 

174 
Force. Now the interagency is going to come in and do the stability and reconstruction 

and the State Department has a lead on that by NSPD-44 (National Security Presidential Directive 44) and there is an expectation among the students, majors, that somebody else is going to come in and take over this country after the invasion is done, after 

the occupation is done. 

Dr. Stewart 

I wonder where they get that idea. 

Audience Member 

Which to me seems to be an unrealistic expectation. Nobody is going to come in and 

take it over for the reasons that you mentioned; nobody else has the capacity to do it. 

During World War II, Roosevelt did not want to give the reconstruction mission to 

the Army. The Army stepped forward and seized it, basically building a military government force and making plans for the occupation of Germany against Roosevelt’s 

wishes. 

Dr. Stewart 

With the MPs (Military Police) in the lead, but that is another story. 

Audience Member 

Right. I guess my question is, when you talk about culture, when is the culture in the 

Army going to change so that we realize that this is going to be our mission, we need 

to be the lead on it, and we need to step forward and take the lead and finish off the 

invasion through the occupations that we begin? 

Dr. Stewart 

Good question. It is not a mission that for many years we were at all comfortable with. 

I remember talking with the civil affairs planners with DESERT STORM when they 

said, “Well, after we occupy these large chunks of Iraq, what are we suppose to do 

next?” They were told, “Well, do not worry about it because there are not any civilians 

there and we do not have to plan for them,” even though the Tigris and the Euphrates 

Valley had been occupied with civilians for some time. The ability of the Army and 

DOD to deny that there is going to be a problem or that in six months, to use as an 

example, we will be pulling out anyway so it will be somebody else’s problem de facto 

is remarkable. I think recent experience has once again filled that particular glass up to 

be about half full with the fact that we need to be able to do this thing. The difficulty 

is when we have the capacity, when we have the doctrine which we are getting developed, when we have the people who are beginning to be trained to know how to do 

this, the fear by a number of folks and senior Army leadership is, since we know how 
to do it, we have the people, we have the capacity, we are there, we are always going 

to get it, no way around it. In other words, it will stick to us like glue when we, in our 

minds, should be training to do other things. I think that is a false argument. I do not 

think it matters whether we want to or not, we have it, we are going to get it the next 

time, we might as well work on a more robust civil affairs structure although I submit 

that most of them still need to remain in the Reserves rather than Active Duty. I would 

argue that with anyone who would like. More robust civil affairs structure, a clearer 

doctrine, which I believe is beginning to be developed now on our stabilization and 

reconstruction even within the military and we capitalize upon this wonderful amount 

of experience we have received from our captains, majors, and everybody in the Army 

at all levels on how it actually works on the ground in an unstable environment from 

Iraq and begin capturing that experience, instilling the practical tips of how it works in 

addition to the doctrine of how it should work and putting the two together and bouncing them off each other for awhile. So I think we are heading in the right direction. I 

think we have to head in that direction in order to actually make things work, not just 

for the rest of our time in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the next one, and we do not 

know where the next one is going to be. But we need to be prepared for it even if it 

looks very different than Iraq or Kosovo or Bosnia. 

Audience Member (From the Blogosphere) 

He says that you had mentioned it would take 20 years for the “silver bullet” to become 

effective and his question is, the incentives are not in line be it for DOD military, tax 

free, etc, and for State Department and civilians, it is not tax free in the combat zones. 

So is there any short-term actions, either legislation or regulatory changes that could 

effect or entice incentives-wise civilians to go do this rather than the State Department 

saying it might be a death sentence? 

Dr. Stewart 

And there is a disparity, it goes back to the cultural question. The people in charge of 

the State Department, I do not think, have been pushing for this change in part because 

if you suddenly incentivize this and have a thousand extra people volunteer and you 

suddenly have to triple your budget for this particular thing, where is the money going 

to come from? From a Congress that keeps zeroing out your budget line? Congress will 

not turn down a military appropriation for any length of time. They will do it postural 

for awhile but not for any length of time because they know the American people will 

look at that and say, “This guy voted against protecting our troops.” The legislature 

or the Congress can turn down any number of bills that expand or improve the State 

Department, one of which is funding, any time they like. So the incentives should be 

there. I would hope the State Department leadership and others within the interagency 

are working to incentivize that because there needs to be more money to ensure that 

their children are being taken care of and that they have better health care when they 

get back. A number of State Department folks have gone over there and gotten shot at 

176 
and gotten wounded, come back and the State Department says “Well, I guess that is it 

for you. Sorry about that.” They do not really give that same level of health care that 

in the military we are used to thinking of automatically. It is not there in their culture. 

That culture needs to change. That mindset needs to change from the highest levels 

of leadership down to their operational level, down to the troops in the field so they 

do fight to get those resources to take care of their people, to make them believe that 

this is a career-enhancing assignment, and that we will protect them financially and 

physically while they are there and when they come back and promote them and look 

upon this as a good thing. These are the people that are the rising stars within the State 

Department rather than with someone who moves on to the next diplomatic reception 

in Monaco. Does that answer the question? 

Audience Member 

Yes Sir. 

Dr. Stewart 

It is a big issue and it will be going on for a long time, even if the legislation was 

passed today. Especially if it is not passed, you need to start those things anyway and 

not wait. 

Audience Member 

I have a question relating to the 20 years that you think it might take to make the institutional adjustments. 

Dr. Stewart 

That is just a pull out of the hat, because that is how long it has taken for GoldwaterNichols to begin to make substantive change but . . . 

Audience Member 

Right Sir, I understood long term. It made me think of the Army objective force which, 

I think, in its original conception was supposed to take about 30 years to transform 

from what we had in early 2000 until what we are moving toward in the objective 

force. Obviously, that has been greatly accelerated lately due to the external stimulus of 

the long war. The question I have is, are there any useful models we can use to possibly 

apply a way to make those institutional changes in a shorter amount of time from say 

the military form of movement from the late 1970s or early 1980s, or does it always 

take a large external stimulus to change the inertia from organizational behavior and 

governmental politics that preclude those changes in a shorter time period? 
Dr. Stewart 

One of the interesting things about the discussion yesterday was even when there is 

sometimes a tremendous stimulus which you would assume 9-11 was, sometimes it 

does not have the long-term effect that you would think it would have. So when you 

are dealing with cultures like with nation building, it takes generations. You have to 

sow the seeds; you have to be patient. It is a hard thing to shortcut. If you start coming 

up with shortcuts, you think you have achieved something but then when you move 

on or when your successor decides that it is not as important, that change begins to 

evaporate. So there needs to be a systematic, long-term, consistent cultural change 

beginning, probably, with mid-level officers here and mid-level officers at the State 

Department in order to get the right sustained change over time. I submit you cannot 

go a lot faster than that. The 30-year thing for the future combat systems is interesting 

although I think 15 years of that has to do with dealing with the contracting office and 

the acquisition community. Do not get me started on that. Compared to that community 

the interagency is an efficient team. Thank you. 

Audience Member 

Sir, my background has been a combat engineer for my first decade of service in the 

Army, but I had the opportunity to work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency on my last assignment in the Washington, DC, area. This was my first exposure to the strategic intelligence world. I was wondering if you were aware of, or 

monitoring, the review of the IC (Intelligence Community) and how they are encouraging their employees to do two-year tours or joint jobs within the IC. You referenced 

Goldwater-Nichols but the IC is also moving in that direction as well. I just wanted to 

get your comments on that. 

Dr. Stewart 

Interesting, I did not know about that. That is an interesting initiative which, again, 

shows that instead of waiting for somebody in Washington to come up with the better 

structure they have recognized that there is a problem and are beginning to make some 

incremental changes. It does start with people; culture is just a collection of people 

trying to learn to do things differently. So they are beginning to change the culture one 

person at a time. That is a good initiative. Even then, of course, as you run into it anywhere in the intel world there are not just regulatory, but legislative barriers sometimes 

in the sharing of information between different communities. So even with people being trained up and disposed to share, they have to be very careful that they do not end 

up in trouble for it. But it is a good initiative and I am glad to hear about it. I will check 

into that. It sounds like something interesting. Thank you. 

Audience Member 

It seems to me that Army officers are very well adapted to dealing with the kind of situ178 
ations you are talking about, coordinating disparate elements, non-Army. They grow 

up in a combined arms framework where they have to coordinate all kinds of things 

and as they grow and interact with battalion, brigade commander, division commander, 

they get better and better at this kind of coordination, and it certainly is showing up 

in Iraq where captains and lieutenants, taking on completely strange jobs working at a 

village or working on what have you, adapted very well. This should be built on and 

no doubt will be built on in the future, so I do not think that things are all that bad. It 

seems to me, however, that the superstructure of the Department of Defense gets in 

the way because Army is just one of the services and they have all the other services. 

Things have to be done equally and command jobs parceled out equally pretty much. 

The Army has done a lot of training of the other services. You will find years ago the 

Army’s method of analyzing doctrinal problems and systems problems was picked up 

by other services. They all finally got a TRADOC (United States Army Training and 

Doctrine Command) kind of thing. I do not know what to make of this, but I think there 

is a lot to be hopeful for as we go along, and maybe incremental change and adaptation 

by people is going to solve some of these problems. 

Dr. Stewart 

I can only hope you are right, Sir. Certainly the amount of time it took to adapt to new 

environments and new situations in Iraq was surprisingly swift when you think about 

a huge institution based upon, if you ever knew the old combat-based requirements 

system and the old doctrinal developments model, it could sometimes take five years 

to turn out a new chunk of doctrine, whereas Iraq turned things around a lot quicker 

than that, a lot more agile than that. But again, they were building in some cases on 

a very experienced deployed officer core from Bosnia and Kosovo, and even though 

there is not a direct mixture, they were amorphous enough situations that a different 

set of skills were tapped to deal with those environments and then they became a little 

more flexible and in Iraq had to be even more flexible. Still I submit that when we go 

to Afghanistan there will not be another full culture shift, but there needs to be a certain 

amount of adaptation as well to deal with that situation. 

Audience Member 

Which I think they are doing. 

Dr. Stewart 

Yes Sir, I think so, but again, talk to me in about five years on that. We will see how 

well the institution captures that experience, puts it into something that is both reasonable and not locked into one time or place but is more generalizable, and then transmits 

that to the next generation of officers. That is always the key to a training institution 

such as this and such as the command schools—how well do they capitalize upon current experience and get it back into the system so that the next generation knows that 

as well as the new skills they have to learn? 
Audience Member 

Secretary Gates has used a number of vehicles and venues to try and emphasize increased resources for Department of State. I would like your comments on whether you 

think that will even have an impact on Congress or whether they will respond? 

Dr. Stewart 

You would think it would have an impact on Congress when the Secretary of Defense 

says, “Look, this is important enough for me to give a 100 million dollars out of my 

budget to the State Department today, saying please take this money, use it because I 

know you need this capacity; go for it.” I am not even sure if Congress allowed him to 

reprogram that money but he probably got away with it. But it did not seem to shame 

Congress at all. They are almost unshameable in that regard. I do not see any huge 

expansion, some incremental expansion. They have authorized a couple hundred more 

Foreign Services Officers, for example, and that is a start. But a hundred million dollars, again, a good start, but up in Washington you cannot institutionalize anything for 

a hundred million dollars. You cannot set structures in place. You can use that to fill 

current shortcomings maybe, but you need a sustained funding flow of 100, 200, 500, 

a billion dollars a year in order to set the structure in place and expand it permanently. 

When talking about training soldiers you cannot just recruit another 10,000 soldiers. 

You need to figure out how much that is going to cost over the course of their career 

for schooling, housing, development, doctrine, and expansion of the training base to 

deal with them. The State Department has to do that and it must have dedicated funding. It is a good gesture; it is a good start. It needs to be followed up by Congress with 

something sustained. 

Audience Member (Internal Circuit Television) 

What are your thoughts on this historical application of the US Information Agency 

and whether it needs to be expanded or resurrected in today’s information environment? 

Dr. Stewart 

Excellent question because the US Information Agency, the US Information Service, 

the name changed over the years, was now looked upon by historians as one of the 

great institutions of the Cold War that helped us not just build confidence in our system 

of government, but bucked up wavering allies, helped us win the information war, as 

it were, for the Cold War, the hearts and minds war for the Cold War. And if right now 

we are in a struggle for some hearts and minds around the world, getting our message 

out, why are we ignoring this public communications thing that we have assigned to 

the State Department, but again not giving them the resources to do it when you need 

something like the US Information Agency, run by people with the confidence of the 

administration, with a consistent message (once we find out what that is), and thus use 

180 
over time to tell the world our side of the story? It will be seen by some as propaganda, 

fine, but by repeating our message in a number of venues I think that we are missing 

a bet by not resurrecting something like the US Information Agency. Yes, keeping it 

within the State Department, but giving them the resources to make it actually work. 

This is a valuable tool. It is not PSYOP (psychological operations), but information 

that in the long run will help, I believe. 

Audience Member 

We have talked about resources and the fact that they are not getting any and they do 

not have enough, I would like your opinion on the argument that the State Department 

and these other organizations are not effectively communicating their needs and that is 

why they are not being met. They are either not speaking the right language and we can 

provide a translator for them, or they are not making it a priority that what they need . 

. . is there a way to intertwine it with the 700-billion-dollar DOD budget that you are 

talking about and state it in terms of what they can do to support the overall military 

effort worldwide? 

Dr. Stewart 

You have made a good point because for any argument to succeed you both need an 

effective and skilled arguer on one side, but then a set of ears on the other side that 

is willing to listen and then turn that into some degree of action. At the War College, 

we had Carlos Pasqual drop by who was one of the heads of the initial stabilization 

organizations that they tried to set up at State. A more articulate, passionate, devoted 

individual for his organization and its goals and needs it would be hard for you to meet. 

For two years he met with Congress, which I submit probably wined and dined them, 

but also talked to them at committees, individually, in an attempt to get them to realize this was a long-term need of the nation not just of the State Department. Like two 

weeks after he talked to our War College class—I do not think we had anything to do 

with it—he resigned in disgust because his information was being thrown out there on 

the ground and none of it was sprouting. So if he is an example of some of the others 

at State, they are very skilled, they are very articulate, they know the levers of power 

that they can try to pull, but it has to fall upon ears that are willing to listen and Congressmen with bases in their districts; they will listen to a military spokesman. Where 

is the State Department base in Peoria, Ohio? It is not there. It is a very weak arguing 

position to begin with so State has a problem right from that; not their fault but the way 

that it is. 

Audience Member 

Real quick follow-up. Is there any benefit in tying it to an overarching goal? Something that gets more response that they can basically hitch their wagon to and try and 

receive some of the benefit of that? 
Dr. Stewart 

Yes, probably so. They have not been able to do so successfully so far because it seems 

that in the budget there is only a certain amount that people are willing to give out on 

the budget and I do not believe we should stint the DOD budget necessarily because 

that is critical to our national survival, but Congress needs to come up with more creative ways to put a little more in the other side of the house. So far they have not shown 

a huge inclination to do so. 

Audience Member 

At any given time there is some amount of DOD manpower detailed to the other agencies be it State or intel agencies. What is your observation or assessment of the extent 

to which that manpower facilitates interagency coordination or perhaps cooperation, or 

is it making a difference at all? 

Dr. Stewart 

I have nothing quantitative to deal with it. From the people I have talked to it seems 

to make a difference within the offices to which they are assigned, but like everyone 

else, everywhere else within the State Department, there are desks and subdesks, and 

subcommittees and divisions and all that. Within a small organization a handful of 

military folks will begin having an impact upon them. But remember it is military in 

their culture; we have to learn to adapt to their culture and that is good for us, but they 

are not really adapting much to the people that we have working for them. I submit the 

only way around that is for them to have enough people so that some of their people 

can be assigned more than just one POLAD (Political Advisor) at CENTCOM. Come 

on now, you need a hundred folks from State, CIA, a variety of agencies assigned to 

various headquarters, and then go back to their headquarters and spread the word about 

the new culture they have run into. So yes, military folks assigned in a wide variety of 

things do help us as a community, I think. I think it helps us more than it helps them, 

but it at least exposes them to another viewpoint. They need to come and become part 

of our culture as well for long-term change. 

LTG Caldwell 

As we watch what our Chief of Staff of the Army is doing, where his effort was to 

elevate the importance of stability operations to be equally as important as offense and 

defense and he publishes a doctrinal manual to do that. He approves it and publishes it 

and then he goes on and has us working on stability operations where, again, it will be 

codification of the requirement for the military to be able to, in fact, do many of these 

type activities that perhaps the interagency would want them to do, but with the inability of them to have the resourcing, recognize that we are going to pick up a lot more 

of this. As we look back over history, and again, we continually peak things, are we 

182 
on the right track to try to learn these lessons we have observed over the last six years, 

five years in combat, or are we doing what has been done before and we are really not 

on the right path yet? I know you can look back in 5 or 10 years and give me a much 

better answer, but today, what would you say? 

Dr. Stewart 

It appears that we are on the right track now in a sense of trying to enshrine some doctrine, do some training, try to capture the experience of what is going on now, but then 

we did the same thing in the 1960s with Vietnam. Down at Special Operations Command I had file cabinets filled with all the new initiatives, counterinsurgencies, special 

warfare, PSYOP, the blending of this and that, tremendous training effort. In 1975, 

apparently someone came and said, “This is no good and we are just going to throw it 

away. We are never going to do that mission again.” If this mindset occurs again after 

we have pulled most of our forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan, if this occurs again then 

we will have failed because then we will have taken our collective experience, the wisdom that we have gained from doing this hard stuff, and decided that it is never going 

to apply again and dropping it as opposed to preserving it and nurturing it and continuing to train on it even while the need is not there. Is that not what armies are to be, the 

best in being ready for any mission that can occur no matter what it is? But for that we 

cannot just consign that mission to a couple of guys down at Fort Bragg or Civil Affairs 

branch. They can handle this military governance thing. We do not have to think about 

it. The Army has to continue to think about it as an institution long term because we 

cannot say that mission is not going to happen again. I suppose that is a fancy way of 

saying, “Ask me in five years.” It is a way to say we have to be serious about capturing 

it now which I believe we are doing, but when the emergency is not there how then do 

we invocate it and continue to capture it and use it and learn from it. That is the test and 

that will be a test 5 years from now . . . 10 years from now. 

Audience Member 

I was just reading the new FM 3-07, Stability Operations, which is excellent, and in 

Chapter 5 they talk about “transitional military authority.” If you look at the previous 

version of FM 3-07 it was not there, no analogous chapter. If you read FM 3-07, Chapter 5, much of it is a lift out of FM 27-5, Military Governance, that we published in 

1940 before we were even in World War II. It was based on our progressive era experiences after the Spanish American War, and the occupation of the Rhineland after World 

War I. My question to you is, as a historian, a military historian, why does the Army 

forget its history? Why are we relearning what we once knew? 

Dr. Stewart 

That is an excellent question and one that I have continually wrestled with as an officer 

and as a civilian and as a historian because it . . . maybe I am predisposed to history, to 
think historically, to ask the question occasionally that is asked even in the Pentagon, 

has this ever happened before? Maybe I ought to look into this. If I could get people to 

ask one question when they are beginning to plan for an operation, that would be the 

one because at least it would get them thinking about the possibility that there might 

be information out there that might be discoverable and might be useable. The transition part, in particular, is interesting. Everyone talks about lack of Phase IV planning 

for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, right? Oh, we did not do any Phase IV planning. I 

was in the 352d Civil Affairs Command at the time with planning for postoccupation 

operations in Iraq, and we had six phases in our particular plan. We had Phase IV yes, 

which was immediate postemergency reconstruction activities, but we went on in our 

plan and continually thought about Phase V, how do we begin to pull out of this and 

turn things over to Iraqi officials, and then Phase VI, close things out completely, sort 

of lock and head out the door as a civil affairs military government type organization? 

That entire plan with all six phases which dealt with transition was not used at all by 

CENTCOM when they decided to basically throw the plan out and start all over again. 

Not only do we not use history from Spanish American War, World War I, Rhineland 

occupation, and by the way they did not look at that report from 1920 when it was produced until 1940. So there was 20 years where they had collective amnesia. Not only 

did they not look at the far past, to look for appropriate historical examples, they do not 

even look at the more recent past, and the more recent possibilities, their own historical 

thinking and plans that they are generating now because they cannot be bothered to 

think about that old stuff. I remember briefing General Potter once from Special Operations Command on the Haiti Operations and I wanted to give him some sense of the 

problems that the Marines ran into in Haiti in the 1920s and 1930s. I had just started on 

my presentation full of historical beans and he says, “Look at those years, 1919-1938, 

that was 50 years ago; sit down.” Maybe that is more Dick Potter than anyone else, but 

the fact is, he was not willing to listen to old historical experience because to him it had 

no application to today’s current situation. If we could go back to inculcating in our 

officer corps, not just in the Army but in other services as well, some of the historical 

mindedness that was so much a mission, so much a part of TRADOC in the 1980s and 

1990s. You remember Sir, a battle analysis and a tied year long process, a historical 

analysis as well as teaching by the Combat Studies Institute in an attempt to inculcate 

in every officer a sense that history is alive, that history is useful, that you need to learn 

it and know where to find it, and know it has continuing validity. Pretty important lessons. If we could go back to some of that perhaps that would help. Again you got me 

on my soap box. Thank you. 

Audience Member (From the Blogosphere) 

Sir, the military command and control structure is often alien and often too inflexible for many other government and nongovernment organizations to be successful in 

working together. How can we in the military adjust to accommodate without deteriorating our own effectiveness? 

184 
Dr. Stewart 

A good question, especially that first word alien. To some people, and it is not just 

the uniform either though, that changes over time. To some people and organizations 

within our own government, let alone foreign governments, we come across as beings 

from another planet. It is not just how we look, but by the very way in which we use 

time. 1500. When you are talking to military folks be efficient, but remember always 

think of your audience before you begin to speak. Some of them may not know what 

1500 is. Use civilian language occasionally. Acronyms, you cannot abolish acronyms 

from your vocabulary, God knows we learn in acronyms; we have acronyms in our 

soup every day it appears. But if we could learn that after using an acronym to any audience, military or otherwise, to then say what that acronym means we would go a long 

way toward other people beginning to understand the alphabet soup that we drop on 

them. So some of it is mindset, thinking about your audience before you go on and on, 

making sure that they understand what you are talking about so they feel included in 

the discussion and not simply being bombarded with alien terms and doctrinal terms; 

that would go a long way, I think, to reducing some of that alienness that you bring up. 

That is an important point but remember, when we are dealing with the interagency 

we are not dealing with other people in uniform. Even with the Navy sometimes I had 

trouble making myself understood and vice versa. But with other civilian agencies, 

they really are coming from a different organization. Take a moment, look them in 

the eye, talk to them using the English language which is a wonderful and marvelous 

tool of communication rather than military acronyms short, concise, and to the point 

that work in a certain environment. When you are briefing your patrol before a night 

operation, that is one thing. Learn to switch gears, change your language, change your 

approach, and speak English when you are speaking to the civilian audiences which 

you have to deal with in the interagency; that will be a good start. Thank you for your 

attention this morning. 

Panel 4—Interagency Case Studies 

(Submitted Paper) 

Approaching Iraq 2002 in the Light of Three Previous Army Interagency 

Experiences: Germany 1944–48, Japan 1944–48, and Vietnam 1962–73 

by 

Lieutenant General (Ret.) John H. Cushman, US Army 

The theme of this Symposium is “The US Army and the Interagency Process.” 

Since 2002, forces of the US Army have been engaged in an interagency mode in 

Iraq. The theme of my talk is that if the senior officers of the Army who were responsible in 2002 and 2003 for the Iraq effort had been students of Army history they would 

have understood the full dimensions of what the Army was getting into. And they 

would have been in a good position to stand their ground with a Secretary of Defense 

who, not understanding that situation, forced on them a faulty plan for the invasion of 

Iraq. 

The US-led Coalition’s two-month conquest of Iraq’s armed forces in March-May 

2003 was superbly done. But, in view of its wholly inadequate planning for postconquest conditions, the full Iraq invasion was the worst planned US military operation 

at least since the Spanish-American War. The United States has suffered grievously 

therefrom. 

I will use three historical examples—Germany 1944–48, Japan 1944–48, and 

Vietnam 1962–73—to make my case. My primary sources are, for Germany The US 

Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944–46, by Earl F. Ziemke; for Japan, a 1949 

Ph.D. thesis at Syracuse University The Occupation of Japan: A Study in Organization 

and Administration, by a later distinguished scholar, Ralph J. D. Braibanti; and, for 

Vietnam, my own experience and Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s 

Hearts and Minds, by Richard A. Hunt. 

United States planning for and conduct of the 1941–1945 war against Germany 

and Japan took place in an organizational structure quite different from that of Iraq 

2002. There was no Department of Defense, simply a War Department, and a Navy 

Department. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were an ad hoc planning and directing arrangement, using existing very senior officers, created to parallel that of the British Chiefs 

of Staff Committee. Detailed planning and orders for execution were accomplished 

by the Army and Navy staffs, including the Army’s Air Staff. Unity of command in 

overseas theaters was achieved simply by double-hatting. For example, in Europe, 
General Eisenhower was the commander of all US Army forces, including their logistics, and also supreme commander of the allied (including US) forces. He had two 

separate staffs. 

It was not until late in 1943 that it was finally decided that the Army in the field 

would be responsible for posthostilities governance of occupied territory. But in 1940, 

as war clouds began to gather, the Army War College prepared a draft military government manual (civil affairs and military government are related but distinct notions; 

think of military government as “civil affairs conducted on enemy territory,” and civil 

affairs as “military government conducted in friendly territory”). At the same time, a 

War College committee prepared a manuscript on the administration of enemy territory. 

Uncertain about which of its staff sections should have the responsibility, the Army 

General Staff wrestled with the problem. Within six months after Pearl Harbor an Army 

School of Military Government was up and running at the University of Virginia at 

Charlottesville, Virginia. Soon the Army had established a Military Government Division in the newly created Office of the Provost Marshal General. 

In mid-1942 various civilian agencies of the government began to take note of 

what the Army was doing. As operational planning took place for the November 1942 

invasion of North Africa, free-wheeling discussions began in the high levels as to how 

civil affairs/military government (CA/MG) were to be handled in that theater. At the 

direction of Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson, the Provost Marshal General 

and the Charlottesville school came up with a “synopsis” of the matter. It said that: 

• In the first phase, military necessity would govern and US armed forces would be 

responsible for CA/MG. 

• In the second phase, a civilian authority would probably supplant the military, but 

until then government of occupied territory would be in Army hands. 

The announced gist of the synopsis was “to assert and maintain War Department 

leadership in military government and at the same time invite and employ a wide cooperation with other departments and agencies of the government.” 

Accompanied by a letter from Secretary of War Stimson, this Synopsis was widely 

distributed in the government. In October 1942 it was brought before a full meeting of 

President Roosevelt’s cabinet. 

There, quoting from Ziemke, 

Several members, who apparently would have liked larger roles for themselves and 

their departments, voiced suspicions; and the Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes 

expressed outright alarm at what he saw as a germ of imperialism. The President 

188 
seemed to think it was a good idea but had doubts about the (Charlottesville school’s) 

faculty. 

That day the President wrote a memo to Secretary Stimson which said that the 

matter was something that should first have been taken up with him, that governing 

civilian territory was predominately a civilian task which required “absolutely first 

class men.” 

Again, from Ziemke: 

. . . the President’s memo converted an interdepartmental squabble into a monumental 

misunderstanding and a dire threat to principle of unity of command. The Army doctrine that made the theater commander the military governor at least until hostilities 

ended was apparently unknown to the President and could not be fitted into his concept 

of military government . . . . (He) considered civil administration, no matter where it 

was conducted, a civilian responsibility and was totally unimpressed by the argument 

of military necessity. 

Taken somewhat aback, Secretary Stimson sought to avoid precipitating a Presidential decision that could force the Army out of military government and create intolerable command problems in a theater of operations. Rather than respond to the 

President in writing, he made an oral report of the objectives of the Army school at 

cabinet the following week, disclaiming the Army’s desire to control occupied areas 

after the war ended. 

On November 8, just two days later, US and British forces landed in Algeria and 

Morocco, and matters became very real. Assuming that administration in French North 

Africa could be left entirely to local authorities, the President had assigned policy formulation and execution to the State Department and provision of relief supplies to the 

Lend-Lease Administration. But soon, again per Ziemke, 

Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower (theater commander) . . . protested that 

until North Africa . . . was secure, everything done there directly affected the military 

situation. His chief civil administrator, Minister Robert D. Murphy, could not be a 

member of the theater staff and at the same time be independently responsible to the 

State Department. 

The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, agreed and on 28 November informed Eisenhower that Murphy would not function independently and the State Department would 

not assume control of civil matters until the military situation permitted. The Secretary 

of State, Marshall said, was in complete agreement . . . . 

Marshall had rescued the principle of military necessity . . . the North African campaign, in its first weeks, had set a pattern for civil affairs and military government that 

would persist throughout the war . . . . Thirty thousand tons of civilian supplies were 

needed every month . . . and both the military and civilian agencies agreed that on the 

drive into Tunisia the Army would have to assume complete responsibility for civilian 

relief. 
By February 1943 it had become evident that a more substantial arrangement for 

managing CA/MG was needed in the War Department. The Civil Affairs Division, 

with Major General John H. Hilldring its director, was established on 1 March. 

General Hilldring was to report directly to the Secretary of War on “all matters 

except those of a military nature” and to represent the Secretary of War to outside agencies. For the future, War Department officials contemplated placing full responsibility 

for civil affairs in the staff of the theater commander “until such time as the military 

situation will allow other arrangements,” and the Civil Affairs Division was charged 

with making certain that all plans to occupy enemy or enemy-controlled territory included detailed planning for civil affairs.” 

On April 10, 1943, the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the Civil Affairs Division as 

“the logical staff to handle civil affairs in nearly all occupied territory.” (Presumably an 

element of the Department of the Navy staff would handle civil affairs in some small 

part of occupied territory.) 

Where would the people with the necessary expertise for the wide range of military government tasks come from? General Hilldring’s solution was to staff the Charlottesville school, and a second school established at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, with 

expertise from other agencies or with people brought in from their civilian pursuits. 

He would meet in-theater needs, which were forecast into many thousands, by training officers and by direct commission of civilian expertise, including some into field 

grade. And he did just that. 

The issue of when the Army would relinquish management of civil affairs was yet 

to be resolved. In March 1943 the President placed former New York governor Herbert Lehman’s Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation in charge of planning and 

administering US civil relief in liberated areas. The President remained convinced that 

civil affairs was a civilian job, and in June 1943 he proposed to put an Assistant Secretary of State in charge of a committee that would give central direction to all economic 

operations in liberated areas, with a subordinate in each theater, nominally responsible 

to the theater commander, who would receive his orders from the State Department. 

The invasion of Sicily that summer demonstrated that divided command in the 

field would not work. The Army commander on the scene had both the resources and 

the ability to direct operations; a civilian did not. In November 1943 the President 

wrote Secretary Stimson: “. . . it is quite apparent that if prompt results are to be obtained the Army will have to assume the initial burden . . . until civilian agencies are 

prepared to carry out the longer range program.” 

So that is how it turned out in World War II for the “US Army and the Interagency 

Process” with respect to civil affairs and military government. In Washington the War 

Department was a key agency, but not necessarily dominant, in policy making; other 

190 
agencies of the government had interests and much to offer. But in the field the theater 

commander’s responsibility for executing CA/MG, within policy, prevailed in war and 

continued with little outside participation for a time even after hostilities ceased. 

In December 1943, General Eisenhower was named Supreme Commander; SHAEF 

(Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) would be his staff. An interim 

planning staff had been busy; that month it published a Standard Policy and Procedure for Combined Civil Affairs Operations in Northwest Europe, which assigned full 

control of and responsibility for civil affairs and military government to the military 

commanders, from the Supreme Commander on down. Well before Normandy, a G5 

Section, SHAEF, under a British lieutenant general, began to function. 

In England the US structure for CA/MG had already been forming. A Civil Affairs 

Center at Shrivenham and another at Manchester would receive and further train the 

hundreds, then thousands, of officers and enlisted men gathered into the Army, trained, 

and sent from the United States. They would form these people into self-sustaining 

CA/MG detachments of various sizes which were then assigned to every command 

level, from army group to division. At each level a G5 section would direct their activities. Large or small, a detachment would carry out the essential CA/MG actions—government, public safety, public health, public welfare, utilities, communications, labor, 

transportation, resources, industry, commerce, agriculture, legal, fiscal, supply, and 

information. 

The expertise for these tasks came largely from men brought in from civilian life, 

many of them directly commissioned as captains or at ranks as high as colonel. Thousands of others were trained from scratch by the US Army. Ziemke tells in rich detail 

how these teams received their direction and then operated as the Allies entered German territory. 

As the end of the war came into sight, authorities at the highest level began to discuss how to bring a civilian into Germany’s postwar government, possibly as General 

Eisenhower’s deputy; Eisenhower was willing, and even had his own civilian candidate. The War Department’s choice for that job was Major General Lucius D. Clay, the 

highly regarded director of the military production program. Clay, supported by President Roosevelt, was nominated for his third star. In April 1945 he reported for duty as 

Deputy Military Governor of the United States Army European Theater of Operations, 

Eisenhower’s “other hat.” 

In July 1945, SHAEF dissolved. The unified command USFET (US Forces European Theater), headquarters in Frankfurt, Eisenhower in command, came into being. 

The Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) was created, with General Clay in charge. Clay began to reduce its military strength, to bring civilians in, and 

to bring about the orderly transfer of government to German control. 
In March 1947 General Clay succeeded General Eisenhower as theater commander and military governor. In 1949 he was replaced by John J. McCloy, named the US 

High Commissioner for Germany. 

* * * 

The occupation of Japan was markedly different from that of Germany. 

On August 10, 1945, the Japanese made their first offer of surrender. On 

September 1 the Eighth US Army began to enter Japan unopposed. The next day General Douglas MacArthur, as the Allies-designated Supreme Commander Allied Powers 

(SCAP) received the surrender aboard the USS Missouri. The substance of an Initial 

Post-Surrender Policy (approved by the President on September 6) was provided to 

him on August 29. That policy read: 

Although every effort will be made, by consultation and by constitution of appropriate 

advisory bodies, to establish policies for the conduct of the occupation and control of 

Japan which will satisfy the principal Allied Powers, in the event of any difference of 

opinion among them, the policies of the United States will prevail. 

As SCAP MacArthur was nominally responsible to the 13-member (including the 

United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, and China) Far Eastern Commission 

(FEC) in Washington, DC. However, the FEC, which established an Allied Control 

Council in Tokyo, did not meet until February 1946 and had minimal influence on 

policy formulation. 

Major General Courtney Whitney, in his book MacArthur: His Rendezvous with 

History, tells of MacArthur “pacing up and down the aisle of his C-54” as he dictated 

en-route to Japan. The 

. . . notes I took formed the policy under which we would work . . . First destroy the 

military power; then build the structure of representative government; enfranchise the 

women; free the political prisoners; liberate the farmers; establish a free labor movement; encourage a free economy; abolish police oppression; develop a free and responsible press; liberalize education; decentralize the political powers. . . . 

MacArthur went right to work. Until September 2, 1945, his one headquarters in 

Manila, SWPA (Southwest Pacific Area), was a US unified warfighting command; it 

also served MacArthur in his role as commander of US Army Forces Pacific, including 

Sixth and Eighth Armies and other Army engineer, logistical, and administrative commands. On that date, GHQ SWPA became GHQ SCAP, responsible for the occupation 

of Japan. If MacArthur was to carry out his program, he must bring in substantial new 

expertise for management of occupation affairs, and his headquarters must adjust its 

working methods. 

192 
The solution, arrived at in the next six months, was to create within a single headquarters two interconnected staffs, one for Japan’s governance and one for military 

matters. General MacArthur, as SCAP, would be the ultimate authority for the former 

function. As concurrently commander of the US Far East Command (and directly commanding the US Army element of FEC), he would be the ultimate authority for the 

latter. Depending on the issue involved, the same officer would often serve on one 

staff or the other, his paperwork arriving for decision at the appropriate authority, or 

MacArthur himself. (I am told by my neighbor in Washington, Lieutenant General 

Edward L. Rowny, US Army, Retired, who served on MacArthur’s staff in those days, 

that this was indeed how it worked, and very well.) 

On September 6, 1945, General MacArthur received these instructions from the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff: 

The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State is subordinate to you as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. You will exercise your 

authority as you deem proper to carry out your mission. Our relations with the Japanese do not rest on a contractual basis, but on unconditional surrender. Since your 

authority is supreme, you will not entertain any question on the part of the Japanese 

as to its scope. 

Dr. Braibanti, in his Syracuse University doctoral dissertation gives many examples of how General MacArthur used this authority with great skill to bring about the 

transformation of Japan, including its adoption of a new constitution. 

MacArthur decided right away to leave in place the Japanese structure of government with its prefectures and subordinate echelons. Annex 8, 28 August 1945, of Operating Instructions No. 4, 15 August 1945, provided that MacArthur would 

. . . issue all necessary instructions to the Japanese Emperor or to the Imperial Government and every opportunity would be given the Government and the Japanese people 

to carry out such instruction without further compulsion. If necessary, however, (he) 

will issue appropriate orders to (US) Army and Corps commanders . . . to secure compliance with (SCAP) instructions. 

Eighth Army deployed a total of 46 military government teams, one team at each 

prefecture, each team with its subordinate detachments. As was the case in Europe, 

each team encompassed the full range of governmental functions. Operating for the 

most part under I Corps at Kyoto and IX Corps at Sendai and their assigned division 

and supervised by army, corps, and division G5s, this was the field structure that, along 

with the Tokyo SCAP establishment, carried out the occupation of Japan. 

* * * 

In 1962 President Kennedy’s ordered increase in the US advisory effort and troop 

support began to arrive in Vietnam. In 1973 the last US troops were withdrawn and the 
Congress forbade any further US military involvement. Throughout those years, US 

authorities sought the right recipe for civil-military action through which the Government of Vietnam (GVN) could take back the countryside from the communist Viet 

Cong. 

I grappled with this problem myself, in 1963–64 when I was senior advisor to the 

21st ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) Infantry Division in charge of a four 

province area in the deepest regions of Vietnam’s delta, its headquarters in Bac Lieu. 

President Diem had recently launched his ultra-ambitious strategic hamlets program, 

which called for fortifying hamlets, and occasionally for moving people into new hamlets. But the strategic hamlet program had tried to do too much too fast and was in a 

shambles. 

The fundamental reality was that out there in the countryside there were two governments competing for the loyalties and control of the same population. One was the 

GVN, the official government of Vietnam, with its province chiefs, district chiefs, 

and village and hamlet chiefs, its tax collectors, its armed forces down to civil guard 

companies, self-defense corps platoons, and hamlet militia, its schools and information 

machinery, and so on. The other was the Viet Cong with its own structure of province 

and district and other chiefs, its own tax collectors, its own schools, entertainers, and 

propaganda squads, and its own armed forces down to the hamlet militia, farmers by 

day and fighters by night. The VC side had its own doctrine, that of revolutionary war, 

and in the countryside it was winning. 

I decided that our advisory team would work with the division commander and his 

four province chiefs to develop a doctrine of our own that would reverse the situation 

and win back the countryside. I was fortunate in having two very good colleagues, 

Lieutenant Colonel Robert M. Montague, a deputy senior advisor, and Richard Holbrooke, later famous but then a brand new foreign service office who was working in 

my area as a USAID representative. 

Working with a grizzled old major on the division staff, among other Vietnamese 

officers who spoke pretty good English, we developed the “oil spot” concept. Major 

Yi, who gave the concept its name, told us that it was how the French had operated in 

Algeria. 

Pacification by “oil spot” meant that we would start at the fringe of an area under GVN control and, using a civil-military organization and civil-military action, we 

would patiently pacify one contested hamlet at a time. We were rather successful; 

when I left Vietnam in April 1964 we had a division school in operation and systematic 

hamlet pacification underway in each province. (Those interested in the details can 

read about it in my article, “Pacification Operations in the ARVN 21st Infantry Division,” Army Magazine, March 1966, and also in pages 108–116 of Strange Ground: 

Americans in Vietnam 1945–1975, An Oral History, by Harry Maurer, Henry Holt and 

Company, New York, 1989.) 

194 
The 21st ARVN Division initiative was not replicated elsewhere. It was later melded into a joint GVN–MACV (Military Assistance Command,Vietnam) program called 

HOP TAC (Victory), the execution of which then suffered from faulty management 

and, with coup after coup, from government disarray. As ARVN and local province 

forces were increasingly buffeted by the growing Viet Cong, by mid-1965 the Republic 

of Vietnam was losing the war. 

President Johnson then committed US Marines, an Army air cavalry division, and 

two airborne brigades to save the situation. Embarking on a “strategy of attrition,” 

General Westmoreland, COMUSMACV (Commander, US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), asked for more. In July the President announced that he would send 

44 combat battalions to Vietnam, increasing the US military presence to 125,000; it 

would triple by end-1966. President Johnson, meanwhile, was casting about for ways 

to improve the progress of pacification. Various avenues were explored; none satisfied 

him. 

On March 26, 1966, the President (per Richard Hunt) 

. . . appointed Robert W. Komer as special assistant for supervising pacifi cation support from the White House. . . Komer’s powers were substantial. He was authorized 

to draw support from the secretaries of state, defense, treasury, agriculture, and health, 

education, and welfare, from the administrator of USAID and from the directors of 

CIA and USIA. . . . The President made it clear that . . . Komer ‘will have access to 

me at all times’. . . . 

Komer handpicked a small group of people experienced in pacification to work for 

him. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Montague was his executive officer . . . (also) Richard 

Holbrooke of State. . . . Komer set out to solve problems, prodding offi cials in Washington and Saigon . . . earned the nickname ‘Blowtorch.’ 

In September 1967, having just taken command of the 2d Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, which had been alerted to deploy by air to Vietnam in December, I visited Vietnam with the division commander in an orientation party. In Saigon I spent an 

evening with Robert Komer, who was living out the consequences of his appointment 

18 months earlier. Since May, Komer had been there as Deputy COMUSMACV for 

Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development (CORDS), with the rank of ambassador and with authority to manage all US participation in the GVN-US pacification 

effort. Bob Montague was his executive assistant. 

Bob Montague and Dick Holbrooke, both brilliant men, had with their accomplished colleagues in Washington created CORDS—a Cadillac version of the Model 

T pacification machinery that the three of us had built in Bac Lieu three years before. 

[When President Nguyen Van Thieu in 1968 set up the GVN’s Central Pacification and 

Development Council (CPDC) with a staff that reported to the Prime Minister and kept 

close ties with CORDS, he appointed our old 21st ARVN Division commander, Major 

General (then Colonel) Cao Hao Hon, to take charge of it.] 
Richard Hunt: 

CORDS unique feature was to incorporate civilians into a . . . single chain of command that consolidated control of all pacification support. (Komer) exercised command of all pacification personnel from Saigon to the provinces (and down into the 

districts). . . . CORDS interleaved civilian and military personnel throughout its 

hierarchy. . . . Of the province senior advisors roughly half were civilians, and half 

were military, although the less secure provinces and districts tended to have a military head. . . . Civilians wrote the performance reports of their military subordinates, 

and army officers evaluated the Foreign Service officers under them. . . . The CORDS 

staff, called MACCORDS . . . functioned as a regular staff section under the MACV 

chief of staff. . . . 

General Westmoreland . . . transferred the responsibility for advising and supporting 

the RF/PF (Regional Force companies and Popular Force platoons commanded by the 

province chief in his capacity as sector commander) from the J3 (Operations) section 

in MACV to a directorate within CORDS. No single change was more important to the 

eventual course of pacification. It allowed CORDS to increase substantially the number of advisors and at last gave the pacification program access to forces that could 

provide sustained local security. 

Commanding the 2d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, north of Hue during and 

after Tet 1968, I watched province and district chiefs and their RF/PF units weather the 

intense fighting of that period, supported by their advisors and the CORDS structure 

and by the ARVN 1st Infantry Division and by my brigade. The system rebounded. 

When in March 1970 I returned to Vietnam’s delta as senior advisor to the Commander, ARVN IV Corps/Military Region 4, pacification in the region was thriving and 

CORDS was going strong. (See my “Senior Officer Debriefing Report” of 14 January 

1972, Headquarters, Delta Regional Assistance Command . . .) 

* * * 

Thirty years later as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander, US Central 

Command, were addressing the Iraq situation, Vietnam was a distant memory and 

CORDS had been forgotten. 

From my January 15, 2007, paper “Planning and Early Execution of the War in 

Iraq: An Assessment of Military Participation” (http://www.westpoint.org/publications/cushman/ForArmyWarCollege.pdf). 

At CENTCOM there was little post-hostilities planning; Mr. Rumsfeld’s key principals had told General Franks to ‘leave Phase IV [the post-Hussein-defeat phase] to 

us.’ Mr. Rumsfeld himself waved off help offered by the State Department. ARCENT 

set up a post-hostilities planning cell, but not until Secretary Rumsfeld named retired 

Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner to take charge of an Office of Reconstruction 

and Humanitarian Assistance two months before the invasion did real planning begin. 

196 
Garner would in effect work for the Secretary of Defense, creating divided in-theater 

command. Hastily collecting a staff, he deployed to Kuwait just days before D-Day. 

As operations began, plans for constituting key ministries of an Iraqi post-Hussein 

national government and for putting in place provincial governments were essentially 

unformed. Provisions ensuring that there would be an Iraqi army and police force did 

not exist. The troops were not told what to do when the Iraqi Army was defeated. Posthostilities operational concepts were not developed and made known. PSYOPS plans 

and capabilities were rudimentary at best. Gaping holes remained. 

We know the rest of the sad story. In 2003 I had written an article for the November 

US Naval Institute Proceedings. Its title, “President Bush Deserved Better.” Excerpts: 

On 8 September, a somber President George W. Bush told the nation that accomplishing his goals in Iraq would take a lot more money and a lot more time than the public 

had been led to believe. He deserved better from his military. . . . 

(W)hile Secretary Rumsfeld and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must be 

held primarily accountable for the second phase ineptness and the resulting problems, 

I also hold General Franks accountable. The Rumsfeld–Franks partnership extolled 

by Secretary Rumsfeld during the major combat phase had failed thereafter—and at a 

huge cost. . . . 

Only in January 2003 did Secretary Rumsfeld appoint retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner as head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance 

to deal with postwar Iraq. It was late already, but that month, General Franks should 

have said something like this to Army General John Abizaid, his newly arrived and 

highly capable Arabic-speaking deputy commander: 

The postwar planning effort is not going well. If it falls short, I will be 

responsible. So I am going to tell Secretary Rumsfeld that you will plan 

the second phase, which will begin seamlessly as soon as we defeat Saddam Hussein’s army. As my deputy, you will take over General Garner’s 

operation and become the temporary military governor of Iraq. Get busy 

planning for a military-civilian operation, basing your organization on the 

solution applied by General Creighton Abrams that was successful—but 

too late—in the Vietnam War. 

We will find a civilian to play the part of Robert Komer, who fi rst headed 

the Civil Operations Rural Development Support effort in Vietnam. You 

will make your own estimate of post-victory conditions, which will be 

chaotic. Here is one idea I want you to consider. There are 18 provinces 

in Iraq. Organize 18 province teams under three regions, one of which 

will be Baghdad and vicinity. I will get the Army War College to name 18 

smart students to do full-time planning and to stand by to move to their 

province seats with their teams, complete with communications and local 

security from US troops. 

Next week, I will move you and a small planning staff to Carlisle Barracks, near Washington, DC, for convenient interagency planning. Start 
gathering data on Iraq and doing research on former occupations of countries. Be ready to brief me on your concept by mid-February. I will fight 

for suffi cient resources. 

I ended the article with “General Franks should have acted along these lines and 

insisted that Secretary Rumsfeld accept his approach. Think of the difference it would 

have made.” 

198 
Panel 4—Interagency Case Studies
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

A Mile Deep and an Inch Wide: Foreign Internal Defense 

Campaigning in Dhofar, Oman, and El Salvador
 

by
 

Mr. Michael J. Noonan
 

Foreign Policy Research Institute
 

Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be here today and an honor. It is my first 

time to be here at Fort Leavenworth, especially as a soon to be former captain. It is 

always nice to be able to talk to your betters in uniform. The title here of my presentation—I do not mean this in derisive way or in a dismissive way, “A Mile Deep and an 

Inch Wide” really refers to, as we will see in the case studies, a very small footprint 

approach to foreign internal defense where you do not have a large buildup or a large 

presence of troops. This is a possible model for what some people call phase zero in 

operations. Before I start all that I would like to say a line from Mark Twain. “The three 

most difficult things are, climbing a wall that leans towards you, kissing a woman that 

is leaning away from you, and addressing an audience that knows more about your 

subject than you do.” And certainly in the case of Dr. John Fishel, I am sure he has 

probably forgotten more about El Salvador than I have probably read. 

Like some of the other presenters I am also trained in the dark arts of political 

science, coming before an August crowd of military historians (Slide 1). At FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute) a lot of my colleagues are trained historians. As a political scientist I promise not to put any two by two tables in this presentation. Political 

scientists are generally an Aaron Simpson in the crowd. We tend to be lumpers. These 

kind of political scientists like to dichotomize things and there are lumpers and splitters. We like to aggregate things and then slice it up. Whereas I think historians like to 

split things up. I think in this presentation perhaps we can look at these discrete cases 

and get to more lessons learned issues as discussed before. A second caveat is that this 

research is in progress and this is part of a larger project. So this part is largely gathered 

from secondary source information with some primary source information. Due to the 

30-year rule as was explained yesterday, there is more information coming out on the 

Dhofar case, and I have been able to assemble a lot of that as well as do some archival 

research in the United Kingdom, but this is sort of an initial macro view of these cases. 

The same is true of the case with El Salvador. George Washington University has an 

archive of information that deals with El Salvador that is fairly complete, but there are 

other resources out there that I am trying to gain access to, going into the historian’s 

office at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. I think only one academic [inaudible] has gained access to this information for his dissertation on Central 

American strategy. The third caveat is that I think my experience in Iraq may have affected my analysis on this so I certainly welcome any push back. But my experience in 

Iraq was much different than the two cases that we are going to be talking about today. 

These were much smaller, much more discrete, and the advisors on the ground were on 

a much longer string without the type of support that my team and I were able to get. 

The first question is, why look at these two cases? (Slide 2) I think the first and 

obvious point is the contemporary operating environments. You have al-Qaeda and 

affiliated movements, whether one thinks that this is an existential threat or more of a 

strategic nuisance. In 2001, discussions of al-Qaeda, we talked about this movement 

being spread across 60 countries and could tap into a sea of a billion Muslims throughout the Muslim world stretching from Morocco to Southeast Asia, from Central Asia 

down to the eastern littoral of East Africa. The second point gets to discussions of irregular warfare versus major combat operations. I do not know if anybody has seen it, 

but I recommend you take a look at Colonel Andrew Bacevich. He has a piece in the 

latest Atlantic where he talks about that in the United States Army there are two schools 

of thought. I think he oversimplifies, but there are definitely strands of truth in each 

one of the schools. One school is pushing for irregular threats in the future saying that 

obviously because the enemy gets a vote, the enemy is not going to organize conventionally against us. Then we will see a continuance of irregular threats in the future as 

opposed to another school that thinks we should wait. The Army should really focus on 

big picture stuff and major combat operations. Colonel Gian P. Gentile at the US Military Academy is considered the archetype of this school. Some people say that John 

Noggle is the archetype of the other school. So this sets up a Harry Summers-Andrew 

Krepinevich type of debate between people like Noggle who thinks that an irregular 

future is the path and people like Colonel Gentile who say let’s hold on a second and 

not lose sight of things that actually could be an existential threat to the country. Finally 

on this point, we have seen since the Long War began you had Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM–Philippines, Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, and the Pan Sahel Initiative working with armies in the Sahel region south of the Sahara in Africa 

going against groups like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria moving down into the Sahel regions. It takes advantage of 

geopolitical dead space where lack of formal governments allows for an infestation 

or breeding like in the tribal areas of Pakistan today. These cases look at historical 

harbingers of those types of environments. The second point here, resource constraints 

in an economy of force as I believe one of the speakers said yesterday, I think it was 

Lieutenant General Caldwell, the defense budget is not going to be getting bigger over 

time therefore the supplemental is funding so many activities and operations today that 

as we move forward, particularly depending on what happens in November, there will 

be resource constraints and an optempo issue with the Army that will cause us to . . . I 

have little faith that there is going to be any sort of large Iraq or Afghanistan types of 

operations in the future. However, in order to shape the international environment, case 

studies like El Salvador and Dhofar might give us an alternative path. Lastly, these two 

200 
cases deal with very politically sensitive operating environments which cause the type 

of force employment that we will discuss later on. 

For internal defense you can see here from the DOD dictionary, I will give you a 

moment to read the definition here (Slide 3). As you can see this is a subset of counterinsurgency. It is not a big picture. During publication 3-07.1 Joint TTPs (Training, 

Techniques, and Procedures) Foreign Internal Defense tells us that there are three varieties of foreign internal defense. Indirect—which is basically training and equipping 

of foreign forces in a nonpermissive environment; direct—which is a direct support but 

not combat support for host nation governments; and finally, combat operations where 

you are actually going out on combat operations with the host nation in order for them 

to gain time to build up their own force structure to handle the lawlessness, insurgency, 

or subversion within the society. 

Somebody said yesterday there is an obligatory Clausewitz slide. Well, in talking 

about counterinsurgency in foreign internal defenses, this is my obligatory David Galula slide (Slide 4). I will give you a moment . . . these are just some points that I find 

interesting from Galula. Now, in counterinsurgency operations there are basically two 

approaches. There is the enemy-centric approach where you are trying to attrit the enemy down and then there is a population-centric approach where you are working by, 

with, and through the host nation in order to address the political, economic, and social 

conditions on the grounds. As Galula quotes the Chinese General, “Counterinsurgency 

is kind of an 80/20 split.” Only 20 percent of it is military and you can debate these 

numbers, but the important fact is that the other 80 percent, or whatever percentage you 

assign to that, is the main part of his operations, the political, economic and cultural 

underpinnings of the grievances on the ground that is feeding the insurgency in that 

country. 

The advisors and advising, basically there are two approaches for advisors or advising (Slide 5). First, you have materiel advisory and support where you are basically 

providing weapon systems and training on those weapon systems in order to increase 

the host nation’s capabilities. And secondly, there is nonmateriel advising and support, 

small unit training, and developing cohesion. A number of scholars such as Stephen 

Peter Rosen wrote articles in the Washington Quarterly back in 1982, particularly on 

insurgency environments. The second form of advising is much more important because all armies overseas for the most part see themselves as sand. They want to be 

armies; they want the equipment that makes them have a martial spirit and martial outlook. They want such things as artillery, tanks, and other things. Dealing with my Iraqi 

counterparts this would always be the crux of the matter. They wanted the big toys 

that made them more of a military unit. Seeing Coalition M1 Abrams and Bradleys or 

Strykers—you could see the glint of jealousy or envy in their eyes and them wanting 

these things. But in an insurgency environment you had a need for the more important 

things—radios, boots, good weapons, and good small arms in order to engage against 

the insurgents. Lastly, on selection, there is a big debate within the literature about 
what is more important, whether it should be a functional knowledge—expertise and 

small unit tactics—or whether you need a deep cultural base in order to relate with 

the forces that you are working with, by, and through on the ground. We will get into 

this in the two case studies. Secondly, on selection for advisors, this is the volunteer 

versus the volun-told dichotomy. I think it is a big issue today with the transition teams 

in the Army. The team that I was with was largely a Reserve Component unit. We had 

three Active Component soldiers on our team. The teams that replaced us were Active 

Duty soldiers and there was some debate there among them about why people were 

there. In the Army today there is a big debate, and we will get to this later on, about 

the people that you select for advising and what type of backgrounds and personalities 

those people have. Finally, you have an organizational cultural essence issue. This gets 

back to the discussion before about an irregular or a major combat operation focus 

of the force. Organizational essence was what Morton Halperin came up with in his 

book Bureaucracy in American Foreign Policy. It says the organizational essence is 

the dominant outlook of the profession itself. Talking about Vietnam, one of the things 

that he said was that the creation of Special Forces was the biggest threat to the Army’s 

organizational essence since the split off of the Air Force in 1947. This dominant outlook within the profession itself plays back on to things like who should be advisors or 

whether the advisor mission should be an important mission or not. 

The first case we will deal with is what I call the Dhofar War, probably more technically the Dhofar Rebellion, in Oman (Slide 6). Oman had an interesting background 

for this part of the Middle East. It had a treaty of friendship with the United Kingdom 

dating back to about 1798. So it was not a colonial possession of the United Kingdom, 

unlike the Trucial States which are the modern day United Arab Emirates or Southern 

Arabia with Aden that later became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and 

then later just became Yemen when North Yemen and South Yemen united. The Dhofar Rebellion—an important historical antecedent to this was Sultan Sa’id bin Taymur 

who rose to power in 1932. He had a very backward looking approach so Oman had 

been stuck in the 17th century. He was a very tyrannical leader. He did not allow education. He did not allow foreign travel. He did not allow people to smoke cigarettes 

in the kingdom which originally was called Muscat. The Dhofar region which is the 

southern region to the southeast had always been an occupied portion of the country. 

The people there are different from those in the north. They have an Ethiopian or Somalian background. The language on the ground is different. They spoke a version of 

Aramaic and they were looked down upon by the north. There is an old Omani proverb 

or saying that says if you come across a Dhofari and a snake on the road, kill the Dhofari first. So they were looked down upon by the Arabs in the northern parts of Oman. 

Starting in the 1950s and 1960s the Sultan had built a palace down in Salalah which is 

in the southern part of the country. He had married a local Dhofari woman. You can see 

from the topographical map there, it is a very rugged terrain. There is basically only 

one road that leads up from Salalah to Durmat that reaches the rest of Oman. He did 

not allow any kind of agriculture throughout that coastal plain that you can see in front 

of the Jebel Dhofar which is a mountain range that runs down to the Yemeni border. 

202 
At its highest part it is about 3,000 feet. As you can see, it is a very rugged terrain that 

is perfect for guerilla activity. Oman at this time had a population of about 700,000 

people and Dhofar had a population of about 50,000. Ten thousand of the Dhofaris 

were Jebeli living up in the mountains, and in the 1960s a group emerged called the 

Dhofar Liberation Front which is a Marxist organization that wanted development and 

aid for this part of Oman. The Sultan had really applied his resources to Muscat in 

the Arab portions of the country so this rebellion starts to break out. It starts out very 

slowly going after some oil concessions and other things that were exploring up toward 

Saudi Arabia and then eventually leads on to going after the Sultan’s Armed Forces. 

So in 1965 the Sultan invites the British in and they do some initial operations from 

the Trucial States going through Dhofar that were very ineffective and small and did 

not last for a long time. The Sultan’s Armed Forces, however, at this time were very 

small, there were a few thousand soldiers drawn mainly from Arabs in the north, and 

Baluchis from Pakistan. Until 1958 the Sultan had been in possession of Gwadar in 

Pakistan until he gave up that possession. The British Army had assigned seconded 

officers to the Sultan’s Armed Forces. The commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces 

was a British officer and all the way down to battalion level you had as many as three 

British Army captains for every company in the Sultan’s Armed Forces, but it is a very 

small organization. So from 1965 to 1970 is a Phase I of the counterinsurgency operations in Dhofar. This period is an abject failure. One of the interesting things about the 

Dhofar case is that it is two separate periods. It is a nice case to look at because there 

are discrete time frames that can show a lot of progress depending upon approaches of 

counterinsurgency. The first portion of operations, from 1965 to 1970, were very ineffective because it was a very attrition-based strategy. They tried to go after the Dhofar 

Liberation Front which in 1968 becomes the People’s Front for the Liberation of the 

Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). This organization was supported by the People’s 

Democratic Republic of Yemen which had gained independence from Britain in 1967, 

and they were armed fairly heavily from the Soviet Union and China and they were 

much better equipped than the Sultan’s Armed Forces. They had Kalashnikovs (AK47), they had RPKs (Kalashnikova light machinegun), and they had RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), whereas the Sultan’s Armed Forces was equipped with Lee-Enfield 

rifles and Bren guns. Phase II is 1970-1972. In 1970, the commander of the 22d Special Air Service Regiment, looking for work for his regiment, goes to Colonel Johnnie 

Watts, goes to Dhofar and does a hasty assessment on the ground and he comes up 

with a five part plan for winning the war there. This plan is based on civil reorganization, agriculture and economical development, intelligence gathering, physiological 

warfare, and military operations and training of local forces. However, because Sultan 

Sa’id bin Taymur was still in power, he really wanted to keep this operation very low 

key. He did not want an acceleration of British support there. So his son, Said bin Qabus launches a coup d’état against his father in the summer of 1970 and takes power. 

The son trained at Sandhurst, had served in the Cameronian Rifles, and had done a 

tour in the United Kingdom looking at modernization issues. With his rise to power 

he decides to change the approach on the ground there. The first thing he does is to 

address the social, political, and economic concerns. He offers general amnesty to all 
the subjects who opposed his father. He incorporates Dhofar formally into Oman as 

the southern province. He decides to provide effective military opposition to the rebels 

who did not accept the amnesty offer. He started a vigorous nation-wide program of developments, and finally he started diplomatic initiatives with the aim of having Oman 

recognized as a genuine Arab state and to isolate the People’s Democratic Republic of 

Yemen. At this point he invites the 22d SAS (Special Air Service) to come into Oman. 

They start to do civil action programs, and they began to raise local civilian regular 

defense groups called Firqats which is Arabic for company. Those groups start to work 

in the Jebel. I will speed things up here since I am running out of time. In any event 

he takes a very population-centric approach between the SAS and with the Sultan’s 

Armed Forces. They start working with the Jebelis. They start building wells and doing 

things like cattle inoculation. They do a cattle drive to bring cattle to market there. And 

in combination with the Sultan’s Armed Forces they began to push the supply lines of 

the PFLOAG back toward Yemen with a series of defensive lines—the Hammer Line, 

the Hornbeam Line, and Damavand Lines. In 1973, the Iranians come in because of the 

broader geopolitics of the region. In the 1960s, the British Prime Minister declared that 

the British were going to start to leave the Gulf. However, you have this very important 

geostrategic position of Oman on the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians wanted to ensure 

that they had a peaceful neighbor across the straits. The Jordanians start to send in 

troops. Oman is admitted into the Arab League, and eventually into the UN. As these 

population-centric and more effective military operations take place, you have increasing numbers of surrendered enemy personnel, and the insurgency itself peters out. In 

1975, there is an offensive and basically that breaks the back of PFLOAG which at this 

time had dropped the Occupied Arabian Gulf portion from its name and basically went 

into a small handle and more of a brigand situation there. 

British involvement there, you had about 300 seconded officers and air crew, field 

surgical team, etc. (Slide 7). You had the British Army training teams which were 

Special Air Service squadrons that served there, and then you had British contractors 

as well who worked with the Omanis, particularly pilots as defense expenditures increased and the Sultan’s Armed Forces were modernized. 

I will try to do this fast and furious here with the El Salvador case (Slide 8). El 

Salvador at the time was a country of about 5.4 million people, very high population 

density, about 239 people per square kilometer, the highest population concentration 

in North or South America, and basically a one commodity economy of coffee which 

basically was responsible for about 80 percent of GDP (gross domestic product). The 

problem, however, is that 60 percent of the population owned no lands and were basically seasonal migrant workers on the coffee plantations. About 4 percent of the population owned about 65 percent of the lands. Beginning in 1932 as the Great Depression 

set in and the economy there got worse, you had a despotic form of government take 

place between the landowners and the military in the country. In 1932, 30,000 peasants 

are killed in an uprising by Augustin Farabundo Marti. Fast-forwarding, 1969, you 

have a war with Honduras which is important because the El Salvadoran forces really 

204 
saw themselves, as I said before, as a standing military force and saw the external threat 

as more important than internal strife. In 1977, FMLN which is the Farabundo Marti 

National Liberation Front begins kicking off minor operations throughout El Salvador 

due to human rights violations by the military. General Carlos Romero becomes President. Because of these human rights violations the Carter administration cuts off all aid 

to El Salvador. However, in 1979, with the Iranian Revolution, with the rise to power 

of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Carter administration decides 

to start backing the El Salvadorian government again. Because of these death squads 

about 30,000 people were killed and this fueled the FMLN insurgency in El Salvador. 

With President Reagan coming into office, he begins to seize three important geopolitical things in Central America at the time. He wanted a base in Honduras, he wanted to 

roll back the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and he wanted to ensure that the government in 

El Salvador did not fall. So he begins to introduce advisors there. 

Because Vietnam was very much in the short-term memory at the time, Congress 

and the administration worked out an arrangement where there would only be 55 advisors on the ground. This is from 1981 and these numbers shift over time (Slide 9). 

Special Forces soldiers from 7th Special Forces Group and other personnel came in 

to work with six El Salvadorian brigades. Five of the teams were Army or Special 

Forces teams and one team was a Marine Corps team working with an El Salvadorian 

brigade. In order to fight the insurgency however, they had to increase the size of the 

El Salvadorian forces. In 1979, there were 11,000 soldiers in the ESAF (El Salvadoran 

Armed Forces) and this number grew to about 50,000 soldiers by the end of the 1980s. 

The USA Today version of the strategy there was KIS, this is from Tommie Sue Montgomery, “Keep it simple, sustainable, small, and Salvadoran.” In other words, we 

did not want them to get deeply involved in El Salvador. The military focus on Fulda 

Gap in Europe ensured that the military itself would not pay a lot of attention to this, 

and this space and top cover from the Embassy working with the Mil Group allowed 

these advisors to work with the El Salvadorans first to build capacity for the military 

and then to work on things like human rights and civil development in order to defuse 

some of the underlying causes of the insurgency. Over time, with the election of Jose 

Napoleon Duarte, and then with the election in 1989 of Alfredo Christiani who was 

with the National Republican Alliance, a very right-wing organization, they were able 

to build up the El Salvadoran forces to get to a draw situation with the insurgents on the 

ground which allowed, later on, a political resolution to the crisis finally with a peace 

treaty in 1992. 

We can talk about this in the Q & A session because I know I am drastically over 

time (Slide 10). 

Thank you for your patience. 
Mr. Michael J. Noonan Slide Addendum:
 

Interagency Coordination
 

Slide 1
 

Slide 2
 

206 
Slide 3 

Slide 4
 
Slide 5 

Dhofar War, 1965-1975 

Slide 6
 

208 
Slide 7 

El Salvador, 1980-1992 

Slide 8
 
Slide 9 

Slide 10
 

210 
Panel 4—Interagency Case Studies
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Lieutenant General (Ret.) John H. Cushman
 

Mr. Michael P. Noonan
 

Moderated by Mr. John J. McGrath
 

Mr. McGrath 

Okay, we will open it to the general public. Any questions or comments? 

Audience Member 

Mike, you talk about, in both of your cases, the role of Special Forces (SF) and British 

SAS (Special Air Service) and Army Special Forces Group in El Salvador. Can you 

talk a little bit today about the role of Special Forces in the Foreign Internal Defense 

mission and why perhaps we have abandoned it? 

Mr. Noonan 

That is a very interesting question. I think a lot of it depends on who you talk to in the 

Special Forces community. I gave a talk down at the Asymmetric Warfare Group last 

year and I pushed on this. It appeared that Special Forces was a functional area until 

1986 when we created a branch. Then there is a line of argument advanced by people 

like Richard Downy and Anna Simons and others and Hy Rothstein who is also a Special Forces veteran, saying that they conventionalized their force and that they were 

more interested in how to deal in more direct action and special reconnaissance missions and less focused on foreign internal defense and their other core mission which 

is unconventional warfare. I think there is a lot of push back even within the Special 

Forces community today. It really depends on who you talk to. Some people, like Colonel Dave Maxwell, will say no, we have not abandoned this. We actually do a lot of foreign internal defense missions. We work a lot with the Iraqi or Afghani Special Forces 

elements. But then there are so many anecdotes out there that say hold on a second. Hy 

Rothstein calls it “Delta envy.” Working in Afghanistan they wanted to do more direct 

action type stuff, more door kicking stuff and have backed away from indirect things. 

I think one of the interesting things was that the Special Operations Command handed 

off a large part of its civil affairs capability back into the Army Reserve and only kept 

a small . . . they expanded it, there used to be only one civil affairs battalion on Active 

Duty. Now there is a group headquarters, but because of the promotion processes the 
more kinetic realm of Special Operations Forces has been ascended. A few things got 

bumped up like the Special Missions Units, the JSOC commander, the Joint Special 

Operations Command which is responsible for these classified elements. It used to be 

a two-star command. Then General Stanley McChrystal was given a third star and was 

told that this was going to be a temporary situation. Then his replacement, Admiral 

McRaven was also given a third star. On top of that, Special Forces officers, because 

they are in their own distinctive branch cannot not rotate back out to more conventional 

units in order to gain rank. If you look at the most recent brigadier generals appointment lists, people on there with an SF or SOF background are mainly guys coming 

from this more kinetic community. So there is big debate on that, but what I am seeing 

at least, anecdotally, leads me to believe that kinetic is the way to get ahead and has 

dominated the culture a bit. 

Audience Member 

They certainly have no interaction with the training effort at Fort Riley and SOCOM 

does not support the Marine side of training advisors either. So that is an interesting 

development from that respect. 

Mr. Noonan 

It is also an interesting element that as they have become a branch they have so many 

LNOs (liaison officers) that have to be assigned outside their headquarters that people 

that get outside that tract are told they are persona non grata back in the Special Forces community, particularly some of the people who worked in Asymmetric Warfare 

Group. 

Audience Member 

My question is for General Cushman. Looking at your case studies it strikes me that, 

we did a lot of talking yesterday about trigger events, and it strikes me that of your 

three case studies they are all in established institutionalized crisis—the end of World 

War II and the hot part of the Cold War, whereas Iraq was a response to a new set of 

emergencies or perhaps one that had just been recognized. I wonder if you could talk 

a little bit about that as an issue of whether the length of time between September 11th 

and the invasion of Iraq may have played a role in perhaps the lack of consideration 

being given to postwar outcomes and long-term expectations of the changing security 

situation. 

LTG Cushman 

I think that the amount of time between 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq had very little 

to do with the decision as to whether it would be a theater commander’s job or the job 

of some civilian agency as it turned out to be. It just had nothing to do with that. In 

my opinion, the lack of comprehension by Mr. Rumsfeld and the other senior people 

212 
around him, caused the follow-on posthostilities work to be done by the theater commander. They just did not remember their history. There is an even longer time since 

World War II, but the history is there and they just did not pay attention to it. I think it 

was the job of the institution. The Army as an institution was handed over by the Chief 

of Staff to keep that history alive. We all know what happened with respect to Vietnam. 

All the lessons learned in Vietnam disappeared. I was here at Leavenworth in 1953, 

1973, and 1976 and we could not get out of the Vietnam experience fast enough. We 

quickly decided to go back into warfare European style. Did that answer your question? 

Mr. McGrath 

General Cushman, could I ask an aside to that? Do you think force structure might be 

a factor because the World War II Army was large total mobilization, and even during 

Vietnam there was a draft Army much larger than the 2003 Army. 

LTG Cushman 

Well, I think that the size of the Army was too small. General Shinseki, when he retired, said, “Beware a twelve division strategy with a ten division Army.” The Army 

was allowed to shrink and it should have been increased. That is a decision by management of the Department of Defense. 

Mr. McGrath 

So could the host conflict military government considerations be factored in because 

they wanted troops to do it? 

LTG Cushman 

Well, I think that if they used the troops that are there, even with the size of the Army 

that existed in 2003, properly employed, would have made a huge difference. The fact 

is there were no instructions to the forces that finished the invasion with the possession 

of Baghdad. The troops were not told what to do. They let the looting just go on. There 

were no plans to secure any government facilities. There were no plans for anything 

you properly would plan for. There was just a total void of effective planning. Now 

some planning was done. Third Army was quickly moved out of the sphere and pulled 

back to Kuwait. V Corps under General Sanchez was put in as the occupying force 

totally unprepared for the mission they were assigned. And of course, the 1st Cavalry 

Division was not deployed. They did not deploy the 1st Cavalry Division and should 

have. That would have made a difference. Planning was just dismal for the follow-on 

phrase, and the one person to blame most for that is General Franks because he had no 

conception. He was happy to get rid of that job. He had no conception of the historical 

significance of World War II and Vietnam, in my opinion. 
Audience Member 

Sir, this is for General Cushman. Do you see the current doctrine placing the military 

in a support role to the interagency and nation building? Do you see that as a failure? 

If so, how could that be improved? 

LTG Cushman 

Does current doctrine place the US military in a support role? Is that the current doctrine? 

Audience Member 

That is in the Joint Publication 3-0 and 5-0. It says that we will support interagency 

for defense support, public diplomacy and also for nation building such as in Iraq and 

Afghanistan. 

LTG Cushman 

I think it is a bad doctrine. I had no idea that was the doctrine. Of course, all I know is 

what I read in the newspaper. I am sorry I have not seen that one in the paper. 

Audience Member (from the blogosphere) 

The question is how do you manage competing agendas and how in your specific case 

studies did they do it? 

LTG Cushman 

Say that question again. What are the competing agendas? 

Audience Member (from the blogosphere) 

In your case study when you did the comparison with Vietnam and then to Iraq. How 

did the management of the competing agendas, I guess probably in your specific case, 

potential of the service Chiefs versus the JCS versus General Franks, the agendas that 

were in competition? 

LTG Cushman 

Well, one agenda was—as I see the question—one agenda was that this is going to be 

a short war and we turn it over to the Iraqis without any problem and go on home. And 

the other agenda was that this is going to be a posthostilities war that has to be taken 

care of and planned for. The agendas were managed in such a way that the first agenda 

214 
won out. And I do not know how the person that made the final decision on that was the 

President, given advice by people he had put into positions of authority. He listened to 

his Secretary of Defense and what I say is that the military, the uniformed military with 

their experience in history that they should have understood, should have said, “This is 

a bad idea.” My whole pitch is that they did not have an agenda and they should have 

had one that said, “Do not do it this way. Do it the way the history tells us to do it.” 

And that is to give the theater commander responsibility for posthostilities planning. 

As far as I can tell, nobody in a position of authority, the four-star arena responsible for 

Iraq, ever made that pitch. Someone may have thought it, but they did not make it. 

Mr. Noonan 

Just real quickly, in El Salvador and in Dhofar, one issue was that, in El Salvador in 

particular, all of the advisors assigned there were pretty much fluent Spanish speakers. 

That being said, there were still agendas being played by the units that they supported. 

By keeping the advisory mission so small although the 55 limit was breached on many 

occasions because they would rotate in units from Panama and Fort Bragg to get above 

that cap for short periods of time because they kept the advisor and the Mil Group so 

small and the aid that they distributed was about a billion dollars over the decade, but 

by keeping it small they were able to use that as an excuse for things the El Salvadorans 

wanted, but they did not think was fitting into the campaign plan and put that off. So 

the small part of it was the flexibility of that and the size of the organization allowed 

them to offset some of the competing agendas there and in Oman, again, it was a small 

group. Because there were British officers commanding the Omani units and because 

of the SAS’s background and their intervention force mystic surrounding them since 

the post Second World War period you had a lot more synergy and unity of effort on the 

ground so in that 1970-1975 period they were really on the same page with the Sultan, 

whereas in the 1965-1970 period if you go back into some of the archives, I looked 

through some of Peter Thwaites records at King’s College, Sultan Bin Taimur would 

get so down into the weeds that he would talk about imposing taxes on officers who 

brought hunting rifles into the country. He was that far into the weeds on issues. So that 

change in leadership was a perfect case because you have these two distinct periods 

and in the second period you have somebody that was bought into and is totally on the 

same page with those people so that there was not really that many agendas that needed 

to be pushed aside there. 

Panel 5—PostWar Germany
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

Role and Goal Alignment: The US Military-NGO 

Relationship in PostWorld War II Germany1
 

by 

Major Tania M. Chacho, Ph.D., US Army2
 

United States Military Academy
 

History has hailed the US experience in the reconstruction of Germany in the aftermath of World War II as a “success story” that epitomized the capabilities and vision of a democracy in a postconflict environment. The economic recovery of Europe 

(enabled to a large degree by the Marshall Plan), along with the development of West 

Germany as a liberal democracy, provided convincing evidence that the reconstruction 

and stabilization efforts of the United States and her allies achieved success. During 

the course of this reconstruction effort, the US military found itself working closely 

with many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to restore the basic necessities of 

daily life to the German (and other former Nazi-occupied) people. This paper examines 

the intricacies of this military-NGO relationship, and presents several salient characteristics that defined the nature of the interaction. Of these, the leadership and direction 

provided by the US government emerges as particularly critical in achieving an integrated effort. This guidance served to mitigate many of the organizational and logistical challenges faced by those working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and set the 

stage for the eventual reconstruction of Germany. Overall, the humanitarian relief and 

reconstruction work carried out by the US Army and nongovernmental organizations 

in postwar Germany provides testament to the value of the relationship developed between these two entities, and the circumstances under which they developed these ties 

offers interesting insights regarding the ability of two different organizational entities 

to work in the same geographic space to achieve their goals. 

This study will begin with a brief overview of the general state of thinking regarding crisis-response and developmental environments, followed by an examination of 

the situation in postwar Germany, and in Europe in general, to set the context for the 

relationship. Next, a discussion of the goals and objectives of both the US military and 

the various NGO actors establishes the conditions for “success” in the humanitarian 

mission that both undertook. The third section will explore the interaction itself, identifying the characteristics that marked the relationship. The penultimate portion of the 

paper investigates the challenges that organizations on both sides faced, and the conclusion explores the role of US governmental leadership in setting goals and forging 

the structure around which the military-NGO relationship could develop. Ultimately, 
 

 

this paper seeks to investigate the salient characteristics of the relationship between US 

military forces and NGOs that resulted in the successful handling of the humanitarian 

crisis and set the stage for reconstruction efforts in postWWII Germany. 

Immediate and Long-Term Efforts: From Crisis-Response to Development 

Much of the existing literature focusing on postwar environments emphasizes the 

need for capacity building and places the challenge in a developmental context.3 Yet 

often, it is the effectiveness of the preceding immediate humanitarian efforts to save 

lives and alleviate human suffering that sets the stage for these societal building activities. Such humanitarian relief takes place as soon as hostilities cease (or in some cases, 

while the security situation is still tenuous), and scholars view these efforts as largely 

short term and usually unsustainable in scope.4

 PostWorld War II developments, such 

as the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the additional protocols of 1977, have articulated the rights of victims of armed conflicts to receive assistance and protection with 

the purpose of satisfying their immediate needs,5

 thus lending further credence to the 

short-term nature of the involvement. However, often the initial response is just a stopgap measure, intended to mitigate the suffering in order to allow a more sustainable, 

long-term effort to get underway. 

The concept of separate military and civilian domains within the humanitarian and 

reconstruction environments is also a prevalent theme of the literature, both during the 

World War II era and today. Recent writings have emphasized the concept that the military has “taken on new and significant political roles”6

 that place it within the realm of 

what NGOs regard as civil space. Missions in the 1990s and early 21st century have 

seen the military engaging in tasks such as providing shelter for displaced persons, 

supervising the return of refugees, organizing and monitoring elections, and supporting 

civilian reconstruction—many of the same functions performed by their nongovernmental counterparts.7 This overlap has created tensions and misunderstandings about 

the propriety of military involvement in these types of situations. 

Yet these debates are not new. Recent years have seen larger numbers of civilian 

relief workers and organizations engaged in postconflict operations, and a better articulated concept of humanitarian space has emerged. Yet many of the issues and challenges that exist today between soldiers and civilian aide workers were also present in 

the postWorld War II period. Each perceived their roles to be distinctly different and 

separate, and this self-identification of roles persists in each organization today. The 

US military in 1945 had just waged four years of high-intensity combat and was not 

eager to pick up additional missions as an occupying force—missions that the Department of War believed would be best honchoed by the Department of State. 

But we must take care not to overstate any parallels present between postwar Germany and more recent humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. Certain specific elements of the postwar situation in Germany may mirror more modern situations, yet 

218 
 

 

 

their very context is different due to the vast changes in the international environment 

over the past 60 years. As many recent commentators have observed, parallels between 

current US operations in Iraq and those in postwar World War II Germany are difficult 

to make, because the contrasts tend to outweigh the similarities.8 The danger in attempting analogies is that the investigation often creates links out of context, potential 

ignoring critical shaping aspects in a desire to capitalize on similarities that make sense 

of the situation and potentially illuminate the way forward. 

But if, as the saying goes, history “rhymes, but never repeats,” perhaps a micro approach—in this case, examining the specific dynamics of a carefully defined aspect of 

the military-NGO relationship—may offer some insights into the elements necessary 

for a fruitful partnership. It is in this vein that this study moves forward. 

Context: The Crisis Situation in PostWar Germany 

Almost six years of war left Germany utterly and completely devastated. By the 

time of her unconditional surrender to Allied forces in May 1945, experts estimated that more than 20 million Germans were homeless or without adequate shelter, a 

food shortage and coal crisis was looming, and a further 5.2 million displaced persons 

(mostly liberated civilians and prisoners of war) were moving throughout SHAEF-held 

territory.9

 Of these issues, the lack of food was perhaps the most acute. And the situation was indeed grim: American officials estimated that the caloric intake of German 

civilians living in the British and US-occupied zones in the fall of 1945 was only 1250 

a day (on average), compared to 3,000 calories a day in Great Britain and between 

3,000 and 4,000 calories a day in the United States military.10 Some deemed even this 

figure too high: a report by Colonel Joe Starnes the week that the war ended indicated 

that the “average basic ration is less than 1,000 calories.”11 A typical week’s ration for 

a German citizen in May 1945 consisted of the following: “bread, 3 pounds; meat, 4 

ounces; butter and fat, 2 ounces; sugar, 7 ounces; macaroni and spaghetti, 5 ounces; 

potatoes, 6 pounds.”12 This added up to just under 1,000 calories a day. By the fall of 

1945, the infant mortality rate approached 65 percent in many places, according to the 

US Deputy Military Governor General Lucius Clay.13 He further noted that “by the 

spring of 1946, German observers expect that epidemics and malnutrition will claim 

2.5 to 3 million victims between the Oder and Elbe.”14 

Yet losses in the rest of Europe were also severe, and the hardships suffered there 

(many at the hands of the Nazis) created a situation in which many of the Allies had 

little desire, inclination, or capacity to assist the German population. In the US, the 

Morgenthau Plan—a punitive “pastoralization” of Germany to ensure that she never 

again took hostile action—initially gained favor among governmental leaders as the 

preferred method of administering the occupation, and reparations were a key component of this strategy.15 But even if the desire to help was present, the French, British, 

and other Europeans had very little to offer the German people, as they themselves 

struggled to feed and shelter their own citizens. The displacement of millions of Euro 

 

 

peans, caused both by the war and by the migrations of those that wished to position 

themselves on different territory as the lines between the Soviet east and the democratic west became clear, added to the humanitarian crisis. 

The people of Europe faced a daunting task just meeting one of their most basic 

needs: food. Due to the devastation of the war, sufficient food was simply not available 

in theater, save for that brought in by Allied armies for use by their troops.16 Worries 

about the ability of European farmers to harvest adequate crops in the fall of 1945 

became compounded by a worldwide food shortage that shrunk the available supply 

and added to the crisis.17 In the United States, President Truman’s Cabinet Food Committee worked with the multinational Combined Food Board allocated resources in an 

attempt to mitigate hunger in Europe.18 

Yet the intent of this aid was primarily for the newly liberated areas of Europe, not 

for the German people. Furthermore, the Allied government-supported agencies supplying aid to refugees, displaced persons, and those in the newly liberated territories 

did not view assistance to German citizens, seen as the perpetrators of the war, as part 

of their mandate. Eventually, in February 1946, President Truman did approve the creation of a Council of Relief Agencies Licensed for Operation in Germany (CRALOG) 

and allowed this umbrella organization to operate under the direction of the US Military Government.19 Yet CRALOG’s creation came nine months—and one winter—after the cessation of hostilities in May 1945. 

And the worldwide food situation did not improve over the next few years. By 

1947, a report by the Cabinet Food Committee spelled out the story in convincing 

detail: because of poor crops abroad, because of a sharp drop in US corn production, 

Europe now faced a food shortage of 4.5 million tons in grain alone.20 By 1947, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) had the responsibility for supplying food to the displaced persons in Germany, a population of roughly 552,000,21 

which further strained the availability of food for ordinary German civilians. 

The humanitarian crisis that Germans faced from 1945–1948 was one of unprecedented magnitude.22 And on top of the physical hardships endured by the German 

people, they also faced worldwide censure and condemnation for their role in the war. 

This left many people in Allied nations unable to identify with their plight, or even to 

demand that they be forced to continue to live at bare sustenance levels.23 Goodwill 

toward Germans was not readily apparent in many quarters, and this reluctance to aid 

a former enemy further complicated the humanitarian situation. 

Yet some segments of American society did view the German people with compassion, and they worked to provide a means by which humanitarian aid could flow 

to ordinary German citizens. American voluntary agencies wanted to provide help to 

the war-stricken population for a variety of different reasons, ranging from pure humanitarianism, to a desire to help ethnic brethren and relatives, evidenced by German220 
Americans. Religious organizations, particularly those with members of their faith in 

Germany (Lutherans, Catholics, and Mennonites, for example) were also interested 

in rendering assistance, as were organizations such as the American Friends Service 

Committee (AFSC) that had a record of operating in Germany, having helped German 

children in the aftermath of World War I.24 Nongovernmental agencies were critical 

in shaping public perception of Germany, helping it to overcome the negative image 

of being the country of Nazism.25 Once this stigma was no longer at the forefront of 

American minds, the need to provide aid for a starving people became more readily 

apparent. Such was the environment in which the US Army and NGOs performed their 

work. 

“Success” in the Reconstruction Effort 

Setting the criteria for “success” in any endeavor that involves multiple actors is always difficult, which is perhaps why in the realm of postconflict reconstruction, a clear 

definition is often absent. Most early researchers who examined the US occupation of 

Germany have evaluated it as successful, noting that America achieved her objective 

of an independent, liberally democratic, economically viable, and nonaggressive West 

German state.26 Later scholars challenged this overall positive assertion, arguing that 

certain occupation policies contained notable shortcomings.27 Still, the overall impression of American reconstruction activities in Germany during the postwar period 

remains favorable, at least in retrospect. At the time, there was much more angst about 

the course taken, and much more uncertainty about the eventual outcome.28 

The US government initially set its criteria for postwar success through a series 

of directives and agreements, beginning in the spring of 1945 while the war was still 

ongoing. First, in April 1945, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) 1067 set the policy for the 

occupation, although scholars generally believe that a discrepancy existed between official policy and the views of those who carried it out.29 JCS 1067 was, in fact, a harsh 

document, intent on producing the “hard” peace favored by Henry Morgenthau and 

devoid of any mention of humanitarian assistance for the German people. In fact, the 

paper provided General Eisenhower with the “Basic Objectives of Military Government in Germany” as follows: 

a. It should be brought home to the Germans that Germany’s ruthless warfare 

and the fanatical Nazi resistance have destroyed the German economy and 

made chaos and suffering inevitable and that the Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves. 

b. Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated 

enemy nation. Your aim is not oppression but to occupy Germany for the purpose of realizing certain important Allied objectives. In the conduct of your 

occupation and administration you should be just but firm and aloof. You will 

strongly discourage fraternization with the German officials and population. 
 

c. The principal Allied objective is to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a threat to the peace of the world. Essential steps in the accomplishment of this objective are the elimination of Nazism and militarism in all their 

forms, the immediate apprehension of war criminals for punishment, the industrial disarmament and demilitarization of Germany, with continuing control over Germany’s capacity to make war, and the preparation for an eventual 

reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis. 

d. Other Allied objectives are to enforce the program of reparations and restitution, to provide relief for the benefit of countries devastated by Nazi aggression, and to ensure that prisoners of war and displaced persons of the United 

Nations are cared for and repatriated. 

Furthermore, paragraph 5 of JCS 1067 clearly stated that Military Government 

officials were to restrict themselves to promoting the production and maintenance of 

only those indigenous goods and services “required to prevent starvation or such disease and unrest as would endanger the occupying forces.”30 Planners envisioned no 

mass scale relief efforts to assist the German population; instead, they directed their 

attention to the care of displaced persons and the imposition of order within the US 

zone of occupation. Thus, JCS 1067 did not supply any stated humanitarian relief and 

reconstruction objectives of the US as an occupying force. 

Yet those responsible for running the military occupation received additional guidance from the Potsdam Agreement, issued in August 1945. In the few months that 

passed between the end of the war in Europe in May and Potsdam in late July-early 

August, doubts had emerged about the ability of the communist USSR and the democratic West to sustain their wartime partnership into the postwar era, and the document 

reflected some of the strategic maneuverings between the Allies. Ultimately, under the 

rubric of economic unity, the West used the Potsdam communiqué to consolidate their 

three zones and create a capitalistic and democratic West Germany.31 But more importantly from a developmental standpoint, the spreading East-West divide and developing Cold War that became clear at Potsdam eventually allowed the US to shift its policy 

regarding the long-term viability of the German state. This marked the starting point of 

American leadership’s strategic turn away from the Morgenthau plan and their move to 

an acceptance of a “softer” attitude toward defeated Germany. Secretary of State James 

Byrnes officially announced this change in American attitude in a speech at Stuttgart 

on September 6, 1946, when he emphasized (among other things) the need for an improved level of industry for Germany.32 As Franklin Davis notes, from an American 

policy standpoint, the Stuttgart statement “oriented the Occupation Army away from 

a repression of German militarism and dispelled once and for all any concept of the 

Army in Germany as a force to exploit the purely military values of the victory in Europe.”33 So approximately 16 months after the formal cessation of hostilities, the role 

of the occupying US forces finally formally transitioned into one that could engage in 

relief operations for the benefit of the German people. 

222 
 

 

In addition, from a legal perspective, there existed support for use of the military in 

a limited humanitarian role. In fact, and some law experts argued that international law 

dictates that an occupying force provide adequate feeding of civilian populations under 

their control, and thus the care of the German civilian population should ultimately 

become a mission of the US military.34 Military doctrine of the time tends to support 

this view, and by 1946, Defense Department officials argued before Congress that 

international law obligated them to import and distribute food to prevent “disease and 

unrest” among the German population.35 The pacifying effects that an adequate caloric 

intake provided the occupied citizenry was something that the military recognized and 

appreciated, as ultimately it facilitated the job of preserving the security environment. 

Initially, then, the relief mission was thus an implied task required to complete the 

stated goal of maintaining order. But while military involvement in providing food aid 

to the German population may have originated with these practical operational considerations, evidence suggests that military leaders in theater were among the first to 

recognize and call for the need for an expanded effort to avert a humanitarian disaster. 

For example, the Military Governor of the US Zone (Germany), General Clay, writes 

in his memoirs that, “From the first I begged and argued for food because I did not 

believe that the American people wanted starvation and misery to accompany occupation. . . .”36 Clay further notes that in November 1945 he “made a hurried trip home” 

to discuss the food shortages with government officials and “ask personally for their 

assistance in increasing the food supply.”37 While Clay’s efforts were largely unsuccessful (due to the world grain shortage and the desire to ensure that Allies received 

preferential treatment over former enemies), they do indicate a military awareness of 

the critical humanitarian need. 

So as the mission of the US military morphed by default and necessity into one that 

included a formalized humanitarian role beyond that required to maintain the peace, 

the definition of “success” changed along with it. By taking on this role, the US occupying forces now had to measure their efforts against a new standard. Given this, a 

contemporary definition of relief “success” may prove useful here: Francis Fukuyama 

describes the first phase of successful nation-building as the United States solving immediate problems of physical infrastructure through the infusion of security forces, 

humanitarian relief, and technical assistance.38 

This contemporary definition also provides a useful bridge to a discussion of the 

goals of humanitarian relief organizations involved in postwar Germany. In December 

1945, a group of American voluntary relief agencies formed a united body—CRALOG 

—that received formal recognition from President Truman in February 1946. While 

each voluntary aid organization maintained its own individual mission and mandate, 

through participation in CRALOG, those operating in Germany agreed to a standardized set of four goals: “to provide a channel through which interested Americans could 

send relief to Germany; to avoid duplication among the agencies; to provide liaison 

with government and military authorities as well as German welfare agencies; and to 
 

 

provide facilities for other agencies and individuals, not members of the Council, to 

participate in this humanitarian undertaking.”39 

These generalized goals created the framework under which voluntary aid organizations operated. Yet some also opted for a more specialized, “niche” approach. For 

example, the Cooperation for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) had a stated 

mission of selling food remittances to interested individuals, groups, and organizations 

for designated beneficiaries. This person-to-person aid (with its striking similarities 

to micro-finance ventures promoted today) appealed to many Americans who wanted 

reassurance that their donation made a tangible difference to an individual recipient’s 

life. As General Clay explains: 

The physical and psychological effects of this aid were immense. Much larger quantities of bulk food, largely grain, brought in with appropriated funds, lost their identity 

through processing before they reached the consumer. He knew something of the huge 

extent of this aid, but it remained impersonal. On the other hand, when a CARE package arrived, the consumer knew it was aid from America and that even the bitterness 

of war had not destroyed our compassion for suffering.40 

Voluntary aid organizations often reported on the amount of food and supplies 

provided from the monies raised from donors, and this became a measure of their “success.” Although many recognize now that this is a crude guide, at best, since it focuses 

on quantifiable rather than qualitative measures, it was nonetheless an accepted standard of the time. Using these criteria, CARE’s Executive Director reported in February 

1948 that “since the actual operation commenced, we have supplied between 52 and 

53 million dollars worth of food and other packages.”41 This relief represented a vast 

impact on the lives of many Germans and kept many from starving during the initial 

rough postwar years. As such, it warrants mention in a discussion of the criteria of 

voluntary relief agency “success.” 

Characteristics of the Military-NGO Relationship 

Postwar interactions between civil relief workers and military authorities occurred 

in an environment marked by clear (if often debated) policies and regulation, coordinated by a Presidential-appointed central authority. The government mobilized philanthropy, like other aspects of national life, in the interests of “efficiency and speedy 

victory.”42 The President’s War Relief Control Board, established by Executive Order 

of President Roosevelt on 25 July 1942, oversaw the overall coordination of the efforts 

of public charities with regard to the provision of relief, reconstruction, or welfare arising from the war or its immediate aftermath (the order was valid until six months after 

the termination of hostilities, “unless revoked by Presidential order.”)43 Not only was 

the Board active throughout the war, but President Truman saw fit to have the functions 

of the Board continue into peacetime, and on 16 May 1946 he renamed it the Advisory 

Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid.44 

224 
 

 

The development of the War Relief Control Board created some controversy. It 

essentially forced the mergers of many independent agencies, citing efficiency concerns, and made licensing decisions among ethnic-orientated agencies with different 

viewpoints that also caused contention.45 The Board sought to clearly identify aid 

agencies with the United States government and its citizens, and so required charitable 

organizations to change their names to include “American” in their title to identify the 

source of the aid.46 So, the French Relief Fund became American Relief for France; the 

Queen Wilhelmina Fund changed it’s moniker to American Relief for Holland, and so 

forth.47 Such partisan identification clearly linked the aid organization to the foreign 

policy objectives of the US government, but this identification was one that most made 

willingly,48 in an atmosphere of national mobilization. This wholehearted identification 

with the aims of the national government is a unique feature of the time, and a response 

to the call for a national wartime effort. The ideological appeal was clear-cut and welldefined, which aided the government in its appeal for support and its establishment of 

a centralized framework for aid work. 

The United States government was also instrumental in founding an international 

coordination effort for humanitarian relief. On 9 November 1943, 16 months after 

President Roosevelt established the War Relief Control Board, the United Nations 

Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) began its operations. A collaborative effort involving 44 Allied nations, the purpose of UNRRA was to “plan, co-ordinate, 

administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of 

war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision 

of food, fuel, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities, medical and other essential 

services”49 Although UNRRA eventually operated in occupied Germany (primarily 

operating displaced persons camps), the organization did not render assistance to ethnic Germans.50 

This distinction was critical, and Richard Wiggers sees it in the overall context 

of a lack of American desire to care for a population seen not only as the enemy, but 

also as perpetrators of horrible crimes against humanity.51 Slowly, as the dire nature of 

the situation became clear through independent reports, US relief agencies and others 

began to advocate greater amounts of assistance for the German people. Yet President 

Truman remained initially reluctant, noting that it was difficult to feel “great sympathy” for the Germans, “who caused the death of so many human beings by starvation, 

disease and outright murder.”52 

Public pressure, coupled with an increasing understanding of the criticality of the 

situation in Germany and the emerging geopolitical outlines of the Cold War, slowly 

changed the minds of US leaders. Notably, however, this did not occur until about 

12 months (and one harsh winter) into the occupation period. The mindset of US leadership toward the Germans at the cessation of hostilities (and thus the beginning of the 

postconflict period) was one of retribution and punishment, and as mentioned above, 

this influenced the guidance given to those in charge of the occupation. But some 
 

 

historians have argued that all along, the American Occupation Forces did “frequently 

perform their duties at variance with the policies expressed by the civil authorities at 

home.”53 This dissonance between stated government policy and actions of the military government on the ground in Germany is a critical aspect of the postconflict relief 

operation. Acknowledgement that the military performed tasks designed to alleviate 

human suffering suggests recognition that those soldiers on the ground were perhaps 

best poised to assess and address the operational situation. 

In 1946, Congress authorized emergency aid for Germany, Japan, and Austria 

under the Government Aid and Relief in Occupied Areas (GARIOA) program. This 

money came with Congress’ stipulation that OMGUS use the funds only to import 

“food, petroleum, and fertilizers” to prevent “disease and unrest” in Germany.54 In 

1946, GARIOA provided almost $9 million in aid and supplies.55 Military authorities 

worked with aid organizations (both foreign and local national) to distribute this assistance and, in this way, developed their relationship. 

Prior Planning: Immediate Humanitarian Needs 

As indicated above, discussions regarding the role of charitable organizations in 

postwar Europe began long before the surrender of the Third Reich. Indeed, a long war 

(and a mobilized public) provided ample time and opportunity to engage in planning 

regarding the postwar challenges that the European continent as a whole would face. 

American agencies paid time and attention to both the immediate humanitarian needs 

faced by the European people (many in newly liberated territory in the wake of the 

advancing Allied armies) and to the longer-term reconstruction challenges that these 

war-torn societies would encounter. 

The President’s War Relief Control Board set the priority of effort. Although it 

came under “continued and increasing pressure from persons and organizations who 

desire to assist in the reconstruction of damaged towns, institutions, monuments, etc. 

in Europe,” the Control Board took the position that “in view of the present conditions 

in Europe, private relief resources should be utilized for the direct relief of human suffering rather than for reconstruction.”56 While some might argue for a simultaneous 

rather than a sequenced effort, the Control Board’s determination was unambiguous. 

Letters from private citizens and organizations reached the White House and State 

Department and other government agencies, requesting guidance as to how to proceed 

in reconstruction efforts for Europe. Citing the Control Board’s policy, government 

officials replied that this was premature, and that the sole focus of current relief efforts 

should be on the alleviation of human suffering.57 

The human aspect of the postwar situation was indeed critical, and many offered 

ideas for providing and facilitating this relief as well. For example, a national committee headed by Henry J. Kaiser organized a United National Clothing Collection in the 

spring of 1945—a unified effort on the part of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and all the voluntary war relief agencies of the United 

226 
 

 

 

 

 

States.58 The campaign’s publicity department (it was a very well organized effort) 

issued a release to inform Americans that the nationwide drive would occur between 

April 1-30, 1945, to “secure the maximum quantity possible of good used clothing for 

free distribution to needy and destitute men, women, and children in war-devastated 

countries.”59 This drive was strictly to benefit the newly liberated areas of Europe, so 

it did not encompass Germany. 

Yet after the war, other organizations did take the needs of the German people into 

account. For example, concern over the immediate humanitarian needs spawned the 

creation of the Cooperation for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) by “some 

twenty leading American charitable organizations.”60 Created “largely at the insistence 

of the President’s War Relief Control Board,” CARE had a stated mission of selling 

food remittances to interested individuals, groups, and organizations, for designated 

beneficiaries throughout Europe.61 By June 1946, CARE had concluded a formal 

agreement with OMGUS that specifically delineated the obligations expected of both 

sides. On paper, the relationship appeared to be an unequal one: CARE listed 4 points 

under their obligations, and in return articulated 12 items (some with subcomponents) 

under the paragraph titled, “Exemptions and Facilities Accorded to CARE.”62 This 

was a reflection of the environment: OMGUS administered the US Occupied Zone, 

and thus were the entity responsible for executing the occupation plan’s rules, including those dealing with humanitarian assistance. 

Yet aid and economic assistance was not a business that the military desired to remain involved in beyond what was necessary for as an emergency, stop-gap, measure. 

During the war, in February and March 1945, President Roosevelt sent Judge Samuel 

Rosenman to investigate Europe’s reconstruction needs. The Rosenman Report identified the need to remove the military from responsibility for civilian supply as soon 

as operationally feasible, citing concerns that the continuation of such involvement 

would “mitigate against ultimate economic recovery.”63 The report noted that General 

Eisenhower, SHAEF Commander, had made the same recommendation regarding the 

termination of military responsibility for civilian supply in the newly liberated territories—namely, that it occur at the earliest practicable date.64 The Army’s eagerness to 

get out of the humanitarian business did come with the recognition that initially, they 

were the only organization who could perform some essential tasks. For example, the 

Rosenman report readily acknowledged that war created conditions in which the “only 

effective medium for the initial provision of civilian supplies” is the Army.65 

Soon after the Rosenman report, President Truman instructed the Secretary of War 

to plan for the termination of military responsibilities for shipping and distributing 

relief supplies for liberated areas of Europe as soon as the military situation permits.66 

He also clearly indicated that he expected a relationship between military and civil 

authorities to develop: 

In addition, I think that the general policy of the Army, upon such termination, should 

be to continue to assist the national governments involved and the appropriate civil 

ian agencies of our own Government and UNRRA to the extent the military situation 

permits. This should include, where possible, and to the extent legally permissible, the 

transfer of supplies which are in excess of essential military requirements.67 

Thus, initial relief planning efforts from both the US governmental and voluntary 

agencies had expectations of close interaction and working relationships developing 

between the military and NGOs. 

Prior Planning: Reconstruction Efforts 

While the focus of this study is immediate humanitarian efforts, it is worth mentioning that longer-term reconstruction planning also occurred—and not just in the 

governmental realm. Private organizations and agencies engaged in strategic planning 

regarding reconstruction on the European continent. For example, the Director of the 

International Relations Board of the American Library Association penned a letter to 

the Secretary of State in May 1945 expressing that the Association was “anxious to 

renew and extend their relationships with European libraries,” including the restoration of the “flow of books, pamphlets and serial publications from the United States to 

Europe, and from Europe to the United States.”68 He further notes that the American 

Library Association “has now in stock piles in the United States nearly half a million 

dollars’ worth of carefully selected books and periodicals (purchased with Rockefeller 

Foundation money)” with which to bring European libraries up-to-date in “American 

publications and American scholarship and thought.”69 The identification of the need 

to provide the necessary materials to resume educational opportunities speaks to the 

recognition of a long-term effort to rebuild war-torn societies, and is thus firmly in the 

realm of reconstruction activities. 

For Germany, as well as for the rest of Europe, the ultimate reconstruction effort 

occurred with the announcement of the Marshall Plan (or the Economic Recovery Program, as it was formally known) in 1947. This also signaled the end of the emergency 

relief effort and the transition to foreign aid for development. 

Goal Alignment 

During the humanitarian assistance phase, several characteristics of the relationship between the US military and voluntary aid agencies quickly became evident. First, 

thanks to the establishment of the President’s War Relief Control Board, there existed 

an alignment of goals between aid agencies and governmental policies. The recognition of this commonality was important in that it established the framework for operations within the theater of operations. Of course, the path was not smooth, and 

disagreements arose regarding the best means to achieve the end. 

For example, the Control Board regulated “appeals to the public for funds and 

other contributions for foreign relief”70 and thus arguably stifled the free speech of 

228 
 

agencies that would have otherwise asked the public for donations. And by setting 

the conditions under which private relief agencies could operate, the Control Board 

ensured that it controlled the means by which each goal was tackled. For example, it 

“. . . has refrained from giving its approval for campaigns to raise funds for the restoration of cities abroad. It has taken the position that the solicitation of funds for war relief 

at this time should be confined to emergent projects, that is, for the direct relief of human suffering through provision of food, clothing, medicaments, et cetera.”71 

NGOs’ reaction to this control was overall rather muted. For example, CARE documents from the time show that the organization developed within the system emplaced 

by the Control Board, and sought to align their goals with those of the Board in order to 

achieve success by emphasizing the areas of overlap. CARE emphasized that by design, 

they filled a “need for an individual to individual and group to group package service” 

that the American voluntary relief agencies “were not equipped to handle.”72 Like any 

good business plan, the CARE concept sought to find a niche to fill. Once it identified 

this, its supporters then lobbied an initially reluctant government to grant it recognition 

and allow it to operate in pursuit of this goal.73 In doing so, it did not change its stated 

mission, nor did it alter its vision regarding the essential functions of this mission. The 

organization’s concept of providing a method for interested Americans to purchase remittances to send food overseas to designated or undesignated individuals and groups 

remained intact. The organizers of CARE marketed their plan effectively and, in doing 

so, helped the US government to see that their goals aligned. 

Another compelling force for goal alignment was CRALOG. The requirement to 

register with CRALOG prior to operating in theater ensured that the ends pursued by 

voluntary agencies coincided, with the intent of reducing inefficiencies and duplication 

of effort. Of course, the means by which each agency decided to pursue the goal was 

still matter of discussion. 

Coordination and Deconfliction of Effort 

Once the actors established agreement on goals, or ends, a discussion over means 

(procedures and processes) naturally ensued. The State Department handled many inquiries from citizens and groups regarding providing assistance to the civilians liberated in Europe. The standard response was that the provision of supplies was a military 

responsibility and that the interested party should contact the President’s War Relief 

Control Board to determine how best to render assistance.74 Although the provision of 

supplies was indeed a military responsibility at the end of the war, it was one that the 

Department of War wanted divested as soon as possible. 

In fact, interagency disagreements permeated the discussion of the means of execution for the postwar relief aid plan. A central issue was who held ultimate responsibility for the provision of civilian supplies, and this was a matter of intense debate between the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State. President Roosevelt directed the 
 

 

 

Secretary of War to provide initial relief supplies in newly liberated areas necessary to 

“avoid disease and unrest.”75 In a letter dated 21 May 1945, President Truman directed 

that the War Department cease taking responsibility for these relief efforts “as soon 

as the military situation permits” and after consultation with the State Department.76 

What ensued was a series of letters back and forth between the Secretary of State 

and the Secretary of War, discussing the terms of the handoff arrangement. State expressed reluctance to take on the mission immediately, as they had very few resources 

in theater that would allow them to effectively oversee the effort. For its part, the 

military wanted to relinquish this mission—and its ensuing financial obligations—as 

rapidly as practicable.77 Ultimately, the military wound up retaining responsibility for 

these aid functions longer than they felt necessary given the President’s directive, and 

they did so under protest. 

Initial military plans for the occupation of Europe overlooked the need for coordination with voluntary aid organizations. For example, the Basic Preliminary Plan for 

Allied Control and Occupation of Germany 1944–45 does not include any nongovernmental organizations in an extensive matrix of those organizations with which military 

divisions or headquarters sections should coordinate.78 This oversight persisted into 

the administration of the military government and occupying force in Germany. Indeed, as late as the fall of 1946, many in the US government opposed allowing voluntary aid organizations to even enter into Germany. A case in point is the reaction of the 

Office of Political Affairs as they expressed nonconcurrence with a proposal from the 

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to allow 10 Americans into a town in 

Bavaria to provide relief to displaced persons and to facilitate relations between them 

and the German population.79 The Director of Political Affairs indicated his concern 

with this plan, noting: 

The door, admitting the entrance of relief personnel, cannot be readily closed once 

it is opened. The British opened the door at an early stage and now fi nd themselves 

with more than 600 non-German volunteer workers in the British Zone working in the 

interests of the German population.80 

The worry about “opening the floodgates” of relief workers is clear, and the Director goes on to note that “every non-German individual who comes into the Zone occupies space and utilizes facilities which are at a great premium and definitely needed 

by the German people themselves.”81 

The discussion about the best means to use to execute the relief plan produced 

many challenges for both the relief organizations and the military. For example, CARE 

initially struggled to obtain authority to purchase surplus “10-in-1” rations from the 

Army, which the organization needed in order to establish their individual food package plan. These rations could feed 10 combat soldiers for 1 day or 1 combat soldier for 

10 days—a total of 30 meals or 45,000 calories.82 The military initially wanted to sell 

these surplus rations to UNRRA, apparently to dispose of them in the “simplest way 

and in one transaction.”83 CARE ultimately achieved success here, and managed to 

230 
 

 

purchase 2.8 million to successfully launch their remittance program and also inaugurate their operations as a private nonprofit agency.84 

Scholars of humanitarian assistance often cite a clear recognition of areas of responsibility as a key element necessary for the successful execution of the aid mission.85 Yet this was not immediately achieved in US governmental operations in 

postwar Germany, and still the organizers found ways to overcome this difficulty. As 

noted above, disagreements most certainly existed, and interagency and interorganizational debates challenged smooth transitions and timelines. Yet as this occurred, the 

force on the ground, in theater, with resources—the US military government—stepped 

in to address the gaps created (and often self-inflicted). As a recent RAND study on 

US nation-building experience in Germany notes, “The US Army’s focus on “getting 

things moving” was key to minimizing humanitarian suffering and accelerating economic recovery in its zone in the immediate aftermath of World War II.”86 

Reliance on Local National Groups (Aid Organizations) 

Another key characteristic of the relationship between the US military and American-based voluntary aid organizations was their reliance on another actor; namely, 

German relief agencies. In fact, the lessons learned by the War-Torn Societies Project 

from its experience of working in war-torn societies87 have a familiar ring: “Local 

solutions and responses to rebuilding challenges are often more effective, cheaper and 

more sustainable” than any of those imported by foreign counterparts.88 The Military 

Governor, General Lucius Clay, fully recognized and appreciated this distinction: 

While German welfare agencies deserved high praise for their work in the winter of 

1945–46 with meager resources, there was a growing consciousness of their need for 

help from the United States. I was convinced that German organizations were competent to distribute supplies and that United States aid sent directly to these agencies 

would prove most effective.89 

In retrospect, General Clay felt even more strongly about the role played by German organizations, “While it is true that without American food, bought with American money, loss of life in Germany would have been appalling, the major relief burden 

was carried by the German state governments and private welfare organizations.”90 

Fortunately, in postwar Germany, there was a network of private welfare organizations that the Allies could work with to provide this emergency relief. The organizations did have to undergo a vetting process to ascertain that they did not have ties to 

the Nazi Party, but then could operate under the direct supervision of local German 

authorities. Many were religious organizations, and they worked with the administrators of the Lander (State-level authorities) to distribute aid, particularly when it began 

arriving from abroad.91 
 

 

Understanding and Appreciation of Roles 

Mutual recognition and understanding go a long way to reduce friction, and this 

was evident in the relationship between US soldiers and American civilian aid workers in Germany. The gap was not a wide one to breech, since conscription in the US 

ensured that most aid workers had a relative, neighbor, or friend serving in uniform. 

Furthermore, many voluntary aid organizations were led by former members of the US 

military. For example, CARE’s Executive Director during the immediate postwar period was former Army Major General William Haskell.92 The benefits derived from this 

rather widespread understanding of military had the effect of minimizing any potential 

institutional culture divides between civilians and soldiers working in Germany. 

Clearly outlined expectations also assisted the smooth progression of the military-NGO relationship. On behalf of OMGUS, General Clay signed a concise twopage agreement with the American Council of Voluntary Agencies that captured the 

understanding of the necessary procedures that both sides would follow.93 Notable in 

this agreement was the liaison functions that the voluntary relief agencies performed, 

which provided evidence of the close nature of the cooperation between the military 

and these organizations. 

The CARE program operated in a similar close fashion with the military government, which provided “general supervision of the CARE program” and received the 

attachment of three CARE representatives “to observe and assist in the operation of 

the CARE program.”94 Such close collaboration, so problematic today, was a feature 

of the postwar landscape in 1946 Germany. 

Challenges 

The mutual understanding of roles also allowed both organizations to overcome 

challenges. For example, perhaps one of the greatest concerns for the aid organizations operating in Germany was the living and working conditions for the volunteers 

themselves. Many did without rations, living on bread and a meager ration of “one or 

two sardines on a small triangle of cheese”95 and contracted illnesses. According to a 

Quaker relief worker, the “lack of food and the consequences of not getting enough” 

created a “constant worry.”96 These conditions made arrangements for military provisions all the more necessary. The military agreed to provide “billets, mess, and transportation”97 but, in return, could set limits on the number of aid workers allowed in 

country and receiving this type of support. This unequal relationship was not accepted 

by all agencies; for example, aid workers with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC–Quakers) “lived on the German economy and shared to considerable 

degree the hardships of the German,”98 as noted above. This conscious choice created 

a unique role for the AFSC, and it differentiated their efforts from those of other aid 

organizations. 

232 
 

A final thought in relation to roles deals with budgets and donor accountability. As 

Barakat and Chard point out, in the nonprofit arena, a donor culture of “financial accountability tied to the management of short, fixed-term budgets by means of measurable indicators of expenditures” often exists and presents challenges to those agencies 

operating in a postconflict environment. And although the agencies operating in postWorld War II Germany did so long before this analysis, there is substantial evidence 

to indicate that donor concerns were very similar in the late 1940s. For example, the 

precise CARE method of ensuring that donor remittances went to the named individual 

involved the “proper presentation of credentials” and then CARE transmitted a receipt 

of delivery to the donor.99 The need to formally notify the donor that his or her aid 

money was converted to a food package that reached the intended friend or relative 

was clear. 

In fact, if CARE could not find the designated beneficiary, they promised to notify 

the donor and refund his or her money. 

Conclusion 

Times have undeniably changed since the postWorld War II era. In the humanitarian and reconstruction arena, nongovernmental organizations have expanded their 

work, and their definition of the international environment in which they conduct business. Concepts of impartiality, neutrality, and independence have become critical to 

the operations of most aid organizations, and in some cases, this has created clear lines 

between military and nongovernmental actors. 

Can the characteristics of the relationship be duplicated, or are they a product of 

a specific time period and set of circumstances? A powerful argument exists for the 

uniqueness of the experience, with its specific configuration of social, political, and 

economic factors creating an environment conducive to such communication, cooperation, and coordination of efforts. But to what degree do leaders affect the political (and 

arguably the economic and social) sphere, thus shaping and ultimately creating this 

environment? If we accept the notion that individual actors (leaders) can influence and 

affect the political environment, then perhaps lessons learned from a particular type 

of environment can provide useful insights into the conditions that breed successful 

operations, from both a governmental and a nongovernmental perspective. 

The skill sets that both soldiers and aid workers possess are critical to the humanitarian relief endeavor. The understanding of each other’s mission, and a willingness to 

search for aligned goals and common ground, also assists the relief work on the ground. 

An ability to communicate with each other further facilities the relationship, although 

it cannot (and will not) overcome different points of view regarding the means of mission accomplishment. Context matters, and drawing analogies imprecisely can create 

imperfect solutions. But when viewed on a microscale, certain elements of a “successful” relationship in a humanitarian relief environment can perhaps provide guidance to 
those looking to improve such interactions in the future. Whether or not there should be 

a normative basis for the relationship is a question that deserves discussion. It is in this 

spirit that this study offers these thoughts regarding the interaction of the US military 

and NGOs in Germany during the postconflict phase of World War II. 

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Notes 

1. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect 

the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the US Army, or the United States 

Military Academy at West Point. 

2. Please contact before citing: Tania M. Chacho, Department of Social Sciences, USMA, 

West Point, NY 10996; (845) 938-7758, Fax (845) 938-4563; tania.chacho@usma.edu 

3. See Sultan Barakat and Margaret Chard, “Theories, Rhetoric, and Practice: Recovering 

the Capacities of War-Torn Societies,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 5 (October 2002): 

817-818. 

4. See Deborah Maresko, “Development, Relief Aid, and Creating Peace: Humanitarian Aid 

in Liberia’s War of the 1990s,” OJPCR: The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, 

6.1 (Fall 2004): 94–120 (2004), 102. Maresko offers a definition of “relief aid” as “any provision of aid during an emergency that is meant to attend to a person’s immediate requirements 

for survival or recovery, which include food, clothing, housing, medical care, necessary social 

services, and security when a person is faced with circumstances beyond her or his control.” 
5. See Joana Abrisketa, “The Right to Humanitarian Aid: Basis and Limitations,” Reflections on Humanitarian Action: Principles, Ethics and Contradictions, ed. ited by Humanitarian Studies Unit, Transnational Institute (London, Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2001), 55. 

6. Michael Williams, Civil Military Relations and Peacekeeping, Adelphi Paper 321 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998), 14. 

7. See Donna Winslow, “Strange Bedfellows: NGOs and the Military in Humanitarian Crises,” The International Journal of Peace Studies Vol. 7, Issue 2 (Autumn/Winter 2002). 

8. See Fred Kaplan, “Iraq’s Not Germany: What a 60-Year-Old Allen Dulles Speech Can 

Teach Us About Postwar Reconstruction,” Slate, posted October 17, 2003, http://www.slate. 

com/id/2089987/ (accessed January 22, 2008). 

9. Earl F. Ziemke, The US Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944–1946 (Washington, 

DC: US Army Historical Series, Center of Military History, 1975), 275, 283–284. 

10. Heney Clark Schor and Harmon L. Swan, “Simultaneous Surveys of Food Consumption 

in Various Camps of the United States Army,” (Chicago: Department of the Army Medical 

Nutrition Laboratory, 1949), 56. See also Military Government of Germany, “Monthly Report 

of the Military Governor, US Zone,” No. 4, “Monthly Report of the Military Governor,” 20 

November 1945, Record Group (RG) 94, OpBr/B1174, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD (NACP). 

11. Ziemke, 283. 

12. Ibid, 274. 

13. Lieutenant General Lucius D. Clay, Office of the Deputy Military Governor to John J. 

McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, War Department, 5 October 1945, RG107, E180/B26, 

NACP; Hans W. Schoenberg, Germans from the East: A Study of their Migration, Resettlement, 

and Subsequent Group History Since 1945 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 32, 38. 

14. Ibid. 

15. The simplification of the harsh treatment argument into “Morgenthau” has come under 

valid critique by at least some current historians. For a nuanced study of the perils of the reductive statement the “Morgenthau Plan,” see Jeffrey K. Olick, In the House of the Hangman: 

The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago 

Press, 2005). 

16. See “Prospectus for Cooperation for American Remittances to Europe, Inc.,” CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder: Prospectus for CARE. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New 

York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 

17. Paul W. Gulgowski, The American Military Government of United States Occupied Zones 

of Post World War II Germany in Relation to Policies Expressed by its Civilian Authorities at 

Home, During the Course of 1944/45 Through 1949 (Frankfurt am Main: Haag und Herchen 

Verlag, 1983), 283. 

18. John Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 1945– 

1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 54–55 and Harry S Truman, Memories, 

Volume I: Years of Decisions (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 468–469. 

19. Richard Dominic Wiggers, “The United States and the Refusal to Feed German Civilians 

after World War II,” Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, eds. Steven Bela Vardy 

and T. Hunt Tooley (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2003), 282. 

20. “Waste Less,” Time Magazine, October 6, 1947. 

238 
21. Oliver J. Frederiksen, The American Military Occupation of Germany: 1945–1953, 

(United States Army Europe: Historical Division, 1953), 74 and 78. 

22. Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New 

York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 296–299. 

23. See Ziemke, 104. 

24. Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945–1952 (Detroit MI: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 55. 

25. See Hermann J. Rupieper, Review in the American Historical Review 106, No. 5, 1,828. 

26. See Harold Zink, The United States in Germany, 1944–1945 (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1957); Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany; Edward N. Peterson, The 

American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory (Detroit MI: Wayne State University Press, 

1978); John H. Backer, The Decision to Divide Germany American Foreign Policy in Transition 

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978); John H. Backer, Winds of History: The German 

Years of Lucius DuBignon Clay (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983); Dewey A. Browder, 

Americans in PostWorld War II Germany (Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998). 

27. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949 

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), xv. 

28. In August 2003, members of the Bush administration drew similarities between the uncertainty of the outcome of Germany in 1945 and that of Iraq in 2003. See Daniel Benjamin, 

“Condi’s Phony History: Sorry, Dr. Rice, Postwar Germany Was Nothing Like Iraq” Posted 

August 29, 2003 http://www.slate.com/id/2087768/ (accessed January 22, 2008). 

29. Gimbel, 5. See also Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, 

vol. 3, European Advisory Commission; Austria; Germany, p. 484. 

30. SHAEF Food and Agriculture Section, Economic Control Agency, G5 Division, “The 

Food Position in Western Germany as of 1 June 1945,” 3 July 1945, RG332, ETO,SGS/B57, 

NACP; see also John H. Backer, “From Morgenthau Plan to Marshall Plan,” Americans as 

Proconsuls: United States Military Government in Germany and Japan, 1944–1952, ed. Robert 

Wolfe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 157. 

31. See Robert Cecil, “Potsdam and Its Legends,” International Affairs 46, No. 3 (June 1970), 

462. 

32. Franklin M. Davis, Come As Conqueror: The United States Army’s Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949 (New York: The MacMillian Company, 1967), 186. 

33. Ibid. 

34. See Wiggers, 275. 

35. Ibid. 

36. Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 

1950), 263. 

37. Ibid. 

38. Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century 

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 100. 

39. Genizi, 56. 

40. Clay, 277. 

41. Memorandum from Paul Comly French, Executive Director, CARE, dated February 20, 

1948. CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder “CARE—Organization” CARE records. Manuscripts 

and Archives Division. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 
42. Merle Eugene Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 452. 

43. Executive Order No. 9205, Establishing the President’s War Relief Control Board (July 

25, 1942). John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. 

Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database), http://www. 

presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16287. 

44. See Anna C. Bramwell, ed., Refugees in the Age of Total War (London: Unwin Hyman 

Ltd, 1988), 96. 

45. Curti, 454. 

46. See Bramwell, 96; Curti, 453–455. 

47. Curti, 453. 

48. See Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro, “Private Voluntary Organizations Engaged 

in International Assistance, 1939–2004,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly Journal 

(December 2007): 20. 

49. Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, November 9, 

1943, Pamphlet No. 4, Pillars of Peace, Documents Pertaining to American Interest in Establishing a Lasting World Peace: January 1941–February 1946 (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Army 

Information School, May 1946), Articles 1 and 2. 

50. Wiggers, 281–282. 

51. Ibid., 287. 

52. Ibid., 281. 

53. Gulgowski, 10. 

54. Nicholas Balabkins, Germany Under Direct Controls: Economic Aspects of Industrial 

Disarmament 1945–1948 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 101. 

55. John Killick, The United States and European Reconstruction: 1945–1960 (Edinburgh, 

UK: Keele University Press, 1997), 76. 

56. Department of State, War Problems–Special Division Letter, dated September 12, 1945, 

signed by Edwin A. Plitt, General Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938– 

1949, Roll 15, NACP. 

57. See, for example, Department of State Airgram to US Ambassador in Brussels, dated 

February 22, 1945, General Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives 

Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of 

Relief and Refugees in Europe Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 

14, NACP. 

58. Department of State, Plitt letter, RG 59, 840.48, Roll 15, NACP. 

59. General Information from the Publicity Department, United National Clothing Collection, 100 Maiden Lane, New York 5, New York, General Records of the Department of State 

(RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the Department of State 

Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe Arising From World War II and Its 

Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. 

60. Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, Memorandum dated January 8, 1946, 

CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder: Development—Committee on Cooperatives, Manuscripts 

and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations 

240 
61. Ibid, 3; Agreement Between the Deputy Military Governor of the United States Zone of 

Occupation in Germany and Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, Inc., Records 

of US Occupation Headquarters, World War II (RG 260), Office of Military Government, US 

Zone (Germany)-CARE file, Entry 81, NACP. 

62. Agreement Between Deputy Military Governor of US Zone and CARE, RG 260, Entry 

81, NACP. 

63. Report prepared by Rosenman Mission London, England, April 15, 1945, General Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, 

Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe 

Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. 

64. Ibid. General Eisenhower identified this date as May 1, 1945 for France. 

65. Ibid. 

66. President Harry S. Truman letter to the Secretary of War, dated May 21, 1945, General 

Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, 

Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe 

Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. 

67. Ibid. 

68. Keyes D. Metcalf letter to the Honorable Edward R. Stettinius, Secretary of State, dated 

14 May 1945. General Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief 

and Refugees in Europe Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, 

NACP. 

69. Ibid. 

70. Department of State Airgram to US Ambassador in Brussels, dated February 22, 1945, 

NACP. 

71. Ibid. 

72. Memorandum from Paul Comly French, dated February 20, 1948, CARE Collection, 

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden 

Foundations. 

73. See for example, Letter from Wallace J. Campbell, Chairman, Committee on Cooperatives, to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, dated October 18, 1945, General Records of the 

Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the 

Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe Arising From 

World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 15, NACP. 

74. See, for example, Telegram from the Reverend Steven H. Fritchman, to Matthew J. Connelly, Secretary to the President, dated April 24, 1945, General Records of the Department of 

State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, Records of the Department of 

State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe Arising From World War II and 

Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. 

75. See Rosenman Mission Report, dated April 15, 1945, RG 59, 840.48, Roll 14, NACP. 

76. President Harry S. Truman letter to Secretary of War, dated May 21, 1945, RG 59, 840.48, 

Roll 14, NACP. 

77. See Letters Between the Department of War and the Department of State, General Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, 

Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe 
Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. See Rosenman Mission Report, dated April 15, 1945, RG 59, 840.48, Roll 14, NACP. 

78. This matrix did include a caveat, noting that it does not list “all agencies with which 

coordination may be required.” See HQ US Group CC—Sub-Plans (Annexes) to Preliminary 

Basic Plan Allied Control and Occupation of Germany—Tab D, Records of US Occupation 

Headquarters, World War II, RG 260 390/40–5/17, Entry 2, Records of the US Group Control 

Council (Germany)—Records Relating to the Basic Preliminary Plan for Allied Control and 

Occupation of Germany 1944–45, NACP. 

79. American Friends Service Committee Proposal for Aid to German Expellees (undated), 

OMGUS Entry 25, Records of US Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 260 390/40/19/7, 

NACP. 

80. Memorandum from Sumner Sewall, Director, Internal Affairs and Communications Division, “Aid to German Expellees by AFSC,” dated November 12, 1946, OMGUS Entry 25, 

Records of US Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 260 390/40/19/7, NACP. 

81. Ibid. 

82. CARE’s Financial Requirements Memorandum, dated January 8, 1946, CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder “Development-Committee on Cooperatives,” CARE records, Manuscripts 

and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 

83. E.D. Kuppinger, Department of State, Memorandum, dated October 17, 1945. General 

Records of the Department of State (RG 59), National Archives Microfilm Publication 840.48, 

Records of the Department of State Relating to the Problems of Relief and Refugees in Europe 

Arising From World War II and Its Aftermath, 1938–1949, Roll 14, NACP. 

84. Agreement on 10-in-1 Rations dated 2–11–46, CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder “Development-Committee on Cooperatives,” CARE records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The 

New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 

85. Ray Salvatore Jennings, “The Road Ahead: Lessons in National Building from Japan, 

Germany, and Afghanistan for Postwar Iraq,” Peaceworks No. 49 (Washington, DC: United 

States Institute of Peace, April 2003). 

86. James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel M. Swanger, Anga R. Timilsina, “America’s Role in Nation-Building, From Germany to Iraq” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), 22. 

87. Matthias Stiefel, Rebuilding After War: Lessons Learned from the War-Torn Societies 

Project (Geneva: UNRISD/PSIS, 1999), 16–19. 

88. Barakat and Chard, 827. 

89. Clay, 276. 

90. Clay, 279. 

91. Hermann J. Rupieper, Review of Humanitare Auslandshilfe als Bruke zu atlantischer 

Partnerschaft: CARE, CRALOG und die Entwicklung der deutsch-aamerikanischen Beziehungen nach ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges by Karl-Ludwig Sommer, American Historical Review 

106, No. 5 (December 2001): 1,828. See also Godehard Weyerer, “CARE Packages: Gifts from 

Overseas to a Defeated and Debilitated Nation,” The United States and Germany in the Era of 

the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook, Volume 1: 1945–1968, ed. Detlef Junker (Washington, 

DC and Cambridge University Press: German Historical Institute, 2004), 524. 

92. William Haskell, Executive Director of CARE, Letter to Robert Patterson, Secretary of 

242 
War, dated September 9, 1946, CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder “Contracts” CARE records, 

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden 

Foundations. 

93. Memorandum: Agreement from German Delegation, American Council of Voluntary 

Agencies to Office of Military Government (US) Re: Relief Operations by American Voluntary 

Agencies, OMGUS Entry 112, Records of US Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 260 

390/40/19/7, NACP. 

94. Alden E. Bevier, Chief, Public Welfare Section, Information Memorandum: “CARE 

Food Package Program,” dated 2 July 1946, CARE Collection, Box #13, Folder “Germany 

– US Zone,” CARE Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 

95. W. Howard Wriggins, Picking up the Pieces from Portugal to Palestine: Quakers Refugee 

Relief in World War II: A Memoir (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004), 151. 

96. Ibid. 

97. Memorandum: Agreement from German Delegation, American Council of Voluntary 

Agencies to Office of Military Government (US) Re: Relief Operations by American Voluntary 

Agencies, OMGUS Entry 112, Records of US Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 260 

390/40/19/7, NACP. 

98. Clay, 277. 

99. See “Prospectus for Cooperation for American Remittances to Europe, Inc.,” CARE Collection, Box #1, Folder: Prospectus for CARE, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New 

York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 

 

Panel 5—Post-War Germany 

(Submitted Paper) 

Between Catastrophe and Cooperation: The US Army 

and the Refugee Crisis in West Germany, 1945-50 

by 

Adam R. Seipp, Ph.D. 

Texas A&M University 

The day after Thanksgiving, 1960, a group of American and West German dignitaries arrived at the refugee camp in Heidingsfeld, bringing with them quantities of 

turkey for a proper American feast. Colonel Jack Dempsey from Leighton Barracks in 

nearby Würzburg told the assembled crowd that he was “grateful that he was stationed 

in the miracle city of Würzburg, which sank into ashes 15 years ago yet stands again 

and has become one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.” More boldly, Dempsey 

suggested that the American day of giving thanks mirrored the situation of the Eastern 

European refugees living at Heidingsfeld. After all, he reminded his audience, what 

was Thanksgiving but a day when “a group of European immigrants gave thanks for 

the end of a difficult time?”1 

The fact that this speech happened at all, and that it took place fifteen years after 

the end of the war, highlights the extraordinary set of crises that befell Central Europe 

after 1945. The war generated millions of refugees, many of whom would never return 

home. At the same time, the Cold War created an institutionalized emergency across 

the region and led to the creation of a network of military installations on both sides of 

the Iron Curtain. In this paper, I will demonstrate that these two developments have to 

be understood together. 

This paper has three arguments. First, that the United States Army played a critical 

and little appreciated role in the management of the postwar refugee crisis in Germany. 

Second, that US strategic priorities often conflicted with the needs of German and international agencies and organizations charged with managing refugees, a conflict that 

escalated as the Cold War standoff in Central Europe worsened. Finally, that troops on 

the ground in occupied Germany often acted on their own initiative in refugee affairs, 

sometimes directly contradicting or contravening US policy on the matter. 

We cannot understand the history of the American military presence in West Germany without examining the refugee problem. Histories of the Cold War US Army 

and histories of West Germany have tended to gloss over this critical issue.2 The refugee problem complicated American efforts to establish bases in post-sovereignty West 

Germany because many of the spaces suitable for quickly establishing such posts were 
 

 

already occupied by the displaced. At the same time, West German responses to the 

American presence were in turn conditioned by these living reminders of the costs of 

war and the looming Cold War division of Europe. 

Perhaps the best reason for the relative absence of refugees in histories of the 

period is one of sources. Simply put, the Army and the American military government (OMGUS) had good reason to move refugees onto the books of other agencies, 

both German and international. Refugees proved a logistical nightmare, one that the 

Army was more than happy to shift elsewhere. The result was a lack of clear authority 

and confusion that sometimes mirrored the chaotic conditions that created the refugee 

flows in the first place. 

Several distinct streams of refugees existed in Germany after 1945. Large numbers 

of Germans from across the ruins of the Third Reich found themselves homeless, a 

problem exacerbated by Germans fleeing the Soviet occupation of the eastern zone 

of the country. Even before the end of the conflict, ethnic Germans began to flee their 

homes in Eastern Europe, beginning a bloody exodus from countries recently subject 

to the Nazi empire. Between legal and extra-judicial expulsions, nearly 14 million “expellees” made their way west, often under terrible conditions. More than 2 million of 

these refugees ended up in American occupied Bavaria alone.3 As OMGUS attempted 

to establish viable German institutions to manage civilian affairs in occupied Germany, 

one of the first acts was to create state-level refugee agencies tasked to feed and care 

for the growing stream of refugees. 

At the same time, occupied Germany played host to a new kind of refugee. More 

than 5 million people, many of whom were survivors of German slave labor or concentration camp facilities, were classified as “Displaced Persons” (DPs). These DPs 

enjoyed the protection of the new United Nations and could, in theory, depend on the 

international community for their lodging and provisioning.4 

The changing relationship between American authorities and refugees can be seen 

in the administrative structure established to deal with them and their concerns. Under 

OMGUS, which lasted from 1945 until West German sovereignty in 1949, a Prisoners of War and Displaced Persons Division existed as a distinct functional division 

reporting to the Executive Office. German refugees did not formally concern OMGUS 

officials after the establishment of German agencies to oversee their needs. After 1949, 

when the Office of the High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG) replaced OMGUS, 

the calculus of refugee affairs had changed. Now, even with the DP problem still a 

major issue across West Germany, refugee affairs shifted names and, importantly, responsibilities. Now, the office of the HICOG Political Advisor had a Displaced Populations Branch, as did the Public Affairs Division and each of the Resident Officers in 

the field. This shift from Displaced Persons to Displaced Populations was more than 

semantic.5 As West Germany emerged as a sovereign Cold War ally and frontier state, 

American concern shifted from the specific needs of the DP population to that of the 

overall refugee problem. 

246 
 

The remainder of this paper will examine this shift, and the implications that it had 

for Germans, Americans, and refugee populations, in the Bavarian district of Lower 

Franconia (Unterfranken). Within a few months of war in 1944 and 45, the district 

of Lower Franconia transformed from a sedate, rural part of Central Germany into a 

possible Cold War flashpoint. The region, about 12% of the landmass of Bavaria, occupied a critical junction along the emerging inter-German border. Unterfranken’s 124 

kilometer border with what is today the German state of Thuringia was, after 1949, an 

international frontier. That border fell squarely along the southern edge of the most 

famous strategic route in Cold War Europe: the Fulda Gap.6 This space between the 

Vogelsberg and Spessart hills offered the easiest approach to Frankfurt, and both sides 

of the emerging Cold War sought the advantage along this corridor. 

Lower Franconia became one of the most highly militarized districts in Bavaria, 

home to a division headquarters and a number of smaller facilities near or along the 

border. Two of the places where American basing policy and the refugee crisis collided were the district capital of Würzburg and the small town of Wildflecken about 

seventy kilometers northwest. In these communities, and in many others across Central 

Europe, refugees, refugee agencies, and the American military presence shared close 

quarters, with results that helped to shape West Germany’s Cold War future. 

Würzburg lay in ruins in 1945. On March 16, a massive RAF assault obliterated 

nearly 80% of the city center, killing about 5,000 people in 20 minutes. A month later, 

American troops crossing the Main River met stiff resistance and many of the remaining buildings fell during fierce fighting in the streets. This series of disasters, along with 

the low-level civil war in Franconia at the end of the war, created waves of displaced, 

terrified, and starving humanity. At the end of the war, Würzburg had a population of 

only about 6,000, bolstered by nearly 5,000 refugees. While the population rebounded 

to nearly 70,000 within two years, the number of refugees did not decrease markedly 

for almost five years.7

 Clearly, the refugee problem was going to be a long-term one, 

and local officials scrambled to find places to house this influx of extra mouths. 

The American footprint in the city was tiny, with a small headquarters in one of the 

few intact buildings along the river. This meant that the occupation forces did not need 

the abandoned Wehrmacht airfield on the Galgenberg Hill above the city. The Bavarian 

Refugee Office, headed locally by an energetic and respected bureaucrat named Josef 

Winter, began housing some of the refugees in the buildings along the airfield, which 

had likely survived the bombing because of their relative distance from the center of 

the city. Between Galgenberg and a smaller camp at Heidingsfeld south of the city, 

refugees could be drawn out of the enormous construction zone in the city center. 

There were significant formal contacts between the occupation forces and the mass 

of refugees in Würzburg and the region. In 1947, more than 6,700 refugee children 

from around Unterfranken were treated to Christmas parties hosted by the occupation 

government. The Americans made much of the fact that most of the refugees involved 

came from places under Soviet domination, noting that the entertainment for these 
 

parties included “Ukrainian Cossack dances, Baltic choirs, Polish dances, folk music, 

and the showing of the colorful garments of the different nationalities.” On a more 

prosaic level, the budget of the Würzburg Military Post indicates that the Americans 

helped to finance the recovery of local industries by paying for a range of materials to 

be delivered to DP camps and other refugee installations. The glassmaker Otto Weigan, 

for instance, provided 10 DM glass eyes for inhabitants of local DP camps.8 

To the north, in the tiny farming community of Wildflecken, a very different story 

unfolded. Wildflecken had been a rural backwater until 1936, when the German Army 

identified it as an ideal spot to conduct training in hilly and wooded terrain. They built 

an 18,000 acre training facility there, with a ring of buildings on a hill above the village. During the war, the remote location made it an ideal site for a hidden armaments 

plant, which included hundreds of slave laborers. The town and the nearby base escaped bombing, and Wildflecken’s war ended with the arrival of a lone American jeep 

in early April 1945.9 

The Americans left a small garrison in Wildflecken, largely to guard the munitions 

plant and demolish the network of bunkers that ringed it. In taking charge of the base, 

they also inherited supervision over the workers living therein. Between May and October, the Army began the process of consolidating a warren of facilities for laborers 

into a few large camps, divided by putative ethnicity. Wildflecken, with a tremendous 

amount of unused space, became one of the largest such catchment facilities in Europe, with nearly 15,000 Poles in residence by the time the Army gave over control 

to UNRRA on 1 October 1945. The American Kathryn Hulme, the camp’s Assistant 

Director, recalled that: 

When we entered the camp, Army was in control in the form of a Captain, but he took 

off at the end of the first week, leaving us a handsome large office equipped with mahogany desks empty of all documents, reports or even carbon copies of letters which 

might have given us a clue to what had gone on in the camp prior to our arrival.10 

While the Army turned over formal control of the DP camps to UNRRA, it was 

forced to take a more active role in their maintenance than had been expected. Despite 

initial plans to provision the facilities from locally available stocks, the devastated 

German economy proved unequal to the task. As early as 1946, most DP calories came 

from occupying, and mostly American, supplies. “Preferential feeding for DPs,” one 

report noted, “has always been US Army policy. It gave them 425 calories above the 

basic ration for Germans.”11 The strategy of clearly favoring DPs over both Germans 

and German refugees created enormous resentment among local populations. It also 

did not work particularly well on the ground, where conditions and personal behavior 

made the situation far more complicated. 

Scarcity created competition between UNRRA and the Army, with the results typically favorable to the latter. UNRRA could claim preferential treatment, but small 

American garrisons in places like rural Franconia faced similar supply problems and 

were unlikely to yield to the demands of the refugee agency. Ephraim Chase, a young 

248 
American UNRRA employee at the DP camp in Dillingen, captured this problem nicely with regard to the perpetual problem of lumber: 

. . . often when our trucks arrived at the saw-mill to gather the products of the previous 

two or three days we would find that someone beat us to it. The XYZ Engineers, we 

would learn, appeared on the scene a day or an hour ago and removed every splinter of 

wood on the premises leaving a tell-tale notice behind to the effect that from now on 

everyone else is to keep out of here. At first we felt frustrated, but gradually we became 

inured and mastered the game of matching wits. Compromise and gentlemens’ agreements were effected, and the supply of lumber resumed its steady flow. So that we 

shall have a quantity of lumber left over to meet emergency repairs during the winter 

months and for the camp shop to make simple furniture.12 

DPs were also supposed to receive priority when it came to hiring for civilian labor. In mid-1947, US Army Labor Service Companies employed about 40,000 DPs.13 

While this number was high, there is significant evidence to suggest that many units, 

when given the option, chose to hire non-DP refugee labor. The company guarding 

the facility could easily employ Poles from the camp as civilian laborers but chose to 

hire almost entirely from the ranks of other refugees. In March 1946, twelve of twenty 

civilian workers came from either the Soviet zone or from Poland/Silesia. Only three 

came from the Rhön region.14 

Despite a policy that officially favored DPs, many American officers found them, 

and their UNRRA supervisors, tiresome and untrustworthy. Despite wartime optimism 

on the part of the Allies, many Eastern European DPs had little desire to return home. 

By the time Eisenhower ordered an end to forcible repatriation in September, 1945, almost 2 million DPs remained in Western Europe, more than half of whom were Poles.15 

As relations between former allies deteriorated, Eastern Europeans came under increasing scrutiny as potential security threats. Nothing caused more problems between 

UNRRA and the Americans than the periodic camp inspections. OMGUS consistently 

emphasized the need to speed up repatriation. As a corollary, American suggestions 

or demands for camp administrators focused on making the camps physically safe but 

minimally comfortable in order to encourage repatriation without the risk of the sorts 

of epidemic diseases that might both create a public health nightmare and slow down 

repatriation. Relations between inspectors and UNRRA officials generally proceeded 

efficiently, if not warmly. Friction, however, was all but inevitable, spurred by the 

kinds of rumor and innuendo that acted as a motor for camp life. 

In late 1945, the camp received frequent visits from one General Watson and his 

staff. UNRRA reports from the period suggest that Watson became an almost legendary figure among camp residents, prone to simply appear and begin questioning DPs 

and UNRRA officials. In September, rumors circulated that Watson believed that “all 

Poles should be treated as Germans.” Whatever the conversation among the residents, 

Watson’s relationship with the camp director, the Frenchman George Masset, did not 

go well either. In the very least, the General could be brusque, tone-deaf to the needs 

of the camp, and fixated on the idea of repatriation. 
 

Watson tended to descend on the camp, leaving trouble in his wake. On an inspection in mid-September, he pointedly criticized the amount of litter in the camp, the 

frequency of bathing, and the existence of a Polish Committee, which he believed 

indicated that the camp ran along “Soviet lines.” On several occasions, he told camp 

administrators that he expected repatriation to be sped up to 1,500 a week. 

As might be expected, both the Wildflecken Poles and UNRRA expressed outrage 

at the tone and content of these inspections. Masset sent an angry letter to his superiors, 

reporting that the Wildflecken Poles now believed that the camp “is occupied more 

rigorously than were concentration camps during the war or German cities since the 

peace.” How, asked Masset, did the Army expect sanitation to improve with limited 

resources and a hygiene situation that already was “more clean and healthy than many 

European cities of 15,000 inhabitants?”16 

He took the additional step of writing to the UNRRA offices in Bad Kissingen 

unofficially to protest what he saw as outrageous behavior on the part of the American 

officers. Continuing to emphasize the connections between DP camps and concentration camps, Masset angrily noted that the General: 

[gave] hell to a DP worker who was dressed in the striped coat of Buchenwald! None 

of General Watson’s commands and orders were made privately; at all times he was 

surrounded by a crowd of 200 to 300 Poles, many of whom understand English. You 

cannot imagine the state of this camp today.17 

In 1950, a series of seismic shifts in the Cold War order changed the face of refugee 

policy and with it the relationship between the Army and refugee agencies. Truman’s 

Troops to Europe decision and the beginning of the Korean War forced a reorientation 

of basing policy and created a vast need for usable space. At the end of 1950, there 

were 86,000 American soldiers in Europe. A year later, this number climbed to almost 

232,000.18 The demand for housing for these personnel and their dependents brought 

the refugee question to center stage. 

In April, 1949, according to the city government, of 5,245 refugees living in Würzburg, 3,444 had some sort of private accommodation. 1,052 lived in the Galgenberg 

camp, while 749 were at Heidingsfeld.19 Into this tense and difficult situation came 

the Americans. Following the reversal of the US drawdown in Europe, the US Army in 

particular needed facilities that could be made ready quickly. The most efficient way to 

accomplish this was to take over old Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe facilities, which served 

no purpose in a disarmed West Germany. The problem was that thousands of refugees 

were already living in these abandoned bases, supported by state-level bureaucracies 

like the Bavarian Refugee Office. 

By early 1951, the Americans identified the Galgenberg facility as suitable for 

conversion to an American base. When local Refugee Office officials pointed out that 

there were more than 1,000 refugees living in the surviving barracks on the facility, the 

Resident Officer in Würzburg responded that money had already been budgeted and 

250 
there was no way to delay the beginning of construction. By summer, virtually all of 

the building firms in and around the city were engaged in the largest postwar construction project in the region, the building of the Skyline barracks complex. 

By October, the few refugee families left on the base received notice to vacate 

within ten days, awaiting the arrival of American families and the opening of a base 

school. The remaining residents either found homes and livelihoods in the private sector 

or moved to the Heidingsfeld facility, which remained open until the early 1960s.20 

The goal of the Land-level refugee administrations was not to keep moving people 

from camp to camp. Their hope was to allow refugees the time to secure employment 

and find their own housing. At the same time, Federal money was available to help the 

Länder build new homes for West Germany’s homeless. This process was achingly 

slow, making it imperative to keep camps operating as long as possible. In 1950, there 

were 9,635 refugees living in 35 camps administered by the Bavarian Refugee Office 

across Unterfranken. As settlement plans advanced, that number declined, slowly but 

surely, to about 5,000 at the end of 1952. About 3,000 families moved elsewhere in 

Bavaria, while others moved into newly constructed homes across the Land. Many of 

the apartment blocks built with funding from the Bavarian Refugee Agency remain in 

Würzburg, reminders of the haste and confusion of the city’s conversion into a Cold 

War garrison town.21 

The problems of conversion in Würzburg were serious, but nothing like the crisis 

over the future of the Wildflecken facility. While UNRRA turned over its operations to 

its successor the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in 1947, the camp remained 

in operation and, if anything, the pace of repatriation slowed. In January of that year, a 

team of Polish Army officers visited the camp to conduct a nationality screening. Fearing forcible repatriation, the inhabitants rioted and only the timely arrival of American 

troops saved the Polish officers from being beaten to death by an angry mob.22 

At the same time, the Wildflecken facility came to the attention of the Bavarian 

Refugee Office. The DP camp occupied a small corner of the base, while the villages 

that had been cleared to build the camp in the 1930s had been continuously occupied 

by workers and remained reasonably intact. Beginning in 1946, the Refugee Office 

began to settle ethnic German refugees in the surviving houses in Werberg and Reussendorf. Werberg, now settled by farmers from Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, 

emerged as a model community that seemed to highlight all of the virtues of thrift and 

hard work that the Bavarian Refugee Office wanted to publically display. “For expellees, the chance to have a place of their own is not common,” wrote the Main-Post 

in 1950, “But here, thanks to their energy and drive a large number of refugees have 

found a new home on the grounds of the former base at Wildflecken.” The senior refugee official for Lower Franconia, Anton Beck, expressed his confidence in the project. ‘Despite the fact that Werberg has taken up nearly all of my time in the past few 

months . . . it brings me great joy to see the first loaf of bread baked, the first calf of the 

season, or a father’s pride when he shows off a newborn resident before the town.’23 
 

In July 1950, six days after the North Korean invasion of the South began, the 

IRO transferred jurisdiction over the last 600 DPs at Wildflecken to German authorities. Not only did the UN leave, but American policy toward refugees began to change 

in line with the unstated preferences of many of the troops on the ground. In the new 

security situation of Central Europe, DPs were a minor irritant compared with the potential problems of integrating millions of ethnic German refugees. The refugee issue 

now topped lists of concerns for the Americans in their vision of the continued development of Lower Franconia. When the mayor of Wildflecken went to Hammelburg to 

meet with the American Resident Officer in January 1951, he and the other assembled 

mayors were castigated for their obstruction on the refugee question. Many local mayors, the Resident Officer suggested, would rather ‘foster division between locals and 

refugees than to lead the way toward integration.’24 

The Americans had good reason to be interested in the improvement of local conditions and the resolution of outstanding refugee issues. As early as 1948, the Military 

Government informed local officials that they had approval to build a training facility 

on the grounds of the former Wehrmacht base above Wildflecken. The initial plans 

came with severe restrictions, notably that both the DP camp and local settlements 

could not be disturbed. Since even the reduced DP camp monopolized most military 

buildings on the site, and since the communities like Werberg and Reussendorf sat 

squarely in the middle of the proposed maneuver grounds, these restrictions were simply untenable. Six months later, the official requisition forms for the facility contained 

no such limitations.25 

So began a nearly three-year conflict between local government and the American 

military over the fate of the communities around Wildflecken. While the Americans 

continued to promote the speedy clearance of the DP camp, they argued with local officials over the scale of the camp. At issue were the small towns dotted across the 18,000 

acres of the facility. Dr. Maria Probst, a Landtag and later Bundestag delegate living in 

Hammelburg took special interest in the fate of these small towns, forcing meetings in 

Bonn over the issue and holding a series of rallies in the region to bring together farmers threatened with dispossession.26 

The looming crisis over the base expansion had the effect of hastening the integration of those recent arrivals into the rural communities where they found themselves 

after the war. A 1950 meeting in Reussendorf issued a statement in the name of “old, 

new, and neighboring” inhabitants of the area urging the Bavarian government to distribute the territory inside the base to local farmers.27 The local Landrat went even 

farther, darkly suggesting that the experience of dispossession might well unite the 

local population behind “politically extreme ideas.”28 

In the summer of 1951, the Bavarian government publicly suggested that the 

Americans concentrate their building program on Wildflecken. They expressed particular concern over the possibility of an American base in nearby Hammelburg, with a 

252 
larger population and more refugees subject to resettlement. The Münchner Merkur applauded the move, suggesting that a base at Wildflecken would be minimally invasive, 

could take advantage of all the amenities built by the Wehrmacht during the construction program of the 1930s, would displace far fewer people, and, most importantly, 

would get rid of the DP camp. “Three groups would be helped: the Hammelburger who 

will not be made homeless, the displaced, who won’t have to keep living in camps, and 

the public good, which will be saved from this smuggling center.”29 

The local government in Brückenau reacted furiously to the letter, pointing out, 

entirely correctly, that most of the luxuries (like a swimming pool and a modern town 

hall) didn’t actually exist, that 55% of those who would likely be displaced by the base 

were, in fact, Flüchtlinge, and that Wildflecken was so close to the border that enemy 

agents could easily watch proceedings at such a facility. But the Landrat reserved his 

greatest indignation for the suggestion that Wildflecken was the center of a smuggling 

enterprise. “Coffee and cigarettes will no longer be smuggled by DPs from Wildflecken, since they all left four months ago. A ‘smuggling center’ is no longer there to be 

dissolved.”30 

Delicate negotiations over the precise demarcation of the new American facility 

proceeded through 1951, which added to the anxiety of residents who complained that 

they were being kept in the dark. In the end, even compromise was not enough to save 

the towns. Reussendorf had to be abandoned by its nearly 300 residents. Werberg, the 

model refugee town of a half-decade before, survived, but only after losing most of 

the farmland north of the settlement. While the town remained intact, it was no longer 

economically viable. By 1960, only 12 farms remained. Three years later, when the 

base expanded, the town vanished completely.31 

As the towns faced the prospect of ruin, Bavarian government funds sponsored a 

crash building program designed to give resettled residents apartments in Wildflecken 

and in the community of Neuwildflecken on the grounds of the abandoned munitions 

plant. By October 1952, just as the cold rains of another Central European autumn arrived, the new town was passably ready. Despite the lack of a school or town hall, sixty 

new homes had been completed in Neuwildflecken, cause for a public celebration.32 

The invitation evoked the hilly country of the Rhön and the bucolic comforts of the 

new settlement. Such celebrations were common events in a country going through the 

early stages of an astounding economic transformation. For the citizens of Neuwildflecken, this was a transformative event, creating a new community in the shadow of 

an occupying army. 

The story of the relationship between the Army and the refugee crisis in post-1945 

West Germany is an important one. The Army had little or no interest in taking direct 

responsibility for refugees or refugee affairs and worked through German government 

agencies or the United Nations. Particularly in the case of UNRRA, which was dependent on the Army for supplies, this meant in practice a close working relationship that 
was often fractious. Efforts by the Bavarian government to manage their own refugee 

affairs consistently ran into difficulties because of the divided sovereignty arrangement 

in postwar Germany. 

Relations between the Army, refugee agencies, and the refugees themselves mirrored the broader transformation of the American presence in Germany after the war. 

In the wake of the war, policy emphasized the importance of creating comfortable 

conditions to ensure the safe return of DP populations. As it became evident that DPs 

were likely to be a long-term presence, Army personnel on the ground began to turn 

on them, a shift that anticipated the larger change in focus that accompanied West 

Germany’s emergence as a state at the end of the decade. 

These relationships, marked by necessary cooperation and increasingly by frustrated disagreement, did more than decide the short-term fate of thousands of refugees in 

the years after the war. They shaped the emerging society of a Cold War frontier state 

and the American military presence that remained there for decades to come. While 

the Wildflecken training area was turned over to the Bundeswehr in 1994 and the last 

barracks in Würzburg are in the process of closing, the American presence there in the 

second half of the twentieth century shaped the lived experience of the Cold War for 

Americans and Germans. As this paper has argued, we cannot understand the creation 

of that Cold War order, or its centrality in the history of the divided century, without 

seeing in the context of the German refugee crisis. Through collaboration, negotiation, and confrontation, the interests of refugees, refugee agencies, and the US Army 

intersected in the limited space of places like the Fulda Gap. The result was a country, 

a region, and an Army transformed. 

Notes 

1. “Die Flüchtlingen schmeckte der Truthahn” Main-Post, November 25, 1960. 

2. Harold Zink’s classic The United States in Germany, 1945–1955 (Princeton: Nostrand, 

1957) has precisely one reference to the refugee issue. Jeffry Diefendorfer, Axel Frohn, and 

Hermann-Josepf Rupieper, eds., American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany, 

1945–55 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) has little more. Richard Merritt, Democracy Imposed: US Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945–49 (New Haven: Yale 

University Press, 1995) considers the role of later refugee flows, but has little about the larger 

issue in the postwar years. A recent exception to this is Sylvia Schraut, Flüchtlingsaufnahme in 

Württemberg-Baden 1945–1949. Amerikanische Besatzungsziele und demokratischer Wiederaufbau im Konflikt (Munich, 1995). 

3. Among others, see Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat: Die Gesichchte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich, 2008); Marion Frantzioch, Die Vertriebene: Hemmnisse, Antriebskräfte und Wege ihrer Integration in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin, 1987); and 

254 
David Rock and Stefan Wolff, eds., Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic 

Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic since 1945 (New York and 

Oxford, 2002). 

4. Daniel Cohen, “Remembering Post-War Displaced Persons: From Omission to Resurrection” in Mareike König, Rainer Ohliger (eds.), Enlarging European Memory: Migration 

Movements in Historical Perspective, (Stuttgart: Thorbecke Verlag), 2006, pp.87–97; Atina 

Grossman, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 2007); Laura Hilton, “Prisoners of Peace: Rebuilding Community, 

Identity, and Nationality in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, 1945–1952”, PhD, Ohio 

State University, 2001; Anna Holian, “Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: 

The Politics of Self-Representation Among Displaced Persons in Munich, 1945–51”, PhD, 

University of Chicago, 2005; Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum Heimatlosen 

Ausländer: Die Displaced Persons in Westdeutschland, 1945–1951 (Göttingen, 1985); Kim 

Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War: Towards a New International History of the International 

Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund, 1991); Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca, 1998). 

5. Zink, 27 and 61. HICOG had a slightly different structure in the German states (Länder) 

administered by the United States. Württemberg-Baden had significantly fewer ethnic German 

refugees than Bavaria, so refugee affairs were not given as prominent a role. 

6. Regierung von Unterfranken, Unterfranken in Zahlen (Würzburg: Regierung von Unterfranken, 1976), 6. I am using the 1976 edition because it was the last that used the names of 

administrative districts before the name and border changes that accompanied administrative 

reform in the 1970s. 

7. Peter Moser, Würzburg: Geschichte einer Stadt (Bamberg: Babenberger Verlag, 1999), 

289; Herbert Schott, Die Amerikaner als Besatzungsmacht in Würzburg (Würzburg: Freunde 

Mainfränkischen Kunst und Geschichte, 1985), 74; and Hans Steidle and Christine Weisner, 

Würzburg: Streifzüge durch 13 Jahrhunderte Stadtgeschichte (Würzburg: Echter, 1999), 223; 

Stephen Fritz, Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 

8. “Christmas Parties Planned by WMP” Würzburg Post-Argus, November 26, 1947. Receipts in Staatsarchiv Würzburg (StaatWü), Rg. v. Ufr. 17224. 

9. Gerwin Kellerman, 475 Jahre Wildflecken, 1524–1999 (Wildflecken 1999). 

10. “History of a Polish Camp.” United Nations Archives and Records Management Section 

(hereafter UNARM) S-0425-0006-17, p. 3. 

11. Jane Perry Clark Carey, The Role of Uprooted People in European Recovery (Washington: National Planning Committee, 1946), 29. 

12. Report of Ephraim Chase, November 1945. UNARM S-0436-0055-01. 

13. Wyman, 113. 

14. Fragebogen in StaaWü, Lra Bad Brückenau, 3700. 

15. Wyman 69. 

16. “Inspection of Camp by Brig. Gen’l Williams” and “The New Military Regime at Wildflecken”, both September 17, 1945, UNARM 5-0436-0008-05 

17. G. Masset to A.R.Truelson, September 14, 1945. UNARM 5-0436-0008-05 

18. Thomas Leuerer, Die Stationierung amerikanisher Streitkräfte in Deutschland: Militärgemeinden der US Armee seit 1945 als ziviles Element der Stationierungspolitik der Vereinigten 

Staaten (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 1997), 335. 

19. Undated document appended to newspaper clippings about Galgenberg. Stadtarchiv 

Würzburg (StaWü), Flüchtlinge und Vertreibene. 

20. “Niederschrift über Besprechung be idem Resident-Officer Mr. Sega,” January 22, 1951, 

StaatWü, Rg. v. Ufr. 16497; “Lager Galgenberg wurde in zehn Tagen geraümt” Main-Post, 

August 29, 1951. 

21. Report in StaatWü, Rg. v. Ufr. 16408, undated but 1952; Report on “The Ausländer in 

Bayern” from Bayer. Statistisches Landesamt, June 3, 1952; “Profile: Dr. Josef Winter,” Fränkisches Volkslbatt, April 21, 1955. 

22. Descriptions of the January 22 riot from Kathryn Hulme, The Wild Place (Boston: Little, 

Brown, 1953), 158–160 and in “Incident at K-7 (22 Jan 1947),” “Statement of Mrs. Nowicka,” 

and “Report on Nationality Screening Incident” by K. Hulme, January 22, 1947 in UNARM 

5-436-8-5, and “DP’s in Camp Riot: Mob ‘Soviet’Aides,” New York Times, February 7, 1947. 

23. “Flüchtlinge wieder auf eigener Scholle,” Main-Post, 15 October 1946 and “Werberg, das 

Flüchtlingsdorf in der Rhön,” Main-Post, 3 June 1950. I have left the word ‘Heimat’ untranslated. In German, it means something more than ‘home,’ generally referring to place with which 

an individual identifies. For a group of people who had recently fled or been pushed out of their 

place of origin, the question of attachment obviously had important political and cultural resonances. 

24. Summary of remarks by US Resident Officer Miller, GaW, Gemeinde Wildflecken, 6.5. 

25. Memo from MG Field Operations Division, 13 November 1948 and US Army Real Property Requisition, 27 May 1949. StaaWü, Lra Bad Brückenau, 4286 (III). 

26. See, for instance, “Wohin mit den Bewohner des Truppenübungsplatzes?,” Fränkisches 

Land, 23 April, 1952. 

27. “Erhebungen” in StaatWü, Rg. v. Ufr. 17363; Minutes of meeting, 27 March 1950 in in 

StaatWü, Rg. v. Ufr. 17363. 

28. “Beschlagnahme des ehem. Truppenübungsplatzes Wildflecken . . .” 8 November 1948, 

StaaWü, Lra Bad Brückenau, 4286 (III). 

29. “Bayern weigert sich 21,000 Deutsche zu vertreiben,” Münchner Merkur, 9 July 1951. 

30. Letter from Landrat Baus, 10 July 1951. StaaWü, Lra Bad Brückenau, 4286 (II). 

31. Shrenk, op. cit., 56–57, 115. 

32. From StaatWü, Reg. v. Ufr, 17364. 

256 
Panel 5—Post-War Germany
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Major Tania M. Chacho, Ph.D., US Army
 

Adam R. Seipp, Ph.D.
 

Moderated by Curtis S. King, Ph.D.
 

Audience Member 

You said in the beginning that you had indicated that the military was unwilling to 

help the refugees. Do you think that was more of a diplomatic issue? Did we have the 

resources to do that? 

Dr. Seipp 

Well, it is sort of a fine distinction because the displaced persons were clearly to be 

helped by the Army. As Major Chacho pointed out, that was something that was established early on. This left a tremendous number of refugees, an unknown number 

of refugees, outside of that circle. So what I am suggesting you end up with is that on 

the ground aid was being given more or less indirectly to these refugees, but it was the 

distinction between former enemies and former allies. So it was relatively easy to make 

the distinction in theory, but in practice it got much more difficult, particularly if you 

were trying to govern in a city that was 50% refugees. So 50% of the population had 

to be left to its own devices. I agree with you that if the decision had been made that 

we are going to help everybody this would have probably been a complete resource 

disaster, but the stark distinctions that were made on paper did not really hold up out in 

the field. So yes, it is a very good point. 

Audience Member 

This is a question for Major Chacho. Reference the United Nations (UN) and the various powers in Europe, I am wondering what was the headquarters relationship? You 

had SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) sitting on top of the western sector. Was there a UN office that plugged directly into SHAPE or worked in coordination with SHAPE and then pushed stuff down to the British sector, the French 

sector, and the American sector? I am just trying figure out how the command and 

control went for UN agencies and also how active was the UN in the Soviet sector? 
MAJ Chacho 

Those are great questions. I guess the short answer to what the command and control 

relationship looked like was that it was really a patchwork that occurred and initially 

since the sectors were divided up as you pointed out, the British, French, and US, there 

were aid agencies that plugged directly into each of those sectors. In my paper I have 

an interesting little vignette about the initial US reluctance to allow aid agencies into 

the US sector. There is a quote from the political advisor, so a State Department official, indicating, “Hey, we were concerned that once we opened the door, like the British 

next door had done, a lot of aid agencies would come in and start running around, and 

we did not really know what that command and control relationship looked like. So we 

were reluctant to actually do that.” He had said that they had up to 600 people running 

around their sector . . . unbelievable. Can you imagine that? They cannot control these 

people who are out there administering humanitarian aid. From the UN perspective 

it was a little bit different and it evolved throughout. I really do not have very much 

information on the Soviet sector, but to say that there was even less UN presence in 

there than there was in the allied sectors which you know eventually emerged into West 

Germany. The information that I had from the National Archives just alluded to the fact 

that things were much worse in the Soviet sector without actually getting into specifics. 

I think part of that was due to the way the political situation developed . . . that information just was not readily available. So beyond just general statements there was not 

really much that they could do there. Then as far as the command and control relationship, it was interesting in that the UN also plugged in at different levels. There were 

liaisons there, but it was often just one or two people at various levels, and they found it 

actually more beneficial and just more operationally efficient to plug in at lower levels 

below SHAPE than to actually plug in at the headquarters itself because at the lower 

levels, you know at that time of course, the headquarters was in France, so to be able 

to plug in at the level of the Provincial Governors who were actually in control of the 

situation, they found it easier to actually facilitate the distribution of aid and that is just 

from what I found during this research and perhaps that there was eventually more of a 

relationship built. But the preponderance of information that I found was really pushed 

down to the operational-level, at the level that we could make a difference. There was 

the strategic agreement in place and then going down almost to the tactical level with 

that gap to use military terms, in that operational level as to where they were plugging 

in in-between. That might have developed beyond 1947, but quite honestly, I stopped 

in my research there so I am not quite certain how that relationship moved forward. 

Dr. Seipp 

Can I speak to this quickly? There is actually an interesting connection here between 

ideology and practice, and that is that the Soviets had a refreshingly direct way of dealing with the refugee problem as they tended to deal with most problems. The vast bulk 

of the refugees in the Soviet zone, of course, had fled from the Red Army, in advance 

of the Red Army. You do not really want to admit that you have created refugees or 

they were people who were kicked out by governments friendly to the Soviets who 

258 
by definition are not refugees. So the Soviet saw themselves as having absolutely no 

refugee problem in Eastern Germany. There was briefly a refugee agency and some 

coordination with UNRA (United Nations Relief Agency) but it was designed to get 

people home. The refugee agency in East Germany was actually closed down in 1946. 

As of 1946, East Germany effectively legally had no more refugees. They had resettled 

people, but they had no refugees, whereas the Americans had adopted the famous “we 

come as conquerors, not as occupiers” mentality. Whether it was true or not, the idea 

was we are coming as a force of rebuilding and a source of liberation. The Soviets really did not quite have the same idea behind their occupation of Eastern Germany so 

that became really important in questions of relief in the rehabilitation. 

Dr. King 

I could briefly add, you touched upon my area of history of Russia and Soviet history 

that looking at it from the economic point of view they had no qualms about using 

the Morgenthau Plan and stripping East Germany of all the equipment that they could 

too. 

Audience Member 

You answered a little bit of what my was question was in reference to, the policy that 

the Soviet Union had for refugees. Were they adhering to the policy they had made 

with the alliance for repatriation of refugees or DPs (Displaced Persons)? 

Dr. Seipp 

This is a great question. I did not want to get into this part in the paper because it is 

a wee bit complicated, but one of the big problems, and I mean huge, was that, those 

of you who know your map of Eastern Europe after the war, a big chunk of Eastern 

Poland was annexed to the Ukraine and Poland was essentially picked up and moved 

westward absorbing a large chunk of what had been Eastern Germany. So overnight, 

millions of Poles became Ukrainians legally. The American policy had been that anyone who was a Soviet citizen could be forcibly repatriated. This fluctuated widely, 

but all of a sudden Poles were being reclassified as Ukrainians, and that riot I talked 

about in 1947 was when the Polish Army showed up and started saying, “You are now 

Ukrainian. You are going back.” The Poles at Wildflecken rioted so this issue of who 

was a Soviet citizen, whether they wanted to be or not, or whether they knew it or not, 

was incredibly important in the question of the DPs and it was a major sticking point 

in trying to convince Poles to go home. 

Audience Member 

Thank you for two excellent papers. I have a question actually for both of you. You 

each mentioned using German aid organizations to help funnel some of the aid through 

because of their local connections and all that. Were the German aid organizations robust enough to handle this burden? I do not know what state they were in after the end 

of World War II and I am interested to hear. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, 

to what degree in the post-war era were they trusted? Were they seen as being reliable 

agents who would account for this material, use it properly, and not just use it to enrich 

their friends or the Black Market? 

MAJ Chacho 

Certainly, I will address that first. It is very interesting. There was the political process 

that was going on, the de-nazification. So once that vetting process had gone through 

and you had the stamp of approval that you were a trusted German that did not have the 

connections with the Nazi Party that perhaps some of your neighbors did, my research 

showed that the relationship was actually fairly open and robust. The problem that the 

German aid organizations had was that they had a certain resource; they had manpower 

that was available and able and willing to work and be employed, but they had no further resources beyond that. So of course, what the United States did as the occupying 

force and in fact, the aid agencies coming in from the United States just included strict 

accountability procedures similar to what CARE had done in tracing each individual 

package. And it is interesting because CARE would spend more money trying to track 

a person with this package because they might have been relocated or they might have 

been displaced. This package would go all the way around. It might be worth five dollars and they just spent $55 trying to deliver it to the person to assure that that accountability was in place. I found that the same sort of degree of accountability was there 

which is not to say that there was not some siphoning off into the Black Market and 

there were certainly incidents of that that had come forward, but one of the benefits of 

having this military hierarchy in place in the military government was that there was 

a streamline procedure that if anything was found that was directly in violation of the 

military code that was in place, that was quickly shut down. The effects of that were 

so brutal upon that area that if they shut down the aid distribution in a certain town 

that could literally mean that hundreds were on the doors of starvation. There was an 

incentivized program to ensure that everything was distributed properly. It did not 

always work certainly. There were problems, but that is how I found the relationship 

ultimately wound up working out. I do not know if with regards to displaced persons if 

that was similar or not so I will defer to my colleague. 

Dr. Seipp 

The answer to the first question is it really depended on where you were. In Lower 

Franconia you had two very important and energetic refugee officers who managed 

to do with very limited resource a lot of good. But overall I think you can say that the 

efforts of the varying refugee offices really on into the 1950s until the Equalization of 

Burdens Law were hampered by consistent underfunding and most of their projects 

would end up on the face of it to failure. The second question is actually really interesting in a way that gets out some of the more, some questions that are applicable in other 

260 
circumstances. The people who had the expertise to handle refugee affairs who were 

German tended to have been somewhere in what you might call the social work hierarchy of the Third Reich, and there were really very few parts of the Nazi dictatorship 

that were more affected by what you might call the criminal elements of German law, 

that is racial policy, than social work. If you think about it, one’s existence as a human 

being was measured by categories that had not really existed before. So for instance, 

social workers were mowed down by de-nazification because these were people who 

had very specialized training, but they had been for twelve years enforcing some variant of German racial law. And in fact, if you look at the people who were important 

in refugee affairs they tended to be drawn from a kind of curious, and as far as I know 

absolutely unstudied, part of the vast Nazi bureaucracy, called the Reich resettlement 

office. Basically, if you lost your house because the German Army needed a base or if 

you had lost property to the German state, these are the people who resettled you and 

it was awfully easy to transform those people into refugee officials after the war. But 

it could not be social workers because social workers were among the first casualties 

of de-nazification. If you look at the civil affairs documents in the National Archives 

there is again and again complaints about we do not have any social workers we can 

work with because they are all in jail or they are awaiting de-nazification or there is 

absolutely no way they are going to get out of de-nazification. And it really points to 

just how difficult de-nazification and the process of political evaluation made doing 

refugee work. 

Audience Member 

(Audio too quiet. Cannot hear speaker.) 

Dr. Seipp 

For DPs the Americans were kind of late-comers. Belgium and France and then slightly later Australia were in dire need of agricultural and industrial labor after the war. 

They were more than happy to take in DPs that made it clear they did not want to stay. 

The Americans started taking DPs in 1948—the Displaced Persons Act—so late in the 

game by those standards. For ethnic German refugees it took longer. By 1949, when 

West Germany got sovereignty the Americans were now more willing to take in ethnic 

Germans as long as they had sponsors in the United States initially. And the other part 

of your question about getting the Germans in on it, there is a significant gap here into 

the early 1950s before the West German State passed a whole raft of absolutely revolutionary social legislation—the Equalization of Burdens Law that created a tax structure 

that was designed to help integrate refugees so this is really a ten year process just to 

get to the point where the West German State is saying we are now stake-holders in 

the permanent resettlement and economic integration of these refugees. And it actually 

takes decades to be accomplished. 
Audience Member 

Dr. Seipp answered one half of the question I was going to ask. I was going to ask of 

Major Chacho, the UN had only been set up that summer of 1945. Where did the personnel come from that made up this UNRA administration? Were they seconded military personnel or diplomats, and mainly, what nations were they drawn from? Thank 

you. 

Dr. Seipp 

Yes, they were not seconded military. As far as I know no one had come directly from 

any of the militaries except possibly the French. The largest numbers of UNRA employees, field workers, initially were French with a significant number of Britons and 

Americans. Most of the senior administrators were French because they tended to have 

more of the language skills and they could get there more easily. It is an amazing story 

because these people were set up, there were schools in the United States, Britain, 

and France and they were put in the field very fast. For instance, the woman I quoted, 

Kathryn Hulme, had been a tour guide in Europe before the war. During the war she 

worked in a shipyard in the United States. She got over there claiming to speak German 

and it is clear from the UN archives that she did not speak German so there was really 

no way for her to communicate. But if you read the reports there is a kind of blue sky 

effect. These people were there and they were being asked to invent everything. They 

more or less successfully did it and that is absolutely remarkable. 

MAJ Chacho 

I do not have too much more to add to that beyond them moving outside of the UN in 

that kind of population pool in voluntary aid organizations, the same types of things. 

Those who had been involved in some type of work, but often times their background 

was that they had organized some kind of town clothing drive and thought they could 

help. There was the need and if they raised their hand and said they were willing. Once 

that opened up in the later years, 1947 and on, they were on the next ship out there and 

they were landing and had discovered this type of environment. That is why it was so 

critical to actually have the relationship with the US military because one of the key 

concerns was if Germans are subsisting on about 1000 calories a day, where are aid 

workers going to get food? It was not like you can go down to the local market so they 

have to turn to the US military and work out some sort of agreement to allow them to 

eat in mess halls or to provide shelter and things like that. 

Audience Member (Blogosphere) 

We have a lot of programs dealing with JIIM (Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, 

and Multinational) and individual advancements and interagency postings. In your research did you find any place where officers that were involved with governance, hu262 
manitarian assistance, that they were rewarded later on and they became compelled or 

they were ostracized because they had this “stigma” of being humanitarian assistance 

type people? Soldiers have always filled the void, but I was wondering if there was 

any career impact that you were aware of? 

MAJ Chacho 

That is a great question, and quite honestly, I did not look at that specifically. I did not 

follow those officers and see what their career impact looked like. To a large degree 

the Army was going through a demobilization period then so people were looking to 

transition to civilian life and some of the officers that I have cited here found that that 

transition was made easier if they worked with a humanitarian aid organization. They 

naturally transitioned into that type of a role. But it does raise an interesting point regarding what the institution rewards or not. I cannot say with any degree of scholarly 

background and citation, but the impression I got from the research in the National Archives was that officers and the military at large were looking to divest themselves of 

this responsibility as quickly as possible, as evidenced by the Secretary of War’s correspondence with the Secretary of State, “You take this. This is humanitarian. We will 

do military governance. We understand that we need to do that, but surely there has to 

be someone else out there who can step up and take on this other mission.” That was 

the impression that I got from the institution writ large, but I do not have any specific 

examples as to whether it helped or harmed an officer’s career which is very interesting 

especially given the current situation and environment we find ourselves in. 

Audience Member 

I am struck by the fact that you mentioned delivering Thanksgiving turkeys fifteen 

years after the war and we still have Palestinian refugees being supervised by the United Nations 60 years after 1948 so I do not think we should find fifteen years of UN 

refugee activities being unusual. 

Dr. Seipp 

Sure. And part of what happened in the 1950s, as the Cold War heated up, refugees 

were being publicized because the new refugees were coming from East Germany. 

Before 1961, when the Berlin Wall was built there was a wave of migration from the 

east and it obviously benefited both the Americans and the West Germans to highlight 

that people were leaving East Germany. In an odd way the second half of the 1950s 

was a great time for refugees in terms of public attention, but the camps would remain 

in constant operation until the early 1960s when, frankly, the Berlin Wall helped close 

off the taps and the refugees that were in the camps could then be parceled out, but yes, 

I think that is a great point. 

Panel 6—The Interagency Process in Asia 

(Submitted Paper) 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor 

by 

Major Eric M. Nager, US Army
 

United States Army, Pacific
 

Acknowledgments 

In completing this project I wish to gratefully acknowledge the support of the 

Public Affairs Office, US Army, Pacific; especially that of Mr. David Hilkert, the Command Historian, who helped source, proof and edit my work. His interview with Colonel Uson inspired me to write this paper. I also want to thank Mr. Ken Gott of the Combat Studies Institute for his encouragement and pointing me in the right direction. Dr. 

Albert Palazzo of the Australian Land Warfare Studies Centre and Wing Commander 

Steve Kennedy of the Royal Australian Air Force provided Australian sources. Lastly 

and most importantly, I wish to thank my family and my civilian employer for their 

support of my military career, allowing me to be “twice the citizen. 

Dedication 

In memory of my Great Uncle, Howard McCormick, who served in the US Army, 

Pacific, during World War II. 

Introduction 

Since becoming the sole super power at the close of the Cold War, the United 

States is accustomed to taking the lead role in international military coalitions. As 

such, much interagency coordination is required between the US Army and US governmental agencies. But what of small, regional conflicts that do not directly impact 

US national security? In such a case, a US ally might take the lead in forming a coalition and the US Army, in a supporting role, then faces coordination with other external 

agencies. This type of “extra-agency” process is exactly what took place in late 1999 

during operations in East Timor and it might well portend future operations with their 

attendant issues. 
 

Background 

As a brief history, the Island of Timor lies about 400 miles north of Darwin, Australia. Portugal colonized the eastern half in the early 1500’s while the Dutch colonized the western portion along with the surrounding islands comprising present day 

Indonesia. From 1515-1975 East Timor was known as Portuguese Timor, a relatively 

neglected outpost. When a military coup in Portugal in 1974 forced them to abandon 

their colonies, it precipitated a short civil conflict in East Timor, culminating in a claim 

to independence on 28 November 1975.1 

Before the world had a chance to recognize the prospective new nation, Indonesia 

invaded on 7 December 1975, citing concerns about communism and regional unrest. 

Indonesia annexed East Timor the following year over international protest and ruled 

with a heavy hand. Upon taking office in 1998, Indonesian President Habibe agreed to 

hold a referendum on self-determination in East Timor. That vote took place on 30 August 1999. The referendum passed overwhelmingly with over 98% voter turnout, yet 

it sparked a violent rampage by local militias backed by the Indonesian military that 

displaced over 300,000 civilians and destroyed East Timor’s infrastructure.2 The cry 

went out for international intervention. Thanks to a successful response, East Timor 

formally and finally declared independence on 20 May 2002. 

The Coalition 

Because of its proximity and good relationship with the Indonesian government, 

Australia was the natural choice to lead such a coalition. To be sure, coalitions have 

been the rule rather than the exception in military history. However, it is one thing to be 

a member of one and an entirely different matter leading one, for they require political, 

economic, and social objective coordination, as well as agreed strategic plans.3 In this 

case there was not much time to act. 

UN Security Council Resolution 1264 authorized forces to assist in the maintenance of peace surrounding the August referendum (see Addendum A). When violence 

broke out, the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) under Australian Major 

General Peter Cosgrove deployed on 20 September. Operation WARDEN was the first 

phase, whereby peace was restored, and the second was Operation STABILISE, maintaining peace. A total of 11,000 troops from 22 nations participated until 23 February 

2000 when INTERFET handed the mission to the United Nations Transitional Authority for East Timor (UNTAET).4 

Participating nations funded the INTERFET mission as did the United Nations 

through a substantial donation from Japan. This was in lieu of troops. Aside from Australia and the US the participating nations were Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Fiji, 

France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, and the United 

Kingdom.5 

266 
The INTERFET rules of engagement were threefold, simple and strong. The first 

goal was to restore peace and security in East Timor. Second was to protect and support the United Nations Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) in carrying out its tasks. 

Third was, within force capabilities, to facilitate humanitarian assistance operations.6 

Because of the scale of destruction wreaked by the militia following the referendum, 

this was a considerable task. 

Australian Perspective 

The 1998 Asian currency crisis sparked a government-directed internal review 

within the Australian Department of Defence. The situation plunged Indonesia, their 

neighbor to the north, into a financial crisis at the same time as they were transitioning 

to democracy and trying to stamp out long-running civil conflicts in Aceh, Irian Jaya, 

and East Timor. Geographically, Indonesia spans about 90% of Australian trade routes 

and has ten times the population so a stable Indonesia was clearly in Australian interests. Their defense planners correctly predicted that at least one of these three hot spots 

would require outside intervention in the near future and began retooling their military, 

which had not been deployed in any numbers since Vietnam.7 

As the lead in the coalition, the Australian government had to devise its own interagency process. Their answer was to bring together representatives from the Department of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Trade, the Attorney General, as well as the Prime 

Minister. The Department of Defence formed the East Timor Policy Unit, and Foreign 

Affairs formed the East Timor Crisis Centre, both of which advised the central government. Seeing that there was limited interagency coordination below the level of cabinet 

minister, the government established in interdepartmental East Timor Policy Group to, 

according to Intelligence Officer John Blaxland, “help develop an integrated policy 

approach to the issues at hand, with senior officers from key government departments 

involved.”8

 (See Addendum B for the current organizational chart of the Australian 

Department of Defence.) 

This was all a new experience for the Australian government as it would have 

been for almost any government. INTERFET represented the first UN-mandated peace 

operation outside of Africa and not headed by the United States. Yet having participated in international coalitions before, the Australians recognized that a multilateral 

response garners greater international support.9 How would they choose to shape their 

response in taking the coalition lead? 

An interesting contrast is how the Australians perceived the US approach to 

military operations, especially in light of the US perspective of INTERFET that is 

shared later. First, they perceived the Americans as prepared to accept casualties. This 

stemmed from working with them in Vietnam. Second, they saw US tactics as “heavy 

handed.” Third, they saw the US goal as achieving success through destroying the 

enemy’s resistance, usually resulting in collateral damage. The Australian goal was 
 

to attain their political and military goals through “bending their opponent’s will,” as 

opposed to brute force.10 

This approach the Australians call Information Operations. The term essentially 

means psychological operations backed by a competent military force in order to get 

the opposition in a “disadvantageous position.” The goal is psychological rather than 

physical by trying to convey the idea to the opponent that “continued resistance is irrational.”11 As a self-described mid-level power, it seems a natural conclusion that Australian military planners arrived at such an approach. Interestingly, such an approach 

involves civil-military affairs, in which the US has great expertise. 

The nature of Information Operations is an interagency approach since it brings the 

diplomat and the soldier together. In the United States, it is the equivalent of pairing 

the Department of Defense with the Department of State. Again according to Blaxland, 

“Australian defence planners and diplomats had to work together to reconcile military 

plans with foreign policy.”12 How they would coordinate with other members of the 

coalition remained to be seen. 

What gave INTERFET teeth was the fact it was a peace-enforcement and not a 

peace keeping mission, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. It allowed for “coercive” 

military use, yet there were 15,000 Indonesian troops on the island backing the local 

militia, versus about 5,000 ground troops for INTERFET. General Cosgrove boldly 

validated the Information Operations approach with a decisive show of force, landing 

the troops quickly and keeping supporting ships close to shore. He correctly identified 

that the militia would crumble once the Indonesian troops left. The latter had trained 

with the Australians, knew their capabilities, and knew they were serious about the 

mission. As a consequence, they withdrew within two weeks and the INTERFET mission reverted to peace keeping.13 Sometimes extra-agency can mean coordinating with 

a potential adversary through joint training exercises. 

US Perspective 

The US mission within INTERFET was simply to provide the Australians the support they requested. This included four areas: communications, intelligence, civil-military operations, to include dealing with non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), and 

heavy lift helicopter capacity. The US Army took responsibility for the first three. Since 

the US was not the lead nation in the coalition, it affected their assessments as to what 

equipment to bring for the mission since they had to wait for the Australian requests 

and the Australians could not anticipate everything they needed ahead of time.14 From 

the start there was a different perspective on this operation. At the diplomatic level, the 

US suspended military to military relations with Indonesia during the operation. 

The US Forces INTERFET (USFI) were commanded by Major General John Castellaw, USMC, and headquartered in Darwin, Australia. The US Forces East Timor 

268 
 

 

(USFET) were commanded by Colonel Randolph Strong and located in Dili, the capital of East Timor. At the height of operations, the US Army had 230 troops on the 

ground. The largest of the three missions was communications and USFI formed Task 

Force Thunderbird, made up of an element from the 11th Signal Brigade. Soldiers were 

spread in six locations across East Timor, with an additional element in Darwin to support USFI headquarters. The Australians provided force protection.15 

Obviously the primary extra-agency coordination was with the Australian Department of Defense through their military. This extended to the intelligence mission as 

well. Six US Army personnel comprised Trojan Spirit II, downloading classified information from satellite. Another eight conducted counter intelligence. The remainder 

of the US intelligence personnel was integrated into the INTERFET C2

 staff.16 The 

Australian military has a similar staff structure to that of the US. 

The mission for the civil-military operations was to coordinate and facilitate the relationship between INTERFET, UN agencies and NGO’s. The CMOC team consisted 

of 15 personnel from four nations (see Addendum C for CMOC organizational chart) 

with the US in the lead.17 Not only did the US personnel have to adapt to Australian 

leadership, they had to integrate soldiers from other nations into the team. Expertise 

on the team included specialists in engineering, law, water purification, and power 

generation. 

The US Civil Affairs teams worked primarily with humanitarian assistance, but 

they were largely on their own. There was an Information Operations cell at INTERFET Headquarters in Darwin, but it was ad hoc in nature, so there was little integration 

of Civil Affairs. Within the Australian military, Civil Affairs is a secondary assignment 

for artillery battery commanders and their forward observers.18 This is why the US 

troops were invited to share their expertise, but it also made the mission more challenging. 

The arrangement also made for odd working relationships relative to rank. The 

Australian battery commander in the CMOC was a major, and the senior US officer 

was a lieutenant colonel. Since the US Civil Affairs mission was coordination and not 

command and control, the US CMOC commander supported the Australian major at 

the regular INTERFET briefs. The US CMOC commander reported directly to Colonel 

Strong, the USFET commander.19 

In his role as USFET commander, Colonel Strong wore several figurative hats. 

Perhaps his primary role was a diplomatic one as he represented General Castellaw at 

daily meetings with General Cosgrove to sort out issues with the US forces and how 

they were accomplishing the mission.20 US soldiers did not strictly deal with the Australian Army, however. Their extra-agency coordination ran virtually the entire gamut 

of the Australian Department of Defence. 
For example, when Colonel Strong and his troops arrived in Darwin prior to deploying to East Timor, the Australian Northern Command (NorCom) welcomed them. 

They provided facilities for US soldiers in newly renovated barracks, and the US unit 

had the honor of being the first organization to occupy a recently constructed bunker as 

a Command Post (CP). Meanwhile, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) provided 

Post Exchange (PX), dining, barber, and other services on their nearby base.21 

The assignment of liaison officers was a key military to military technique that 

facilitated good communication between key USFI and INTERFET staff. One aspect 

that made this easier was the years of experience conducting joint exercises between 

the US and Australian militaries. The US Army, Pacific conducts about 35 exercises 

per year as part of their Expanded Relations Program (ERP) with other Pacific nations. 

One example was Crocodile ’99 that took place at the same time as the East Timor 

operation. Within the operation, five Australian signal officers had graduated from US 

programs, were familiar with US equipment, and this made them a perfect fit to work 

together with Task Force Thunderbird.

22 

At times alternate methods had to be found to accomplish the mission, as was the 

case with the Australian Navy. During the sealift of signal equipment from Darwin to 

East Timor, Her Majesty’s Australian Ship (HMAS) Jervis Bay, a catamaran, was assigned but did not have the capacity to carry the largest items. Since they were also too 

heavy for available aircraft, other container ships were found.23 Of course the extraagency extended beyond the Australian Department of Defence. 

The Australian government supplied all contributing nations with a computer in 

order to access the INTERFET Local Area Network (I-LAN) set up for the operation. 

This included over 20 computers along with hub, router, cable and other necessary 

equipment. The US AAR found that this was an unnecessary drain on already short 

resources, and that in the future participating coalition members can supply their own 

computers.24 Nevertheless, this issue highlights the difference for US planners when 

they are not leading a coalition. 

Another area of coordination was with the Australian medical community. Those 

concerned with mental health issues wanted to learn more from their American counterparts about the US Family Support system for deployed soldiers. At the time Australia had an informal program only, and it became apparent to US participants that other 

armies around the world are recognizing the need for such a support network.25 Even 

when not in the lead, US coalition participation can be a teaching as well as a learning 

tool. 

Extra-agency coordination is not merely confined to the government of the coalition leader. When Lieutenant Colonel Uson, the CMOC Commander, arrived in Dili on 

3 October, his first meeting was with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). For the first time, the UN Secretary General designated OCHA 

270 
 

 

as the lead NGO coordination agency.26 Of course even when the US is in the lead of 

a coalition, such extra-agency coordination is necessary, but not being in the lead adds 

an extra layer. 

The same holds true for NGO’s, which are agencies unto themselves. One example 

of an issue that arose during Operation STABILISE came in the form of a letter from 

James Patterson of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders—see Addendum D). As of 19 October, the Australian 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment had moved 

into a hospital in Maliana, and the letter requested they move so the hospital would be 

seen as “neutral” by the local populace.27 The letter came to the US officer in charge 

of the CMOC. 

Such extra-agency coordination can also include entities within the nation in which 

the operation takes place. For example the CNRT was identified before the operation 

as an umbrella organization of Timorese communities. They were seen as a political 

organization by the UN and various NGO’s who had to maintain their neutrality and 

therefore did not deal with them. Yet, the CNRT cooperated with the civil-military operations and collected over 30,000 names in the town of Christo Rei within a span of 

two weeks for the purpose of building a census.28 

Perhaps no issue is more important to US planners, especially if they are not leading a coalition, than force protection and East Timor was no exception. Different nations have different standards for force protection, and these must be reconciled, sometimes under the stress of operations. From the US Commanding General briefing on 18 

September, there were two components to US force protection. First, security for US 

forces was a US responsibility unless otherwise stated. Second, US personnel were not 

to go beyond the wire of secured areas unless the situation changed.29 From a Civil 

Affairs perspective, the latter guidance presented practical problems. 

According to one US member of the CMOC, much information had to be gathered 

from various NGO’s and the local populace to determine conditions on the ground. 

However, the travel restrictions inhibited the Civil Affairs team travel such that they 

were reduced to collecting information from the Australian Civil-Military Operations 

teams that were freer to travel.30 The irony is that these are the same teams that the US 

personnel were sent to augment! 

Force protection has many aspects, the most obvious of which is physical. As noted, standards varied by nation and in some cases within different services of the same 

nation. As a condition of US support when carrying out their missions, US personnel 

insisted on US force protection standards. While not every coalition member agreed 

with these standards, they agreed to comply. It appears this issue was negotiated on the 

ground and not part of any extra-agency coordination. Until Dili was deemed secured, 

US soldiers worked ashore during the day and slept on ships anchored in the harbor 

by night.31 
 

Force protection can also mean medical precautions, and again the US led the 

coalition in high standards. In one case flooding from a monsoon wiped out the Australian mess facility. Deeming the area to be unsanitary until properly cleaned up, US 

soldiers went to consuming MRE’s while their allies reportedly suffered from gastrointestinal problems. US soldiers also deployed with malaria pills, mosquito netting and 

other items to combat tropical diseases. During the exercise only one US soldier came 

down with such an illness while there were 191 other reported cases among coalition 

personnel.32 Here it is only fair to note that in some of the AAR comments, US soldiers 

were at times bewildered by the severity of the force protection restrictions, but this 

hearkens back to the more traditional interagency process in conjunction with the US 

Department of Defense. 

Overall Operation STABILISE functioned very smoothly, especially given the 

short time span under which the participants had to deploy. If there was one area of 

friction among the allies, it was the redeployment schedule. The Australians wanted the 

US to stay longer than their December pull out date. From a US perspective, the main 

criterion for exiting was that all non-US personnel were trained and could handle the 

functions performed by the US.33 Even so, US soldiers had 179 days on their orders as 

a precaution for a longer operation. As it was, UNTAET took over in February 2000. 

Australian Lessons Learned 

As first time coalition leaders, the Australians learned many lessons about the interagency process. Of course these lessons can also apply to other nations. According 

to Dr. Alan Ryan, a Research Fellow at the Australian Land Warfare Studies Centre, 

“If Australia is to make an effective coalition contribution, foreign policy and defence 

planners need to work together to develop a clear-eyed appreciation of Australia’s most 

likely partners; ensure adequate preparation and training for combined operations; and 

undertake a thorough re-evaluation of Australia’s force structure.”34 The same applies 

for US extra-agency planning. 

A specific lesson learned from the INTERFET operation was that the Australian 

Defence Headquarters developed a model to look at the requirements of future warfare. 

This model includes seven elements and was written about by Australian Brigadier 

General Steve Ayling and Ms. Sarah Guise of the Australian Department of Defence. 

The seven components are command and control; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; tailored effects; force projection; force protection; force sustainment; and 

force generation.35 Only a couple of these elements will be examined here as they 

pertain to extra-agency coordination. 

For command and control, the Australian model emphasizes the importance of the 

national commander/force commander relationship. Each coalition participant nation 

should agree to predetermined limits, yet allow each nation to maintain control of its 

own troops. This is significant since it differs from the NATO model of unified com272 
 

 

 

 

mand that the US is more used to operating under. The Australian argument is that their 

model is more appropriate for the Asia-Pacific arena since there are so many nations 

with differing political objectives.36 And the more nations that participate lend more 

legitimacy to a given operation. 

A main objective of the Australian model is to move away from the ad hoc nature 

of the INTERFET operation to a more permanent regional security framework. This 

includes more sharing of intelligence among coalition partners, staged deployment, if 

possible, versus direct deployment, and negotiating logistic and force generation requirements ahead of time.37 This implies much extra-agency coordination with allies 

in peacetime. 

Much self-examination came out of INTERFET on the Australian side. According 

to an Australian Defence White Paper, they have identified eight conditions for participating in future coalitions. First is the effect on Australian strategic, political and 

humanitarian interests, in addition to those of their allies. Second is a clear mandate, 

goals and an end point. Third is the achievability of the mission based on the given 

resources and circumstances. Fourth is the degree of international support. Fifth is 

the cost, including the effects on the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for other tasks. 

Sixth is the training benefit for the ADF. Seventh is the risk to personnel. Eighth are 

the potential consequences for Australian interests and relations.38 These are criteria 

the US can apply as well. 

US Lessons Learned 

The US conducted its own analysis of Operation STABILISE. One reason for the 

success was that Australia is such a strong and capable US ally. According to David 

Dickens, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, the Australian government has a strategic decision-making capacity: “Canberra was capable of making strategic decisions, gathering and interpreting 

intelligence and staffing military and diplomatic organizations with experienced professionals.”39 In other words the agencies of the Australian government are internally 

efficient. 

Another important factor according to Dickens is that the Australians had good 

defense relationships with other nations, especially the US. They knew whom to call in 

Washington and what to ask in terms of strategic and tactical intelligence, protection of 

communication sea lines, and strategic lift capability.40 This made the US more willing 

to work with the Australians, to include assets outside of what the Army provided, such 

as the Aegis-class cruiser USS Mobile Bay. This ship was vital to the INTERFET show 

of force during the landing in East Timor. 

From the American side it was a great advantage that they could seamlessly “plug 

into” the Australian intelligence system. Since Australia’s military is fully compatible 
 

 

with NATO, it was a comfortable match. However, this does raise the question as to 

whether the US can realistically only support nations that feature such interoperability.41 If they cannot, it might limit future operations. 

There is little doubt that there is a wide technological gap from an operational 

standpoint between the US military and most other militaries around the world, so the 

question remains as to with how many nations the US can conduct future operations of 

a similar nature to East Timor. Dickens performed such an analysis as of 2002, dividing 

potential US coalition allies into various tiers. Only two nations, Australia and Great 

Britain, made it into the top tier. Does this mean that East Timor was a one-time rare 

event? His recommendations to increase the number of top tier nations is for the US to 

maintain close military cooperation with like-minded nations and to develop and nourish more such relationships.42 

Another lesson for US military planners is opportunities such as that presented in 

East Timor represent great potential for non-combat arms Army officers. Major General William Ross, then the Commanding General of the US Army Signal Corps, called 

Colonel Strong’s assignment as USFET commander a “history making event” that 

could lead to more such opportunities.43 All Army officers, regardless of branch, must 

be prepared. 

From a troop on the ground perspective, perhaps Colonel Strong’s own words provide the best example of US lessons learned. According to Strong, “I think we learned 

the lesson that it is okay to be in a support role to an ally. The US doesn’t always have 

to be in the lead.”44 With small, regional conflicts in various parts of the world seemingly more the norm than the exception, the US might have more opportunities to test 

Colonel Strong’s words. 

Analysis 

In September of 1999, there was no Operation IRAQI FREEDOM to occupy the 

bulk of US Army planning and assets, yet the Army only sent a couple of hundred 

soldiers to East Timor. Vital US interests were not at stake, yet there was value in 

participating in and supporting the multinational effort approved by the UN in order 

to further national goals and objectives in a time of peace. With the US Army now 

focused on the Middle East in time of war, planning for similar operations takes on 

greater importance. 

Normally when the US leads a coalition, a close working partnership is necessary between the Army and US government agencies in attaining national goals. This 

has happened often enough in recent years that a good working relationship and procedures are fairly firmly in place and institutionalized in such Army officer training 

as the Command and General Staff College. When such coalitions are built, primary 

coordination with allied government agencies is done through the US government and 

is thus invisible to the Army. However in the case of a coalition led by another nation, 

274 
direct extra-agency coordination with allied government agencies and the Army comes 

into effect. 

The case of East Timor, while not common enough to establish trends, nevertheless identified at least six issues associated with Army operations that require such 

cooperation. The first of these is the possibility that the lead nation in the coalition 

might be taking the lead for the first time, as was the case with Australia. The Australian government did an admirable job of bringing together an interagency task force of 

various cabinet ministers, yet by their own admission there was limited coordination 

below that level. While the Australians performed exceptional self-analysis of their 

performance after the fact in order to institutionalize some of their procedures, the next 

coalition might well be led by another nation. 

The second issue, and key to being prepared for any deployment, is a needs assessment prior to the operation. When the US takes the lead, that process is relatively 

clear. In the case of East Timor, US Army planners had to wait for the Australian needs 

assessment, communicated through their Department of Defence. Again, since they 

were new to leading such an operation, the needs assessment took time to compile and 

the short timeframe in which to deploy exacerbated the problem for US planners. This 

presented dilemmas as to what equipment to bring. 

The third issue raised by Operation STABILISE is the interoperability and capability of the lead nation’s military. Fortunately in this case the Australian military is 

extremely capable and operates on the NATO model. Through many joint exercises 

and training conducted prior to East Timor, the US and Australian Armies had a good 

working relationship and were familiar with each other’s strengths. This allowed for 

Australia to invite US Army Civil Affairs soldiers in order to augment an area in which 

they are not as organically strong. However as pointed out by David Dickens, the Australian army is one of the very few in the world that is as compatible with the US, and 

this points all the more to the importance within the US Army of continuing to conduct 

similar training and nurturing relationships with other potential coalition leader nations. 

Whether we recognize it or not, even when leading a coalition, the US Army already performs extra-agency coordination with such entities as the UN, NGO’s and 

agencies within the host country of a given operation. The difference and key fourth 

issue from the East Timor operation is that such extra-agency coordination is no longer 

directly between those agencies and the US Army, but the US Army becomes a conduit 

for coordination with the agencies of the lead nation. This is an important distinction 

and it might take more such operations for US planners to get used to and feel comfortable with it. 

Even in coalitions that the US leads, force protection has been and will continue 

to be a major issue. This includes everything from physical protection such as body 

armor to sanitation and medical procedures. Standards will continue to vary by nation, 
but one critical difference in operations where the US is not the lead is that political 

decision makers might be even less inclined to accept casualties. There is no question 

that force protection issues negatively impacted the mission in East Timor that in all 

other regards was a great success. US soldiers confined behind the wire could not always get out and gather the information they needed. This will require better internal 

coordination in the future since the force protection standards were not imposed by the 

Australians. 

The final issue is that of redeployment. In East Timor the US Army and Australian 

government had different ideas about when the operation was complete. When the US 

criteria for mission accomplishment were fulfilled, the Army had to negotiate with 

their Australian counterparts to let them go home. Ideally in future operations, this will 

be worked out ahead of time. 

With the US Army stretched by current operations, now is the time to cultivate 

allies that can take the lead in future operations. Such cultivation will get the Army 

used to working with governmental agencies of other nations. This includes but is 

not limited to needs assessment, military capability and interoperability, extra-agency 

coordination with outside entities, force protection, and redeployment. The Army will 

know that it has arrived as an expert in the extra-agency process when that process can 

be moved from an ad hoc system as it was in East Timor, to an institutionalized one as 

it is when the US takes the lead in multinational coalitions. 

Notes 

1. US Department of State Website, Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs, http://www. 

state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35878.htm, (accessed 19 May 2008). 

2. Ibid. 

3. Alan Ryan, “From Desert Storm to East Timor: Australia, the Asia-Pacific, and ‘New 

Age’ Coalition Operations,” Canberra, LWSC 2000, Study Paper 302, 14. 

4. John Blaxland, “Information-era Manoeuvre: The Australian-led Mission to East Timor,” 

Canberra, LWSC 2002, Working Paper 118, 2-3. 

5. Steve Ayling and Sarah Guise, “UNTAC and INTERFET—A Comparative Analysis,” Institute for National Strategic Studies Pacific Symposium Papers (March 2001), http://www.ndu. 

edu/inss/symposia/pacific2001/aylingpaper.htm (accessed 20 May 2008), 4. 

6. David Dickens, “The United Nations in East Timor: Intervention at the Military Operations Level,” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 

August 2001, Vol. 23, Issue 2, 216. 

7. Eric Nager, Interview with Australian Wing Commander Steve Kennedy, RAAF, 29 May 

2008. 

8. Blaxland, 20, 21. 

9. Ryan, 2, 8. 

10. Blaxland, 9, 10, 18. 

276 
11. Ibid., 19. 

12. Ibid., 22. 

13. Dickens, 4, 5. 

14. Bill McPherson, “The East Timor Tapes: An Interview with COL Randolph P. Strong, 

Commander US Forces East Timor (October-December 1999),” Pacific Voice, Special Edition, 

Spring 2000, 8-9. 

15. Craig Collier, “A New Way to Wage Peace: US Support to Operation STABILISE,” Military Review, January-February 2001, Vol. 81, Issue 1, 4. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Operation Stabilize CMOC AAR, Tab H. 

18. Blaxland, 43. 

19. David Hilkert interview with Colonel Jose Uson, 27 July 2006. 

20. McPherson, 8. 

21. Ibid., 10. 

22. Collier, 7-8. 

23. McPherson, 10. 

24. AAR, Tab B. 

25. Ibid., Tab D. 

26. Ibid., Tab M. 

27. Ibid., Tab U. 

28. Ibid. 

29. Ibid., Tab M. 

30. Ibid., Tab D. 

31. Collier, 6. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Hilkert, Uson interview and AAR, Tab I. 

34. Ryan, 11. 

35. Ayling & Guise, 5-6. 

36. Ibid., 6. 

37. Ibid., 7-9. 

38. Ibid., 3. 

39. David Dickens, “Can East Timor Be a Blueprint for Burden Sharing?” Washington Quarterly, Summer 2002, Vol. 25, Issue 3, 30. 

40. Ibid., 31. 

41. Ibid., 31-33. 

42. Ibid., 39. 

43. McPherson, 13. 

44. Ibid., 14-15. 
Bibliography 

Ayling, Steve and Guise, Sarah. “UNTAC and INTERFET—A Comparative Analysis.” Institute for National Strategic Studies Pacific Symposium Papers (March 2001), http://www. 

ndu.edu/inss/symposia/pacific2001/aylingpaper.htm (accessed 20 May 2008). 

Blaxland, John. “Information-era Manoeuvre: The Australian-led Mission to East Timor.” 

Canberra, Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2002, Working Paper 118. 

Collier, Craig. “A New Way to Wage Peace: US Support to Operation STABILISE.” 

Combined Arms Center, Military Review, January-February 2001, Vol. 81, Issue 1, pp. 2-9. 

Dickens, David. “Can East Timor Be a Blueprint for Burden Sharing?” The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2002, Vol. 25, Issue 3, pp. 29-40. 

Dickens, David. “The United Nations in East Timor: Intervention at the Military Operational 

Level.” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, 

August 2001, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 213-232. 

Hilkert, David. USARPAC Command Historian Interview with COL Jose Uson, 27 July 2006, 

transcribed by MAJ Eric Nager. 

McPherson, Bill. “The East Timor Tapes: An Interview with COL Randolph P. Strong, Commander, US Forces East Timor (October-December 1999).” Pacific Voice, Special Edition, 

Spring 2000, pp. 6-16. 

Nager, Eric. USARPAC Deputy Historian Interview with Wing Commander Steve Kennedy, 

Intelligence Officer, Royal Australian Air Force, 29 May 2008. 

Operation Stabilize Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC) After Action Review (AAR). 

Ryan, Alan. “From Desert Storm to East Timor: Australia, The Asia-Pacific, and ‘New Age’ 

Coalition Operations.” Canberra, Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2000, Study Paper 302. 

US Department of State Website, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, http://www.state. 

gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35878.htm, April 2008, accessed 19 May 2008. 

278 
MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum A:
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 
MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum A (cont’d):
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 

280 
MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum A (cont’d):
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 
Judge Advocate General 

MAJGEN The Hon Justice 

Richard Tracey

** 

(1) (2) 

Chief Military Judge BRIG Ian Westwood 

* 

 (2) (1)

Director of Military

Prosecutions 

BRIG Lyn McDade 

*

 (1) (2) 

 Inspector-General

Australian Defence Force 

Mr Geoff Earley

** 

(1) (3) 

**

Australian Defence Force 

Investigative Service 

COL Tim Grützner

Provost Marshal 

(3) 

as at 6 February 2008 

Minister for Defence

The Hon Joel Fitzgibbon MP 

Parliamentary Secretary

Defence Procurement

The Hon Greg Combet AM MP 

Minister for Defence, Science

and Personnel 

The Hon Warren Snowdon MP 

Parliamentary Secretary

Defence Support

 The Hon Dr Mike Kelly AM MP 

Secretary

Mr Nick Warner 

   (1) 

Chief of the Defence Force

ACM Angus Houston

** ** (1) 

Inspector General

Dr Ian Williams 

**

Deputy Secretary

 (6) 

Strategy, Coordination & Governance 

Mr Michael Pezzullo 

***

Office of the Secretary and Chief of the Defence Force 

Chief Executive Officer

Defence Materiel Organisation 

Dr Stephen Gumley

*** 

(5) 

Deputy Secretary

Defence Support

Mr Martin Bowles

*** 

Deputy Secretary

Intelligence, Security and 

International Policy

Mr Stephen Merchant 

*** 

Chief Information Officer

Mr Greg Farr

*** 

Chief of Navy

VADM Russ Shalders

*** 

(1)(4) 

Chief of Army

LTGEN Peter Leahy

*** 

(1)(4) 

Chief of Air Force 

AIRMSHL Geoff Shepherd 

*** 

(1)(4) 

Chief Defence Scientist 

Dr Roger Lough

*** 

Vice Chief of the Defence 

Force

LTGEN Ken Gillespie

*** 

(1) 

Chief of Joint Operations 

LTGEN David Hurley

*** 

Chief Capability

Development 

VADM Matthew Tripovich 

*** 

Deputy Secretary

People Strategies & Policy

Mr Phil Minns

*** 

Chief Finance Officer

Mr Phillip Prior 

*** 

MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum B:
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 

Statutory appointment. (1) (5) Under the agreed business model for DMO as a prescribed agency, the CEO DMO 

 Reports directly to the Minister for Defence in accordance with Sections 196 (A), (B), (C) (2) Ministerial Directive identifies that the CEO DMO is directly accountable to the Minister

of the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982. for DMO’s performance but remains accountable to the Secretary and CDF. Directly responsible to the Chief of the Defence Force. (3) (6) The Inspector-General reports directly to the Secretary and Chief of the Defence Force. 

 Section 9(3) of the (4) Defence Act 1903 requires the Service Chiefs to advise the Minister

on matters relating to their command. 

282 
MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum C:
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 
MAJ Eric M. Nager Paper Addendum D:
 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor
 

284 
Panel 6—The Interagency Process in Asia 

(Transcript of Presentation) 

Joint Military-Civilian Civil Affairs 

by 

Nicholas J. Cull, Ph.D.
 

University of Southern California
 

Thanks. As a foreigner living in this country I have a strange relationship with the 

flag. This is the first time I have actually wondered how much warmer I would be if I 

wrapped myself up in it. Barry Zorthian would like to have been able to come out to 

make this presentation himself but was unable to. He was one of the witnesses, not for 

my national security review piece, but for the book that I have just completed. 

The title of my presentation today, “The Armenian Word for Chaos” is one of the 

jokes from Vietnam. It comes from a journalist who said what does this word JUSPAO mean and was told it was the Armenian word for chaos, an in-joke because Zorthian was from an Armenian-American family and he was in charge of JUSPAO (Joint 

United States Public Affairs Office). The presentation I am giving you today is derived 

from research that went into my book which came out a couple of months ago from 

Cambridge University Press so if you are looking for footnotes this is where you will 

find them. I will first of all talk about my core terms—public diplomacy and how I see 

that fitting into the world of counterinsurgency. Then I will look at the way in which 

public diplomacy worked in Vietnam and something about its interagency context and 

interagency cases. I will go through each of the presidential phases of the Vietnam War 

and pick out one case of interagency public diplomacy work as an example to work 

through. I will finish up by talking about some of the lessons of this period for the 

present. My theme is one that you have already heard something about, the perennial 

difficulties in interagency work, especially in the field of information. When we get to 

the question period I hope that we will be able to get into how we work this problem 

today because it is a big problem and the system such as it is today clearly still is not 

working as it should. 

So first of all, what is public diplomacy? My own definition is that public diplomacy is quite simply foreign policy through engagement with a foreign public rather 

than through engagement with a foreign government. The term public diplomacy was 

created in the Vietnam era because the United States Information Agency wanted to 

be able to talk about what it did. It wanted a word other than propaganda so that it 

could say, “We Americans do public diplomacy. Those Communists do propaganda,” 

and filled the term public diplomacy with benign meaning. But it is an old term. There 
are many ways in which states have always engaged with foreign publics. The most 

important way of engaging with a foreign public, and the one that everyone forgets, is 

to listen to that foreign public. The one everybody thinks of first is advocacy—influencing a foreign public through speeches, through all the ways in which we are used 

to governments addressing foreign publics. But also we have cultural diplomacy, we 

have exchange work and international broadcasting. Each of these is distinct. We can 

talk about the distinctions later on if you wish, but they come together in a range of 

practices which I think can be characterized as all properly civilian, overt, and overseas. Whenever we are doing one of these things in a way that is not civilian, is not 

overt, and is not overseas, we have a different term for it. But the boundaries, one of 

the problems with diplomacy in Vietnam is that the boundaries blur. I am feeling like in 

The Longest Day when everyone is trying to get their clickers to work. Successful public diplomacy, I would argue, needs first of all, the right bureaucratic structure. Each 

element within public diplomacy needs to be preserved as distinct; it needs to have its 

own credibility. It needs a voice in policy making. It is not enough just to have the public diplomacy element hauled in once you have decided on your policy. You have to be 

in on the takeoffs of policy, not just the crash landing. Historically public diplomacy is 

seen as an optional extra and is very much an underfunded element of statecraft. And it 

needs the right leadership. We know public diplomacy is at its most effective when the 

person in charge of it has some bureaucratic clout, not so that they can win all the time 

in the interagency discussion, but at least so they can hold their own. And you need the 

right policies. The best public diplomacy in the world cannot sell a bad policy, cannot 

make a bad policy good. The only way in which public diplomacy, I think, can help 

with a bad policy is by considering that policy early enough that the error of the policy 

can be pointed out with relationship to its likely impact on international public opinion. 

This all too seldom happens. 

So counterinsurgency, I think, takes place in sort of a parallel space. It is an ancient 

phenomenon as you all know well. It is hard to do well and very easy to do badly. I like 

to tell my students that there are no ballads of Prince John. The imagination always runs 

the other way with the insurgent. The counterinsurgency requires a minimum of force 

and the subordination of military objectives to the political. It requires a splitting of the 

enemy from its host population and therefore is often played out in terms of reputation, 

image, and frames, and a quest to capture the frame, to capture the political future of 

the area in which the insurgency is taking place. This means that public diplomacy is 

tied into and parallel to this whole process. It means that counterinsurgency overlaps 

with public diplomacy and public diplomacy overlaps with counterinsurgency. They 

come to be about the same thing, about who can engage most effectively with a foreign 

public. 

How was this done in Vietnam? I will now give you a little recap of the foundations of the Vietnam era public diplomacy. The American tradition of public diplomacy 

is basically this: when we have a crisis we have to do something about it in terms of 

public diplomacy, but once that crisis is over, quick, let’s close it down because we do 

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not like to think of governments having a role in the media. This was the case with the 

American Revolution, Civil War, First World War—as soon as the crisis was over the 

public diplomacy element was demobilized. That was not the case in the Cold War. 

Because of the Soviet threat, the public diplomacy apparatus was maintained and financed under the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act. But the floor within the structure of the Cold 

War is that public diplomacy has a limited role in the formation of policy. It is a junior 

partner in the interagency Psychological Strategy Board structure, and there is a very, 

very confused patent of agencies in Washington, DC. When Eisenhower comes in in 

1953 he tries to tidy up the structure creating what he would like to have been a onestop shop for all American information work. Overt information work had ceased. The 

United States Information Agency (USIA) winds up not being as tidy as Eisenhower 

would have liked, thanks to the intervention of Senator Fulbright. The floor in American public diplomacy at its creation is that there is no distinct public diplomacy role in 

the NSC (National Security Council), no mandated seat. The Director of USIA gets to 

sit in on NSC meetings at the invitation of the President and when presidents have other 

priorities, as was the case with Kennedy, Johnson, and thereafter, then increasingly the 

public diplomacy factor gets marginalized, gets pushed out. The interagency structure, 

maybe you spoke about this yesterday, is coordination by the Operations Coordinating 

Board. Was this spoken about yesterday? No, oh well. I talk about it a bit in my book 

and there are others that have written about it. But the major change that happens in 

this period is, I think, the Cold War comes to be seen as a zero-sum propaganda war 

with the Soviet Union in which the image of the United States becomes something that 

has to be protected. The credibility of the United States becomes something that has to 

be protected with military force, and of course, once you have made that decision, then 

force has to be placed on top of force in order to maintain that investment and to protect 

that investment credibility. The point I am making here is that image was an important 

part of America’s Cold War strategy but without being an important part of Cold War 

policy making. So there is a bit of a mismatch going on. 

When we get to Vietnam the issues play out like this: first phase of course, Eisenhower’s mission characterized most famously with Ed Lansdale’s CIA mission to help 

Ngo Dinh Diem in the aftermath of the Geneva Agreements. Now, there is an interagency group. Lansdale tends to be ad hoc with USIA and American military advisors 

in Vietnam helping him in his work. His big campaign is to encourage North Vietnamese people, especially Catholics, to migrate to the south and he called this campaign 

“The Virgin Mary Has Gone South.” This was part of a project to build an identity for 

South Vietnam. The problem is that the more American aid is seen as being responsible 

for helping Diem the less nationalist he seems. America actually begins to undercut 

the only person who can bring order to South Vietnam. But undeterred by this, USIA 

expands its network in Vietnam. During the course of the 1950s, we see the setting up 

of regional offices and more and more investment going into the country. Ironically, 

even though USIA is putting in all this investment, it cannot use its usual materials 

in Vietnam. Usually USIA would talk about the benefits of democracy and celebrate 

freedom and so forth, but they find that in Vietnam they cannot do that. So what they 
are worried about is that the people will draw a contrast between the virtues of America 

and the realities of America’s client in South Vietnam. So they have to go very lightly 

in the content in South Vietnam. 

Here is a case study from that period. The USIA team wanted to undermine the 

credibility of the enemy and thought one way of doing this was by thinking up a derogatory title that would undermine their credibility in front of their own population. 

So some bright spark in USIA came up with the name Viet Cong for the NVA (North 

Vietnamese Army). Army public affairs used it. Everybody got together to give this 

term currency. The problem is, of course, that the name emphasizes a national agenda, 

the Viet component. They would have been better off, as the British did in Malaya, 

dismissing the enemy as bandits or even calling them the Chi-Cong, undermining them 

as being Chinese. But every time the term Viet Cong was used, it played into the selfconception of the enemy as being nationalists. In 1962, USIA offered a $50 prize for 

coming up with a better name; this is for locals, to come up with a better name than 

Viet Cong. That prize remains unclaimed so if anybody wants to have a go. . . . 

The second phase—Kennedy. Kennedy’s goal was very much to present a credible 

image of the United States counterbalancing the successes of communism in Cuba. 

Vietnam looks like a better place to demonstrate the potency of the American system, 

America’s ability to win a revolution than Laos. Because of this credibility goal of 

Kennedy’s presence in Vietnam, he needs press coverage and this puts the public affairs element in Vietnam into the front line of the campaign. The point man at this time 

is the public affairs officer in Saigon, former Time magazine journalist John Mecklin. 

The operating doctrine is one of giving guidance to the American press and aiding the 

government of Vietnam in its psychological warfare effort. The problem is that Diem is 

keen to protect his sovereignty and resists management and resents the American press 

reporting of the situation in Vietnam. The United States feels that it ought to be able to 

take command of the situation, but cannot and you know the rest of the story, support 

for the coup in 1963, gambling on finding a substitute Vietnamese leader. 

But here is a case of how this situation played out, the case of the Invisible Ship. 

February 1962, the State Department issued a cable, 1006. This was the instruction to 

provide maximum feasible cooperation, guidance, and appeal to the good faith of correspondents, particularly the American correspondents in Vietnam, so to try and draw 

the correspondents into the effort. The problem is that both USIA and the military press 

officers implemented this as a limit on what they could tell journalists and saw this as 

a mandate to guide in a particular direction. This led to the absurd situation in 1963 of 

the US mission refusing to acknowledge the presence of the aviation transport vessel, 

USS Core in the Saigon River. Everybody could see it there, but it was officially denied, and it made the mission simply seem incredible. Both the press officers of MACV 

(Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) and the USIA press teams became part of the 

oppositional culture. The government people trying to spin the story of Vietnam and 

the journalists presented themselves as heroically connecting to the young officers in 

the American Army to get the real story out. 

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Next phase—Johnson. Now, Johnson has a clearer public diplomacy strategy and 

the information element in Vietnam settles down to this two-pronged attack—selling 

the government of Vietnam to its own people and trying to sell the war to the outside 

world. Now, Johnson decides that in order to give coherence to the information effort 

in Vietnam, you need a single information czar, and so in April of 1965 he creates the 

Joint United States Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) in Vietnam. Here, Army Public 

Affairs is placed under civilian leadership. The vision of JUSPAO is that there will be 

one person in command. The differences in institutional culture, which were beginning 

to emerge between what journalists like Mecklin felt was proper and what the Army 

Public Affairs people thought was appropriate, could be eliminated just by having one 

voice in charge. Now, there were non-USIA personnel within JUSPAO. There were 

Army people filling JUSPAO positions, and also people coming in from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), but the whole organization is given a civilian flavor. USIA is 

eager to take command of JUSPAO to build on its success leading psychological operations in the Dominican intervention in April of 1965. The real reason USIA is so eager 

to assert itself and take command in JUSPAO is not necessarily to do with the sense 

that the agency was best fitted to the task. It is a bureaucracy. What do bureaucracies 

want? They want more—they want more resources, they want more significance. The 

Director of USIA, Carl Rowan, was very keen to be relevant to President Johnson, and 

I think, was over-eager to commit USIA to the Vietnam War. Your access to the President at this time is really based on, “What are you doing in Vietnam?” The problem of 

USIA’s role in JUSPAO is that it compromises the civilian element of USIA work and 

you get USIA, a civilian agency, leading off on psychological warfare operations. The 

key figure in all this is Barry Zorthian, and I will give you a little bit of background on 

Barry Zorthian. He is an Armenian-American. He was a graduate of Yale and a Marine. He remained in the Marine Reserve. But his career had been at Voice of America 

where he was a campaigning program director who resisted McCarthy-ite purges and 

this gave him great credibility in his work with journalists in Vietnam. They really saw 

him as one of their own and respected him. He was able to negotiate a voluntary code 

with the journalists, a sort of self-censorship and then to sell this voluntary code to 

the Army. So Zorthian was sort of a go-between. He is able to open America’s effort 

in Vietnam to the press and work to seek out good news, particular campaigns he is 

involved in without playing up Viet Cong atrocity and promoting the State Department 

white papers that document the levels of North Vietnamese infiltration. The problem 

is that as Zorthian becomes so efficient he quite swiftly outstrips the ability of the 

Vietnamese to talk about their own war. And we run into this problem of American 

ventriloquism when the Vietnamese people themselves start to hear about their own 

war in American accents. 

Here is an example of where Zorthian broke down. While he is technically in control of the messages coming out of Saigon, there were still units in the field that felt 

that they knew how to appeal to the enemy, and this is a typical theme in a propaganda 

leaflet, what they call the nostalgia theme, trying to get the soldier to think of his girl 

friend at home. The only problem is this is what an American thinks the girl friend 

at home looks like. When a Vietnamese saw that picture they saw a prostitute. So 
this leaflet was saying not, “Wouldn’t you rather be at home?” Instead it was saying, 

“Wouldn’t you rather be at war fighting these Americans who are turning our women 

into prostitutes?” So it was a counterproductive element in the campaign which shows 

the need to have some sort of authority, to have some sort of management structure 

with cultural knowledge. The government of Vietnam and some American military 

briefers resisted Zorthian’s authority and he is trying all the time to get them to say 

more, to get them to trust more, to open out the war as much as he can. And I think he 

makes considerable progress. 

Here is, however, one of the other cases where things go terribly wrong. March 

1965, Peter Arnett and the use of nonlethal gas in operations in South Vietnam. The 

Army declines to comment on the story and the Associated Press runs the story in its 

Tokyo bureau. The problem is this term: nonlethal gas. Probably if it had been a tear 

gas story it would have not attracted the attention it did, but the idea that the United 

States is involved in gas warfare in Vietnam causes outrage in the West. It becomes a 

major propaganda story in the East, and Zorthian argues that this is the classic example 

of the damage that can be done from an initial misstep, the initial mishandling of a 

story. If the Army had commented and had explained, “What on earth is Peter Arnett 

talking about? This is the sort of tear gas that has been used all over the world for many 

years. There is nothing sinister here.” But they did not get their voice into the story and 

so had no control over what happened next. 

The fourth phase is the next reorganization of the interagency element regarding 

public affairs and that is the creating of a greater structure. The first time they try it is 

1967 when William Porter is brought in. He was the Deputy Chief of Mission, given 

the rank of Deputy Ambassador and put in charge of an office of civilian operations. 

This is then reformed again to create the CORDS (Civil Operations Rural Development 

Support) bureaucracy. The objective here is to get interagency working for revolutionary development. But it disrupts that sort of perfect structure that Zorthian thought 

he had back in 1965. JUSPAO and the USIA elements are mixed in with USAID (US 

Agency for International Diplomacy), CIA, and the government of Vietnam. Porter 

and his successor trump the information czar in their approach to information. But this 

is the peak of the public diplomacy budget. A lot of the public diplomacy at this time 

was seeking to publicize what Johnson called “the other war,” the fact that the Americans were building hospitals, were doing positive developmental projects for the Vietnamese people. But of course, America’s behavior in Vietnam is the real message, and 

images of the extraordinary level of destruction in the Vietnam War and of the behavior 

of American troops in Vietnam on things like search and destroy missions started to 

become the real story and are much more potent than the official newsreel pictures of 

a new hospital being opened or kids being given typhoid shots. The blow of the Tet 

Offensive you know about and the counterinsurgency operations following Tet. The 

implementation of the Phoenix Program worked and yet they negate the original objective of the entire war which was for something to be seen to be done swiftly, easily and 

we become bogged down in something quite beyond what was originally intended. At 

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the moment of Tet, Zorthian leaves Vietnam, and he leaves with a profound sense of 

disillusionment in what he has been a part of. 

A case from this period would be the interagency effort around the Vietnamese 

election of 1967. JUSPAO and CORDS made the election a priority really to prove to 

the world that democracy was possible in Vietnam. They had special publications, special films. The Vietnamese traditional theater troops—Van Tac Vu theater troops—did 

shows around the election, there were loudspeaker flights trying to get people out to 

vote, and special tours for journalists and jurists from around the world to come and 

inspect the quality of the elections. However, the campaign, both domestically and 

internationally, raised unreasonable expectations. There was corruption and some recriminations. The losing candidate ended up being jailed. I can see in the wake of the 

coming election the winning candidate might well wish to jail the losing candidate, but 

this is not the show piece of democracy. The problem is there is no viable government 

in Vietnam to be chosen by these elections. 

By the time Nixon is in power the game is withdrawal and managing the negatives of the war. USIA’s leadership by this time is very wary of its connection to Vietnam. It sees its presence in Vietnam as a negative. The staff does not like going there, 

not unlike the problem we see today in Iraq. And USIA is also being shut out—even 

inside Vietnam—of important issues. Zorthian’s successor, Ed Nichol, is left out of 

the planning around the Cambodian operation. Senator Church introduces an amendment to restrict American public diplomacy around the Vietnam War, forbidding the 

United States from actually conducting any propaganda in support of President Thieu. 

It is supposed to be to avoid assisting that element which seems very strange, in great 

contrast to what had been done earlier on. And USIA worked to essentially pull out of 

the Vietnam operation. By this time there were about 100 US Army personnel working within the JUSPAO structure. As their tours of duty came to an end, USIA merely 

did not notify the Army that those people needed to be replaced. And so they allowed 

JUSPAO to wind down until it was no more significant than any other USIA post. Outside of Vietnam, USIA merely stopped talking about the war. They found that if they 

wanted to reach and engage a foreign audience they talked about something else. They 

talked about blue jeans, John Wayne, recycling, anything other than the Vietnam War. 

The American troop withdrawal in 1973 closed this military-civil aspect of the Vietnam War and, interestingly from my perspective, ended the American image problems 

around the Vietnam War. Okay, some people around the world still say, “What about 

Vietnam? That was not any good for you people, was it?” But if you look at the polling 

data within just a few weeks of the withdrawal of American troops there is a big up-tick 

and you do not see a perpetuation of anti-American feeling based around Vietnam. In 

fact, the rebound happens very, very swiftly, surprisingly swiftly. 

A case from this period would be the Easter Offensive, the NVA attack on Easter 

of 1972, and of course, was successfully repelled. We see all the JUSPAO elements 

working very well together and connecting to Voice of America which extended its 
Vietnamese service. JUSPAO used its network to post regular updates all around Vietnam so people could go to central places and see what was happening, read the results 

of the battles, and the particularly effective operation was the rapid turn around of the 

names of the captured POWs so these could be recorded and then broadcast immediately into North Vietnam where people were able to listen on little radios that had been 

pretuned to American frequencies and had been dropped coincidentally some months 

previously, but they were all still working. This was a terrifically effective campaign. 

And of course, no problem here with coordination of story because it is an obvious 

story, the defeat of the North Vietnamese Army. It is like the old saying “a rising tide 

lifts all boats.” A really good information campaign needs a good story and if the 

story is there everything works well. The problem is when you do not have the story. 

My analysis of what happened in Vietnam is that the wrong policies were followed, 

aid undermining Diem, the presence of the Americans negated the policy objective of 

shoring up and protecting South Vietnamese independence and the cure of the American intervention became worse than the disease. But of course, we also have the wrong 

tactics with the United States initially underplaying counterinsurgency tactics and the 

military becoming such a large part of the problem. And we see the wrong public 

diplomacy being used. The public diplomats in Vietnam tried to sell a different story 

to the world, but they were stuck with the message of America’s deeds and stifled the 

Vietnamese voices. 

I see that lessons were learned, but I think they were the wrong lessons. I think that 

the United States comes out of Vietnam fixating on domestic opinion, planning that 

its next war should be short with tightly managed domestic coverage and ignoring the 

role of local media images. There is a problem of the Vietnam War on TV, but here I 

am not talking about American TV, I am talking about the Vietnamese TV that the US 

Army installed in Vietnam. This is like the problem of that little flyer of the girl in a 

bikini, but writ large. America paid for TV sets to be put into Vietnamese villages to be 

watched communally. These were so popular in the villages that were controlled by the 

Viet Cong, they would come out of the jungle at night and sit around watching Batman 

and reruns of Combat! and other shows they really liked, but when it was the variety 

shows depicting Vietnamese society, what was showcased was the bastardization of 

Vietnamese culture. It played directly into their interpretation of what was happening 

in Vietnam. You could not conceal the impact of the Americans on Vietnamese society 

and cannot match the national claim made by Ho Chi Minh. 

My conclusion is that there is great danger at this juncture between images and action and that an interagency process leaves more than just a pooled resource. It needs 

an internal consistency of word and deed to making sure that what you claim to be the 

objective of your policy is worked through in the course of your action. I think there 

is a big problem here of multiple audiences. Not only the multiple audience having to 

have information campaigns and public affairs work that played within Vietnam, but 

also the play to the world. There was no single world audience. Johnson became very 

frustrated that every time he bombed North Vietnam the Europeans would be very 

292 
upset with him, but the Asians would really be very supportive and think, “Yes, this is 

the way to go!” Then whenever he talked to the North Vietnamese the Asians would be 

very worried—the Philippines, South Korea. “What is President Johnson doing?” The 

Europeans would think, “This is great!” So he was caught in a juggling act with international opinion. You can see the parallels to present problems in Iraq and Afghanistan 

where we see lessons of counterinsurgency being successfully applied, but have to ask, 

“The lessons are being applied, but what is the end state? Is the political center viable? 

Are we winning a war or is there somebody there to win the war for?” I have already 

mentioned this lesson. Well, the opinion recovered quickly post-1973. However, the 

tragedy of the damage done in Vietnam and the damage internally within the United 

States lived on. I think in some ways, both Vietnam and the United States are still living it. That is all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. 

Panel 6—The Interagency Process in Asia
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Major Eric M. Nager, US Army
 

Nicolas J. Cull, Ph.D.
 

Moderated by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Farquhar, US Army
 

Audience Member 

Sir, you talked about the problems of multiple audiences. Given the error of instantaneous communication, whether it is video or YouTube or the Internet or text, how do 

we get the message that we need to craft for specific audiences that do not contradict 

or appear to be contradictory to different audiences? 

Dr. Cull 

The first thing you have to do is acknowledge that we now live in a different world 

where a message crafted for Kansas will be heard in Kandahar. I think we have now 

moved beyond the phase where a president will go out and say let’s have a crusade 

and then be surprised that there are Muslins listening who do not like that terminology. 

What I think we are seeing now in terms of public diplomacy is messages for Kandahar 

being crafted on the assumption that Kansas is listening in, and in a number of countries around the world public diplomacy has become a performance for domestic consumption to give your domestic audience the prestige of the admiration of the world 

or minimize the absence of the prestige. The real reason the Chinese ran the Olympics 

was not to impress us. It was to impress their own population because it is their own 

population that might overthrow them. So much of what happened in the Bush administration was . . . take for example, Karen Hughes when she went overseas. She took 

the press with her on her listening tour, but she did not take the world’s press. She took 

the American press because she wanted to show that she was doing something to fix 

America’s image problem. I think the first thing we need to have is a public diplomacy 

that is actually based on engaging its target audience and is created with the courage to 

defy the four-year political cycle. Otherwise we will be stuck in a perpetual echo chamber of domestic politics. There are some countries that are prepared to do that and are 

able to do that in other places where it is harder to do, but I think you put your finger 

on a really important issue. It stresses the need for information to be thought about in a 

new way. We do not have the luxury of the divisions of audience we had in the past. 
Audience Member 

I have a question for Major Nager. You had mentioned that there is a need for greater 

allied involvement in humanitarian assistance, and I was wondering about the potential 

role of Japan for that kind of help? When the US is so stretched what potential is there 

for Japan to help out? 

MAJ Nager 

It is included in my paper, but I did not mention it today in the presentation. Japan 

substantially funded the INTERFET (International Force for East Timor) Exercise in 

East Timor. So even though they did not send troops, they gave a substantial financial 

contribution which they also did, of course, in DESERT STORM/SHIELD. So until 

they get their constitutional issues resolved where they feel more comfortable sending soldiers overseas, to contribute economically through NGOs (nongovernmental 

organizations) may be the best way to contribute, but they did contribute financially 

in that case. 

Audience Member 

Is that the most we can really hope to expect in the near term? Funding is nice, but 

sometimes it is helpful to have other things. 

MAJ Nager 

I think we want greater involvement with troops and soldiers and I hope we will work 

in that direction. 

Audience Member 

I had a question about the seven components of future warfare. Could you expand on 

those a little bit? 

MAJ Nager 

The Australian lessons? 

Audience Member 

Yes. 

MAJ Nager 

All right. I could tell you the other ones. I was just drawing upon a couple that I thought 

296 
were most pertinent to this discussion. Some are them are just applying to Australia. 

They did not apply as directly to the United States. I can tell you what all seven of 

them are if you would like. They talked about command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, tailored effects, force projection, force protection, force 

sustainment, and force generation. I will give those to you again afterwards if you are 

really interested. I only examined a couple of them as they pertained to extra-agency 

coordination which is my focus in this paper. But I would be happy to share those with 

you afterwards. 

Audience Member 

I was wondering if in your research prior to the Timor Exercise if any of the lessons 

learned from Bosnia had any impact on how they conducted that operation? 

MAJ Nager 

Not that I read in my research. I took this from an Australian standpoint first and how 

the US plugged into that, so in my research I did not come across anything specifically 

mentioning that. 

Audience Member 

My question is for Dr. Cull. Is there an Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy now 

in the State Department? 

Dr. Cull 

There is an Under-Secretary. What happened was in 1999 USIA was closed down and 

the public diplomacy elements were integrated into the Department of State. And instead of the USIA Director, the lead person in public diplomacy is supposed to be the 

Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. So that on paper is 

how it is supposed to work, but it has not been an ideal situation. There is also a Deputy 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support for Public Diplomacy who is Michael Durant, a historian of the Middle East which reflects where they expect the public diplomacy might need to be supported. 

Audience Member 

I have not heard it brought up yet and this may be the appropriate time. I am curious 

about how language can be a barrier to the interagency process. I know since we are 

talking about public information, this may be the appropriate place to talk about that 

because it was a problem. 
Dr. Cull 

I think it is an excellent point, and you see how language and institutional culture are 

both problems. 

Audience Member 

I thought it was interesting in the study that was done in the Washington Quarterly 

about allied nations to the United States that could take the lead in the coalition as of 

2002, and the only two listed were Australia and Great Britain where there was no language barrier. They did not talk about language barrier in that article, but it is a factor 

as well. 

Dr. Cull 

We even find that within the UK forces that you can have a language barrier. They 

found at one of the landings in the Falklands that paratroopers would not get out of a 

landing craft because the Marines were being told “now” and if you want a paratrooper 

to move you say “go.” Nobody said “go” so they just stood there until they heard the 

right word to move a paratrooper. So it can even happen within a service. I think the 

way that we begin to address this is by using the same sort of public diplomacy tools 

to get nations to understand each other, using exchange of persons, particularly, and 

increasing mutual experience. It is a slow process, but I think you have hit on an important problem. 

Audience Member 

Having worked in the US Embassy one of the biggest challenges we found was the 

constraints that were put on the US Embassy personnel to speak on the record to the 

press corps. Contrary where in the military, of course, we have taken a total change 

now where the soldier down at the lowest level is authorized to speak to the press corps 

provided that they have permission. I just wanted to see from a historical context how 

is that affecting our ability to get the message out there in a consistent fashion when 

the military can speak on the record, but yet in a US Embassy there is only one person 

who is authorized to speak on the record and that is the Ambassador. 

Dr. Cull 

I think that is the least of the asymmetries, frankly, and the big problem is how much 

bigger the budget for military public diplomacy is than public diplomacy in the State 

Department. The State Department retains the title of leading public diplomacy and 

officially all the DOD can do is support public diplomacy, but we see such an asymmetry. Something really has to be done about that, and I have been impressed by what 

Secretary Gates has said and done. I think he really understands the problem in a nu298 
anced way, but goodness knows what will happen in January. But that is always the 

way of things. I think you need to have control of the message and I can understand 

why the State Department has this restriction. One thing that they are trying to do is to 

make sure that talking points are made available in real time and according to the news 

cycles of the rest of the world so that American diplomatic personnel overseas are able 

to respond accurately and swiftly to issues being raised by the foreign media because 

for too long America has worked on a domestic news cycle and has ignored the fact 

that by the time America wakes up a story that was a rumor 12 hours ago is being reported as fact. And American denials and American rebuttals come very late in the day. 

That is now starting to be addressed by the creation of regional hubs up in Doha, a hub 

in Brussels, and I believe there is talk about doing one even farther east, but I cannot 

remember where that is going to be. 

Panel 7—Interagency Process in the United States
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

Cold War Interagency Relations and the Struggle 

to Coordinate Psychological Strategy
 

by
 

Robert T. Davis II, Ph.D.
 

US Army Combat Studies Institute
 

Introduction 

At the beginning of April 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, President Harry 

Truman issued an executive order establishing a Psychological Strategy Board “for 

the formulation and promulgation, as guidance to the departments and agencies responsible for psychological operations, of over-all national psychological objectives, 

policies, programs, and for the coordination and evaluation of the national psychological effort.” The creation of the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) was an attempt to 

solve years of interagency wrangling over the direction and scope of US information 

operations in the early Cold War.1 For two years the Psychological Strategy Board 

functioned as a planning and coordinating body, but ultimately the Eisenhower administration would find the PSB no more satisfactory than previous attempts at planning 

and coordination and dissolve the board in the summer of 1953. This paper will review 

the US government’s attempts during the Truman administration to find a solution to 

the problem of a coordinated information strategy in the context of interagency cooperation, or its lack thereof.2 By way of introduction, a brief review the previous wartime 

attempts at information operations that developed in the United States, particularly the 

Creel Committee and the Office of War Information, is provided. 

Antecedents:
 

The Wartime Psychological Warfare Effort in World War I and World War II
 

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson established what is regarded as 

America’s first official propaganda agency. This agency was the Committee on Public 

Information, but better known as the Creel Committee, since it was headed by journalist 

George Creel. The Creel Committee was nominally headed by a committee made up of 

Creel, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, and 

Secretary of War Newton Baker. This was meant to provide a modicum of interagency 

cooperation, but as a practical matter, Secretary of State Lansing chose to have little 

to do with the committee, and the secretaries of the two military services largely left 

Creel to his own devices. The Creel Committee had responsibility for both censorship 
 

 

 

 

and propaganda production, but Creel himself tried to stress that he did not perceive 

his roll as censor-in-chief. Though the Creel Committee did have both domestic and 

foreign divisions, the vast bulk of its resources and energy during the war were devoted 

to maintaining domestic support for the war effort.3 When the war ended in November 

1918, Congress moved quickly to dissolve the committee. Revelations in the interwar 

period about the nature or the wartime propaganda effort, not least by Creel’s own 

book How We Advertised America (1920), as well as the activities of the Communist 

International and the European fascists governments did a good deal to generate hostility in the United States to the notion of government-sponsored propaganda. 

As the world moved toward war in the later 1930s, American concern about again 

being drawn into a conflict, including potentially by allied propaganda, contributed 

to the limitations under which President Franklin Roosevelt operated. Roosevelt, for 

all his desire to convince the American populace of the need for preparedness and 

his own views on supporting Britain and France, proved cautious about replicating 

the perceived excesses of the government propaganda effort in World War I.4 And 

as a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration, he was 

well familiar with the activities of the Creel Committee. President Roosevelt’s own 

approach to presidential leadership further complicated matters. He had a penchant 

for fostering bureaucratic rivalries to preserve presidential prerogatives.5 In keeping 

with this practice, Roosevelt authorized the creation of a number of different agencies tasked with information activities in the two years before American entry into the 

war. These included the creation of an Office of Government Reports (est. September 

1939), a Division of Information of the Office of Emergency Management (est. March 

1941), an Office of Coordinator of Information (est. July 1941), a subsidiary Foreign 

Information Service (est. August 1941), and an Office of Facts and Figures (est. October 1941).6 The growing need to counter German propaganda aimed at Latin America 

in the summer of 1940 occasioned the appointment of Nelson Rockefeller as the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in August 1940. Rockefeller’s brief gave him wide 

latitude in the direction of US information operations within the region.7 This confusing profusion of agencies remained in place until the exigencies of wartime prodded 

Roosevelt to consider a more centralized public information effort.8 

Once the United States had entered the war, Roosevelt was pressed by advisors to 

create a more orderly arrangement of US information activities. Nonetheless, President 

Roosevelt refrained from duplicating the Committee on Public Information, essentially 

opting to split its functions between two new organizations, an Office of Censorship 

and an Office of War Information (OWI).9 In addition, in June 1942 he expanded the 

writ of William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Coordinator of Information (OCI) 

into the new Office of Strategic Services (OSS), although the Foreign Information Service, formerly part of OCI, was transferred to the Office of War Information. Of these 

three, both the Office of War Information and the Office of Strategic Services played 

a role in the production of wartime propaganda (psychological warfare, or what we 

would now refer to as strategic communications) for foreign dissemination. Continu302 
 

 

ing friction over responsibilities led President Roosevelt to issue further clarification 

on responsibilities in March 1943. These instructions stated that the Office of War 

Information was responsible to “plan, develop, and execute all phases of the federal 

program of radio, press, publication, and related foreign propaganda activities involving the dissemination of information.” When these programs were to take place in 

areas of current or projected military operations, they were to be “coordinated with 

military plans through the planning agencies of the War and Navy Departments, and 

shall be subject to the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Reflecting traditional 

military views of command responsibility in wartime, the directive also stated that, 

“parts of the foreign propaganda program which are to be executed in a theater of 

military operations will be subject to the control of the theater commander.” Finally, 

the authority and functions of the Office of War Information were not to compete with 

Nelson Rockefeller’s bailiwick in Latin America.10 Appraising the actual contribution 

of OWI and OSS to the war effort is a very difficult proposition.11 In any case, in the 

waning months of World War II, many of the psychological warfare and information 

operations capabilities (what we would now refer to as strategic communications) that 

the United States government had developed during the war were wound down. In 

commenting on the need to study psychological warfare at the end of the war, General 

George S. Patton well reflected the ambiguous position of many regarding psychological warfare when he stated, “Such a study must be made. Psychological warfare had an 

important place in the European campaign. It can accomplish much good. It can also 

be extremely harmful.”12 

With the approach of war’s end, the Office of Censorship, the Office of War Information, and the Office of Strategic Services would all be shut down. In the case of the 

Office of Censorship, Director Byron Price had long advocated that censorship be curtailed as soon as the threat to national security decreased. He proposed that the Office 

of Censorship be closed as soon as fighting ended. Price’s views were endorsed by the 

Censorship Policy Board as early as 20 November 1943. After the defeat of Germany, 

Price cancelled program restrictions on the radio code. He subsequently won President 

Truman’s endorsement to declare the end of censorship on the same day that victory 

over Japan was announced. The work of the Office of Censorship formally ended on 

15 August 1945. Byron Price’s plan for a voluntary censorship code was generally 

perceived to have worked admirably well. The editors of the trade journal Editor & 

Publisher stated, “We have never heard anyone in the newspaper business contradict 

the statement that Byron Price conducted the Office of Censorship in a competent, 

careful and wholly patriotic manner.”13 

While there had probably never been any question of the Office of Censorship 

continuing its activities in peacetime, a reasonable case could be made for the retention 

of the Office of War Information. Unlike the Creel Committee, which had focused the 

great majority of its propaganda output toward domestic support for President Wilson’s 

policies, from 1944 on, 90 percent of OWI’s budget was geared toward international 

propaganda activities.14 At the end of August, President Truman signed an executive 
 

order that transferred the foreign information functions of the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American Affairs to an Interim International Information 

Service established within the Department of State. Under this order, the remaining 

functions of the Office of War Information were to cease on 15 September 1945. As of 

31 December 1945, both the Office of War Information and the Interim International 

Information Service were abolished.15 The War Department retained its Public Relations Bureau, the function of which was increasingly geared toward defending Army 

appropriations during the massive postwar demobilization. The dawning of the Cold 

War, however, would soon revive the interest of the US government in pursuing a more 

aggressive approach to public affairs, public diplomacy, and psychological warfare. 

Difficult questions about where responsibility for these functions should be vested 

hampered to implement this program for the next several years. 

Postwar Psychological Warfare Planning and the SWNCC 

In early 1946 a number of events contributed to a hardening of US attitudes regarding the Soviet Union.16 Soviet activities in Romania, Bulgaria, northern Iran, and pressure on Turkey all suggested little willingness on the part of the Soviets to work within 

the framework of the United Nations. A toughly worded speech by Joseph Stalin to the 

Soviet people on 9 February that warned of the impending final crisis of the capitalist 

world and called for the Soviet people to be prepared for conflict seemed to some in 

the West as a warning of more aggressive Soviet intentions.17 On 22 February 1946, 

George Kennan cabled his famous “long telegram” from the US Embassy in Moscow 

which helped to crystallize the attitudes of many in the US government about the need 

for a firm response to the expansionist impulse in Soviet foreign policy. In March 

1946, the Truman administration dispatched the USS Missouri to Turkey, ostensibly to 

return the body of the recently deceased Turkish ambassador, but also to send a clear 

message to the Soviets that the United States could not look with indifference upon 

Soviet attempts to pressure Turkey. On 5 March, Winston Churchill, former and future 

Prime Minister of Great Britain, delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech at Fulton, Missouri. One of the chief advocates in the Truman administration of a firmer US position 

toward the Soviets was Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal (later the first Secretary 

of Defense). Forrestal had been much impressed by Kennan’s telegram. Shortly after 

Churchill’s speech, Forrestal wrote in his diary that the United States needed a program 

“to inform the country of the facts, of the complete impossibility of gaining access to 

the minds of the Russian people, of piercing the curtain of censorship which is drawn 

over every area they occupy.” Though Forrestal thought such a program desirable, he 

also realized that initiating such a program without infringing on the State Department’s own responsibilities would be difficult.18 It would indeed prove difficult in to 

reach an accommodation between the Department of State and the nation’s military 

authorities on direction of US information operations for years thereafter. 

In 1946, members of the US government were working to find solutions to a number of problems in the international arena while the nation was still coming to grips 

304 
 

 

with its new world role. Part and parcel with this shift toward wider responsibility was 

a wide-ranging discussion over the best means of determining and directing US foreign 

and security policy. Any discussion of the struggle to coordinate foreign information 

operations in the early Cold War must keep this broader context in mind.19 Since late 

in World War II, the primary means of coordinating policy between the State, War, and 

Navy Departments was a series of semiregular meetings held by the three secretaries 

and interdepartmental meetings of their three principal deputies who met at the StateNavy-War Coordinating Committee (SWNCC).20 In early March 1946, Secretary of 

War Robert Patterson approached Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal about the 

need for bringing together qualified military and civilian experts to assess the utility of psychological warfare in World War II.21 Then, at the end of May 1946, the 

Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, John L. Sullivan, sent a memorandum to the 

State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee that suggested the formation of an ad hoc 

committee under the SWNCC “to study and report on the future status of psychological warfare.” He recommended that the committee study psychological warfare with 

an eye toward developing a peacetime organization that would be prepared for rapid 

mobilization in wartime and suggest a suitable wartime organization. Ideally, these 

organizational arrangements would prevent the trial-and-error effort which had characterized the implementation of psychological warfare in World War II.22 The Assistant 

Secretary’s suggestion was approved by the committee shortly thereafter, and an ad 

hoc committee formed to study the US government’s psychological warfare organization. This ad hoc committee reported its findings in early December. Its assessment 

was that “psychological warfare is an essential factor in the achievement of national 

aims and military objectives” whether in time of war or threat of war (the latter to be 

determined at the President’s discretion). At the time, the SWNCC confirmed that the 

State Department had the primary interest in determination of psychological warfare 

policy because of its impact on the nation’s foreign policy. To improve intergovernmental coordination, the ad hoc committee advocated that a standing Subcommittee 

on Psychological Warfare should be established under the SWNCC. It was to be composed of two members each from the State Department and the Central Intelligence 

Group, and one each from the War and Navy Departments.23 

While the State-Navy-War Coordinating Committee continued to discuss the question of planning for psychological warfare during late 1946 and into 1947, developments in the broader Cold War and questions of the establishment of a more formal 

US national security apparatus occupied center stage. It proved difficult to formalize 

mechanisms for policy coordination of psychological warfare—or anything else for 

that matter—while the debate on military unification (and, ultimately, the creation of a 

national security council) was under way. However, international affairs continued to 

press government officials to better marshal US information operation capabilities in 

the service of government policy. On 12 March 1947, Truman addressed Congress to 

request aid for Greece and Turkey. The address, which has subsequently been known 

as the Truman Doctrine, signaled a clear shift in US policy toward the Soviet Union. 

In June, Congress agreed upon the legislation that became the National Security Act. 
 

 

The National Security Act (NSA) was meant to help formalize the structure of interagency cooperation, though in practice problems continued to plague US interagency 

relations for many years. The NSA authorized the creation of the new Cabinet position 

of Secretary of Defense to head a nascent National Military Establishment, established 

an independent Air Force (within the National Military Establishment), established the 

Central Intelligence Agency (adding a new bureaucratic competitor to the psychological warfare debate), and established a National Security Council to advise the President. The National Security Act was passed at the end of June, and its provisions went 

into effect in mid-September 1947. 

President Truman attended the first meeting of the National Security Council on 26 

September, but was only a sporadic attendee of its meetings prior to the outbreak of the 

Korean War.24 Truman initially kept the NSC at a distance, at least in part because he 

did not want his participation in its deliberations to make it seem that he was bound by 

its decisions. In his stead, the meetings were generally chaired by the Secretary of State 

(George Marshall until January 1949, and Dean Acheson thereafter). The first meeting 

of the National Security Council was primarily an organizational meeting to discuss 

the policies and procedures of the NSC, as well as discussing the initial directive to 

the CIA. It would be over six weeks before the next meeting of the NSC convened. 

Given this lack of clear-cut presidential participation in the NSC’s deliberations, its 

initial role in the policy coordination process was somewhat limited. In the interim 

between the first and second meetings of the NSC, the State-Army-Navy-Air Force 

Coordinating Committee (SANACC, as the SWNCC had been reconstituted following 

the establishment of the Air Force as a separate service) decided there was an urgent 

need to create an ad hoc committee to investigate whether the United States should 

“at the present time utilize coordinated psychological measures in furtherance of the 

attainment of its national objectives.”25 Interestingly, a draft memorandum prepared 

by Forrestal’s staff for consideration by the SANACC anticipated the form that the 

Psychological Strategy Board would subsequently take.26 Nonetheless, in early November, the newly created War Council (another product of the National Security Act, 

made up of the Secretary of Defense, the three service secretaries, and the three chiefs 

of the military services) reached agreement that SANACC 304/10 (the 304 series of 

documents pertained to psychological warfare) should be revised to delete any reference to a domestic information program; “fix responsibility for the general direction 

and coordination of both black and white activities in the State Department”; and have 

the State Department carrying out white activities and the CIA the black activities. The 

War Council explicitly rejected the proposal of creating any new board or committee 

to supervise and coordinate the psychological warfare activities.27 

At the second meeting of the NSC on 14 November, the Council took under consideration SANACC 304/11, the revised paper on Psychological Warfare.28 The study 

stated that the Secretary of State would be charged with the general responsibility for 

the coordination of psychological measures. The SANACC members wrote that they 

presumed the Secretary of State would delegate these responsibilities to the Assistant 

306 
 

 

 

 

Secretary of State for Public Affairs, who in turn would be assisted by representatives 

from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Central Intelligence Agency. Secretary of the 

Army Kenneth Royall, speaking on behalf of himself and Secretaries Forrestal and 

Symington, stated that the National Military Establishment “did not believe it should 

have a part in these activities.” In the course of discussion, Secretary of State George 

C. Marshall expressed his concern about referring to information activities as psychological warfare. The Department of State was concerned that operational control over 

covert psychological activities ran the risk, should it become public knowledge, of 

undermining or outright discrediting US foreign policy.29 As a result of this discussion, two separate streams of directives on information operations were developed, 

one which delineated State Department responsibilities, the other, Central Intelligence 

Agency responsibilities. The NSC approved the first two directives (NSC 4 and NSC 

4-A) at its meeting on 17 December 1947. NSC 4, “Coordination of Foreign Information Measures,” charged the Secretary of State with responsibility for policy formulation and “coordinating the implementation of all information measures designed to 

influence attitudes in foreign countries in a direction favorable to the attainment of US 

objectives and to counteract the effects of anti-US propaganda.”30 NSC 4-A, “Psychological Operations,” authorized the Director of Central Intelligence “to initiate and 

conduct, within the limits of available funds, covert psychological operations designed 

to counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities.”31 The State Department’s leading 

role in overt information programs abroad was further solidified with the passage of 

Public Law 402, The United State Informational and Educational Exchange Act of 

1948 (better known as the Smith-Mundt Act), signed into law by President Truman on 

27 January 1948.32 

The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in late February 1948 energized Western 

officials, leading to a number of important Cold War initiatives.33 In this vein, Secretary 

of Defense Forrestal requested in late March that the NSC review the progress that had 

been made since the NSC 4 documents had been approved because the international 

situation made it “more important than ever that our foreign information activities be 

effectively developed.”34 The Joint Chiefs of Staff now supported the creation of a 

separate Psychological Warfare Agency which would operate directly under the NSC.35 

State Department remained resistant to losing any authority in this regard in peacetime. For the next three years, the State Department successfully deflected attempts to 

alter the system established by the NSC 4 series.36 Indeed, in March 1950, President 

Truman approved NSC 59/1, “The Foreign Information Program and Psychological 

Warfare Planning,” which reiterated and extended State Department’s authority in the 

field of information operations.37 Superseding the NSC 4 series and NSC 43, NSC 

59/1 stated that the Secretary of State was responsible for the “formulation of policies 

and plans for a national foreign information program” not only in time of peace, as had 

formerly been the case, but also in times of national emergency and in the initial stages 

of war.38 To carry out these planning and coordinating responsibilities, the Secretary of 

State, in consultation with the other departments and agencies represented in the NSC, 

was authorized to name a director of a new organization within the State Department. 
 

 

 

This office was initially known as the Interdepartmental Foreign Information Organization. The director, along with a board of consultants representing State, Defense, 

CIA, the JCS, and the National Security Resources Board, and a staff drawn from 

State, Defense, and CIA, was charged with the policy formulation and planning functions delineated in NSC 59/1.39 Complementing this latest reorganization, President 

Truman inaugurated a “great campaign of truth” in an address to the American Society 

of Newspaper Editors, with the aim of launching a public diplomacy campaign against 

Soviet propaganda.40 This campaign was just getting underway when the Korean War 

began. The stress of coping with a difficult wartime situation would soon call the appropriateness of the NSC 59/1 arrangement into question. 

When the Korean War broke out, the State Department initially retained authority for the conduct of the foreign information program. Acting under the provisions 

of NSC 59/1, the State Department announced the establishment of a National Psychological Strategy Board on 17 August, though in practice this Board was simply a 

renamed Interdepartmental Foreign Information Organization.41 This version of the 

National Psychological Strategy Board remained under the direction of the Secretary 

of State. Since mid-July, however, a new arrangement had been under discussion. Pursuant of provisions of NSC 59/1, a draft “Plan for National Psychological Warfare” 

under the imprimatur of Under Secretary of State James Webb had been submitted for 

the NSC’s consideration on 10 July, and subsequently circulated as NSC 74.42 NSC 74, 

which was by and large written before the outbreak of the Korean War, recognized that 

after the initial stages of any war, the US government would move to establish a national psychological warfare organization of independent status, with direct access to 

the president, and “the authority to issue policy directives to departments and agencies 

of the government executing psychological warfare measures.”43 As had been the case 

in all previous incarnations of a coordinating and planning authority for psychological 

warfare, the draft of NSC 74 called for a directing board with members from the agencies which had been drawn from throughout the period since 1946–47. 

In one of the more interesting critiques of the status quo approach to organization 

presented in NSC 74, a letter to the NSC Secretariat submitted under the signature of 

Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson (Johnson had replaced Forrestal in March 1949) 

argued that, “effective psychological warfare requires perspective over and beyond 

that available to individuals who must consciously or subconsciously reflect the actions and policies, past and present, of the operating organizations which they represent.” He went on to argue that, “with rare exceptions, they do not have the broad, 

almost intuitive knowledge acquired in varied walks of life which go into the make-up 

of outstanding experts who have become leaders in their fields by practical application of mass civilian psychology techniques.” For Johnson, the only way to avoid the 

narrow, departmentally focused mindsets which had characterized previous attempts 

at psychological warfare coordination was to create a board in which the majority of 

its members were drawn from outside of government. Finally, Johnson suggested—reflecting a long-standing strain of Department of Defense opinion—that rather than 

simply having “official access” to the President, the Board should be lodged directly 

308 
 

within the Executive Office of the President.44 Interesting though these ideas were, by 

the time they had been submitted to the NSC, they carried little weight. Secretary Johnson had—for a variety of other reasons—already been forced to resign by President 

Truman.45 In his stead, President Truman would recall George C. Marshall to duty. 

After the Inchon landings (15 September) and prior to Chinese intervention in the 

Korean War (late November), when General Douglas MacArthur’s pledge of “Home 

by Christmas” pledge still seemed realistic, the perception that the fighting in Korea 

would be relatively brief contributed to a sense that there was little urgency to develop 

the psychological warfare program.46 Following Chinese intervention, a much gloomier view of the war emerged, which soon prompted Washington to become more interested in the problem of information management in wartime. In order to assert closer 

control over pronouncements by “officials in the field as well as those in Washington,” 

President Truman issued a memorandum on 5 December requiring all speeches, public statements, and press releases on foreign and military policy to be cleared by the 

State Department and Defense Department, respectively.47 However, this was largely 

a negative policy that did little to address how the US could better craft an information 

campaign in the context of a Cold War turned hot. 

On 16 December 1950, President Truman signed a declaration of limited national 

emergency. As he had previously explained to key legislative leaders, he intended that 

this declaration “would have very great psychological effects on the American people.”48 It also helped signal to government officials “the intensity of the current crisis 

demanded sweeping new initiatives.”49 The State Department and Defense Department had, however, made little progress toward closing the gap between their respective views regarding the appropriate wartime organization of a national psychological 

organization.50 Even after the Psychological Strategy Board was established, this difficulty was never fully resolved.51 

When the NSC took up discussion of the national psychological effort at its meeting on 4 January 1951, President Truman, probably frustrated with the lack of compromise between the respective agencies, directed Sidney Souers, the Executive Secretary 

of the NSC, and the Bureau of Budget to study the matter and make a recommendation 

for the organization to him.52 By 18 January, Souers had produced a “Draft Directive on the National Psychological Effort” which he proceeded to discuss with State, 

Defense, and CIA officials. Not surprisingly, Souers compromised between the State 

and Defense Departments by placing his proposed Psychological Strategy Board under 

none other than the National Security Council (rather than the “independent status” 

which the State Department had envisioned or directly in the Executive Office of the 

President, which was favored by the Defense Department). Despite initially strenuous 

State Department objections, the Psychological Strategy Board would be established 

broadly within the lines advocated by Souers’ compromise.53 

President Harry Truman issued a directive establishing a Psychological Strategy 

Board (PSB) on 4 April 1951. The PSB was to serve as a planning, coordinating, and 
evaluating agency, but it was not to carry out any operations itself. It would take several months to secure a director, staff, and offices. The PSB was comprised of the Under 

Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Central Intelligence, a military adviser from the JCS, appropriate representatives from other government departments and agencies as determined by the Board, and a Director (designated 

by the President), who served under the Board and directed the activities of its staff.54 

The PSB’s staff was organized into three offices: the Office of Plans and Policy, the 

Office of Coordination, and the Office of Evaluation and Review. One of the first subjects taken up by the PSB staff was contingency planning for a potential armistice in 

the Korean War. Should armistice negotiations break down, it was considered important that the fault be attributed to the communist participants. Subsequently, the PSB 

staff also tried to make an inventory of the US governments “weapons” for conducting 

psychological operations, and found itself caught up in the long-running wrangle over 

what should be the national psychological plan for general war.55 Constraints of time 

and space prevent a detailed discussion of the efforts made by the Psychological Strategy Board to carry out its mandate, but this author hopes that the interested reader will 

consult the impressive literature on the subject which has emerged in recent years.56 

Eisenhower and Psychological Warfare 

Once he was elected president, Eisenhower would make the formation of a coordinated national psychological effort one of his key objectives. Back in February 

1949, then General Eisenhower foreshadowed his own later views on the Psychological Strategy Board during a NSC discussion of planning for overt psychological warfare operations in peacetime. The summary of the discussion records that Eisenhower 

“agreed that the Department of State was the proper organization to plan [in peacetime],” but in a wartime situation the NSC itself, “which he saw as a defense cabinet during time of war, could effectively direct psychological warfare.”57 During his 

campaign for the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower frequently invoked the need for 

psychological warfare as the key component of the Cold War struggle with the Soviets. 

In a speech in San Francisco in early October 1952, Eisenhower said that in order to 

avoid the horror of war, it was necessary for the United States government to “use all 

means short of war to lead men to believe in the values that will preserve peace and 

freedom.” For Eisenhower the end goal was to convince the people of the world that 

“Americans want a world at peace, a world in which all people shall have opportunity 

for maximum individual development.” One of the key means of spreading this truth, 

for Eisenhower, was through psychological warfare, which Eisenhower defined as “the 

struggle for the minds and wills of men.” He charged the Truman administration had 

“never been able to grasp the full import of a psychological import put forth on a 

national scale.” Eisenhower argued that the United States needed a “united and coherent” Cold War effort in which every department and agency of the government would 

participate. In order to help coordinate this effort, Eisenhower championed the appointment of a “man of exceptional qualifications to handle the national psychological 

effort” who would have direct access to the President. For Eisenhower, it was critical 

310 
Psychological Strategy Board Organizational Chart (1951) 
 

 

to the success of such an effort would be the realization that, as a nation, “everything 

we say, everything we do, and everything we fail to do will have its impact in other 

lands”58 What role the Psychological Strategy Board would play was uncertain, given 

President-elect Eisenhower’s interest in reinvigorating the planning and coordinating 

role of the National Security Council. 

The future of the PSB was further clouded when, after his election, Eisenhower 

appointed C.D. Jackson, a wartime associate at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) who had experience in psychological warfare planning, to 

the post of Special Assistant to the President for Cold War Planning.59 In addition, 

Eisenhower formed a committee to investigate the foreign information activities of the 

US government with an eye toward improving their utility and coordination. President 

Eisenhower announced the formation of the President’s Committee on International 

Information Activities (better known as the Jackson Committee) on 26 January 1953. 60 

The Jackson Committee’s report was submitted to the President by the end of June, and 

discussed by the NSC during July and August.61 The committee members concluded 

that despite the numerous attempts at improving the policy coordination process in 

previous years that “a serious gap [existed] between the formulation of general objectives and the detailed actions required to give effect to them.” According to the Committee, the PSB had “neither sufficient power to exercise effective coordination nor the 

techniques adequate to produce meaningful evaluations.” Furthermore, the committee 

considered it inappropriate to attempt to hive off “psychological” planning from wider 

national policy, in which every diplomatic, military, or economic action had “psychological” implications.62 Having identified these failings, the Jackson Committee 

recommended the PSB be abolished, and it be replaced by a new body “capable of 

assuring the coordinated execution of national security policies.” This resulted in yet 

another organizational shuffle in the ensuing months. 

On 2 September 1953, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10483 establishing the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) in order to coordinate and ensure 

the carrying out of national security policy. As a result of this directive, the Psychological Strategy Board was to be abolished within 60 days, and its functions transferred 

to the OCB. The Operations Coordinating Board reported to the National Security 

Council. The OCB was composed of the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Foreign Operations Administration (abolished in 

August 1954), the Director of Central Intelligence, and a designated representative of 

the President. Thus, its compositions closely mirrored that of the earlier Psychological 

Strategy Board, though its writ was intentionally broader. Whether the OCB was any 

more successful than its predecessor is a matter of debate. 

Conclusion 

The Psychological Strategy Board represented an attempt to find a bureaucratic/ 

interagency solution to the coordination of America’s efforts to more successfully 

312 
 

wage Cold War. Mirroring the conclusions of the Jackson Committee, recent historical 

scholarship has taken a rather critical view of the PSB. According to Walter Hixson, 

“the PSB produced reams of studies, but failed to marshal the national security bureaucracy behind a coordinated effort.”63 In her recent study, Sarah-Jane Corke has argued 

that, “The bureaucratic machinery put in place between 1947 and 1952 had the unintended consequence of further removing the planning, development and implementation of covert operations from broader questions of national policy.” She regarded this 

as particularly problematic because it “ensured that American psychological warriors 

had an unprecedented degree of autonomy” which meant that they did not always act 

in accord with the wider American national interests.64 Though it is beyond the scope 

of this brief overview to assess the PSB’s failure to affect broad-ranging interagency 

cooperation, this author presents the following modest observation. The PSB was established in a period when the United States government had just begun to address the 

question of what is national security policy, and was doing so after 1950 in the context 

of a challenging war in East Asia. The emergence of national security policy, as opposed to foreign policy, posed a challenge to the traditional purview of the Department 

of State. That bureaucratic infighting remained unresolved even after numerous attempts had been made to improve the planning, coordination, and execution of policy 

may be unfortunate, but it is hardly surprising. The failure of the PSB might not lie 

in its bureaucratic structure, but rather in the limits of what can be attained by any attempt to better coordinate information policies or psychological strategy. There is also 

a legitimate question as to what can be construed under the umbrella of “all means 

short of war.” Finally, later day attempts at information management, whether in the 

Eisenhower administration, during the Vietnam War, or the modern day campaigns in 

Southwest Asia, have all demonstrated that the PSB’s limitations were certainly not 

unique.65 

Notes 

1. Some of the most extensive early research on the history of the US psychological warfare 

effort in World War II and the early Cold War was done by Dr. Edward Lilly, a historian, who 

served as the Office of War Information (OWI) first Official Historian (late June 1944 to late 

1945), as a Special Consultant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1946–1952, and as a long-serving member of the National Security Staff thereafter. While working for OWI, Lilly began a 

history of the agencies activities, which eventually ran to 800 pages. While working for the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lilly produced two classified reports: a 1,400-page opus on the US psychological warfare effort, generally, and a shorter 104-page report titled “Psychological Operations 1945–1951. None have been published, but drafts and extensive material Lilly collected 

for research are available at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. See Papers of Edward P. Lilly, 

especially Boxes 15–53, Eisenhower Library. Lilly was finally able to publish a distillation of 

his voluminous research in an article “The Psychological Strategy Board and Its Predecessors: 

Foreign Policy Coordination 1938–1953,” in Studies in Modern History, Gaetano L. Vincitoria, 

ed. (New York: St. John’s University Press, 1968), pp. 337–82. Other early literature on the 
subject includes Edward W. Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 

1953); Murray Dyer, The Weapon on the Wall: Rethinking Psychological Warfare (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins Press, 1959); Robert Holt and Robert van de Velde, Strategic Psychological Operations and American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Thomas 

C. Sorensen, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda (New York: Harper & Row, 

1968); and Robert Edward Summers, America’s Weapons of Psychological Warfare (New York: 

Wilson, 1951); and John Boardman Whitton, ed., Propaganda and the Cold War [originally 

Public Affairs Press, 1963], reprint edition (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984). 

2. A brief note on terminology: psychological warfare was used extensively from World 

War II on to refer to what an earlier generation would have called propaganda. Due to concern 

over that “psychological warfare” sounded out of place in peacetime, the phrase “foreign information operations” was applied by some as a substitute. The difficulty in delineating the meaning of these terms (propaganda/psychological warfare/foreign information operations) was recognized by participants at the time. There is fairly extensive literature on this subject, of which 

the following is certainly not exhaustive. See Nancy E. Bernhard, “Clearer than Truth: Public 

Affairs Television and the State Department’s Domestic Information Campaigns, 1947–1952,” 

Diplomatic History, v.21, n.4 (Fall 1997): 545–67; Nancy E. Bernhard, US Television News and 

Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Sarah-Jane 

Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA, 

1945–53 (London: Routledge, 2008); Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War 

Behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000); Walter Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); 

David F. Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945–1953 

(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Scott Lucas, “The Campaigns of Truth: The 

Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953,” The International History 

Review 18:2 (May 1996), pp. 279–302; Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Crusade 

Against the Soviet Union (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Gregory Mitrovich, 

Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca, 

NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of 

Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Frank 

Ninkovich, US Information Policy and Cultural Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy 

Association, 1996); Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle 

at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Alfred H. Paddock Jr., US 

Army Special Warfare: Its Origins, rev. edn. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002); and 

Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda and the Cold War, 1945–1955 

(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). 

3. On the history of the Creel Committee, see Stewart Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War: 

How the United States Was Conditioned to Fight the Great War of 1914–1918 (Jefferson, NC: 

McFarland & Company, 1996), and Stephen Vaughn, Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information (Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 1980). 

4. For an assessment of the dilemma Roosevelt faced, see Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2001). 

314 
5. William Leuchtenburg has written, “in flat defiance of the cardinal rule of public administration textbooks—that every administrator appear on a chart with a clearly stated assignment—[Franklin Roosevelt] not only deliberately disarranged spheres of authority but also 

appointed men of clashing attitudes and temperaments.” William E. Leuchtenburg, “Franklin 

D. Roosevelt: The First Modern President,” Leadership in the Modern Presidency, ed. by Fred 

I. Greenstein (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 28. 

6. Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information 1942–1945 

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 21–28. 

7. Ibid., p. 25. On Roosevelt’s concern regarding Nazi activities in Latin America, see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 233–36. 

8. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda, pp. 28–29. 

9. On the Office of Censorship, see Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of 

Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of 

North Carolina Press, 2001). 

10. Reproduced in Appendix A, p. 2 of SNWCC 304/4, 3 September 1947. State-War-Navy 

Coordinating Committee Records Policy Files, 1944–1949 [Microfilm] (Wilmington, DE: 

Scholarly Resources, 1977), Reel 26 [hereafter SWNCC]. 

11. Clayton D. Laurie, The Propaganda Warriors: America’s Crusade Against Nazi Germany 

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), pp. 233–40. 

12. The General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, Psychological Warfare in 

the European Theater of Operation, Study No. 131. p. 1 https://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/ 

carl/eto/eto-131.pdf 

13. Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American 

Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 

209–10. 

14. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 4. 

15. Executive Order 9608, 31 August 1945. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=60671. 

16. Nonetheless, Truman scholar and biographer Alonzo Hamby argues that “as late as September 1946, [Truman’s] personal attitudes toward the USSR remained mixed and allowed 

room for hope about the future. He did not believe that his move in the direction of a hard line 

was irrevocable.” Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 360. 

17. Hamby, Man of the People, p. 346. 

18. Walter Millis, ed. The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), p. 143. In addition, during 1946 a considerable amount of Forrestal’s attention was engaged in the question of 

unification of the armed services into a single department, which would itself have important 

implications for the coordination of US national security policy. 

19. On the broader context of the emerging national security state, see Michael J. Hogan, 

A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of 

Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford 

University Press, 1992). 
20. The State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee had been formed in December 1944. It 

was made up of the Under Secretary of State, the Under Secretary of War, and the Under Secretary of the Navy. Harold W. Moseley, Charles W. McCarthy, and Alvin F. Richardson, “The 

State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee,” The Department of State Bulletin, v.13, n.333 (11 

November 1945), pp. 745–47. 

21. Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy, p. 28. The General Board, United 

States Forces, European Theater did commission a study on psychological warfare in the European Theater. It was prepared by Major Ray K. Craft with consultation from BG Robert A. 

McClure and COL Clifford R. Powell. It is unclear, however, when this report was completed. 

The General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, Psychological Warfare in the European Theater of Operation, Study No. 131. p. 3, https://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/eto/ 

eto-131.pdf. 

22. Memorandum for the SWNCC Secretariat, 31 May 1946, Ser. No. 00395P35, SWNCC 

[Microfilm], Reel 26. 

23. Report of Ad Hoc Committee—Psychological Warfare, 10 December 1946, SWNCC 

[Microfilm], Reel 26. 

24. President Truman attended only 10 of the first 55 meetings of the NSC. On the functioning of the NSC in the Truman Presidency, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/history.html. 

25. SANA–5781, 24 October 1947, SWNCC Records [Microfilm], Reel 26. 

26. Memorandum for SANACC with a draft Memorandum to the President, 25 October 

1947, SWNCC [Microfilm], Reel 26. 

27. Summary of Decisions of the War Council at its Meeting on 4 November [1947], Declassified Documents Reference System [Microfiche], 2000, Fiche 244, doc. no. 3058. See also 

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945–1950: Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment [hereafter FRUS, 1945–1950] (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1996), 

Doc.248, pp. 633–34, http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/intel/index.html. 

28. Reproduced in FRUS, 1945–1950, Doc.249, pp. 635–37. 

29. Paddock, US Army Special Warfare, p. 50. 

30. FRUS 1945–1950, Doc.252, pp. 639–42. 

31. FRUS 1945–1950, Doc.253, pp. 643–45. 

32. Krugler, The Voice of America, pp. 57–70. The Smith-Mundt Act stated “the Secretary [of 

State] is authorized, when he finds it appropriate, to provide for the preparation, and dissemination abroad, of information about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, 

publications, radio, motion pictures, and other information media, and through information 

centers and instructors abroad.” 

33. The communist coup in Czechoslovakia had important repercussions in Western Europe, 

as well as in the United States. Anglo-French-Benelux discussions on a security treaty got 

underway in Brussels, Belgium from 4–15 March, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty 

of Brussels on 17 March 1948. John Baylis, The Diplomacy of Pragmatism: Britain and the 

Formation of NATO: 1942–1949 (London: Macmillan, 1993); Bruna Bagnato, “France and 

the Origins of the Atlantic Pact,” and Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, “The Origins of Western 

Defense. Belgian and Dutch Perspectives 1940–1949,” both in Enni DiNolfo, ed., The Atlantic 

Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991). The British, Canadians, and Americans also undertook preliminary security consultations in March with 

316 
an aim toward coordinated their respective emergency war plans. Cees Wiebes and Bert Zeeman, “The Pentagon Negotiations March 1948: The Launching of the North Atlantic Treaty,” 

International Affairs, v.59, n.3 (Summer 1983), pp. 353–54; and Steven L. Rearden, History of 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense, v.1: The Formative Years 1947–1950 (Washington, DC: 

Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1984), pp. 459–61. 

34. All that came of Forrestal’s request was a study undertaken by a board of NSC Consultants which essentially verified the status quo. FRUS 1945–1950, Docs.262, 266–67, pp. 655, 

664–65. 

35. Years before, Major Ray Craft stated in his report to the General Board, European Theater 

of Operations that “psychological warfare operations embrace politics which can only be fixed 

at the highest government level.” Psychological Warfare in the European Theater of Operation, 

Study No. 131. p. 3. 

36. The conduct of covert psychological activities abroad remained within the purview of the 

CIA. NSC 10/2, “National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects,” approved 

on 18 June 1948, established an Office of Special Projects within the CIA. The Director of the 

Office of Special Projects was responsible, through coordination with designated representatives of the Secretaries of State and Defense that covert operations were planned and conducted 

consistent with the foreign and military policies of the US government. The JCS were also 

given the right to assist in the drawing up plans for covert operations in wartime and approving 

such plans as being consonant with approved wartime plans. FRUS 1945–1950, Doc.292, pp. 

713–15. The State Department position on this matter was consistent under both Secretary Marshall and his successor Dean Acheson. Acheson reiterated the State Department’s position that 

they should retain responsibility for planning at the 34th NSC Meeting on 17 February 1949, 

Papers of Harry S. Truman, PSF Subject File, NSC Meetings File, Box 177, Harry S. Truman 

Library [hereafter HSTL]. 

37. NSC 59/1 was approved by President Truman on 10 March 1950. It had been circulated 

to the NSC, but does not appear to have been discussed at any formal NSC meeting prior to its 

approval based on the authors review of NSC Meetings 51–54, dating from 5 January through 

6 April 1950. Papers of Harry S. Truman, PSF Subject File, NSC Meetings File, Box 179, 

HSTL. 

38. NSC 43, “Planning for Wartime Conduct of Overt Psychological Warfare” had been approved on 9 March 1949, following discussion at the 34th NSC Meeting of 17 February. 

39. Foreign Relations, 1950–1955: The Intelligence Community [hereafter FRUS 1950–1955], 

Doc.2, pp. 2–4; and Lilly, “The Psychological Strategy Board and Its Predecessors,” p. 360. 

40. “Truman Address to Editors Stresses Facts Urgent in Global Field,” Christian Science 

Monitor, 20 April 1950, p. 3; and “Text of President’s Plea to Editors to Help Crush Red ‘Lies,’” 

New York Times, 21 April 1950, p. 4. Edward Barrett, a former director of the Office of War 

Information’s Overseas Branch and editor of Newsweek, was recruited to serve at the Assistant 

Secretary of State for Public Affairs in order to help launch this campaign. Barrett, The Truth Is 

Our Weapon, pp. 31ff. 

41. FRUS 1950–1955, Doc.17, pp. 20–21. 

42. NSC 74 was never formally approved, but remained the subject of discussion throughout the fall of 1950. The complete report, running to 51 pages, is not reproduced in FRUS, 

1950–1955. See note 17, pp.20–21. There is a copy of the first nine pages of the report and 
comments thereon by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and the JCS in the folder for the 77th 

NSC Meeting, 4 January 1951, Papers of Harry S. Truman, PSF, NSF Files, Box 181, HSTL. 

43. NSC 74, p.4, located in the folder for the 77th NSC Meeting, 4 January 1951, Papers of 

Harry S. Truman, PSF, NSF Files, Box 181, HSTL. 

44. Johnson suggested these civilian members might include a public relations counsel, publisher, internationally knowledgeable labor and church leaders, and/or professionals in the field 

of mass psychology. Memorandum from the Secretary of Defense for the Executive Secretary, 

NSC re: NSC 74, 13 September 1950. Before the matter was taken up by the NSC at its 77th 

Meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff also submitted a memorandum which supported the suggestion that the director of any new board be independent of any existing agency and responsible 

directly to the President. Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense from the JCS, 3 January 

1951. Copies of both are located in the folder for the 77th NSC Meeting, 4 January 1951, Papers 

of Harry S. Truman, PSF, NSF Files, Box 181, HSTL. 

45. Truman informed Johnson that he wanted him to resign on 11 September, and had Johnson sign his letter of resignation the next day. Thus, it is unclear whether the letter submitted to 

the NSC on the 13th was actually signed by Johnson, or represented the views of one his office 

staff. On Truman’s decision to remove Johnson, see Hamby, Man of the People, pp.546–47. 

46. For the best recent study of the US governments public diplomacy/information engagements in the context of the Korean War, see Steven Casey, Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 2008). See also the “Second Progress Report on NSC 59/1,” FRUS 19501–955, Doc.28, 

pp.45–46. 

47. DDRS, 1992, F127, 1873. 

48. Quoted in Casey, Selling the Korean War, p.175. 

49. Casey, Selling the Korean War, p.176. 

50. Memorandum from Asst. Sec. State for Public Affairs to Sec. State Acheson, 13 February 

1951, FRUS 1950–1955, Doc.49, p.92. 

51. Osgood, Total Cold War, p.45. 

52. The National Psychological Effort, min.4, 77th NSC Meeting, 4 January 1951, Papers of 

Harry S. Truman, PSF, NSF Files, Box 181, HSTL. 

53. Memorandum from Asst. Sec. State for Public Affairs to Sec. State Acheson, 13 February 

1951, FRUS 1950–1955, Doc.49, p.93. 

54. FRUS 1951, v.1, pp.58–60. The first director of the PSB was Gordon Gray, a friend of 

Truman’s who had previously served in the administration as Assistant Secretary and Secretary 

of the Army before leaving government to become President of the University of North Carolina. Gray served as Director of the PSB from June 1951 until May 1952. Raymond H. Allen 

then served as director from May-September 1952, and Admiral Alan Kirk served as director 

for the remainder of the Truman presidency. 

55. “One Year’s Development of the PSB,” DDRS, 1999, F99, 1155. 

56. See note 2. 

57. Memorandum of Discussion, 34th NSC Meeting, 17 February 1949, Papers of Harry S. 

Truman, PSF, NSC Meetings File, Box 186, HSTL. 

58. “‘Ike’ Sees Victory in Cold War,” Christian Science Monitor, 9 October 1952, p.9. 

59. Osgood’s Total Cold War has the best recent discussion on C.D. Jackson’s role in the 

318 
Eisenhower administration. Two earlier studies of note are Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1981), and H. W. 

Brands, Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 1988). 

60. The Committee was chaired by William H. Jackson. Its members included Robert Cutler 

(Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs), Gordon Gray (the first director 

of the PSB), Barklie McKee Henry, John C. Hughes, C. D. Jackson, Roger M. Kyes, and Sigurd Larmon. The President’s Committee on International Information Activities: Report to the 

President, 30 June 1953, DDRS, 2002, F100-101, 1697. 

61. The longest discussion of the report took place at the 152nd meeting of the NSC on 2 July. 

Subsequent progress reports on the drafting of an executive order to establish the Operations 

Coordinating Board took place at the 157th, 159th, and 160th meetings. Copies of these meetings are located in Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ann Whitman File), National Security 

File, Box 4, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library. 

62. The President’s Committee on International Information Activities: Report to the President, pp. 89–90. 

63. Quoted in Osgood, Total Cold War, p. 45. 

64. Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy, p. 5. 

65. For instance, in 1964, senior officials in the Johnson administration deemed it necessary 

to establish a “communications czar” in Saigon to improve US information policies in Vietnam; in 1969, President Nixon established an Office of White House Communications to better 

coordinate its own information policies; and in 2003 President George H. Bush established an 

Office of Global Communications to improve US information policies in the global war on terror. 

Panel 7—Interagency Process in the United States
 

(Submitted Paper)
 

“Our Most Reliable Friends”—Army Officers and Tribal 

Leaders in Western Indian Territory, 1875-1889
 

by
 

Mr. William A. Dobak
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

Scholars and members of the general public alike often display a warped view of 

the United States Army’s relation to American Indian tribes. This view emphasizes 

violent conflict rather than the implementation of national policy. The problem has 

existed for more than a century, at least since Frederic Remington picked the most 

dramatic incidents in his own and other authors’ articles to serve as subjects for illustrations. A generation ago, Robert M. Utley’s two classic histories of the Army in the 

American West appeared, each with the phrase, The United States Army and the Indian 

in the title. Today, the University of Nebraska Press paperback editions of Frontiersmen in Blue and Frontier Regulars contain only the briefest hints that both books first 

appeared as part of Macmillan’s Wars of the United States series, commissioned in the 

early 1960s—a commission that defined the scope of the author’s investigation and 

necessarily excluded a mountain of documentation about “the Army and the Indian” 

that would take several historians’ lifetimes to work through.1 

This focus on conflict has led to some very odd assertions finding their way into 

print. One historian has observed casually: “Not surprisingly, many soldiers were devoted Indian-haters; relatively few were concerned with Indians’ rights or their government’s guarantees of protection to Indians under federal treaties.” Another relates 

that after General William T. Sherman’s narrow escape from an ambush in 1871, he 

“abandoned the [Grant administration’s] Peace Policy and Sheridan, as commander 

of the Division of the Missouri, was responsible for all military matters in the million-square-mile expanse of the Indian insurrection.” An architectural historian writing 

about 19th century Army posts in Wyoming seems to separate the Army from the Federal government entirely: “The nature of the army’s conflict with the Indians changed 

as the army’s goal shifted from protecting emigration to facilitating the process of 

settlement. US government relations with the Indians changed as well. . . .” The Army 

has a “conflict”—the US government maintains “relations.”2 

The viewpoint that these and many other authors share might be called the Fallacy of Army Autonomy. One would like to see all of them enrolled in an introductory course in American politics, to learn about the three branches of government and, 

subordinate to the executive, the cabinet departments, for it was within this framework 
that the 19th century Army operated. Like any other agency of the Federal government, 

the Army followed policies decided at a higher level and depended for its budget on 

funds appropriated from year to year by the legislative branch. 

The Army itself is not altogether blameless in this matter. The 1956 edition of 

American Military History (ROTCM 145-20), the military history text used in Army 

ROTC courses, did not get around to mentioning the administration of Indian affairs 

until the chapter that discussed post-1865 events. Then, it did so in tones that suggest 

the screenplay for one of John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy films: 

In 1849 the administration of Indian affairs had been taken away from the War Department and entrusted to the Department of the Interior, whose agents either were inexperienced in the administration of Indian affairs or deliberately cheated their charges. 

Even under conditions of hostility, these agents furnished Indians with the latest models of repeating rifles and plenty of ammunition, either because it was fi nancially profitable to do so or because they naively believed that the Indians wanted their weapons 

only to kill buffalo. 

Since this textbook concerned itself only with the Army, it did not mention that before 

1849, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reported to the Secretary of War; or, indeed, 

that administrators of Indian affairs had reported to the Secretary of War since Washington’s first term as President. Having noted the 1849 transfer, the authors imply that 

all Indians are plains buffalo hunters.3 

The text of the 1969 edition underwent some revision. Gone were the malevolent 

or naive civilian agents. Instead, shoved even further back in the text, in a brief discussion of conflict with the Apaches, was: 

Throughout the Indian wars there was constant friction between the War and the Interior Departments over the conduct of Indian affairs. A committee of the Continental 

Congress had first exercised this responsibility. In 1789 it was transferred to the Secretary of War, and in 1824 a Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in the War Department. 

When the Department of the Interior was established in 1849, the Indian bureau was 

transferred to that agency. Thus administration of Indian affairs was handled by one 

department while enforcement lay with another. 

This is an improvement—the wording remains unchanged in the most recent edition of the text—but the balance of the chapter concerns itself with a series of unconnected armed conflicts across the West. Granted, the Army between 1874 and 1898 

was smaller than today’s New York Police Department, or the total number of police 

(state, county, and municipal) in New Jersey. Granted, too, that the political structure 

of North American Indian societies—which operated by consensus rather than majority rule, with extremely decentralized authority, and individual membership in any particular band apt to shift at a moment’s notice—makes comparisons to official dealings 

with other peoples difficult. Still, unpublished military and civilian documents in the 

National Archives reveal a side of Army life largely unknown to readers and writers of 

the chase-and-shootout school of Western military history.4 

322 
The more usual pattern of relations between the Army, the Indian Service (made 

up of the agents, teachers, physicians, blacksmiths, and other employees hired by the 

Office of Indian Affairs and assigned to tribal agencies throughout the country), and 

the American Indians themselves, grew largely out of the country’s need to replenish 

its treasury after the Civil War. The war had put the United States government deeply 

in debt, and a secure central corridor became necessary to transport the gold produced 

in California, Colorado, and Montana mines. In order to do this, the government extinguished the Indian title to lands in Nebraska and Kansas, moving tribes in those north 

to Dakota Territory, or south to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Some of 

these tribes had moved west only a generation or two before from their ancestral territory east of the Mississippi River, during the era of Indian Removal.5 

Agents and other employees of the Office of Indian Affairs established offices 

(called agencies) at convenient locations to administer the different tribes, furnish 

them with health and educational services, and distribute rations and “annuity goods” 

such as clothing, blankets, and hardware under the terms of various treaties. Such arrangements were common on Indian reservations throughout the United States. What 

occurred more frequently in the plains and the Southwest than elsewhere was the establishment of military posts near the agencies. These posts were necessary to restrain 

the young men of some of the newly confined plains tribes, to avert conflict between 

tribal factions (some of which stemmed from divided allegiances that dated back to 

the Civil War), and to prevent the rustling of Indian horses and cattle or the cutting 

of reservation timber by neighboring white settlers. As Brigadier General Alfred H. 

Terry wrote when the Crow Indians of Montana asked that white intruders be removed 

from their reservation: “Every consideration of good faith, humanity and public policy 

requires that . . . the vagabonds and roughs of the frontier should be taught that they . 

. . must obey the law . . . an obligation which they now deride.” During the last third 

of the nineteenth century, therefore, soldiers had many opportunities for first-hand 

observation of American Indians and the white civilians who were appointed to govern 

them.6 

Since Richard Ellis published his article, “The Humanitarian Soldiers,” in 1969, 

it has become a commonplace that many Army officers were keen observers of western Indians and devoted a good deal of thought to the condition of those who were 

restricted to reservations. More recently, Sherry Smith has devoted a large part of her 

book, The View From Officers’ Row, to this matter. Yet Ellis’s article and Smith’s book 

rely largely on officers’ private letters and diaries and on published sources. What does 

Army officers’ official correspondence tell us about how they handled everyday relations with tribal leaders on the reservations? Let’s look at some of the letters they wrote 

about the plains tribes on their reservations in the western part of the Indian Territory 

during the 15 years after the Army’s last campaign on the southern plains, the Red 

River War of 1874–75.7 

Land for these reservations became available in 1866 after the United States government imposed a series of punitive treaties on Southeastern tribes that the govern 

ment had forced west a generation earlier. The punishment was for those tribes having 

backed the losing side in the Civil War. The 1866 treaties stripped the Five Tribes of 

their land holdings west of the 98th Meridian. Large tracts of this western land were 

then set aside as reservations for tribes of the Southern Plains.8 

This western half of the Indian Territory was the site of three principal Army posts. 

The oldest of these, Camp Supply, on the North Fork of the Canadian River in the 

northwest corner of the territory, dated from General Sheridan’s autumn campaign 

against the Southern Cheyennes in 1868. Fort Reno was also on the North Fork of the 

Canadian River, far downstream from Fort Supply, at the eastern edge of the Cheyenne 

and Arapaho reservation. Fort Sill stood near the Comanche and Kiowa Agency in the 

southwest corner of the territory.9 

Just east of Fort Reno and the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation, on the other side 

of the 98th Meridian, lay the Unassigned Lands, popularly known as the Oklahoma 

District, about 2,950 square miles—which works out to nearly 12,000 quarter sections 

of farm land.10 This large tract in the geographical center of the Indian Territory soon 

attracted the attention of promoters—called Boomers, from the land boom they hoped 

to create—who urged throughout the early 1880s that the Unassigned Lands be opened 

to settlement. From 1879 through 1885, the Boomers mounted annual, even semiannual, “invasions” from towns in southern Kansas. Just as often, soldiers from Fort 

Reno and other Army posts would round them up and deliver them to a Federal court in 

Fort Smith, Arkansas, or Wichita, Kansas, where the judge would levy a fine—the only 

legal penalty for trespass on Federal lands—the invaders would protest their inability 

to pay, and the court would turn them loose to repeat the process. But the Boomers had 

before them the example of the Black Hills gold rush of 1875 and 1876, and they knew 

that a popular invasion of Indian lands was likely to make the Federal government 

disavow its treaty obligations.11 

They were right. Through the early months of 1889, a lame duck session of the 

50th Congress wrestled with legislation to open the Unassigned Lands to settlement.12 

On 12 February that year, a delegation of about 20 Cheyennes and Arapahos called 

on Fort Reno’s commanding officer. “There is considerable uneasiness among these 

Indians,” the colonel reported, “they get all the wild reports about Oklahoma and the 

Territory from the Kansas papers, and are very anxious to get their views on the matter 

before the President and Congress.”13 

A Cheyenne named Whirlwind spoke for the delegation. He deplored the projected 

land grab and asked that the tribes be allowed to keep a contiguous tract “and let us 

have land enough so we can . . . support ourselves by stock raising and not have to rely 

on the uncertainties of farming in a droughty country.” In his prefatory remarks, he 

explained the delegation’s visit by saying that “in time of peace we have always found 

the military our most reliable friends.”14 

324 
 

 

 

 

A little preliminary oil never hurts when asking a favor, but how much factual 

basis did Whirlwind’s assessment of the Army and its officers have? Five years earlier, Whirlwind had been to Washington and met with the Secretary of the Interior and 

had spoken out against grazing leases for white ranchers on the Cheyenne-Arapaho 

reservation.15 He and other tribal leaders in many parts of the west had observed the 

rudimentary Federal bureaucracy of the 19th century and had some idea, at least, of 

how it worked. What factors might have moved Whirlwind to call Army officers “our 

most reliable friends”?16 

First, there was food. Federal law—the same act of 1834 that created the Office 

of Indian Affairs—obliged the Army to feed any Indians who visited a military post.17 

Congress wrote this provision into the bill in response to reports of starvation among 

the tribes that were being moved forcibly from the southeast to the Indian Territory.18 A 

generation later, the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos must have learned from visits 

with their northern kin about the Army’s feeding those of them who visited Forts Fetterman and Laramie, in Wyoming. In 1871, the Army distributed more than $150,000 

worth of rations to Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Sioux at those two posts on the North 

Platte—nearly three-quarters of the money it spent on feeding Indians that year.19 

More immediate in shaping the Southern Plains tribes’ attitude toward the Army 

must have been the events of 1875, just as the Red River War was petering out. Early 

that May, under the head “Hungry Indians,” the Army and Navy Journal printed a 

dispatch written a month earlier. The Comanche-Kiowa agency had run out of flour, 

Fort Sill’s commanding officer wrote, and he had ordered his own commissary to issue rations to 294 Indians. Moreover, the civilian agency was issuing beef cattle that 

were too weak to be driven to the Indian camps for slaughter; instead, they had to be 

butchered where they fell and the meat carried to the camps. A second report from 

General John Pope, whose command included the Indian Territory, confirmed that the 

Wichita and Cheyenne-Arapaho agencies lacked provisions too and had since the previous summer. “It is idle to expect that these Indians will remain peacefully upon their 

reservations with the prospect of starvation in doing so,” Pope added.20 

One way to help feed the people was to allow them to hunt buffalo off the reservations. “Much of the sickness during the past summer among these tribes is attributed 

to the insufficiency of their rations,” Fort Sill’s commanding officer wrote in the fall 

of 1875.21 To allow hunting parties off the reservations, though, posed the problem of 

keeping the peace between them and any stray or organized white people they might 

encounter, whether cowboys or Texas Rangers.22 The solution was to provide military 

escorts for hunting parties. Escorts usually included one sergeant or corporal and half 

a dozen privates. Troops from posts in the western half of Indian Territory furnished 

such escorts as early as October 1875 for fall hunts by the Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Osages, and Wichitas.23 While the troopers protected the hunters from belligerent whites, the leaders of the hunting party were responsible for the escort’s safety 

“should they meet any bad Indians,” as the colonel put it.24 Some of the hunting parties 

stayed out until January.25 
 

 

The question of escorts for off-reservation hunting parties recalls another, much 

more unusual, instance of escort duty. In December 1884, soldiers furnished an escort for Quanah Parker and other Comanches on their way to the Big Bend country 

of Texas in search of peyote cactus.26 Not that the Army promoted Native American 

religion; its institutional interest was in keeping order, and since “civilizing the Red 

Man” was the business of the Department of the Interior’s Office of Indian Affairs and 

its civilian agents, Army officers were apt to dismiss agents’ nervous appeals for help 

in suppressing such manifestations of Indian culture as communal dances.27 In 1889, 

the same year in which Whirlwind called army officers “our most reliable friends,” the 

superintendent of Indian schools for the Cheyennes and Arapahos requested military 

aid in removing a band of about 200 “non-progressive, dirty and indolent Arapahoe 

Indians, who visit the school buildings begging . . . and every evening to a late hour 

hold their strangely grotesque dances, with drums and hideous yells, which are heard 

throughout . . . the school buildings. . . .”28 Asked to shift these Arapahos, the senior Army officer present replied that the civilian agent was the proper person for the 

school superintendent to report to, and added: “In regard to the dances . . . reported, 

they are only the Indian method of amusement and take the place of ball room, theater, 

saloon, etc., of his more civilized brother.”29 Some years earlier, another Army officer 

had been closer to the mark when he reported, after attending the Sun Dance at the 

Spotted Tail Agency, Nebraska: “The annual Sun Dance is to the Indian about what 

the camp meeting used to be to the Methodists.”30 In both cases, though, recognition 

of the social side of an annual religious observance indicates a more relaxed attitude 

towards non-Christian practices than a civilian Indian agent with a civilizing mission 

could afford to entertain. 

To revert to the immediate question of feeding reservation residents: throughout 

the west, Army officers were present to observe the periodic distribution of food and 

annuity goods—cloth and clothing, hardware, and other items—and reported on the 

quality and quantity of what reservation residents received. In the summer of 1875, 

General Sheridan issued an order affecting the entire Military Division of the Missouri, from Montana to the Rio Grande, that warned inspecting officers to watch out 

for “fraudulent transactions,” but natural causes like drought or freezing weather could 

affect the rations, especially beef on the hoof, as drastically as could contractors’ chicanery.31 Adverse reports from inspecting officers in western Indian Territory began 

to reach the Adjutant General’s office soon after the end of the Red River War, as most 

members of the plains tribes reported to their agencies and began to receive rations. 

Federal law had mandated these inspections since 1868, but during the three years 

after the Red River War, Sheridan’s Chicago headquarters received so many adverse 

reports from inspecting officers at Indian agencies that in 1878 he devoted part of his 

own annual report to the subject. He began by acknowledging the Department of the 

Interior’s responsibility for Indian affairs, “and if it were not for the results which so 

severely involve the military, this would be none of my business.” But “now that the 

game, upon which the Indians depended for their regular supply of food, is gone,” 

Sheridan continued, “we shall require a greater supply of rations, with perfect regular326 
ity in its issue, to meet the needs of these people.” He predicted that “wretched mismanagement” by the Office of Indian Affairs might lead to a new wave of Indian wars, 

for, he wrote, “almost any race of men will fight rather than starve.”32 

Sheridan’s published report bore the date 25 October 1878. Since that summer 

though, the general had been embroiled in controversy with the Interior Department 

about a plan to consolidate the agencies for the Comanches, Kiowas, and Wichitas at 

a site some 30 miles from Fort Sill. Apart from balking at the expense of building a 

new post, Sheridan observed that “the removal of Indian agencies away from military 

posts has for its main motive a desire to cheat and defraud the Indians by avoiding the 

presence of officers who would naturally see and report it.”33 Secretary of the Interior 

Carl Schurz bridled at “so insulting an insinuation,” and when Sheridan’s annual report 

appeared, he demanded a statement of the facts behind the “general arraignment” of 

the Office of Indian Affairs.34 

Fortunately for Sheridan, he had abundant material to draw from. An Army officer 

at Fort Sill the previous December had reported the issue of beef cattle that were “not 

equal to the requirements of [the] contract,” and that letter was the basis of a correspondence file that grew to include more than 50 similar reports from many parts of 

Sheridan’s geographical command by the time Secretary Schurz asked for Sheridan’s 

facts.35 Just a month after the Secretary’s request, Sheridan issued a 10-page “Supplemental Report” with a 20-page appendix of quotations from letters that had been arriving in his office for the previous four years.36 

This bureaucratic flare-up does not figure prominently in recent biographies of 

Schurz and Sheridan, but it was one high point in the decades-long controversy between soldiers and civilians as to whether the War Department or the Interior Department should administer federal Indian policy.37 It was the only occasion during 

Sheridan’s 14 years in command of the Military Division of the Missouri when he published a supplementary report to substantiate charges of mismanagement by the Office 

of Indian Affairs. And this incident shows why Whirlwind could call Army officers the 

Indians’ “most reliable friends”—they could usually be relied on to question the ability 

and honesty of the employees of a different Federal agency. 

One series of visits by tribal leaders to Fort Supply’s commanding officer in 1883 

and 1884 may have produced some results. In July 1883, Colonel Joseph H. Potter received a delegation of Cheyennes led by Stone Calf, Little Robe, and five others whom 

the colonel named, to protest grazing leases to large cattle interests on the Cheyenne 

and Arapaho reservation. The delegation complained of certain prominent Cheyennes 

and Arapahos who had signed the leases and alleged bribery by the Bent Brothers and 

an interpreter employed by the Federal government, among other interested parties. 

The delegates who came to see Colonel Potter “are very emphatic in speaking of these 

leases,” he reported to General Pope’s headquarters at Fort Leavenworth. “[T]his matter should be attended to as early as possible.”38 
 

The grazing leases continued in force for the next 18 months. In December 1884, 

some of the same Cheyennes, Little Robe and Stone Calf among them, called again on 

Colonel Potter. This time Potter sent a personal letter to Lieutenant Colonel Michael 

V. Sheridan in Chicago, where Sheridan served as aide to his brother, the general. The 

letter is worth quoting at length. Potter told Sheridan: 

“I see by the papers, that the Senate is after the Interior Dept. in regard to the leases of 

Indian lands, and ’tis about time. I believe this lease business is a most infamous fraud. 

This whole Territory is fenced in—and covered with cattle. More cattle than grass. The 

Indians are set aside entirely. There are about eighty of them here now complaining to 

me. . . . They say that not one of them have agreed to or signed these leases, and those 

that did sign them were a lot of old bummers who hang about the agency and would 

sign anything for a handful of grub. These people say that they want to make farms 

and raise corn, . . . but that the cattle run over their fences and destroy all they have. 

One of them told me that a year since he had [125] head of cattle and that now he can’t 

fi nd twenty-five of them. All stolen by these cattle men. Small herds stand no chance 

here—whether they belong to Indians or white men. And the small owners have been 

forced to leave or sell out. . . . I have told these Indians . . . to go to their agent about 

such matters, but they say that they won’t do it any more, as they have often enough 

without any satisfaction. He tells them to take the lease money—and that is all. They 

say that they want some honest people to come here and look for themselves, but they 

don’t want them to come to the agency and listen to the agent and those at the agency 

only, but to come and listen to the Cheyenne people. . . . I for one think that these 

people are right, and that the Government ought to look into this matter. It may save 

trouble hereafter, and ’tis no more than justice. . . . They say that they want General 

Sheridan to know how it stands with them. They believe in him. Will you tell him 

so.39 

How Potter came to know Michael Sheridan well enough to entitle him to send a 

private letter is uncertain. They may have known each other in Virginia, during the last 

months of the Civil War.40 Nor is it clear whether Michael Sheridan called the general’s attention to Potter’s letter. It is certain, though, that by the middle of the following 

year there was sufficient disturbance to bring General Sheridan to the Cheyenne and 

Arapaho agency, and that on 18 July 1885, two years to the day after Potter’s reported 

the complaints of Little Robe, Stone Calf, and the others, General Sheridan telegraphed 

President Grover Cleveland to recommend that the Army take over the Cheyenne and 

Arapaho reservation until the matter of the grazing leases could be settled. Five days 

later, Cleveland issued a proclamation that declared the leases void and gave cattlemen 

40 days to move their herds off Indian land. General Sheridan reported soon after that 

he had interviewed many prominent Arapahos and Cheyennes, and that even those 

who had signed the leasing agreements “had become sick of the bargain.”41 The 40 

day deadline was impossible to meet. Not until the first week of November 1885 was 

the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation free of outsiders’ cattle.42 

Of course, we know that there was no happy ending to this story, certainly not for 

the 210,000 dispossessed cattle: the hard winter that followed caused “frightful losses” 

328 
 

in the overstocked Texas panhandle, much as the winter after that did in Montana and 

Wyoming.43 The reservations in western Indian Territory were allotted to individual 

tribal members a few years later and disappeared from maps. Still, the interplay of 

Little Robe and Stone Calf, Colonel Potter and Michael Sheridan in 1883 and 1884 

gives a hint of why another Cheyenne, Whirlwind—one of the grazing lease-signers 

of whom the other two Cheyennes complained—could call Army officers “our most 

reliable friends.” No matter how much rank flattery it involved. 

Let me end with a little speculation. Tribal leaders who used to call at Army posts 

to talk to the commanding officer—and there were many of them throughout the West 

during the late 19th century—were expert at factional politics, as when Colonel Potter’s visitors characterized their opponents as “a lot of old bummers who hang about 

the agency and would sign anything for a handful of grub.” Little Robe and Stone Calf 

lived closer to Camp Supply and were slandering Whirlwind—the same Whirlwind 

who a few years later called Army officers “our most reliable friends”—who lived 

closer to the agency, as did some other chiefs. Although these leaders had traveled 

to Washington, DC, some of them more than once, they probably did not have a firm 

grasp of the intricacies of the Federal government’s executive branch. But they could 

certainly tell that the employees at their agency dressed differently from the soldiers at 

the nearby fort. In taking their complaints to the commanding officers at Army posts, 

were they practicing the same factional skills they used in intratribal squabbles? To 

make that case would require a lot more research and a much longer paper than we 

have time for this morning, but the evidence suggests as much.44 

Finally, is there a benefit to be gained from the study of these episodes of quiet, if 

sometimes tense, diplomacy and long-winded negotiation? A more extensive look at 

the Army’s activities during the last third of the 19th century reveals a different picture from that shown in most books or in countless western films. Knowledge of this 

seldom-mentioned chapter of military history might be of some help to people starting 

out in today’s Army, who will learn early in their careers that they are expected to accomplish not only tasks that may be distasteful or dangerous, but some for which they 

have received no training at all. It may help them to recall that an earlier generation of 

soldiers found itself dealing, all at the same time, with contentious civilian colleagues, 

angry and suspicious groups of people with unfamiliar customs and beliefs, and whose 

command of English varied widely, and clamorous, self-interested ordinary American 

citizens. 
Notes 

1. Both Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 

1848–1865 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), p. xiv, and Utley, Frontier Regulars: 

The United States Army and the Indian, 1866–1891 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 

1984), p. xiii, mention “the series in which this volume appears,” but in neither instance gives 

the name of the series. Utley himself describes Macmillan’s representative approaching him 

in Custer and Me: A Historian’s Memoir (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), pp. 

93–94, 109–10. 

2. Barton H. Barbour, Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade (Norman: University 

of Oklahoma Press, 2001), p. 182; David D. Smits, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of 

the Buffalo: 1865–1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 25:3 (Autumn 1994), 312–38, quotation, p. 326; Allison K. Hoagland, Army Architecture in the West: Forts Laramie, Bridger, and 

D.A. Russell, 1849–1912 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), p. 14. 

3. American Military History (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956), pp. 

278–79. 

4. American Military History, ed. Maurice Matloff (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of 

Military History, US Army, 1969), p. 314; American Military History, ed. Richard W. Stewart 

(Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2005), p. 334. 

5. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 442–43, 452–53, 818; H. Craig Miner and William E. Unrau, The 

End of Indian Kansas: A Study of Cultural Revolution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 

1978), pp. 116–41; Francis P. Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the 

American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 461, 490, 493–96; Utley, 

Frontiersmen in Blue, pp. 2–3, 7–8. 

6. Brigadier General A.H. Terry, endorsement 8 Aug 1878, in file 4930 AGO 1878, National 

Archives (NA) Microfilm Publication M666, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant 

General, 1871–80, reel 421. That year, another general estimated that Nebraska settlers had stolen some 2,000 horses from the neighboring Sioux reservation since 1876. Brigadier General G. 

Crook to Lieutenant General P.H. Sheridan, 4 Dec 1878, in file 8104 AGO 1878, Ibid., reel 446. 

For “woodhawks” who cut reservation trees for sale to steamboats on the Missouri, the region’s 

principal navigable river, see Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Secretary of the Interior, 10 

March 1877, in file 1469 AGO 1877, Ibid., reel 323. 

7. Richard N. Ellis, “The Humanitarian Soldiers,” Journal of Arizona History 10 (Summer 1969), 53-66; Ellis, “The Humanitarian Generals,” Western Historical Quarterly 3 (April 

1972), 169–78; Sherry L. Smith, The View From Officers’ Row: Army Perceptions of Western 

Indians (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), especially 92–138. 

8. Prucha, Great Father, pp. 430–34. 

9. Histories of these posts are Robert C. Carriker, Fort Supply, Indian Territory: Frontier 

Outpost on the Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970); Stan Hoig, Fort Reno 

and the Indian Territory Frontier (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000); Wilbur S. 

Nye, Carbine and Lance: the Story of Old Fort Sill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 

1937). 

10. Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, ed. Charles R. Goins and Danney Goble (4th edn., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 124. 

330 
11. Carl C. Rister, Land Hunger: David L. Payne and the Oklahoma Boomers (Norman: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 1942), 41. 

12. Roy Gittinger, The Formation of the State of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), 175–82. 

13. Colonel J.F. Wade to Brigadier General W. Merritt, 14 February 1889 (932 AGO 1889), 

NA Microfilm Publication M689, Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General (Main 

Series), 1881–1889, roll 670. The Fort Reno interpreter translated Whirlwind’s speech, and 

Carlisle graduates read the written English text back to Whirlwind in Cheyenne. 

14. “Speech of Whirlwind,” filed with 932 AGO 1889, Ibid. 

15. Donald J. Berthrong, The Cheyenne and Arapaho Ordeal: Reservation and Agency Life 

in the Indian Territory, 1875–1907 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 102–110. 

16. Loretta Fowler calls such leaders “intermediary leaders.” Their job was to represent their 

people to agents of the Federal government, civilian or military. Fowler, Tribal Sovereignty and 

the Historical Imagination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 21–29. 

17. US Statutes at Large, 4:738. 

18. For instance, the Choctaws in 1831. Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974), 73–81. 

19. 42d Cong., 2d sess, H.Ex.Doc. 1, Secretary of War Annual Report, 1871 (serial 1503), 

232. 

20. Army and Navy Journal, 8 May and 3 July 1875. 

21. Col. R.S. Mackenzie to Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Missouri, 4 November 1875, NA Record Group (RG) 393, Records of US Army Continental Commands, part 

5, Military Installations, Entry (E) 432-1, Fort Sill, Letters Sent, 1:31. 

22. The Texas legislature established the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers, six companies 

of 75 men, in April 1874, a few months before the outbreak of the Red River War. Troops of the 

Frontier Battalion had several encounters with Indians, but within a few years turned their attention to law enforcement along the state’s frontier of white settlement. Gary C. Anderson, The 

Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (Norman: University 

of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 359; Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the 

Texas Rangers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 144–46, 149–52. 

23. Colonel R.S. Mackenzie to Capt T.J. Wint, 26 October 1875, NA RG 393, pt. 1, E 432-1, 

1:13; Colonel R.S. Mackenzie to AAG, Dept. Missouri, 4 November 1875, Ibid., 1:33; Captain 

J.H. Bradford to AAG, Dept. Missouri, 3 November 1875, Ibid., E 457-2, Fort Supply, Letters 

Sent, 5:297. 

24. Colonel R.S. Mackenzie to Captain T.J. Wint, 3 November 1875, NA RG 393, pt. 5, E 

432-1, 1:35. 

25. Colonel R.S. Mackenzie to J. Richards, 31 December 1875, NA RG 393, pt. 5, E 432-1, 

1:89. 

26. William A. Dobak and Thomas D. Phillips, The Black Regulars, 1866–1898 (Norman: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 40. 

27. J.W. Noble to R. Proctor, 14 September 1889, (4801 AGO 1889), NA M689, roll 708. 

28. T.J. Morgan to J.W. Noble, 14 September 1889, Ibid. 

29. Colonel J.F. Wade to Brigadier General W. Merritt, September 28, 1889, Ibid. 

30. 1st Lieutenant J.M. Lee, Report for June 1878, Spotted Tail Agency Letter Books, vol. 
3, NA Central Plains Region, Kansas City, Mo. On the social as well as the spiritual side of the 

Sun Dance, see Morris W. Foster, Being Comanche: A Social History of an American Indian 

Community (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991). 

31. US Statutes at Large, 15:222-23; General Order No. 12, Military Division of the Missouri, 14 August 1875, filed with 4297 AGO 1875, NA M666, Letters Received by the Office 

of the Adjutant General (Main Series), 1871–1880, roll 225. 

32. 45th Cong., 3d sess., H.Ex. Doc. 1, Secretary of War Annual Report, 1878 (serial 1843), 

34, 37. 

33. Endorsement, 14 September 1878, on P.B. Hunt to Brigadier General J. Pope, 27 August 

1878 (6631 AGO 1878, filed with 5641 AGO 1878) NA M666, roll 423. 

34. C. Schurz to G.W. McCrary, 7 October 1878 (7144 AGO, filed with 5641 AGO 1878), 

NA M666, roll 423; C. Schurz to G.W. McCrary, 16 November 1878 (8067 AGO 1878), Ibid., 

roll 445. 

35. 1st Lt. C.M. Callahan to Post Adjutant, Fort Sill, 26 December 1877 (125 AGO 1878), 

NA M666, roll 389. 

36. “Supplemental Report” and “Briefs and Extracts,” with Lieutenant General P.H. Sheridan to General W.T. Sherman, 28 December 1878 (8977 AGO 1878, filed with 8067 AGO 

1878), NA M666, roll 445. 

37. Paul A. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 

1985), 337–40; Hans L. Trefousse, Carl Schurz: A Biography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), 244. 

38. Col. J.H. Potter to AAG Department of the Missouri, July 18, 1883 (4455-DMo-1883), 

NA RG 393, pt. 1, Geographical Divisions and Departments, E 2601, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received. 

39. Col. J.A. Potter to Lieutenant Colonel M.V. Sheridan, 26 December 1884, filed with 1244 

AGO 1885, NA M689, roll 253. 

40. Michael Sheridan served on his brother’s staff late in the war; Potter was chief of staff of 

the XXIV Corps. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 140; Mark M. Boatner, The Civil War 

Dictionary (New York: David McKay, 1959), 665. 

41. “Brief of Papers in Relation to Disturbances Among the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians,” 

26, filed with 3140 AGO 1885, NA M689, roll 362. 

42. Berthrong, Cheyenne and Arapaho Ordeal, 116. 

43. Edward E. Dale and Morris L. Wardell, History of Oklahoma (New York: Prentice-Hall, 

1948), 218. Shipments of cattle from Dodge City, Kansas, dropped from 32,535 in 1885 to 876 

in 1886. C. Robert Haywood, The Merchant Prince of Dodge City: The Life and Times of Robert M. Wright (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 158. 

44. Compare the “old bummers” remark with a string of quotations from Loretta Fowler’s 

field notes, referring to an incident in Cheyenne-Arapaho politics a century later: “She’s a 

White woman—she has no business here.” “Do you want to eat beans while the business committee is in Washington eating steaks?” “I got the Oklahoma [City] Times interested . . . . And I 

called the US Marshall [sic].” “I got an attorney and sued.” Fowler, Tribal Sovereignty and the 

Historical Imagination, 141. 

332 
Panel 7—Interagency Process in the United States
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Robert T. Davis II, Ph.D.
 

Mr. William A. Dobak
 

Moderated by Ricardo A. Herrera, Ph.D.
 

Audience Member 

This is for Dr. Davis. I am wondering about the relationship between the CIA and the 

Psychological Strategy Board in the 1950s because I know this is a period where the 

CIA is famous or infamous for like Wisner’s Wurlitzer and I wonder if you could comment on that. 

Dr. Davis 

Well, the CIA was happier with the Psychological Strategy Board than they had been 

with the earlier incarnations because the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 

sat directly on Psychological Strategy Board and CIA seconded several of its officers 

for planning purposes, but the Psychological Strategy Board gets shut down as a result 

of the Jackson Committee’s reports. It is essentially abolished from about August of 

1953 and then after that Eisenhower creates this new policy making apparatus that 

functions during his administration where it is a direct feed into the National Security Council process, so the CIA was not unhappy with the shift to the Psychological 

Strategy Board so far as I know between 1950 and 1952. But it is a moot point in the 

Eisenhower era because they no longer exist. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for Mr. Dobak. Going back to one of your early observations in your 

discussion, you noted the mythology or the so called fallacy of Army autonomy. I am 

wondering to what extent this fallacy was exploited politically perhaps in Washington. 

And the reason the question occurs to me is that having done comparable research 

on the Russian Army in the nineteenth century under somewhat comparable circumstances far from home, the Russian government found it quite expedient on a number 

of occasions, either for foreign policy purposes or for domestic purposes, to observe, 

“General so and so is off on his own again. Darn that guy; we did not intend to take that 

village.” I am just wondering to what extent there may have been some comparable 

maneuvering in DC. Thank You. 
Mr. Dobak 

Well, the commanding general of every geographical region, Department of Dakota, 

Department of the Platte, Department of the Missouri which is Kansas, Colorado and 

New Mexico, and Department of Texas, those are the four departments within Sheridan’s military division of the Missouri. There were other departments on the west coast 

and in the east. They all filed an annual report and these were published each year as 

part of the Secretary of War’s annual report in the Congressional Serial Set. So I am 

not sure whether that answers your question or not. Does that go part way towards your 

answer? There was, for example . . . now an outright atrocity like Sand Creek which 

sparked a Congressional investigation which also wound up printed in the Congressional Serial Set. Colonel Baker’s attack on a camp of Piegan Indians in 1870, again, 

wrong Indians, which was also the subject of a Congressional investigation. But by and 

large, something large scale like the Sioux War of 1876 actually grew out of a recommendation by an inspector of the Office of Indian Affairs in the fall of 1875, saying 

that the Crow Indians of Montana and several other tribes were tired of being attacked 

by Sioux who lived off their reservations. It was time to end this intertribal warfare 

by forcing the Sioux onto their reservations which led to a conference that included 

President Grant, General Sheridan, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Interior who decided that it was time to go ahead and try to force the off reservation Sioux 

onto the designated Sioux reservations. This would, coincidentally, settle the matter of 

ownership of the Black Hills, and also a right of way for the Northern Pacific Railroad 

which was going to eventually build through the Yellowstone Valley of Montana. But 

as I said, these matters were settled at the President and cabinet level. Essentially after 

1869, the Army did not lift a finger without a go-ahead from the Secretary of War in 

Washington who had consulted . . . in response to a request from the Secretary of the 

Interior. 

Audience Member 

Yes, thanks. That also does establish for me that the governmental context is a bit different and the analogy I was wondering about is not fully there. Thank you. 

Audience Member 

Over the last seven years, I think a lot of people close to the US Army have gotten used 

to hearing about effects-based operations, measuring effects of things like strategic 

communications information operations. Let me make sure I get the right picture here, 

it sounds like the US government struggled just to define psychological operations. 

Was anybody interested in measuring how well the Voice of America and these other 

instruments worked at all in this time frame? 

Dr. Davis 

Yes, they absolutely were. The Psychological Strategy Board had three subordinate 

334 
organizations. One was Plans and Operations, pretty standard and it makes an easy 

military analogy. Another one was a Coordinating Committee to make sure once the 

plans and operations had been approved that people in various and sundry government 

departments were actually following up on that. And then there was a third body that 

was specifically tasked with measuring those effects. I have not looked at any of the 

records of these three sub-committees so I could not tell you what they determined in 

1951 or 1952 which would be very interesting of course. Did they think they could 

measure these things? They certainly wanted to. 

Audience Member 

Exactly. It is a struggle right now to figure out how well a message gets out in any 

particular province in Iraq. It is amazing to think that they were trying to do this on this 

very broad scale during the Cold War, but also very indicative of a certain mindset. 

Dr. Davis 

What I would say, when OWI (Office of War Information) was winding down at the 

end of World War II, when the Creel Committee came to an end at the end of World 

War I, the only thing you would see, and still historians today fall back on, “Well, I can 

tell you how many speeches they gave, how many films they distributed, how many 

leaflets they dropped over enemy lines.” And it is always like, “I can give you a quantitative how much did we do.” But I have never seen anybody develop a metric and I 

do not necessarily believe there is such a thing as a metric that will tell you how much 

you actually influenced. I do not think it exists, but it is certainly something people 

have struggled with in the past unsuccessfully. 

Audience Member 

Just to follow up on that point briefly, they did try after the Gulf War, during the interviews of the sixty thousand prisoners of war, to say, “Were you affected by this particular leaflet or that particular leaflet?” So they were trying to get the measure of what 

percentage of the folks that saw the “Please Desert” leaflet were affected by it. But you 

are right, they continually try to come up with metrics, they try to measure, and they 

fall back on how many they did, almost like the Air Force dropping bombs, “Well, 

since we dropped sixty thousand bombs, therefore, we were doing our job.” And never 

asking if they were dropped on the right target and what effect they actually had, PsyWar is even more unspecific as that. But for Mr. Dobak, a quick question. Obviously 

Sheridan got out and he visited, he talked to his people and he followed up with some 

visits, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not an organization with the greatest reputation in 

the world, had its inspectors out there also gathering information. Did Carl Schurz get 

out there and see for himself the truth of any of these allegations or was it simply a 

reflex, a fallback and defend my organization, that he would fall back on? 
Mr. Dobak 

I do not think that Carl Schurz got out of Washington much, as far as I know, during 

his term as Secretary of the Interior. And of course, he had federal lands to supervise, 

Indian affairs was only one, although well publicized part of his duties, but he had all 

of the public lands to oversee; he had a lot of things to do besides Indians. 

Audience Member 

One of the things that struck me and this is for Mr. Dobak, in your research did you find 

any documentation of cultural guidance or tribal guidance to the soldiers about how 

to effectively interact with the different tribes or any kind of training or anything that 

would help better prepare them? 

Mr. Dobak 

No, not really. For one thing, each tribe spoke a different language. They certainly 

did not have linguistic language training. They relied on civilian interpreters. And as 

someone said, the kind of white man who could stay alive long enough to learn a native 

language was probably not the kind of guy who was interested in concepts like land 

ownership and not really well suited to interpret for treaty negotiations and stuff like 

that. Sheridan did send a young officer out to study Indian sign language and published 

a book about that, but for the most part, what conflicts there were were over by the time 

they had enough people to send on detail tasks like that, so really, no, is the answer. 

Audience Member 

Way back in Andy Jackson’s administration, before the Civil War when the Indian Removal Act was signed and passed and the reservations were somewhat codified, was 

the Department of War responsible for Indian affairs and then it shifted to the Department of the Interior? Was there a feeling that the person who goes out and fights the 

Indian cannot be the one who governs him and the reservations? 

Mr. Dobak 

The Department of the Interior was established in 1849, that is, after the great expansion of the 1840s—Texas, the Southwest, Oregon country. If you look at the list of 

engagements of the regular Army during the period before the Mexican War, Indian 

fights in 1794, and then nothing until Tippecanoe in 1811, then a couple of fights during the War of 1812, then a short war in Florida, . . . I mean as long as American territory stopped at the Continental Divide, there was no conflict with the Plains Indians. 

A little raiding on the Santa Fe Trail, but by and large, it was an easy decision to turn 

the Office of Indian Affairs over to the new Department of the Interior, just at the time 

when the United States had acquired the Pacific coast and increased traffic through the 

336 
Great Plains and the mountains brought about an increase in conflict. So I would say 

that it probably would have been better to have kept the Office of Indian Affairs as a 

civilian agency within the War Department, separate from the Army, but that is simply 

because I have seen how the information traveled from the Indian Agency to Washington, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, up to the Secretary of the Interior lateral 

over to the Secretary of War, then down to the Army and to the regional commands 

within . . . it would have cut out that much, that stop at the Secretary of the Interior. It 

would have speeded things up and made for less friction, I would say. But it is a little 

late for that judgment. 

Audience Member 

Just to follow up, were there some people in the Department of War and the Army 

that . . . I believe a lot of soldiers were detailed into these Indian Bureaus anyway because they could not be staffed, that there were some arguments about whether or not 

this agency should be in the Interior or in the Department of War? 

Mr. Dobak 

That argument . . . well I mentioned Colonel Baker attacking the wrong Indians in 

1870, bad timing because there was a fairly good chance of returning the Office of 

Indian Affairs to the War Department at that time, but after a gross mistake like that, 

the Office of Indian Affairs stayed with the Interior Department and right through into 

twentieth century. So that was a bad screw up, bad timing. But there was that debate 

back and forth. It is a constant subject like expanding the Army or contracting it. It is 

one of those things they love to talk about all through the last third of the nineteenth 

century 

Panel 8—Military Governments and Courts 

(Submitted Paper) 

1

Army Lawyers and The Interagency: An Examination of Army Lawyers’ 

Experience With Military Commissions and Habeas Corpus 

by
 

Colonel Gary M. Bowman, US Army
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

The Army has periodically played a role in the separation of powers within the 

federal system of government, most often as the means of enforcing federal supremacy 

over the states. Two obvious examples of this was the use of the Army during the Civil 

War against the secessionist southern states and President Eisenhower’s use of the 

Regular Army and federalization of the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the federal 

district court’s order enjoining Governor Orval Faubus from using the National Guard 

to prevent the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock. 

The Army has also played a role in the horizontal separation of powers between 

the branches of the federal government: the Army has imposed and enforced martial 

law within the United States and its territories, displaced the judicial branch, and even 

arrested judges who interfered with it. 

However, Army lawyers have only rarely stood on their own against other agencies and officials within the executive branch. Since 2001, Army leaders, and Army 

lawyers, have resisted policy initiatives of the Bush administration on a number of 

occasions, involving a number of different issues, including the treatment of detainees, 

electronic surveillance within the United States, and military support to civilian law 

enforcement and homeland security officials. This paper will examine several episodes 

in the Army’s interaction with other components of the federal government. These 

episodes involve military commissions and habeas corpus: Andrew Jackson’s conflict 

with Judge Dominick Hall in New Orleans, Winfield Scott’s creation of military commissions in the absence of Congressional authorization during the Mexican War, the 

Army’s implementation of martial law in Hawaii during World War II, and the role of 

Army lawyers during the 1942 Nazi saboteur case. The paper will also discuss the military commission process during the Global War on Terror and evaluate how the Army’s 

recent experience with military commissions and habeas corpus demonstrate a military 

legal culture, which may affect how the Army will participate in the interagency process when policy that conflicts with that culture is proposed. 
 

 

 

I. Martial Law And Military Commissions Prior To Ex Parte Milligan. 

It has been argued by many scholars that Congress was the dominant branch in the 

federal government prior to the Civil War, even in military affairs.2

 However, the historical record does not demonstrate that Congress exercised its dominance. The Army 

was left to find its own way regarding martial law and military commissions until the 

Supreme Court’s decision in Ex Parte Milligan, which was not issued until after the 

Civil War was concluded. 

On December 16, 1814, Andrew Jackson, as the Commanding General of the 

Seventh Military District responsible for the military defense of New Orleans, issued 

a General Order declaring martial law in the city. The order required any person entering the city to report to the Adjutant General’s office, prohibited anyone leaving the 

city without military permission, and established a curfew.3 Violations of the General 

Order were tried by courts-martial.4 

After the British were defeated and while peace negotiations were being conducted 

at Ghent, Jackson refused to rescind the order establishing martial law because he was 

concerned that the British might return.5 During that time, Jackson ordered several 

French-speaking residents of the city deported. When Louis Louallier, a member of 

the Louisiana legislature, published an article in the local French-language newspaper 

calling for trials by civil courts, Jackson had him arrested for “inciting mutiny and 

disaffection in the army.”6 In a March 5, 1815 letter to Lieutenant Colonel Matthew 

Arbuckle, Jackson directed that any person attempting to serve a writ of habeas corpus 

for Louallier be arrested and confined.7 Louallier filed a petition for writ of habeas 

corpus in the United States District Court.8

 Judge Dominick Augustin Hall granted the 

petition and concluded that martial law was no longer justified. Jackson ordered the 

arrest and confinement of Judge Hall, who was jailed with Louallier.9 

Louallier raised several defenses, including the argument Jackson did not have 

the authority to establish military tribunals to try civilians without Congressional authority.10 The court proceeded on the merits of the case, and Louallier was acquitted. 

Rather than having Judge Hall tried, Jackson ordered him to leave the city and not 

return until an announcement of a peace treaty or until the British left the southern 

coast.11 Hall was marched by troops four miles out of the city and left there. The next 

day, after confirming that the peace treaty was signed, Jackson rescinded martial law 

and released Louallier, who had previously been acquitted.12 

When Judge Hall returned to New Orleans, he ordered Jackson to appear in court 

and show cause why he should not be held in contempt for failing to obey the order to 

release Louallier and for detaining Hall. Jackson appeared in court with two attorneys, 

whom he retained himself, and submitted a written statement. His attorneys argued that 

the court lacked jurisdiction to punish Jackson. Jackson later appeared to answer interrogatories, and the United States attorney13 acted as prosecutor, but Jackson refused 

340 
 

to answer any questions. Eventually, after several hearings, Judge Hall fined Jackson 

$1,000.00, which Jackson paid. 

Later, Jackson explained his justification for martial law: 

[When] invaluable [constitutional rights were threatened by invasion, certain basic 

privileges] may be required to be infringed for their security. At such a crisis, we have 

only to determine whether we will suspend, for a time, the exercise of the latter, that 

we may secure the permanent enjoyment of the former. [Is it wise to sacrifi ce] the 

spirit of the laws to the letter [and] lose the substance forever, in order that we may, for 

an instant preserve the shadow?14 

In 1842, Congress passed legislation which refunded the amount of the fine, with 

interest, to Jackson.15 However, despite contention between the Whigs and the Democrats in Congress as to whether the bill should state whether Jackson or Judge Hall was 

right, the bill that was passed was silent on the issue. 

In an unrelated matter, three years later, in 1818, Attorney General William Wirt 

issued a legal memorandum on the authority needed to order a new trial before a military court. The specific issue presented to Wirt was whether the Judge Advocate General acted properly in refusing to prosecute Captain Nathaniel N. Hall because he had 

already been tried by a court-martial on the same charge and the sentence had been 

disapproved by the President.16 

Wirt wrote that the President “has no powers except those derived from the constitution and laws of the United States; if the power in question, therefore, cannot be 

fairly deduced from these sources, it does not exist at all.17 The Constitution made the 

President Commander in Chief, but 

in a government limited like ours, it would not be safe to draw from this provision 

inferential powers, by a forced analogy to other governments differently constituted. 

Let us draw from it, therefore, no other inference than that, under the constitution, 

the President is the national and proper depository of the fi nal appellate power, in all 

judicial matters touching the police of the army; but let us not claim this power for 

him, unless it has been communicated to him by some specific grant from Congress, 

the fountain of all law under the Constitution.18 

In 1847, Winfield Scott, who was a graduate of the College of William & Mary, 

and had practiced law before joining the Army and again when he was suspended from 

the Army after a court-martial, was appointed to command the army that would enter 

Mexico from the Gulf and march on Mexico City. Scott’s command was the first large 

American force to fight outside the United States and his force would be composed 

largely of volunteers. He was anxious to have a well-developed plan for administering discipline within his army and he was also concerned about administering justice 

fairly to Mexicans in his area of operations so that he would not provoke a backlash or 

insurgency, as the French had experienced in Spain from 1809-1813.19 
Before Scott left Washington, he drafted an order establishing martial law in Mexico, which applied to American soldiers and to the Mexican populace. He asked both 

Secretary of War William L. Marcy and Attorney General Nathan Clifford to review 

the order, but neither official either explicitly approved the order or expressed disapproval. Marcy requested that Congress enact legislation authorizing military tribunals 

in Mexico, but Congress did not act on Marcy’s request.20 

When Scott arrived in Mexico, he issued the order which he had prepared in Washington, proclaiming a state of martial law, as General Order No. 20. Scott ordered that 

certain specified acts, including common crimes and violations of the articles of war, 

be tried and punished by military tribunals in Mexico. Scott apparently believed that 

Congress had the exclusive authority to authorize military tribunals, because even after 

he had arrived in Mexico, Scott urged Congress to authorize the military commissions. 

However, Congress would not act: Secretary of War Marcy advised Scott that he had 

discussed the matter with the chairman of the relevant Senate committee and that the 

Senator did not believe that legislation was necessary because the right of the military 

commander to impose martial law “necessarily resulted from the condition of things 

when an army is prosecuting hostilities in an enemy’s country.”21 Scott’s system of 

tribunals worked unevenly in Mexico, but his system of military government accomplished his goal of creating the appearance of fairness which, Scott believed, prevented 

the development of a native insurgency against the occupying Americans.22 

In 1857, Attorney General Caleb Cushing authored an opinion as to the legality of 

“martial law” imposed in Washington Territory. He opined that the commander of an 

army occupying foreign territory is authorized to impose “martial law” in the occupied 

country as “an element of the jus belli,”23 Cushing concluded that the United States 

is “without law on the subject” of whether martial law may be imposed by the armed 

forces of the United States within the United States or its territories.24 However, he 

concluded that, under the Constitution, only Congress is empowered to declare “martial law” and to suspend habeas corpus: 

In the Constitution, there is one clause, of more apparent relevancy, namely the declaration that “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless 

when in case of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” This negation 

of power follows the enumeration of the powers of Congress; but it is general in its 

terms; it is in the section of things denied, not only to Congress, but to the Federal 

Government as a government, and to the States. I think it must be considered as a 

negation reaching all the functionaries, legislative or executive, civil or military, supreme or subordinate, of the Federal Government: that is to say, there can be no valid 

suspension of the writ of habeas corpus under the jurisdiction of the United States, 

unless when the public safety may require it, in cases of rebellion or invasion. And the 

opinion is expressed by the commentators on the Constitution, that the right to suspend 

the writ of habeas corpus, and also that of judging when the exigency has arisen, belongs exclusively to Congress.25 

342 
However, Cushing recognized that the declaration of “martial law” is an extraordinary occurrence, in which the “law” ceases to have force because of the exigency of 

military crisis: 

There may undoubtedly be, and have been, emergencies of necessity, capable of themselves to produce, and therefore to justify, such suspension of all law, and involving, 

for the time, the omnipotence of military power. But such a necessity is not of the 

range of mere legal questions. When martial law is proclaimed under circumstances of 

assumed necessity, the proclamation must be regarded as the statement of an existing 

fact, rather than the legal creation of that fact. In a beleaguered city, for instance, the 

state of siege lawfully exists, because the city is beleaguered, and the proclamation of 

martial law, in such a case, is but notice and authentication of a fact—that civil authority has become suspended of itself, by the force of circumstances, and that by the same 

force of circumstances the military power has been devolved upon it, without having 

authoritatively assumed, the supreme control of affairs, in the care of the public safety 

and conservation. Such, it would seem, is the true explanation of the proclamation of 

martial law at New Orleans by General Jackson.26 

Four years after Cushing’s opinion, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in 

specified areas of the country. His Attorney General, Edward Bates, reached the conclusion that the President’s power to suppress insurrection “is political,”27 echoing the 

pragmatic language of Cushing’s opinion. Louis Fisher has written that “both Lincoln 

and Bates acknowledged congressional power to pass legislation that defines when and 

how a President may suspend the writ of habeas corpus during a rebellion.”28 In fact, 

in 1863 Congress passed legislation which allowed the President to suspend the writ of 

habeas corpus “whenever, in his judgment, the public safety may require it.”29 

The Army honored the suspension of habeas corpus and defied judicial orders 

granting a writ. In Ex Parte Merryman,

30 Chief Justice Roger Taney, who was sitting 

as the circuit judge, issued a writ of habeas corpus to release John Merryman, who was 

being held in military custody for being a vocal opponent of the war and a suspected insurgent. Taney issued the writ, but the Army commander ignored the order to produce 

Merryman in court. Taney then issued papers for the commander to appear in court to 

show cause why he should not be held in contempt, but the marshal was not able to 

enter the fort to serve the papers. Taney had no means to enforce judicial process, but 

he issued an order to release Merryman, which went unheeded by the Army. 

In Ex Parte Vallandigham,

31 the Supreme Court considered the habeas corpus petition of Clement Vallandigham, a former member of Congress and a leading Copperhead, who was arrested in May 1863 for speaking out against the war. He was tried 

by a military commission and sentenced to confinement for the duration of the war. 

While he was in military custody, he filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the 

Supreme Court. The Court, recognizing that the Army did not comply with the writ in 

Merryman, held that it did not have jurisdiction to review the decisions of a military 

commission because, it wrote, a military commission was not “judicial”32 in nature but 

was an exercise of military authority. 
Ex Parte Milligan,

33 which was decided in the immediate aftermath of the Civil 

War, is the most significant case on the relationship of martial and civil law. Lambdin 

P. Milligan, a lawyer in Indiana, was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to hang for 

conspiring to free Confederate prisoners and lead an insurrection in Indiana. He was 

tried by an Army military commission even though the civilian courts had remained 

open in Indiana throughout the war. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the 

Circuit Court for Indiana, which had two judges. The judges disagreed as to whether 

they had jurisdiction to grant the writ and, by agreement of the parties, the issues of 

whether the writ should be issued, whether Milligan should be released from custody, 

and whether the military commission had authority to try Milligan34 were certified to 

the Supreme Court. 

The Supreme Court held that the military commission which tried Milligan was 

illegal because the civilian courts of Indiana were open during the war and Milligan 

could have been tried by the civilian courts. The court wrote: 

It is claimed that martial law covers with its broad mantle the proceedings of the military commission. The proposition is this: that in a time of war the commander of an 

armed force (if in his opinion the exigencies of the country demand it, and of which he 

is to judge), has the power, within the lines of his military district, to suspend all civil 

rights and their remedies, and subject citizens as well as soldiers to the rule of his will; 

and in the exercise of his lawful authority cannot be restrained, except by his superior 

officer the President of the United States. 

If this position is sound to the extent claimed, then when war exists, foreign or domestic, and the country is subdivided into military departments for mere convenience, 

the commander of one of them can, if he chooses, within his limits, on the plea of 

necessity, with the approval of the Executive, substitute military force for and to the 

exclusion of the laws, and punish all persons, as he thinks right and proper, without 

fixed or certain rules. 

The statement of this proposition shows its importance, for, if true, republican government is a failure, and there is an end of liberty regulated by law. Martial law, established on such a basis, destroys every guarantee of the Constitution, and effectually 

renders the “military independent of and superior to civil power”—the attempt to do 

which by the King of Great Britain was deemed by our fathers such an offense that 

they assigned it to the world as one of the causes which impelled them to declare their 

independence. Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the 

antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one of the other must perish.35 

The Court’s finding that the civilian courts in Indiana were open and that war was 

not being waged in Indiana was at least questionable: Confederate Brigadier General 

John Hunt Morgan raided Indiana in June 1863, causing the closure of the courts, and 

Indiana remained under the threat of further raids throughout 1864. 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Milligan was, ultimately, ambivalent. The full 

Court agreed that the executive had gone too far in trying Milligan in Indiana by mili344 
 

tary commission. A majority of the Court returned, once the war had passed, to traditional republican language and rejected martial law and military commissions in general; the minority recognized that martial law could and would be used again in a time 

of “invasion and rebellion.” In fact, the United States continued to convene military 

commissions in the southern states throughout the reconstruction period.36 

II. Martial Law In Hawaii. 

The Army also convened numerous military commissions during the Philippine 

Insurrection. However, the legality of military commissions was not challenged again 

until World War II. 

On December 7, 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joseph B. Poindexter, the 

Governor of the territory of Hawaii, issued a proclamation transferring all governmental functions to the Army general commanding the Hawaiian Department,37 pursuant 

to Section 67 of the Hawaii Organic Act, which authorized the Governor to suspend 

the writ of habeas corpus and impose martial law “in case of rebellion or invasion, or 

imminent danger thereof, when the public safety requires it . . . .”38 Lieutenant General 

Walter C. Short assumed the role of Military Governor39 and suspended the writ of 

habeas corpus (General Short was later succeeded by Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons, who was succeeded by Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson).40 Short issued General Order No. 4, drafted by his Judge Advocate, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas 

H. Green,41 establishing a military commission and provost courts to replace the civilian courts, which were closed.42 Nine days after the initial proclamation, on December 

16, 1941, the authority of the civil courts to hear civil matters was largely reinstated. 

Conflicts between Army authority and the civil courts in Hawaii were redolent of 

Jackson’s conflict with Judge Hall in New Orleans. The Army detained Hans Zimmerman, an American citizen, pursuant to an order which allowed the detention of persons 

“for the purpose of inquiring into . . . whether or not such activities are subversive to 

the best interests of the United States.”43 Zimmerman’s wife filed a petition for writ of 

habeas corpus in the United States District Court. At the hearing on the petition, Judge 

Delbert E. Metzger refused to take evidence or to require the Respondent—“Captain 

Walker of the United States Army, Assistant Provost Marshall”44—to respond. The 

judge stated that he believed the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus was justified, but 

ruled that the court was prevented by “duress” from granting a writ.45 

On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Milligan did not require the District Court to act upon the petition because the petition, on 

its face, did not allege grounds that would have justified the granting of the petition. 

The Court found that “in light of the unprecedented conditions under which present 

day warfare is waged,” the Hawaiian Islands were “peculiarly exposed to fifth-column 

activities.”46 The Court read Milligan to mean that, “[i]t is settled that the detention by 

the military authorities of persons engaged in disloyal conduct or suspected of disloy 

 

alty is lawful in areas where conditions warranting martial law prevail.”47 The Court 

wrote: 

But taken by its four corners the petition discloses that Zimmerman was being subjected to detention by the military authorities after an inquiry related in some way to 

the public safety, in an area where martial law was in force and the privilege of the 

writ had been lawfully suspended. The futility of further inquiry was apparent on the 

face of the petition.48 

Of course, the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning was circular: so long as martial law is 

declared, the government could hold Zimmerman without charging him, and the government itself was in control of when martial law will be terminated. As Judge Bert 

Emory Haney wrote in his dissenting opinion, the test of whether the conditions for 

martial law exist must be by reference to conditions outside of the mere proclamation 

of martial law: 

[M]ilitary government is not established by merely proclaiming it. It comes into being 

and exists solely by reason of the fact that strife prevents operation of the civil government. Ex parte Milligan . . . 4 Wall. 127, 18 L.Ed. 281, where it is said: “As necessity 

creates the rule, so it limits its duration.” In other words, whether military government 

prevails is a question of fact depending on the existence of facts in the territory where 

it is supposed to be controlling, and a proclamation of the military that it exists is superfluous and ineffective.49 

On January 27, 1942, General Order No. 57 provided that the civil courts could 

exercise their full civil jurisdiction “as agents of the Military Governor.”50 However, 

the courts could not summon a grand jury, conduct a jury trial, or grant a writ of habeas 

corpus.51 A proclamation of February 8, 1943 reinstated trial by jury and indictment by 

grand jury in the civil courts for violations of non-military law, except for proceedings 

involving military members or prosecutions of civilians for violating military orders. 

The proclamation specifically stated that “a state of martial law remains in effect and 

the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus remains suspended.”52 

After the February 1943 proclamation restoring power to the courts, Walter Glockner and Erwin R. Seifer, both American citizens who were being detained by the Army, 

brought petitions for writs of habeas corpus before Judge Metzger. The US Attorney 

argued that the petitions should be dismissed because martial law was still in effect. 

Metzger denied the government’s motion on the ground that the threshold element of 

civil habeas corpus jurisdiction under Milligan was satisfied because the civil courts 

were “open” pursuant to the February 8, 1943 order, and Metzger ordered that the Army 

produce Glockner and Seifer. When the Army refused, Judge Metzger fined General 

Richardson (the Commanding General of the Hawaiian Department) $5000.00 for contempt. Richardson then issued an order that specifically prohibited the District Court 

from conducting habeas corpus proceedings and ordered Judge Metzger to expunge the 

contempt citation or face proceedings in the military courts. The Justice Department 

intervened; General Richardson rescinded his order and Judge Metzger reduced the 

fine to $100.00, which was later canceled by a pardon.53 

346 
 

US District Judge J. Frank McLaughlin also resisted Army rule in Hawaii. Harry 

E. White was tried by and convicted of embezzlement by a provost court, which did 

not include the right to a grand jury and from which there was no appeal. His trial was 

conducted on August 20, 1942, after the Battle of Midway, and after General Order No. 

57 which allowed civil courts to conduct criminal trials, but prior to the proclamation 

reinstating the grand jury and jury trials. White filed a habeas corpus petition in the district court. Judge McLaughlin held that White was denied his Fifth Amendment right 

to due process of law and his procedural rights under the Sixth Amendment. Judge 

McLaughlin held that the territorial governor, who was merely an officer of the executive branch, had no right to delegate the judicial functions of the territory to the Army, 

and that the Commanding General had no authority to impede the functioning of the 

civil courts because the threat of Japanese invasion and subversion had been virtually 

eliminated after Midway.54 Judge McLaughlin also granted the habeas corpus petition 

of Fred Spurlock, who was convicted by the provost court of assault, writing: 

[I]t is argued . . . [that the court’s] inquiry is limited to determining whether or not the 

power to declare martial law was properly invoked. This is referred to as the theory 

of absolute martial law and reliance is placed upon several supporting old cases. The 

doctrine is that martial law can be terminated only by the one given the original power 

to invoke it—the Executive. In short the proposition is that whether at any given time 

factual necessity supports the continuation of a state of martial law is a political and 

not a judicial question. The same idea is currently expressed in modern garb in the 

statement that in time of war the courts cannot question the judgment of the Executive—whether that judgment is based on facts or not. By such a specious doctrine did 

Hitler and his ilk rise to dictatorial power. If ever such was the law of this country it 

long since has been slain by the Supreme Court. Under our form of government the 

military even in time of war is subordinate to the civil power, not superior to it. During 

war the military to be sure is allowed a wide range of discretion, but whether it has 

abused that discretion is a judicial question.55 

In Ex Parte Duncan,

56 Judge Metzger considered the habeas corpus petition of 

Lloyd Duncan, a civilian shipyard worker, who was tried and sentenced by the provost 

court for assaulting two Marine guards in violation of military General Order No. 2. 

The case reached Judge Metzger after the February 8, 1943 proclamation restoring 

most power to the civil courts, but which specifically continued the prohibition against 

the writ of habeas corpus. In the Duncan case—unlike the other Hawaii cases discussed here—it was stipulated that a Japanese invasion of Hawaii was unlikely. Judge 

Metzger held that martial law did not exist in Hawaii in 1943 because there was no necessity for military rule at that time and the actions of the provost court were void.57 

The Ninth Circuit reversed Judge Metzger’s Duncan decision58 and Judge 

McLaughlin’s decisions in White and Spurlock.59 The Supreme Court reversed the 

Ninth Circuit and held that the Hawaii Organic Act did not authorize the territorial 

Governor to deny Hawaiian citizens their constitutional right to a fair trial in civil 

court after the immediate threat of invasion had passed. The Court’s decision echoed 

the language of Milligan: 
Courts and their procedural safeguards are indispensable to our system of government. 

They were set up by our founders to protect the liberties they valued. [Citations omitted]. Our system of government clearly is the antithesis of military rule and the founders of this country are not likely to have contemplated complete military dominance 

within the limits of a territory made part of this country and not recently taken from 

an enemy. They were opposed to governments that placed in the hands of one man the 

power to make, interpret and enforce the laws. Their philosophy has been the people’s 

throughout our history. For that reason we have maintained legislatures chosen by 

citizens or their representatives and courts and juries to try those who violate legislative enactments. We have always been especially concerned about the potential evils 

of summary criminal trials and have guarded against them by provisions embodied 

in the Constitution itself. [Citations omitted]. Legislatures and courts are not merely 

cherished American institutions; they are indispensable to our government. 

Military tribunals have no such standing. For as this Court has said before: “. . . the 

military should always be kept in subjection to the laws of the country to which it 

belongs, and that he is no friend to the Republic who advocates the contrary. The established principle of every free people is, that the law shall alone govern; and to it the 

military must always yield.” [Citations omitted]. Congress prior to the time of the enactment of the Organic Act had only once authorized the supplanting of the courts by 

military tribunals. Legislation to that effect was enacted immediately after the South’s 

unsuccessful attempt to secede from the Union. Insofar as the legislation applied to the 

Southern States after the war was at an end it was challenged by a series of Presidential 

vetoes as vigorous as any in the country’s history. And in order to prevent this Court 

from passing on the constitutionality of this legislation Congress found it necessary to 

curtail our appellate jurisdiction. Indeed, prior to the Organic Act, the only time this 

Court had ever discussed the supplanting of courts by military tribunals in a situation 

other than that involving the establishment of a military government over recently 

occupied enemy territory, it had emphatically declared that civil liberty and this kind 

of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the 

conflict, one or the other must perish.60 

In World War II, as in the Civil War, the Supreme Court did not exercise its jurisdiction to prohibit martial law while war was actually pending. The Court allowed the 

military to administer martial law, convene military commissions, and dispense justice 

without intervention by the courts. But once the emergency had passed, the Court 

opined on the necessity of civilian primacy and preached the virtues of republican 

government. 

III. The Nazi Saboteur Trial 

In fact, the Supreme Court’s decision during the war in the habeas corpus case 

brought by the defendants in the Nazi Saboteur case was not consistent with the sublime principles stated by the Court after the war. 

In June 1942, German submarines landed eight Germans, wearing German uniforms (they changed into civilian clothes after they came ashore), in two groups—one 

348 
 

 

group on Long Island, and another group in Florida. All the men had lived in the 

United States; one claimed to be an American citizen. The men had been trained on 

sabotage and each had a box of explosives. One of the men soon turned himself in to 

the FBI, which was then able to capture the others. 

Justice Department prosecutors determined that it was unlikely that the men could 

be convicted of sabotage because they did not have specific plans for sabotage, and it 

was likely that they could only be convicted in federal court of offenses which carried 

a maximum penalty of three years.61 The Judge Advocate General of the Army, Myron 

C. Cramer, advocated trying the men by a military commission because of the light 

penalties available in civilian court.62 

Cramer and Attorney General Francis Biddle discussed the appointment of a military tribunal to try the Germans, and Biddle met with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson on June 29, 1942, to obtain Stimson’s consent for the military tribunal. Stimson 

wrote in his diary that he was surprised that “instead of straining every nerve to retain 

civil jurisdiction of these saboteurs, [Biddle] was quite ready to turn them over to a 

military court.”63 

Biddle suggested the appointment of a military commission to Roosevelt. Several 

factors supported the creation of a military tribunal. The Justice Department wanted 

closed hearings so that the fact that the FBI caught the Germans only after one of the 

Germans turned himself in would remain secret. Also, the Attorney General and the 

President wanted the Germans to be subject to the death penalty, which was not available for any defined crimes which the Germans had committed, and the President did 

not want the civilian courts to be involved. According to Biddle, Roosevelt told him: 

“I won’t give them up. . . . I won’t hand them over to any United States marshal armed 

with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?64 

On July 2, 1942, the President issued a proclamation which declared that: 

all persons who are subjects, citizens or residents of any nation at war with the United 

States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation, and who 

during time of war enter or attempt to enter the United States . . . through coastal or 

boundary defenses, and are charged with committing or attempting or preparing to 

commit sabotage, espionage, hostile or warlike acts, or violations of the law of war, 

shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals.65 

Roosevelt also issued an order under Article of War 38 appointing the tribunal of 

Army officers, the prosecutors, and the defense counsel. Biddle and Cramer themselves 

acted as prosecutors, and two Army Judge Advocates, Colonel Cassius M. Dowell, a 

career Army lawyer, and Colonel Kenneth C. Royall, an experienced trial lawyer from 

North Carolina who had been commissioned as a Colonel at the beginning of the war, 

to serve as defense counsel for seven of the eight defendants.66 The commission was 

empowered to establish its own rules of procedure.67 
The prosecutors charged the Germans with four offenses: coming behind the lines 

of the United States to commit sabotage and espionage in violation of the law of war; 

assisting enemies of the United States in violation of Article of War 81; lurking as a spy 

in violation of Article of War 82; and conspiracy to commit these offenses.68 

Prior to the commencement of the trial, Royall objected to the President’s order 

establishing the commission on the grounds that, under Milligan, the Germans should 

be tried in the civilian courts, which were open and functioning. Royall also objected 

to the charges, because they were not offenses identified by a prior statute, and thus 

constituted common law crimes or crimes which were identified ex post facto (after the 

Germans committed the offenses). 

Article 38 of the Articles of War provided that the President prescribe the rules of 

procedure for military tribunals and “nothing contrary or inconsistent with these Articles shall be so prescribed.”69 Under the Articles of War, the death penalty could only 

be imposed by unanimous vote, but Roosevelt’s proclamation allowed a two-thirds 

majority vote.70 

Royall and Dowell, as defense counsel, were in a quandary. They doubted that the 

procedure of the tribunal was constitutional, and they had a duty to their clients to defend them zealously, but as military officers they also owed a duty to the Commander 

in Chief, who had appointed the tribunal. Prior to the commencement of the trial, they 

wrote to President Roosevelt, stating their concern that “there is a serious legal doubt” 

about the constitutionality of the tribunal. They were advised by an aide to Roosevelt, 

Marvin McIntyre, that they should act upon their best judgment.71 

By the twelfth day of the trial, Royall had decided to pursue an appeal to the federal courts, but he had been unable to find a civilian lawyer to appear in civilian court. 

He told the tribunal that he intended to himself file a petition for writ of habeas corpus 

in federal court in Washington. The defense counsel representing the other defendants 

announced their opposition to Royall’s strategy, and the tribunal refused to address the 

question of whether Royall had leave to appeal.72 

Louis Fisher described the unusual procedure which Royall, an experienced politician, followed: 

With time running out, Royall met ex parte with Justice Hugo Black at the Justice’s 

home in Alexandria, Virginia. When Black said he didn’t want to have anything to do 

with the case, Royall responded: “Mr. Justice, you shock me. That’s all I can say to 

you.” Turned down by Black, Royall tried unsuccessfully to reach Justice Frankfurter 

in Massachusetts. The following morning, he learned that Justice Owen Roberts was 

in Washington, DC, to attend the funeral of Justice George Sutherland. Royall went 

to Roberts’s office and waited for him to return. After listening to Royall outline the 

case, Roberts said: “I think you’ve got something that ought to be reviewed” and 

suggested that they meet the following day, July 23, at Justice Roberts’s farm outside 

350 
 

 

Philadelphia. Dowell, Biddle, and Cramer joined them. After discussing the matter, 

Roberts phoned Chief Justice Stone and got the go-ahead for holding oral argument 

on Wednesday, July 29. Roberts was able to reach all the Justices except two (Douglas 

and Murphy).73 

A highly unusual aspect of the appeal is that Royall went directly, ex parte, to the 

Supreme Court justices without first filing his petition for writ of habeas corpus in the 

lower courts. After the Supreme Court had agreed to conduct oral argument, Royall 

filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the 

District of Columbia, which was denied, but no appeal of the District Court decision 

had been filed when the Supreme Court heard oral argument.74 

The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case—styled Ex Parte Quirin—for 

nine hours over two days; the briefs had been hastily prepared and the Court had not 

had an opportunity to carefully read the briefs before argument.75 At the conclusion of 

the oral argument, the Supreme Court issued a brief per curiam opinion which upheld 

the jurisdiction of the military tribunal.76 

On August 1, 1942, the military tribunal convicted the eight Germans and sentenced them to death. Roosevelt reduced the sentence to life imprisonment for the German who had turned himself in and one other defendant. On August 7, the remaining 

six were electrocuted.77 

On October 29, 1942, the Supreme Court issued its full opinion in the case. The 

lynchpin of the Court’s decision was the distinction between “lawful” and “unlawful 

combatants.” The Court held that unlawful combatants may be tried and punished by 

military tribunals: 

By universal agreement and practice, the law of war draws a distinction between the 

armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between 

those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to 

trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency 

unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a 

belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it 

to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through 

the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar 

examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of 

prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals. [Citations omitted]. Such was the practice of own military 

authorities before the adoption of the Constitution, and during the Mexican and Civil 

Wars.78 

In Quirin, the Supreme Court held that citizens of the United States could be unlawful belligerents and, as such, could be tried by military tribunal.79 The Court also 
 

held that Milligan did not apply to the Germans because Lamdin Milligan had not been 

a member of the enemy armed force and was not subject to the law of war;80 therefore, 

even though the civilian courts were open and functioning in the states where the Germans landed and were caught, Milligan did not require that they be tried in a civilian 

court, where they would have received the benefit of civilian criminal procedural law. 

The Court avoided the question of whether the President had the power to allow the 

death penalty to be imposed by a two-thirds majority vote, when the Articles of War 

required a unanimous vote. The Justices agreed that a writ of habeas corpus could not 

be granted, but they disagreed as to why: some Justices believed that the Articles of 

War did not govern a military tribunal trying “enemy invaders,”81 and other justices did 

not believe that the Articles of War “rightfully construed” required procedures different 

from the procedures the tribunal followed.82 

The Supreme Court’s procedure and decision in Quirin has been widely criticized. 

In an interview in 1962, Justice Douglas said that it “is extremely undesirable to announce a decision on the merits without an opinion accompanying it. Because once 

the search for the grounds, the examination of the grounds that had been advanced is 

made, sometimes those grounds crumble.”83 Louis Fisher has pointed out that Justice Frankfurter asked his former student at Harvard Law School, Frederick Bernays 

Wiener, who was a Colonel in the Army JAG Corps, for his comments on the Court’s 

opinion. In three letters, Weiner provided sharp criticism of the opinion, arguing that 

the opinion improperly sanctioned ad-hoc military tribunals which, unlike the established court-martial system, were immune from judicial review and which made up 

their own rules.84 

When two more Germans were captured in late 1944, Biddle and Cramer again 

prepared to personally prosecute them by a military tribunal in Washington. However, 

Secretary of War Stimson, who was himself one of the most distinguished lawyers 

in the country and was the former United States Attorney in New York, intervened, 

and urged Roosevelt to appoint a military tribunal in general accordance with the established court-martial procedure. Stimson wrote in his diary of Biddle: “It is a petty 

thing. That little man is such a small little man and so anxious for publicity that he is 

trying to make an enormous show out of this performance—the trial of two miserable 

spies.”85 A military tribunal was convened at Governors Island, New York, and convicted the two men, but President Truman commuted their sentences to life imprisonment after the war, and they were later released.86 

IV. The Global War On Terror 

Through the Vietnam War, Army lawyers had limited conflict with the other agencies of the Executive Branch. The Judge Advocate General’s Corps’ main function was 

to administer the Army’s military justice system. Although there were challenges to the 

military justice system, and even to the administration of military affairs by the Army, 

in civilian courts, the Justice Department defended the Army as a client, and there was 

352 
 

no significant conflict between the Army, civilian lawyers in the Department of Defense, and civilian lawyers at the Department of Justice as to military affairs. Colonel 

Kenneth Royall’s challenge to the Roosevelt’s administrations actions in the 1942 Nazi 

Saboteur case was singular. 

However, the culture of the Army JAG Corps changed in the last quarter of the 

twentieth century. The practice of law by Army JAGs became more complex during 

and after World War II. As Army forces were stationed around the world, Army lawyers became accustomed to the practice of international law, particularly the negotiation and interpretation of status of forces agreements and other treaties which governed 

the conduct of Army personnel and activities, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions. 

By far, the most important change in military law was the adoption of the Uniform 

Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in 1950. The UCMJ “civilianized” the courts-martial 

system, codified military crimes, created new procedural rights for defendants, and 

explicitly provided for military and civilian review of court-martial convictions. After 

the passage of the Military Justice Act of 1968, independent military judges presided 

over courts-martial, and the participation of Army lawyers as prosecutors and defense 

counsel was expanded, so that military proceedings became very similar to civilian 

criminal proceedings. In 1980, the Trial Defense Service was established, and Army 

lawyers assigned as defense counsel were removed from the chain of command which 

initiates courts-martial proceedings. 

Army JAGs also became more involved in advising commanders on legal aspects 

of military operations. In 1974, the Department of Defense promulgated Department 

of Defense Directive 5100.77, which required Army lawyers to ensure that “all US 

military operations strictly complied with the Law of War.”87 The Law of War program 

was initiated in response to violations of the Law of War in Vietnam, such as the My 

Lai massacre. The Law of War program required that military commanders be provided advice on the legal implications of their operational decisions. The implementation 

of the program in the Army resulted in the creation of a new legal field—“operational 

law”—and the authorization of positions for JAGs at most brigades throughout the 

Army. The Army JAG Corps now includes over 3400 lawyers.88 

At the same time that the Army was becoming more lawyered, after 1974, the power of the executive branch was being curtailed by Congress. In fact, the lawyerization 

of the Army was itself a result of Congress’ effort to limit executive discretion in the 

military justice system and in military operations. The limitation of command discretion in military affairs enhanced the role and authority of Army lawyers, who became 

watchdogs of a legal culture within the Army. 

When the United States launched its invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for the 

terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the American military detained numerous individuals who were suspected of being lawful and unlawful combatants, as described 

in Quirin, the 1942 Nazi Saboteur case. On November 13, 2001, President Bush issued 
 

a military order, drafted by Timothy Flanigan, the Deputy White House Counsel and 

David Addington, the Vice President’s Counsel, intended to govern the “Detention, 

Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism.”89 The order applied to any noncitizen for whom the President has “reason to believe” either “is 

or was” a member of al Qaeda or a person who has engaged or participated in terrorist 

activities aimed at or harmful to the United States.90 

According to Charlie Savage, the decision to establish military commissions deviated from the normal interagency process. Initially, the question of how to try individuals who had been detained in Afghanistan was considered by an interagency committee, headed by Pierre-Richard Prosper, the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes 

Issues. However, as Savage has described, the interagency process did not complete 

its work: 

Prosper’s group had met for the next month in a windowless conference room on the 

seventh floor of the State Department. It had brought together experts from around 

the government, including military lawyers and Justice Department prosecutors. The 

group had analyzed a range of options, weighing the pros and cons of each. The Justice Department advocated regular trials in civilian federal courts, as the United States 

had done after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But holding terrorist trials in 

a regular courthouse on US soil presented security risks. The uniformed lawyers had 

advocated using courts-martial, which could take place anywhere in the world. But 

courts-martial had well-established rules of evidence and procedure. Setting up a new 

system of military commissions, the third option on the table, would provide greater 

flexibility. There were problems, though: Some lawyers believed that the president 

might need to go to Congress for specifi c authorization. 

Then, before Prosper’s group could complete its work, Flanigan had abruptly short-circuited the interagency process. Without telling Prosper, Flanigan had secretly decreed 

that the answer was military commissions, and that the president had inherent wartime 

authority to create them on his own. Flanigan wrote up the draft order himself. In 

completing it, he worked with just two other government lawyers. One was Berenson, 

his junior subordinate, chosen because he had been the White House’s representative 

at Prosper’s group and so was already steeped in the issue. The other contributor was 

Addington.91 

According to Savage, Flanigan and Addington relied, in part, upon a memorandum 

written by Patrick Philbin, an attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal 

Counsel, entitled “Legality of the Use of Military Commissions to Try Terrorists.” 

Philbin was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, where 

he worked with his law school classmate John Yoo, who had been the original advocate 

within the Bush administration for the legal theory that the President has inherent war 

powers that are not constrained by Congress, treaties, or other international law. Yoo 

and Philbin had both been law clerks for conservative Judge Laurence Silberman at 

the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice 

Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court. However, Philbin had little experience with 

354 
national security law and it is likely that Addington and Yoo provided significant input 

to the memo. The memo argued that President Roosevelt had demonstrated the inherent power of the President to set up military commissions and prescribe the commission procedures during the 1942 Nazi Saboteur case, and the President’s power was 

vindicated by the Supreme Court.92 

On November 8, 2001, the Wednesday before Veterans Day, Department of Defense General Counsel William James Haynes II informed Major General Thomas J. 

Romig, the Army Judge Advocate General, that civilian lawyers in the administration 

had prepared a draft order on military commissions. Haynes told Romig that “he could 

send one representative to his office to help review the draft order, but he would not 

allow the officer to take a copy of the order away or even write down notes about it.”93 

Romig sent Colonel Lawrence Morris to review the draft order. The next day, Morris 

met with Romig in Romig’s basement. They were both concerned because the order 

did not incorporate the changes in international law, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, or changes in military justice, such as the UCMJ, which had occurred since 

the 1942 Nazi Saboteur case. Romig, Morris, and Brigadier General Scott Black, the 

Assistant Judge Advocate General for Law and Military Operations, worked over the 

Veterans Day weekend, drafting suggested modifications to the draft order. Morris presented the proposed changes to Haynes, but none of the suggestions were adopted.94 

On the same weekend—on Saturday, November 10, 2001—Vice President Cheney 

convened a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to finalize the order. 

Defense Department General Counsel Haynes, Attorney General Ashcroft, and “several top White House lawyers” were present. Ashcroft expressed his desire to allow 

Justice Department participation in the trial process, but was overruled by Cheney. On 

Wednesday, November 13, Cheney brought the order to his weekly private luncheon 

with President Bush.95 Jane Mayer has written that: 

On the Tuesday after Ashcroft’s Veterans Day showdown, Cheney presented the draft 

of the military commission order, which had been secretly written by his legal allies, 

to President Bush during their weekly private White House lunch. It was apparently 

the first time that Bush had seen it. The draft ran some four pages. The language was 

arcane and the subject matter more so. But after the lunch, Cheney advised Addington 

and the other lawyers that the President was on board. An hour or so later, with no 

further vetting or debate, and without circulating the draft to any of President Bush’s 

other top advisers on national security matters, the finished document was presented 

back to the President, this time for his fi nal signature. Deputy White House Staff Director Stuart Bowen told the Washington Post that he had bypassed all of his usual 

procedures, which called for more review, because of intense pressure to get it signed 

quickly from the lawyers who had secretly written the order. As a result, in the span of 

little more than a luncheon, Addington’s text became law.96 

The President delegated to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld the responsibility for drafting the rules for the military commissions, and the military JAGs worked 
with lawyers from the DOD General Counsel’s office and the Justice Department’s 

Office of Legal Counsel to develop the rules. Savage has written: 

Initially, Romig said, some of the political appointees were interested in a very draconian system, which, among other things, could convict defendants under a low standard of proof; would deny them the right to have outside civilian defense attorneys; 

and could impose the death penalty without unanimity by the panel of offi cers judging 

the case. The JAGs objected strongly to these and other deviations from military law. 

One of the top JAGs threatened to resign if some of the harshest proposed rules became final, arguing that they would force military lawyers to violate their legal ethical 

standards and possibly put them at risk of later prosecution for war crimes. 

In the end, the political appointees backed down from some of the most extreme proposals they had been floating. When Rumsfeld signed an order fleshing out what the 

commission trials would look like in March 2002, the system was closer to what the 

JAGs wanted: Defendants could be convicted only if guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, outside defense counsel was allowed, and a unanimous vote was required for the death penalty. But the order, Romig said, was still not what the JAGs 

would have designed had they been allowed to create the commission system from 

scratch on their own. While less draconian than the political appointees’ initial plans, 

the military commissions were still legally objectionable in several respects. The commission rules, for example, allowed secret evidence that would be kept hidden from 

a defendant and allowed the admission of evidence obtained through coercive interrogations.97 

The effort of Republican administrations to marginalize military JAGs had been 

going on since the middle of the Reagan administration. During the Ford administration, in which Rumsfeld and Cheney served as White House chief of staff, Congress 

enacted intelligence reforms through the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, 

budget reforms which restricted the President’s power to impound the funding of programs which Congress had authorized but which the President opposed, and attempted 

to limit the President’s power to wage war through the War Powers Resolution. 

In 1986, during the second Reagan administration, Attorney General Edwin Meese 

received a report from the Justice Department’s Domestic Policy Committee, a conservative think tank within the department. The report “noted approvingly . . . [that] the 

strong leadership of President Reagan seems clearly to have ended the congressional 

resurgence of the 1970s,”98 and it described a new approach to presidential power—the 

Unitary Executive Theory. The premise of the theory is that the President is the unitary 

authority within the executive branch; that the executive branch can be viewed as an 

organic being with the President as its brain.99 Under the theory, there can be no meaningful dissent with the executive branch because the President’s will is unitary. 

The philosophy of a unitary executive branch conflicts with the trend within the 

Army JAG corps toward providing independent legal advice to commanders and maintaining a fair military justice system. Attempts to reconcile the tension between the 

356 
 

independence of military lawyers with the political will of the President’s political 

appointees has been an issue since the debate over the Goldwater-Nichols defense reform act in 1987. At that time, Congress considered placing the service JAGs under the 

service’s politically-appointed civilian general counsels, but instead merely enhanced 

the general counsels’ prestige by explicitly recognizing them in statute and requiring 

that they be confirmed by the Senate. 

Shortly before the Gulf War, William James Haynes II, the political-appointee 

civilian General Counsel of the Army, clashed with Army Judge Advocate General, 

Major General John Fugh, over whose office should control operational legal issues 

that would arise during the war. Haynes, who was a protégé of David Addington, a 

close adviser to then-Secretary of Defense Cheney, pressed for greater control over the 

Army’s uniformed lawyers; Fugh resisted. In 1991, Cheney forwarded legislation to 

Congress seeking to place all military attorneys under the control of civilian political 

appointees. When Congress failed to enact the legislation, the Defense Department issued an administrative order effecting the change.100 When Addington was later nominated to become the Department of Defense General Counsel, Senate Armed Services 

Committee chairman Sam Nunn stated that it appeared to him that the Cheney team 

wanted to empower political lawyers to force JAGs to “reach a particular result on 

a question of law or a finding of fact,” and that they wanted to create a politically 

appointed filter between the JAGs and top military decision makers. Addington was 

confirmed “only after promising that the Pentagon would restore the military lawyers’ 

independence.”101 

The issue was revisited when the George W. Bush administration took office, with 

Cheney as Vice President, Addington as his counsel, and Haynes as Department of 

Defense General Counsel. In early 2003, after the resistance of the JAGs to the administration’s civilian lawyers’ plans for military commissions (as well as resistance 

to the civilian lawyers’ interpretation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and 

the standards for treatment of detainees), Army General Counsel Stephen Morello attempted to change the system for selecting the Army Judge Advocate General from 

the traditional system, in which a board of Army generals select the JAG. Morello 

proposed a system in which the uniformed Army would compile a short list of finalists, from which the political appointees in the Department of Army would select the 

JAG. The civilian leadership backed down after the generals resisted the proposal. In 

May 2003, Morello attempted to civilianize “a thousand of the army’s fifteen hundred 

uniformed lawyers into civilian positions.”102 

In late 2004, in response to an order by the Secretary of the Air Force placing the 

Air Force Judge Advocate General and his subordinate uniformed JAGs under the direct supervision of the Air Force General Counsel, Congress included language in the 

2005 Defense Authorization Act, which was intended to prohibit the civilian leadership 

of the Defense Department from “interfering with the ability of a military department 

judge advocate general . . . to give independent legal advice to the head of a military 
 

 

department or chief of a military service or with the ability of judge advocates assigned 

to military units to give independent legal advice to commanders.”103 

On October 29, 2004, President Bush signed the Defense Authorization Act, but 

issued a signing statement which specifically stated that the executive branch would 

construe the statute in light of “the unitary executive branch” paradigm, so that the 

legal opinions issued by the Defense Department General Counsel would “bind all 

civilian and military attorneys within the Department of Defense.”104 In early 2005, 

Defense Department General Counsel Haynes unsuccessfully attempted to implement 

the civilian selection of the top JAGs in all the services.105 In late 2007, the Defense 

Department proposed a regulation which would have required “coordination” with the 

civilian general counsels of each service prior to the promotion of any JAG officer. The 

regulation was widely perceived as an attempt to give the civilian attorneys a veto over 

the promotion of military JAG officers, and was ultimately withdrawn.106 

In the three major cases relating to military commissions—Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush—the Supreme Court vindicated the 

concerns which the JAGs had originally raised regarding the procedure which should 

be applied in military commissions. 

Yaser Esam Hamdi was born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia. In 2001, he 

was captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and turned over to the United 

States military. He was detained at Guantanamo Bay until it was determined that he 

was an American citizen; he was then transferred to custody in the United States.107 

Hamdi’s father filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on his son’s behalf, which alleged that Hamdi 

had been in Afghanistan doing relief work for only a short period prior to September 

2001, that he had not received any military training in Afghanistan, and that he was 

being held without charges by the military.108 The District Court appointed the federal 

public defender as Hamdi’s counsel and ordered that counsel be provided access to 

Hamdi. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, and directed the District Court to consider “the most cautious procedures first” and to conduct a 

deferential inquiry into whether Hamdi was an “enemy combatant.”109 

On remand, the government presented the affidavit of Michael Mobbs (“the Mobbs 

Declaration”) which stated that Hamdi had been captured in Afghanistan as part of the 

Taliban force and that he was carrying a Kalishnikov rifle at the time of his capture. 

Mobbs stated that Hamdi had been declared an enemy combatant.110 The District Court 

found that the Mobbs Declaration was “little more than the government’s ‘say-so’” and 

ordered the government to turn over for the judge’s review numerous documents supporting the claims of the Mobbs Declaration. The government appealed, and the Fourth 

Circuit held that the Mobbs Declaration was sufficient, that Congress’ resolution authorizing the use of military force was sufficient authority for the government to detain 

Hamdi, and that (based upon Quirin) the fact that Hamdi was an American citizen did 

not make any difference as to whether he could be detained without charges or trial.111 

358 
The Supreme Court applied the balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge,

112 a case 

involving entitlement to welfare benefits, and ruled that an American citizen who is 

detained by the government “must receive notice of the factual basis for his classification and a fair opportunity to rebut the Government’s factual assertions before a neutral 

decisionmaker.”113 

Salim Ahmed Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan and detained at Guantanamo Bay. Hamdan’s case has been the vanguard of military commission cases since 

9/11. On July 3, 2003, the President determined that Hamdan was triable by military 

commission. In December 2003, Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles D. Swift was 

appointed as Hamdan’s defense counsel; Swift filed a demand for charges and for a 

speedy trial pursuant to Article 10 of the UCMJ, which was denied by the legal adviser 

to the Appointing Authority, who ruled that Hamdan was not entitled to the rights 

provided by the UCMJ.114 On July 13, 2004, after Hamdan’s civilian attorney, Neal 

Katyal (who had been recruited by Lieutenant Commander Swift to assist Hamdan) 

had filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the 

Western District of Washington, Hamdan was charged with “conspiracy” as a member 

of al Qaeda and as Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard from February 1996 until 

November 2001.115 Hamdan’s case was reviewed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (“CSRT”), which determined that Hamdan’s continued detention was justified 

because he was an “enemy combatant” which was defined in the military order establishing the CSRT as “an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda 

forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or 

its coalition partners.”116 

The US District Court for the District of Columbia, which received Hamdan’s case 

on transfer from the Western District of Washington, granted a writ of habeas corpus 

and stayed the commission’s proceedings because the commission procedure because 

it had the power to convict based on evidence the accused would never hear, in violation of Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention. The Court of Appeals for 

the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the District Court, holding that the Geneva 

Conventions were not “judicially enforceable.”117 

After the Supreme Court granted Hamdan’s appeal but prior to oral argument, 

Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (“DTA”), which deprived the 

courts of jurisdiction to hear “an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or 

behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” 

and vested in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit the sole jurisdiction to review the CSRTs’ decision to detain an alien at Guantanamo Bay and any 

sentence imposed on such aliens by a military commission.118 

The Supreme Court ruled that the DTA did not deprive the Court of jurisdiction 

in Hamdan’s case because the case was already pending at the time of enactment of 

the statute.119 On the merits of the case, the Court found that a military commission 

could not try the charges against Hamdan because none of his alleged acts occurred on 
 

 

 

a specified date after September 11, 2001, were not alleged to have occurred during 

the United States’ war, and therefore could not have violated the law of war.120 The 

Court also held that “conspiracy” was not a recognizable violation of the law of war 

and was not an offense for which Hamdan could be tried by a military commission.121 

The Court also held that a “uniformity” principle required that Hamdan be entitled to 

the same procedural protections as defendants in courts-martial unless the President 

determines that such protections would be impracticable, and such protections were 

not impracticable at Guantanamo Bay.122 The Court held that the procedural rules of 

the military commissions, which did not require that the accused be present or hear 

the evidence against him, violated Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention 

which prohibits “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without 

previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”123 

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan, the administration re-examined 

the procedures followed by the military commissions. On Friday, July 28, 2006, a 

group of JAG officers met with Justice Department attorneys on the fifth floor of the 

Justice Department headquarters, just down the hall from the room where the 1942 

Nazi Saboteur trial was held. A fundamental concern among the JAGs was that secret 

evidence could be introduced during the military commission trials outside the presence of the defendant. Shortly after the meeting began, the Justice Department lawyers 

refused to discuss the secret evidence issue, thus limiting the agenda to less significant 

issues—not the core concerns which the Supreme Court raised in Hamdan. The administration’s civilian attorneys submitted new legislation—the Military Commissions 

Act—to Congress, with virtually no input from the JAG lawyers124 

Congress decided to invite the top JAG from each service to testify about what 

they believed should be in the Military Commissions Act. Given an opportunity to 

bypass the filter of the Bush-Cheney legal team, the JAGs told lawmakers that to be 

fair and legal, the trials must give defendants the right to see any evidence used against 

them. The administration continued to argue against such a plan, but Congress ultimately decided that the uniformed lawyers were right; the final bill outlawed the use 

of secret evidence. 

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) provided specific Congressional 

authorization for the President to establish military commissions. The procedure to be 

followed in military commissions trial is required to “be based upon the procedures for 

trial by court martial,”125 and Congress declared that a “military commission . . . is a 

regularly constituted court, affording all necessary ‘judicial guarantees as recognized 

as indispensable by civilized peoples’ for purposes of common Article 3 of the Geneva 

Conventions.”126 The Act also restated the language of the DTA, which attempted to 

strip the courts of habeas corpus jurisdiction over enemy combatants,127 and made the 

determinations of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals “dispositive” as to whether 

a person is an enemy combatant.128 

360 
 

 

 

 

The Supreme Court’s latest decision in this area, Boumediene v. Bush,

129 addressed 

detainees’ right to habeas corpus review of their detention after the enactment of the 

DTA and MCA. 

The detainees involved in Boumediene commenced their habeas corpus petitions 

in February 2002, but the cases were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction because the naval station is outside the sovereign territory of United States.130 The Court of Appeals 

for the DC Circuit affirmed. In Rasul v. Bush,

131 the Supreme Court granted certiorari 

and reversed, holding that habeas corpus jurisdiction extended to Guantanamo.132 On 

remand to the District Court, the cases were consolidated into two separate proceedings. The judge in one case held that the detainees had no rights which could be asserted in a habeas corpus proceeding; the judge in the other case held that the detainees 

were entitled to due process of law.133 While appeals were pending, Congress enacted 

the DTA, which stated that no court could hear a habeas corpus action on behalf of an 

alien detained at Guantanamo. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan, which 

held that the DTA did not apply to cases which were pending before its enactment, 

Congress passed the MCA, which specifically stated that the suspension of habeas corpus applied to “all cases, without exception, pending or after the date of the enactment 

of this Act . . . .”134 The Court of Appeals held that the new act unequivocally stripped 

it of jurisdiction to consider the detainees’ habeas corpus petitions.135 

When the detainees appealed to the Supreme Court, five military lawyers—from 

the Army, Navy, and the Marine Corps—representing detainees at Guantanamo, filed 

an amicus curiae brief with the Court. The military lawyers wrote: 

The President here asserts the power to create a legal black hole, where a simulacrum 

of Article III justice is dispensed but justice in fact depends on the mercy of the Executive. Under this monarchical regime, those who fall into the black hole may not contest 

the jurisdiction, competency, or even the constitutionality of the military tribunals, 

despite the guarantee of habeas corpus, see US Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 2, and the right 

to such determination by a “competent tribunal” under the 1949 Geneva Convention. 

The President’s assertion of such absolute supremacy contravenes the bedrock principle that it is “the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” 

and the similarly “settled and invariable principle . . . that every right, when withheld, 

must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 

(1 Cranch) 137, 163, 177 (1803) (quoting Blackstone). This Court has never given the 

President the ability to proclaim himself the superior of sole expositor of the Constitution in matters of justice.136 

In Boumediene, the Supreme Court relied extensively upon the amicus curiae brief 

filed by a large group of “legal historians.” The court recited at length the history of habeas corpus, and held that the writ could be suspended only if Congress had provided 

“adequate substitute procedures for habeas corpus.”137 The Court held that the DTA 

did not provide an adequate substitute remedy because the only venue for review of 

a detention decision was the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, but the DC Circuit 
 

did not have authority to entertain a challenge to the President’s authority to detain a 

particular detainee as an “enemy combatant,” to order the release of a detainee, or to 

heat “relevant exculpatory evidence that was not made part of the record” at Guantanamo.138 Accordingly, the Court held that the provision of the DTA and the MCA 

which stripped the court of jurisdiction was unconstitutional and remanded the case to 

the District Court for consideration of the detainees’ habeas corpus petition.139 

The permanence of the Boumediene decision is tenuous, however. The Supreme 

Court was split 5-4. Three of the justices who voted in the minority (Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito) are the youngest justices on the Court, and it is 

likely that any new appointee by President Bush would vote to strip the courts of jurisdiction to review military commission decisions, shifting the majority on the Court. 

In the meantime, the military commission process at Guantanamo Bay continues. 

On August 7, 2008, a commission acquitted Salim Ahmed Hamdan of conspiracy, and 

sentenced him to five-and-a-half years in prison, although he was given credit for the 

61 months that he had already served. Hamdan was the first detainee to be tried by 

a military commission (a prior case, involving an Australian citizen, ended in a plea 

agreement). However, the Justice Department continued to assert that the President has 

the inherent authority to hold detainees until the end of the war on terror, so it is uncertain whether Hamdan will be released even after his sentence is completed.140 

The Army’s relationship to the judiciary’s power to intervene in military affairs 

has turned about since Andrew Jackson’s expulsion of Judge Hall from New Orleans. 

The Judge Advocate Generals’ testimony against the Military Commissions Act and 

the military lawyers’ amicus brief are an unprecedented divergence between military 

lawyers and the policy of the executive branch, which undermined the ability of the 

President to act as a unitary executive. 

In his dissent to the Court’s decision in Boumediene, Justice Thomas wrote that: 

The Founders intended that the President have primary responsibility—along with the 

necessary power—to protect the national security and to conduct the Nation’s foreign 

relations. They did so principally because the structural advantages of a unitary Executive are essential in these domains. “Energy in the executive is a leading character in 

the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community 

against foreign attacks.” Id., [The Federalist] No. 70 at 471 (A. Hamilton). The principle “ingredient” for “energy in the executive” is “unity.” Id. at 472. This is because 

“[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings 

of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater 

number.”141 

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer,

142 the case in which the Supreme 

Court invalidated President Truman’s seizure of steel mills during the Korean War, 

Justice Jackson articulated a test for reviewing the President’s wartime decisions. He 

362 
 

wrote that the President’s executive power varies, depending upon whether he acts 

on his own or with the approval of Congress. When the President acts entirely on his 

own, in a manner which is contrary to the “express or implied policy of Congress,”143 

his power “is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional 

powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.”144 When the 

President acts in the absence of Congressional action, “he can only rely upon his own 

independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have 

concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain.”145 However, when the 

President “acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization from Congress,”146 “his 

authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus 

all that Congress can delegate.”147 

The controversy over the use of military commissions—like the dispute over the 

treatment of detainees and electronic surveillance within the United States by military 

agencies—is a dispute over Presidential power. The Bush administration, motivated 

primarily by Vice President Cheney, who has sought to redress the diminution of Presidential power that he witnessed as Chief of Staff during the Ford Administration, has 

acted on the conviction that the President has unitary power to act without dissent or 

dissonance within the executive branch, and has the inherent authority to wage war 

without interference or limit by Congress, the judiciary, or international agreements. 

When the Supreme Court considered Hamdi, who was an American citizen, Congress had not authorized military commissions or specified the procedures for treatment of unlawful and enemy combatants. Therefore, the Judge Advocates General, the 

detainees’ military defense lawyers, Congress, and the courts had a role in determining 

what policy should be, because the President was acting when his power was at its 

“lowest ebb.” However, after Congress enacted the MCA, the President’s power was at 

“its maximum,” and, although it turned out that the Supreme Court held that Congress 

did not properly suspend habeas corpus, the President should have been able to expect 

that the executive branch would act as a unitary whole in effecting his policy. 

However, the JAGs who resisted the administration policy on military commissions have advanced an institutional agenda which they consider to be independent 

of, and to impose a duty higher than, administration policy. As Rear Admiral Donald 

Gutner, the Navy Judge Advocate General, told Jane Mayer: “We were marginalized. 

We were warning them that we had this long tradition of military justice, and we didn’t 

want to tarnish it. The treatment of detainees was a big issue. They didn’t want to hear 

it.”148 Since World War II, the Judge Advocate General’s corps—and the Army Judge 

Advocate Generals’ Corps, in particular—had developed a robust institutional identity and jurisdiction as the military’s conscience. This identity was bolstered by the 

overhauls of military justice in 1950 and 1968, which made the military justice system 

perhaps fairer than its civilian counterpart. The systemic implementation of the Department of Defense law of war program, the development of operational law as a field 

of substantive law, and the widespread internalization of international law and limits to 
warfighting, all overseen by the JAGs, caused the JAGs to believe that they were the 

keepers of a higher standard of warfighting which matched American values and that 

their input into policy-making that involved the military was indispensable. 

This attitude is a departure from Army tradition. The Army has been a reliable 

agent of executive power throughout its history, and has defied officials outside the 

executive branch to do so. The basis of Army action has been its understanding of its 

mission from the president—its organizational jurisdiction—even in the absence of 

specific instructions. Andrew Jackson ignored Judge Hall, and even removed him from 

office because he believed that it was necessary to accomplish his mission of defending New Orleans, and that his power to act flowed from the President who had given 

him his mission. Winfield Scott imposed martial law in Mexico, even without explicit 

approval, because he believed it necessary to accomplish his military mission. Army 

lawyers during the Civil War prosecuted civilian citizens before military commissions 

even after courts issued writs of habeas corpus requiring the Army to produce their 

prisoners. The Army commanders and lawyers in Hawaii enforced martial law pursuant to the President’s proclamation in the face of continued resistance and orders from 

the federal judges in the territory. Colonel Kenneth Royall, who aggressively defended 

the Nazi saboteurs, only challenged the President’s military commission proclamation 

in the courts after the President’s representative authorized him to act within his own 

discretion. 

The JAGs resistance to the current administration’s military commission process 

may pass into history as a footnote—the Bush administration may terminate without 

the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice who would vote to overturn Boumediene, and the new administration will probably not adopt the aggressive position on 

the unitary and inherent power of the executive which was sponsored by Vice President 

Cheney. Nevertheless, this episode raises important questions about the institutional 

jurisdiction and independence of the Army as a service and Army lawyers as advocates, since the JAGs continued to resist the President’s policy on military commissions and treatment of detainees even after Congress enacted the MCA. The military 

commission policy was supported by both of the political branches of the government. 

The aggressive resistance to the military commissions may be a sign that the Army 

(and its JAGs) are committed, or are becoming committed, to a philosophy of military 

justice and treatment of enemies that, as an institution, it considers superior to the policy of the President himself, or even of the President and Congress acting together. At 

this point—in September 2008—after the Hamdan conviction, the military is implementing the military commissions policy, but this should not obscure the fact that the 

substance of the policy was changed because of the military’s resistance to it and that 

the policy which the military is now implementing is fundamentally different from the 

policy which the administration originally promulgated. 

According to Jane Mayer, Major General Romig claims that Addington was “overheard” to have said: “Don’t bring the TJAGs into the process. They aren’t reliable.”149 

364 
The wariness of the leading administration’s civilian lawyers of military lawyers, who 

have now demonstrated an unprecedented independence, is a fundamental issue of 

civil-military relations which may affect the role which military lawyers are allowed to 

play in the interagency process, especially when policy which conflicts with military 

legal culture is proposed. 

Notes 

1. See Louis Fisher, Military Tribunals & Presidential Power: American Revolution to the 

War on Terror, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005). 

2. 3 Papers of Andrew Jackson, 206–7 (Harold D. Moser ed. 1991). 

3. Fisher, 25. 

4. 2 Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 179 (J. Bassett ed. 1927). 

5. Ibid. 

6. 2 Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 183. 

7. Habeas corpus is the process by which a prisoner may seek review of his detention. Article I § 9 of the US Constitution provides that the writ of habeas corpus may not be suspended 

except in times of rebellion or invasion. A prisoner may file a petition for a writ of habeas 

corpus with a court and, if the court grants the writ, the person responsible for the prisoner’s 

detention must produce the prisoner in court and justify the legal basis of the detention. If the 

detention is found to be illegal, the court may order the prisoner to be released. 

8. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 310. 

9. Jonathan Lurie, “Andrew Jackson, Martial Law, Civilian Control of the Military, and 

American Politics: An Intriguing Amalgam, Military Law Review 126, 133. 

10. 2 Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 189 (letter to Captain Peter Ogden and order to 

Judge Hall, both March 11, 1815). 

11. 3 Papers of Andrew Jackson, 310. 

12. Lurie, 140 (relying upon Dart, Andrew Jackson and Judge D.A. Hall, 5 Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 551–53 (1922)). 

13. Remini, 313. 

14. Fisher, 27 (referring to Jonathan Lurie). 

15. Ibid., 37. 

16. Ibid. 

17. 1 Op. Att’y Gen. 233 (1818). 

18. Fisher, 32. 

19. Ibid., (citing 2 Justin H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 220 (1919)). 

20. Ibid., 33. 

21. John Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil-Military Relations During 

the Mexican War, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2007), 91–95. 

22. 8 Op. Atty Gen. 365. 

23. Ibid. 

24. Ibid. 
25. Ibid. The argument that martial law is imposed in the absence of law recalls Wellington’s 

rationale for the imposition of military rule in Portugal. He wrote in his dispatches from Portugal that: “Let us call the thing by its right name; it is not martial law, but martial rule. And when 

we speak of it, let us speak of it as abolishing all law, and substituting the will of the military 

commander, and we shall give a true idea of the thing, and be able to reason about it with a clear 

sense of what we are doing.” (cited by David Dudley Field in his argument before the Supreme 

Court in Ex Parte Milligan, 71 US 2, 35 (1866). 

26. 10 Op. Atty Gen. 74, 85. 

27. Fisher, 44. 

28. 2 Stat. 755 (1863). 

29. 17 Fed.Cas. 144 (Cir.Ct. Md. 1861). 

30. Wall. (68 US) 243 (1864). 

31. Ibid., 253–54. 

32. 71 US 2 (1866). 

33. Ibid., 108–109. 

34. Ibid., 124–125. 

35. Ex Parte McCardle, 74 US 506 (Wall.) (1868). 

36. Ex Parte White, 66 F. Supp. 982, 984 (D. Hawaii 1944). 

37. Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 US 304 (1946) (citing Hawaii Organic Act, 31 Stat. 141, 

153). 

38. The Army Lawyer: A History of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, 1775–1975, (William S Hein & Co, 1975), 178. 

39. Fisher, 131. 

40. The Army Lawyer, 178. 

41. Ex Parte Zimmerman. 132 F.2d 442, 444 (9th Cir. 1942). 

42. 132 F. 2d at 443. 

43. Ibid. 

44. Ibid, 444. 

45. Ibid. 

46. Ibid. 

47. Ibid., 446. 

48. Ibid., 450. 

49. 66 F. Supp. 982, 984. 

50. Ibid. 

51. Fisher, 134–35. 

52. Ibid. 

53. Ex Parte White, 66 F. Supp. 982 (D. Hawaii 1944). 

54. Ex Parte Spurlock, 66 F. Supp. 997, 1004 (D. Hawaii 1944). 

55. Ex Parte Duncan, 55 F. Supp. 976 (D. Hawaii 1944). 

56. Ibid., 981–82. 

57. Ex Parte Duncan, 146 F. 2d 576 (9th Cir. 1944). 

58. Steer v. Spurlock, 146 F. 2d 652 (9th Cir. 1944). 

59. 327 US at 323–24. 

60. Fisher, 95. 

366 
61. Ibid., 96. 

62. Fisher, 96 (quoting Diary of Henry L. Stimson, June 28, 1942, Roll 7, at 128–29, Manuscript Room, Library of Congress, Washington DC). 

63. Fisher, 99 (quoting Biddle, In Brief Authority at 331 (1962). 

64. 7 Fed. Reg. 5101. 

65. Fisher, 99–100 

66. 7 Fed. Reg. 5103 (1942). 

67. Fisher, 103–106. 

68. “Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,” 

reprinted in 39 Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States 296, 

550 (1975). 

69. Fisher, 112. 

70. Ibid., 106. 

71. Ibid. (Fisher relied upon “The Reminiscences of Kenneth Claiborne Royall,” Oral History Project, Columbia University, New York, 1965, 35). 

72. Ibid., 106–107. 

73. Ex Parte Quirin, 317 US 1, 18 (1942). 

74. Fisher, 107. 

75. 317 US at 48. 

76. Fisher, 114. 

77. 317 US at 30–31. 

78. Ibid., 37. 

79. Ibid., 45–46. 

80. Ibid., 47. 

81. Ibid. 

82. Conversation between Justice William O. Douglas and Professor Walter F. Murphy, June 

9, 1962, at 204–5, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, quoted in Fisher 

at 124. 

83. Fisher, 121–24. 

84. Ibid., 127, quoting Stimson Diary, January 5, 1945 at 18–19. 

85. Ibid., 128. 

86. Frederic L. Borch, Judge Advocates in Combat: Army Lawyers in Military Operations 

from Vietnam to Haiti, (Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 319. 

87. http://www.goarmy.com/jag/history.jsp 

88. 66 Fed. Reg. 57833. 

89. Ibid., 57834. 

90. Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of 

American Democracy, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company), 135. 

91. Ibid., 136–37. 

92. Ibid., 137. 

93. Ibid., 138. 

94. Ibid. 

95. Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War 

on American Ideals, (New York: Doubleday Publishing, 2008), 86. 
96. Savage, 139. 

97. Ibid., 47. 

98. Ibid., 48. 

99. Ibid., 62. 

100. Ibid., 63. 

101. Ibid., 287. 

102. H.R. 4200 “Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005” 

at § 574. 

103. President’s Statement on the Ronald Reagan National Defense Authorization Act, 2005, 

at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/print/20041029-6.html 

104. Ibid. 

105. Charlie Savage, “Control Sought on Military Lawyers,” Boston Globe, December 15, 

2007, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/12/15/control_sought_on_military_lawyers/ 

106. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 US 507, 510 (2004). 

107. Ibid., 512. 

108. Ibid. 

109. Ibid., 513. 

110. Ibid., 516. 

111. 424 US 319 (1976). 

112. 542 US at 533. 

113. Swift was passed over for promotion in 2006 and left the Navy. See Shukovsky, “Gitmo 

Win Likely Cost Navy Lawyer His Career,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 1, 2006 at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/276109_swift01.html 

114. 548 US at 569. 

115. Ibid., 570. 

116. Ibid., 571. 

117. Ibid., 572. 

118. Ibid., 584. 

119. Ibid., 599. 

120. Ibid., 612. 

121. Ibid., 623. 

122. Ibid., 630, quoting Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of 

War, August 12, 1949, [1955] 6 UST. 3316, T.I.A.S. No. 3364 (Third Geneva Convention). 

123. Ibid., 279–81. 

124. 10 USC. § 948b(b). 

125. 10 USC. §948b(f). 

126. 28 USC. §2241(e). 

127. 10 USC. §948d(c). 

128. 128 S. Ct. 2229, 171 L.Ed.2d 41, 2008 US LEXIS 4887, 76 USL.W. 4406 (2008). 

129. 128 S.Ct. at 2241. 

130. 542 US 466 (2004). 

131. 128 S.Ct. at 2241. 

132. See Khalid v. Bush, 355 F.Supp.2d 311 (DC 2005); In re Guantanamo Detainee Cases, 

355 F.Supp.2d 443 (DC 2005). 

368 
133. 10 USC.A. § 948(a) et seq. (Supp. 2007). 

134. 128 S.Ct. at 2242. 

135. Brief of the Military Attorneys Assigned to the Defense in the Office of Military Commissions as Amicus Curiae in Support of Neither Party, Al-Odah v. United States, Supreme 

Court of the United States, No. 03-343 (February 14, 2004) at 5–6. 

136. Ibid., 2270. 

137. Ibid., 2272. 

140. Ibid., 2277. 

141. William Glaberson, “Bin Laden Driver Sentenced to a Short Term,” The New York Times, 

August 8, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/washington/08gitmo.html? 

142. 542 US at 580. 

143. 343 US 579 (1952). 

144. Fisher, 233. 

145. 343 US at 637–38. 

146. Ibid. 

147. Fisher, 232. 

148. 343 US at 637. 

149. Mayer, 88–89. “TJAGs” is the acronym for The Judge Advocate Generals. 

Panel 8—Military Governments and Courts
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT): A Grass Roots Interagency
 

Counterinsurgency Methodology in Afghanistan
 

by
 

Lieutenant Colonel Lynda M. Granfield, US Army
 

Former PRT Commander for Jalalabad
 

Thank you for that humbling welcome. While you are focusing on my title and 

symbology in the photo here (Slide 1), I am going to provide some thoughts, so if I do 

not move through the slides as quickly as you think I should be, I am not missing something. I have some things that I want to just put out there and it is not a paper because 

I am not an academic. I am a practitioner and maybe that is a good thing or maybe 

it is a bad thing; I am not sure. This paper represents my personal views on what the 

interagency and whole of government process currently looks like through the lens at 

the field-level for over fifteen years in a variety of assignments on active duty as a civil 

affairs officer, and now in my current role in Washington DC at the strategic-level. So 

with that, I have to caveat that I do not speak for Secretary of Defense nor do I speak 

for Secretary of State on their policies, views, or doctrines. This is my personal opinion. Working in an interagency environment as a member of the United States Armed 

Forces from my perspective is more of an art and not necessarily a science. Although 

there is a plethora of doctrine and books on this subject, much of what needs to take 

place is based on personal relationships, networking, and more importantly, being seen 

as value added and not only the USG (United States Government) process, but with 

a variety of potential partners found in complex operations. But now is the time, and 

we must get this right, as much depends on creating an environment in which each 

agency’s goals and objectives can be met, thus creating synergy to play off each other’s 

strengths and make up for areas that are known weaknesses. If we do not find balance 

then the enemy will continue to exploit our very bureaucratic tendencies and agency 

stovepipes. There is room for the US military to take the lead, but in many cases, there 

are other agencies in the USG that are more suited based on their expertise. In my 

position in civil affairs, most recently at the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in 

Afghanistan, there are often obstacles to creating that much needed synergy. I plan to 

briefly set the stage of this presentation on PRTs first from the USG’s strategic perspective so that you have an overarching framework to build on (Slide 2). In many cases, 

the tactical part is where the friction can end up either resulting in the cooperating 

graduate, i.e. working in concert to achieve results or the downside of herding squirrels, and notice I did not say cats because squirrels can jump from treetop to treetop as 

going to policy makers and key decision makers. The Jalalabad PRT was a model of 
successful integration of interagency best practices, necessary to achieve a whole of 

government approach. I will then conclude with my perceptions at the strategic tactical 

level of USG integration. 

There are three parts to the three Ds—diplomacy, development, and democracy 

that I would like to cover (Slide 3). Unfortunately, I will not get to each bullet in detail 

today due to my time limits. That leaves you to do your homework on the USG’s strategic publications. This is only the tip of the iceberg and is solely focused on the USG. 

Not only do we need a USG integrated approach to counterinsurgency and stability 

operations, but a multi-national framework as well. As currently seen in Afghanistan, 

NATO, and the United Nations and a variety of interagency bodies are partners as 

well. We must contend with not only USG policy, but with those as well. There are 

international agreements and treaties that the US is a signatory to and a couple of 

examples include the Sphere Guidelines and Oslo Accords. Every military member 

should be familiar with these two documents. The reason why this is important is in 

the case of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) currently in Afghanistan. 

There is a PRT handbook, but not all participants follow the strategy based on country 

caveats that hinder operations. The National Security Presidential Directive 44, otherwise known as NSPD–44, was signed on 7 December 2005. Interestingly, it replaced 

the Clinton Administration Presidential Directive 56. Both documents cover a similar 

document, and interestingly, that is what we have heard throughout the theme of today. Produced in May of 1967, the National Security Action Memo 362, outlined the 

responsibility for the US role in pacification. Of interest, NSPD–44 was issued one 

month after DOD Directive 3000.05. It seems like the cart and the horse, but I am not 

quite sure. NSPD–44 designates the Department of State (DOS), notice not the Department of Defense, as a lead agency for interagency coordination and planning. DOS is 

to develop strategies and plans for reconstruction and stabilization as well as develop 

a civilian response capability through the recently created Office of the Coordinator 

for Reconstruction Development (S/CRS). The second responsibility for Department 

of State is to harmonize such efforts with US military plans and operations, to include 

complex emergencies, failing or failed states, and environments across the spectrum of 

conflict. This is a fairly large undertaking for DOD, let alone Department of State. It 

probably has less than twelve hundred Foreign Service Officers worldwide. 

The second part of the “D” is development (Slide 4). Since the Foreign Aid Act 

Reform of 1961, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has 

come a long way in developing a comprehensive policy framework for bilateral aid by 

implementing transformational diplomacy for development. There are some institutional changes within DOS and USAID that you should be familiar with. As the current 

administrator, Henrietta Fore, equivalent to a Deputy Secretary, has been appointed, 

designated by the Secretary of State as the Director of Foreign Assistance. This change 

took place in January 2006 when Secretary of State announced a major change in her 

transformational diplomacy strategy that not only included DOS but USAID as well. 

Prior to this policy shift USAID had organized several new offices to better address co372 
ordination with the US military during complex operations in humanitarian response. 

The Office of Military Affairs (OMA) was established in 2005 and was created in 

response to the national security strategy to collaborate between the two organizations in order to achieve national security. OMA is the day-to-day interface with DOD 

and helps integrate the USG policy between the two organizations and has recently 

provided senior development advisors to the five geographic combatant commanders, 

AFRICOM (United States African Command) and JFCOM (United States Joint Forces 

Command), respectively, and has senior military personnel represented in the OMA 

to help with three focused areas—interagency planning and implementation, policy 

development, and training and education. I would say that one of the most important 

aspects to OMA is the large piece of training and education. This includes providing 

trained US representatives at JRTC (Joint Readiness Training Center) in JFCOM exercises. The administrator for USAID takes the interaction between the two groups very 

seriously and has recently issued the Civilian Military Cooperation Policy designed to 

facilitate a whole of government approach to draw on the strengths of the two agencies to deal with interactions during complex emergencies. DOD Directive 3000.05 

Military Support for Stability Security Transition and Reconstruction Operations was 

released November 2005. It establishes the framework for DOD to plan, train and 

prepare, and to conduct stability operations (Slide 5). It assigns responsibility across 

DOD. The policy highlights that stability operations are a core US military mission that 

DOD should be prepared to conduct and support. Paragraph 4.4 goes further to state, 

“Integrated civilian and military efforts are key to successful stability operations.” Our 

recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight the importance of successful integrated strategies in complex environments. Not only do we need a national framework, 

but a field-level guide that helps prepare our forces to work in environments that define 

the populations at the center of our efforts. FM 3-07, due to be released in the upcoming months, builds on FM 3-0. It describes an operational concept where commanders 

employ offense, defense, and stability or civil support operations simultaneously as 

part of an interdependent joint force. Both documents build on FM 3-24, counterinsurgency that really was the first real hard look at the Army’s doctrine and strategy and 

played on the painful lessons of Vietnam. 

This slide (Slide 6) shows the overlap of S/CRS as an essential task matrix and 

how it corresponds with USAID programs and tasks found in FM 3-0. This is a methodology in a systematic way that the interagency should conduct mission analysis in 

whole of government planning efforts. It is a framework, and a critical component to 

the USG effort, it offers a foundation to build upon during stability and reconstruction 

activities. Whether one follows the essential task matrix or stability task found in FM 

3-0, the application at the field-level is critical to determine which agency is best suited 

for being the primary or secondary effort across the spectrum of conflict. Another example of the complexity is the Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit, a 

small interagency organization created showing the overlap and alignment of the three 

Ds at work. As you can see from the slides, the lines are often misaligned and as we 

all well know, conflict has no borders (Slide 7). Often issues become regional in focus 
and from this map of the world, it shows how our current institutional organizational 

constructs might not be as flexible and adaptable as it needs to be in complex emergencies or stability operations. So to the meat of my presentation, something that I like to 

talk about. 

Provincial Reconstruction Teams (Slide 8) first found their roots in Coalition 

Humanitarian Liaison Cells (CHLCs), established in early 2002 in Afghanistan and 

were designed to begin coordinating the activities of the USG and other international 

partners to include the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA). 

It had established small outposts in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e Sharif. 

CHLCs had three functions—assess humanitarian needs, implement small-scale hearts 

and minds projects, and establish relationships with UNAMA. The scope and concept 

of CHLCs grew into a new organization called PRTs. They were established in Gardez, 

Bamian, and Kunduz. These three original PRTs were of strategic importance to the 

interim government of Afghanistan and President Karzai, as they represented areas of 

tribal and rival factions that could have disrupted the progress made thus far by the 

US and UNAMA. Originally PRTs were called Regional Reconstruction Teams but 

the name was changed based on the historical baggage of strong regions, i.e. warlords 

versus a strong central government. PRTs were instrumental in creating the political 

desire of the international community to share the burden of nation building to avoid 

the perception that the US and the international community were invading Afghanistan. PRTs, due to their provincial focus and civil-military resources, have wide latitude to accomplish their mission of extending the authority of the central government 

by improving security, supporting good governance, and enabling economic development. This had been, in the past, the strength of the PRT as it provided a flexible approach and resources to support the provincial government, improve security, and gain 

population support of not only the USG actions, but more importantly, to recognize 

the efforts of their own government and that the population in Afghanistan recognize 

that their government was working for them at three levels—central, provincial, and 

district. To give you a bit of context of our area of operations, Jalalabad is the capital 

of Nangarhar Province due east of Kabul and borders Pakistan (Slide 9). Nangarhar 

is considered a strategic gateway due to several factors. History shows us if Jalalabad 

falls, Kabul falls. The economic importance of the Khyber Pass border crossing, the 

rich agricultural capacity that has the potential to produce roughly sixty percent of 

Afghanistan’s food requirements with the right development, an illicit trade route that 

has a long history with the outside world, it has over the last five years produced fifteen 

to twenty percent of the world’s opium depending on the year. Haji Kadir welcomed 

Bin Laden after he was forced out of Sudan, hosted the infamous Tora Bora battle, and 

claims the successful launch of the first Stinger missile by the mujahedin against the 

Soviets and the list goes on and on. Here is the PR (Public Relations) mission statement 

from 2005 that was agreed upon by the interagency at the CJTF-76 (Combined Joint 

Task Force)-level in an effort to further refine our focus at the field-level (Slide 10). As 

previously, there was much dissent in the interagency on the original mission as many 

in the US did not feel that they were to be involved in a counterinsurgency operation. 

374 
PRTs worked to bring the Afghan government to the population. It was not an Afghanface strategy by the USG, but Afghan led as now was the time to push the provincial 

and district leadership to make decisions for the population and increase the security 

situation so that development efforts could begin to take hold. I would also like to 

highlight, from my perspective, PRTs are not a new concept. If you refer to the current 

configuration of the Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC), I would argue from a 

doctrinal perspective, that PRTs are CMOCs on steroids. It is the first time that I have 

had all the pieces and parts, i.e. the interagency, and a large budget to effect the PRT 

mission. You can call them whatever you want, CORDS, CMOCs, PRTs, clearly they 

are an ends to a mean. 

As you can see from this original 2003 task organizational chart, not much consideration was given to the interagency (Slide 11). You can see over here on the right 

hand column that the interagency is on the outside of the PRT and creating the much 

necessary synergy expertise that they brought to the table. In the early days, DOS 

and USAID were merely living on the Forward Operating Base and their stated purpose was outside the mission PRT construct. The base of relationship was information 

sharing only and that was normally accomplished through the Civil Military Operations Center. The relationships were dysfunctional as the team normally worked cross 

purposes, and the military dealt with issues back with the military chain of command 

and Department of State and USAID went back to Kabul for guidance and program 

strategies. It was extremely disconnected. As you can see from this slide (Slide 12), the 

purpose of the PRTs did not change over time, but the efforts and strategy evolved to 

capture synergy. DOS, USAID, and the US Department of Agriculture are no longer 

outside the PRT construct, but an integral partner with an equal voice. This was in part 

due to the recognition of the CJTF-76 Commander, Major General Kamiya, in mid 

2004, prior to US SETAF’s (United States Southern European Task Force) deployment 

to Afghanistan, that more emphasis on the benefits of interagency coordination and the 

application of the three Ds at the field-level, should follow the lessons from the earlier 

efforts of the Civilian Operation and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) 

program of the late 1960’s in Vietnam. This unified effort of interagency representation was not only implemented at the PRT level, but at RC (Regional Command) East 

and South, at CJTF-76 in Bagram and at CFC (Combined Forces Command) Alpha 

in Kabul, providing interlocking efforts at each level. Having the interagency team as 

part of the decision cycle at each level allowed for unity of effort and created a command group, or as we coined at the Jalalabad PRT, the Interagency Executive Team. 

The reason why the Jalalabad PRT was so successful is that this executive team created 

short-, medium-, and long-term objectives that nested with CFC Alpha’s lines of operations and more importantly, the Afghan National Development Strategy, developed 

by President Karzai and supported by the international community through a series of 

Donors’ Conferences. We visualize this concept of unity in our infamous rope slide, 

progress though interagency synergy (Slide 13). And it symbolizes the need for each 

agency to work together to achieve successful conditions in the province. Even our 

provincial governors would say that they were only as weak or as strong as their weakest governor. Creating the optimal conditions requires all entities to come together 

to maximize resources and capitalize on available assets without compromising the 

different agencies’ missions and goals. After all, at the end of the day, team members 

to the PRT are stakeholders in the provinces. We are there to create conditions for the 

central and provincial government to be responsive to the people and self sufficient 

Afghanistan government. The primary and secondary effort concept was created by 

a USAID representative on the PRT and illustrates my earlier point, referring back to 

the three PRT lines of operation—promoting good governance and justice, enabling 

the Afghan security apparatus, and facilitating reconstruction. Developing economic 

growth was no small task. Understanding the operational environment and the priorities for the military and the interagency partners became the priority effort and we 

leveraged the strengths and expertise of each member. So how did the PRT create unity 

of effort without blurring the lines and crossing into each other’s strengths? As you can 

see in this slide, in the areas where security was an issue (Slide 14), the main effort was 

on creating a safe and secure environment so that the USAID implementing partners 

could begin to build capacity and infrastructure and the Department of State could begin working with local district leadership in governance and transparency. Likewise, in 

areas that were more permissive for development, USAID programs became the main 

effort and the PRT programs executed through the Commanders Emergency Response 

Program (CERP) money were focused in other areas such as mentoring and training 

the Afghan national police and border police at the provincial, and more importantly, 

the district level. 

So I am not going to talk about each one because I am not going to have enough 

time, but I am going to highlight the first three (Slide 15). In the case of 2006, the US 

captured best practices in an effort to leave behind a strategy that could continue to be 

implemented. I have talked about the interagency piece for our PRT, but what did that 

mean in the day-to-day operation of the PRT? It was as simple as the four of us in the 

executive team getting together over coffee prioritizing the week’s events, reviewing 

the three to six month strategy, and by the way, figuring out what we were going to do 

with the thirty visitors coming to the PRT that week. In all, we had three hundred and 

sixty seven for the year, not our primary focus, but we had to coordinate our efforts. It 

could also be as complex as building programs that captured all three stakeholders and 

their resources in a unified effort. One of the biggest successes of the joint interagency 

work that our PRT managed to pull off was to create the Nangarhar Construction Trade 

Center. It was a USAID funded program that was 4.5 million dollars. A joint assessment early on from the executive team determined that the original schools and clinics 

that were built by USAID did not necessarily hold up to the harsh climate. As well, 

many of the construction firms used local labor that was not trained. We determined if 

we could create a center that brought the workers from those companies together and 

trained them in five focus areas, we could then send them back to repair the clinics and 

schools and then begin to build the capacity of the local labor. The measure in this program was not the money spent, which is what you hear, effects equal money and that 

is not necessarily the case, but the sustainment of the program and what do I mean by 

376 
that? It does you no good to create a program of skilled workers that do not have a job 

when they leave the program, and by the way, if the government cannot sustain the program over the long term, then it is not viable. In the case of this program, it is still there 

today. The University of Nangarhar has assumed responsibility for the program and the 

sustainment piece and the school is now part of the engineering department. Lastly, the 

PRT created a Project Nomination Review Committee that included senior members 

from the staff as well as the interagency team. Each element could nominate a project 

in support of the lines of operation that were nested in our system’s approach and each 

member of the PRT had a veto vote. This forced PRT members to do their homework 

and it ensured that it nested with the provincial lines, director’s priorities and allowed 

the USAID and the Department of State rep to coordinate with the ministries in Kabul, 

extending the reach of the central government. This allowed all members on the PRT 

to have visibility of what each agency was doing and in many cases, if the project was 

denied, a more senior discussion with the executive team would be held to determine 

if the program was viable or not. Most of the time a compromise was reached or a 

project was shelved. The only exception was USAID opposition to the PRT efforts 

with the Director of Hajj and Mosques in the mullah community. However, since the 

mullah community was part of the PRT’s overall key communicator strategy, the PRT 

ended up funding several programs to support the Director and government controlled 

mosques in our Temporary Work for Afghan Program. 

So are we there yet? What is a presentation without some quotes (Slide 16)? As 

you read through these next few bullets I think it is extremely important to realize that 

the CORDS program was an effort, albeit late in implementation, to bring together 

the interagency. If you have not taken the time to read some of Komer’s thoughts, you 

should. I think his fourth point about creating unified management at each level where 

multidimensional conflict situations dictate integrated multifaceted responses really 

points out that, despite the lessons from Vietnam concerning the interagency, not much 

has changed or improved. We are still, from my point, working at cross purposes and 

paper thin efforts. John Paul Vann also hits the nail on the head and it does not apply 

just to Vietnam (Slide 17). We are seeing this in Afghanistan. The Afghans see a new 

group come in every nine to twelve months and make the same mistakes culturally, 

religiously and tribally. And they are quite honestly, tired of teaching us. In 2006, we 

were well on our way to creating momentum with what the PRT’s mission and focus 

were in capturing the strengths of the interagency. However, we have lost progress. It 

is a complex environment and requires trained experts that command and staff PRTs. 

No offense to my Navy and Air Force counterparts that are now running PRTs, but they 

do not have fifteen years of civil affairs experience, and we have not set them up for 

success. It is not about sending them off to three months at Fort Bragg in a crash course 

and that being good leaders that they will just figure it out as they learn, often making 

critical errors or building schools that have no teachers or program students. An example of comparison is that I have forty-five hours in a Cessna 152 so I guess that means 

the Air Force should send me off to three months of F-16 training and put me in the air. 

I would argue that we have not applied the lessons from the past and, in many points, 
have further created friction at senior levels. CORDS, NSPD–44, and S/CRS are good 

examples. Recently, events in Georgia required a USG unified and coordinated effort. 

S/CRS set up a team to go to the Embassy and yet the diplomacy piece of our response 

was secondary and the US military engaged in humanitarian relief despite the Oslo Accords framework, that any military supportive relief should be the last resort. Further, 

S/CRS has not gotten the traction needed within Department of State and there is still 

much friction within the regional bureaus. In the CORDS program, both civilian and 

military were placed under command and control and unity of effort of the Military Assistance Command. And the program was run by a civilian, creating leveraging in the 

USG unity of effort, again, a little bit too late. So if the strategic-level is not there, are 

the tactical efforts any better? I would argue that the PRTs should be the main effort in 

Afghanistan and yet they lack the expertise, civilian and military, the right equipment, 

the right force composition and adequate funding. The CERP funding differences in 

Iraq and Afghanistan are so disparate and should be cause for alarm. Perhaps a single 

source funding authorization stream for the USG in these types of operations would 

create more favorable conditions for the agencies to work together. Finally, Congress 

must give the other pieces of the interagency the resources the President has directed 

them to carry out. Without significant changes in personnel and budget authorizations, 

I do not have much faith that things will improve to allow S/CRS and Department of 

State to take the lead for the task they have been given, interagency coordination and 

planning, and we will all continue to work at cross purposes. 

378 
Lieutenant Colonel Lynda M. Granfield Slide Addendum:

Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT): A Grass Roots Interagency

Counterinsurgency Methodology in Afghanistan
 

The US Army and the Interagency Process: 

“P i i l R t ti T (PRT) “Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT):
 

A Grass Roots Interagency Counterinsurgency 

Methodologyin Afghanistan”

LTC Lynda M. Granfield
 

Former Jalalabad Jalalabad PRT Commander June 2005 PRT Commander June 2005 -May 2006
 

UNCLASS 

Slide 1 

UNCLAS 

Agenda 

Part I: United States Government (USG)- Macro 

 Over view of key USG and policy changes 

 3’D’s at work 

Part II: Interagency Coordination- Grass Roots Level 

 Understanding the Operational Environment 

 PRT-Command and Control (C2) Relationships 

 Best Practices 

Part III: Are we there yet? 

UNCLAS 

Slide 2 
UNCLAS U.S National Security Strategy (NSS): 

3 D’s Diplomacy, Development and Defense 

Department of State 

•NSPD-44: Designates DoS as the lead agency for interagency 

coordi ti (th h S/CRS dination (through S/CRS 

• 2003-Created the Humanitarian Information Unit 

• 2005-Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and 

Stabilization (S/CRS)
 

•Secretary Rice initiative: “Transformational Diplomacy” 

•Creation of “F”-Dual-hat USAID Director as DoS lead for “Foreign 

Assistance” 

•Secretary Rice launches the Civilian Response Corps on July 16, 

2008 

UNCLAS 

Slide 3 

UNCLAS 

3 D’s (cont) 

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 

• 2003: Est ablishes th e Offi ce of C onflict M anagement and 

Mitigation 

• 2005: Establishes the Office of Military Affairs 

• 2006: Policy Framework for Bilateral Foreign Aid: Implementing 

Transformation Diplomacy through Development Transformation Diplomacy through Development 

• 2008: Civilian-Military Cooperation Policy 

UNCLAS 

Slide 4 

380 
t

 

UNCLAS 

3 D’s (cont)
 

Department of Defense 

• DoD Directive 3000.05 – IA coordination for “Military Support for 

Stability, S t ecuriy, Transition and R econstruction O ” perati ons”

• Irregular Warfare Roadmap 

•JFCOM-Establishment of Joint Interagency Coordination Group 

(JIACG) 

•J.P 3.08-Interagency, Intergovernmental Organizations, and NGO 

Coordination Volume I and II 

•FM 3.0 Operations Feb 2008 

•FM 3.7 Stability Operations (pending release) 

•Provincial Reconstruction Teams- Afghanistan(2003) and Iraq(2006) 

UNCLAS 

Slide 5 

UNCLAS 

How the 3 D’s overlap 

S/CRS Essential Task Matrix: USAID Programs: FM 3.0 Stability Tasks: 

Security 

J ti d 

Conflict Prevention 

R l f L 

Civil Security 

Justice and Ci il C l 

Reconciliation 

Humanitarian Assistance 

Rule of Law 

Humanitarian 

Assistance and Restore Essential 

Civil Control 

and Social Well Being Global Health Services 

Governance and Democracy and Support Governance 

Participation Governance

Restore Essential 

Economic Stabilization Economic Growth, Support Economic

and Infrastructure Agriculture and Trade and Infrastructure 

Governance 

Development 

UNCLAS 

Slide 6 
–

Slide 7 

UNCLAS 

Background 

• Chicklet to PRT-getting other agencies involved 

• Coalition Humanitarian Liaison Cells-”Chicklets” 

• “Chicklet” to PRT getting other agencies involved 

• PRT Concept: 

Fill gap between Phase III and Phase IV Fill gap between Phase III and Phase IV 

– Temporary 

– Interagency and International Interagency and International 

• Pilot PRTs 

– Gardez (Dec 2002) Gardez (Dec 2002) 

– Bamyian (Jan 2003) 

– Konduz (Feb 2003) 

UNCLAS 

Slide 8 

382 
20

1 

2
 20 3 18 4 16 5 17 19 6 12 8 7 15 14 13 9 11 

10 

1. Dara-Inur 

2. Kuz Kunar 

3. Kama 

4. Godhta 

5. Lal Pur 

6. Bati Kot 

7. Muman Dara 

8. Shinwar 

9. Dur Baba 

10. Nazyan 

11. Achin 

12. Rodat 

13. Dih Bala 

14. Pachir Wa Agam 

15. Khogyani 

16. Hisarak 

17. Sherzad 

18. Surkh Rod 

19. Chapahar

20. Jalalabad 

Slide 9 

UNCLAS 

PRT-Jalalabad 

Our purpose is to conduct civil-military operations in

Nangarhar Province in order to extend the reach and 

l iti f th G t f Af h i t b legitimacy of the Government of Afghanistan by: 

Promoting good governance and justice 

Enabling an effective Afghan security apparatus through Enabling an effective Afghan security apparatus through

training and mentorship 

Facilitating reconstruction, development, and economic

growth 

Ultimately creating the conditions for self-sufficiency, enduring 

prosperity, a secure and stable environment in the province. 

To Achieve the Mission: Work with all available stakeholders and 

resources to bring stability to the population by enabling the 

leg y, y itimacy, transparency and effectiveness of governance

and government institutions 

UNCLAS 

Slide 10 
Slide 11 

2006 Jalalabad PRT Task Org 

Slide 12
 

384 
Slide 13 

“Progress Through Interagency Synergy” 

PRT 

Create a moderate, stable, and representative Afghanistan capable of 

controlling and governing its territory. 

Maneuver 

Department of State 

US Agency 

for International Development 

US Department of Agriculture 

Provincial Government 

Afghan Security Entities 

UN Assistance 

Mission to Afghanistan 

The Field Level 3 D The Field Level 3 D s Approach ’s Approach 

Primary:

Development 

Secondary:

Stability 

Primary:

Kinetic 

Secondary:

Trust 

Primary:

Stability 

Secondary: 

Development 

Building 

Slide 14
 
oads ec ca o G o

 

UNCLAS 

Jalalabad PRT -“Best Practices” 

 Interagency “Executive” Committee Meeting 

 Internal Weekly Project Nomination and Review Board Internal Weekly Project Nomination and Review Board 

 Creation of “Center of Construction Excellence”- Nangarhar 

Construction and Trades Center 

 Weekly Provincial Security Coordination Meeting 

 Monthly Provincial Coordination Council 

 Hospital Task Force Working Group 

 Roads Technical Working Group 

 Construction of District government and Judicial Center’s 

 Governmental Conferences/Symposiums Governmental Conferences/Symposiums 

 Monthly “Key Leader “ Engagement Strategy 

UNCLAS 

Slide 15 

UNCLAS 

Learning Lessons? 

“But our Vietnam experience also shows how difficult it is to translate such 

general...and in hindsight obvious...lessons into the requisite performance. 

This demands a constant, deliberate effort to offset the inevitable tendency 

of bureaucracies to keep doing the familiar and to adapt only slowly and 

incrementally. In particular, such efforts requires: 

1) specially selecting flexible and imaginative conflict mangers at all levels: 

2) revising training and incentive systems in place to place a higher 

premium on adaptiveness instead of the “school solution”; premium on adaptiveness instead of the “school solution”; 

3) setting up autonomous ad hoc organizations to manage specially tailored 

programs which are not in conventional organizational repertories: 

4) creating unified management at each level where multidimensional creating unified management at each level where multidimensional 

conflict situations dictate integrated multifaceted responses: 

5) assigning adequate staffs to single managers...” 

Robert W. Komer, Deputy to USMAC-V, CORDS 

UNCLAS 

Slide 16 

386 
reconstruction/develo

UNCLAS 

Learning Lessons?
 

“"We don’t have twelve years’ experience in Vietnam. We have one year’s 

experience twelve times over experience twelve times over"

John Paul Vann- former Deputy for CORDS in the Third Corps Tactical 

Zone of Vietnam 

“I could probably write a lengthy book about being a PRT commander in 

Afghanistan I have told many Army officers that in many respects it is Afghanistan. I have told many Army officers that in many respects, it is 

even a tougher job than battalion (squadron) command. Interagency 

partnership at the grassroots level, integration of security and 

p , g ment, working with Reserve and Active forces... with 

coalition partners, not to mention the Afghan leadership such as provincial 

governors and tribal elders...an accumulation of experience that is simply 

invaluable.” 

MG Jason Kamiya- former CJTF76 Commanding General 

UNCLAS 

Slide 17 

Panel 8—Military Governments and Courts
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Colonel Gary M. Bowman, US Army
 

Lieutenant Colonel Lynda M. Granfield, US Army
 

Moderated by Mr. Robert Ramsey III
 

Audience Member 

I looked at your organizational chart and what I saw was three boxes with vertical lines 

going up to three horizontal boxes with no connection at the top and you mentioned that 

you think there is a problem with unity of effort. It seems to me the problem is unity of 

command and that starts at very high levels. We had a former Ambassador speaking to 

us the other day. He was very jealous of his prerogative to be the President’s personal 

representative in a certain country. Well, who is in charge in Afghanistan? Who makes 

the call on what the PRTs do? My experience over there was, and you have much better 

experience than I do obviously, was that somebody from USAID, for example, might 

completely disagree with the military commander’s objectives for the PRT. Where 

does this need to be solved so that one person is on the blame line and prioritizes the 

efforts of the United States government as a whole in that region? 

LTC Granfield 

Absolutely, that is an excellent question and it probably would take me about two or 

three hours to really cover where I think things were. As I highlighted, in 2006 we had 

representatives of the interagency at all four levels and so the coordination and the 

synchronization of the efforts of the USAID reps at the PRT-level to the brigade-level 

at the combat team up to 76 and then Combined Forces Command, were all nested at 

those levels and it worked quite efficiently when I was there from 2005 to 2006. There 

was obviously friction points because again, it is personality based. There is not any 

doctrine. There is an executive agreement in the interagency MOU (Memorandum of 

Understanding) that was signed in 2003 that really, quite frankly, has not been adhered 

to. There is supposed to be an executive steering committee that met monthly with all 

of the players in Kabul that included the USAID Mission Director, the Ambassador, 

General Eikenberry, and the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) because 

they were a component, to come up with what the priorities and the strategies for the 

PRT should be. Then that was to trickle down in guidance. Were there disconnects? 

Obviously, there were. We made it work at our PRT just because it was personality 

based. How do we fix it? I think at the national-level when we get ready to do a mission, we have to rely on some sort of agreement and it has got to be a quick responsive 
agreement. If we do not have a quick responsive agreement just like we saw in Georgia, S/CRS (Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction Development and Stabilization) stood up a team as they outlined in their matrix and their integrated management 

system (IMS), but they are supposed to stand up a team that is directed by the Principles Committee, and that includes all the senior reps at the Secretary-level and the 

Executive Branch, come up with a plan of action, who is going to be the priority of 

effort, whether it is going to be the military or not. And then they launch a team in to 

help the Ambassador and the Embassy simultaneously. An integrated planning team is 

supposed to go off to the combatant commander that is supposed to be an interagency 

team to help—in this case, EUCOM—come up with a military response to that whole 

of government plan. They do not have the right people, and they do not have the right 

funding; it is just a very frustrating process. I do not have an answer for it. There are 

systems in place but we have to get past “Who is the main effort; who is the supporting 

effort?” Maybe the answer is to create a new agency, outside another executive branch, 

that has the interagency pieces and it is not in S/CRS. In S/CRS’s case, the regional 

bureaus often trump what S/CRS has been tasked to do by the President. So I do not 

know if that answers your question but it is not a simple solution. And it becomes personality based. 

Audience Member 

My question is, you talked about measures of success in terms of what you see. What 

tools do you see out there that have been useful in determining measures of performance as the people within Afghanistan see it? 

LTC Granfield 

Well, that is excellent because if the people do not see what our efforts are, I think 

that we are not making progress, and they do not see that their government is working 

for them. In our case, in 2005 and 2006, our key communicator strategy was one of 

the most effective ways that we could measure performance and the reason being is 

Jalalabad had riots into May of 2005 over the Gitmo-Koran incident. And they literally 

burned the city down as many provinces in Afghanistan did. My predecessor came up 

with a program to deal with key communicators who they thought were the instigators 

of the riots, one of which was the mullah community. So we continued that system and 

that is why it was so important that we continue the work despite USAID’s objections. 

It is not their objections from a personality base, it is because there are legal objections 

that they work with religious institutions, which is again, something that Congress 

probably needs to take a look at. But what we did then was create this very systematic 

approach to all of the key communicators so when the cartoon incident happened about 

seven months later, we were the only Province that did not have riots. That is, I think, a 

direct reflection of not only our key communicator program, but also to what we were 

doing in the provinces and in the districts that were some of the problem areas. Additionally, we bothered to train the police in Jalalabad in riot control and get State to get 

390 
them the right gear so they could deal with riots. We had a big program for University 

of Nangarhar students, and again, they are a part of our key communicator strategy 

so all of these different lines and extremes fit into our measures of performance. And 

from our perspective at the interagency executive team level, we could not have done it 

without each other. So we built off of each other’s strengths. What is happening now? 

Unfortunately, now you are seeing the PRT Civil Affairs Teams going out and building 

schools and clinics in areas that really is an USAID function. And by the way, it is an 

international function because of donors. So if you build a school and you do not have 

teachers that are nested with the ministry at Kabul’s education program, you just have 

an empty building. And so you have to have the right people that understand that it 

has to be a systems approach. It is not just one area. We are going to work on schools, 

USAID is going to do this, and State is going to work on governance to bring that 

framework together. Why did it work for us? I think a lot of it was personality based 

and that we had a commanding general that had vision, both at the JTF–76 level and 

also down in Kabul, who worked very closely with the Embassy to build those relationships, and we had a very strong relationship with General Eikenberry and Alonso 

Fulgham who was the USAID mission director, and Ambassador Neumann. So again, 

it is based on those personalities. We really have this momentum going in not only 

creating effects, but its performance as well. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for Colonel Bowman. Sir, what are the implications of the extension 

of habeas corpus to detainees? Is it restricted only to those in Gitmo or does it extend 

to detainees under US military control in theater? 

COL Bowman 

The implications are extensive and most of my papers are about those implications 

actually but you cannot understand what the current system is without understanding 

where it came from. Yes, habeas corpus extends to Gitmo. One of the initial challenges 

to detention were from a group of detainees, the Rasul group of detainees. The lower 

courts held that habeas corpus did not extend to Guantanamo; the Supreme Court held 

ultimately that it did. So those detainees’ cases came back through the system and that 

group, or the core of that group, were the petitioners in the latest Supreme Court case 

called Boumediene which just came out this summer. And in that case, the Supreme 

Court said that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which was Congress’ attempt to 

validate the administration’s policy for determining whether, and to what extent, the 

government could detain these people in Guantanamo. It was Congress’ attempt to get 

on board with the administration, having a unified executive policy that was validated 

by Congress; that was in the Military Commissions Act. The Supreme Court struck 

down the Military Commissions Act and the administration has said that they are going to abide by that. So at this point, basically the major implication of this is that the 

military and the Army had stood up to the administration’s system for detaining these 
people at Guantanamo. They slow rolled that for a long time, for seven years throughout the war. The executive made its intention clear, Congress passed two acts—The 

Detainee Treatment Act and The Military Commissions Act. Military lawyers recruiting civilian lawyers finally got that to the Supreme Court like Royall in the Nazi saboteur case resisting what the President wanted and they were eventually able to break 

the spear on what the executive’s policy was. 

Audience Member 

My question is for Lieutenant Colonel Granfield. It is about organizational culture. It is 

very interesting that when you mentioned that USAID could not really get past the mission statement, and it is as if as an agency their cultural predisposition is more in tune 

with that of maybe the Peace Corps when you compare it to ours which would be more 

to see ourselves as an extension of policy by other means. So I was just wondering if 

you could dime out some of the key agencies that we could work with in the future and 

describe for us some of their cultural predispositions across the agency that make them 

easy or difficult to cooperate with. 

LTC Granfield 

Well, I can only speak from my experiences. In this most recent experience it is the 

first time really that I have worked within USG (United States Government). I can 

talk about the UN and some of the NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations) agencies 

that I have worked with over the last fifteen years, but in the case of Afghanistan, I 

think we have seen a significant improvement in USAID’s thought process in that they 

have created this new Office of Military Affairs. Henrietta Fore has recently issued 

the civilian-military cooperation policy, not only an external audience piece but also 

internally. How? That means that the USAID personnel will interface with the OD at 

that tactical-, operational-, and strategic-level. So I think that is a huge paradigm shift 

from the mentality of probably 2004 where the environment in Afghanistan was, most 

places there was obviously kinetic stuff going on, but in many cases it is semi-permissive and there was freedom of movement so they thought they could just run off and go 

look at projects and have their implementing partners work to where the security situation got a little bit more dicey, especially in areas such as Kandahar and Kunar where 

they did not have that freedom of movement. And so I think that is a credit to them. I 

gave up one of my NCOs out of my Civil Affairs Team to work with my USAID rep 

so that she could map out where we had villages that were sitting on the fence so that 

we could then use her QUIP (USAID Quick Impact Project) money at the PRT-level 

instead of her spending it because she was spending 17.5 million for counternarcotics 

and she really did not have the time to manage three million in QUIP money. To look 

at information and where we saw targeting of the Marines, the maneuver force, where 

we saw targeting of the Government of Afghanistan entities, whether it was satellite 

dishes or their government facilities. And then go out and interview those villages, sit 

down with the Shura and develop a strategy of projects that may help them come into 

392 
the fold of the government. And so for her to say, “Hey, I want to know what the root 

causes of this insurgency are and how do we as the PRT come together and develop a 

strategy?” Again, maybe I was fortunate because I had a forward thinking USAID rep, 

but you saw that in other PRTs too and so, I think, you are seeing some of the old gray 

hairs, no offense to the gray hairs in the audience, leave the agency and retire and you 

have all these young guys that are coming in that do not necessarily buy into that whole 

mindset that we are just here to do development. Likewise, I see it in the State Department with a lot of the young Foreign Service Officers coming in, volunteering to go to 

Iraq and Afghanistan where their counterparts may not necessarily want to. And in the 

case of USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), we got some great people, 

but the problem is they were volunteers and their agency had to foot the bill for them 

being gone and hire somebody temporarily in their place. So I was fortunate in that I 

had a cooperative extension specialist that came to my PRT which was a perfect fit. 

But in the case of Panjsher, they had a veterinarian and they did not really need a vet 

there. So those are just some of those institutional . . . where there is not a mechanism 

that the USG, those normally non-deploying kinds of people, really want to participate 

in where we are going with this counterinsurgency framework. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for Lieutenant Colonel Granfield. Recognizing the differences or the 

lack of passing the experience on from the military and the interagency perspective, 

what were you better able to do when you were leaving? So we do not repeat learning 

and relearning the lessons every year, what were you able to better do for the interagencies so that their replacements were coming with a better experience base than when 

you came there with your interagency folks? 

LTC Granfield 

That is a good question. Actually, because I am at Department of State, my boss has 

given me flexibility to go out and talk to different organizations. So I have been asked 

to come out to FSI (Foreign Service Institute) when they train up the State Department and workers that are going into Afghanistan. About the PRT experience as well, 

I have worked with USAID. Additionally, I teach at the Joint Special Operations University, courses on interagency operations, and so typically there are a lot of the State 

and USAID reps that are going out. I also left behind about . . . well, we had a three 

week transition which was really good. NESA (Near East South Asia) Center at the 

NDU, hosted a weeklong course or two week course for all of the PRT commanders, 

the USAID reps and the DOS reps that were going into theater, and so I also spoke in 

that. That program has been done away with and now the Air Force and the Navy have 

a program down at Fort Bragg and they bring in former PRT commanders with more 

recent experience to talk to not only their folks but also the USAID and the DOS reps 

that participate, not in the three month program, but they participate in the last week 

of a combination exercise. So there is some low hanging fruit; the Office of Military 
Affairs and S/CRS and JFCOM (United States Joint Forces Command) has tried to 

capture those folks coming out to try to really get at best practices and continuing some 

of the great efforts that worked well when we were there. 

Audience Member 

I have a question for Colonel Bowman. Sir, can you explain to me the logic of how a 

Canadian or American soldier captures say a Saudi or Pakistani in Afghanistan, explain 

to me the logic and the point where they are granted the rights of a US citizen? For 

example, habeas corpus, as opposed to not being held to the standard of what we call 

the Law of Land Warfare which are the Geneva-Hague agreements. 

COL Bowman 

That question assumes . . . there are some mistakes in the question, which I really do 

not have time to correct all those, but I can address it to some extent. American citizens get different rights than non-American citizens, generally. But in one of the early 

cases which gets to the question before about the Padilla case. The Supreme Court held 

that American citizens can be unlawful combatants, in fact one of the Nazi saboteurs 

claimed to be an American citizen. American citizens do get more rights than just 

regular detainees. The fact that they get some rights does not mean that they get the 

same rights as American citizens. You would have to compare what American citizens 

get versus what these foreign unlawful combatants, the array of rights they get and we 

do not have good comparisons of those. But the point at which habeas corpus attaches 

though, there is a process that is called the Combatant Status Review Tribunal. When 

a detainee is detained to the point that they get a review by this Combatant Status Review Tribunal and that tribunal determines that the person is an unlawful enemy combatant and is going to be detained, then at that point there is something to challenge. 

If you just catch a detainee in Afghanistan and the guy just goes to a detention facility 

in Afghanistan or even if he is moved around in theater, that person does not have the 

same array of rights to challenge detention or habeas corpus as when the person is 

determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a tribunal. At that point they have 

already gotten some process. Now the real question is whether they are entitled to even 

that because there are lawyers in the administration that say that the President, when 

he has the power to wage war, can do whatever he wants to the enemy, within some 

standards. And the question then becomes what those standards are and some lawyers 

within the administration, which the most powerful lawyers within the administration 

arguably, would say that there are not any standards. It goes back to what Nixon said 

in the Nixon-Frost interview. “If the president does it, it isn’t illegal.” Well, we are at 

that point where the administration at the highest levels, its lawyers believe that the 

President has that inherent power. The irony is, that the military, which you would 

think would sign onto that, the lawyers in the military do not believe that and so one 

of the unusual aspects of this that is hard for people to understand is that the roles are 

kind of reversed here. The military stands up for greater rights for these people than the 

394 
civilian administration does and that is why it is like Kenneth Royall’s situation here 

with the Nazi saboteurs. Even though he was an Army colonel, he was standing up for 

the rights of these Nazi saboteurs, challenging it in the Supreme Court when the weight 

of the administration was pushing for the quick execution of these people. 

Audience Member 

My question is for Lieutenant Colonel Granfield. Do you consider that due to the fact 

that the security situation in Afghanistan seems to be deteriorating. Do you see a possible evolution in the bureaucratic concept? This was considered six years ago in order 

to address this new security environment. 

LTC Granfield 

That is a great point. I think that the PRT should still be the center of gravity because 

the population is the center of gravity. General Eikenberry will argue that, “No, it is the 

government.” But I truly believe that it is the population. I think that the PRTs should 

be more integrated and we were fairly well integrated with the maneuver battalions. 

But now there is talk of sending over more maneuver brigades into Afghanistan, and 

I do not know if kinetics is necessarily the right answer. And I will give you an example. When we were there the Marines were getting significantly IEDed (Improvised 

Explosive Device) in Khogyani district, however, the PRT could travel freely through 

Khogyani and not get IEDed. And the reason for that being that the population saw 

the PRT as doing work for the provincial and district leadership and benefiting the 

people. It was actually the first time that it was done in Afghanistan, but if you refer 

back to the slide, you have Pachir Wa Agam, Khogyani, and Sherzad which are all 

Khogyani tribes. The Marines are getting IEDed down there, so we actually, myself 

and the maneuver battalion, went down to meet with the elders of Pachir Wa Agam and 

did a Nana Vati ceremony. Nana Vati means sanctuary of last resort. And basically we 

brought enough lamb and rice and stuff to feed the village down there. And we said, 

“Okay look, we know that things have gone wrong and the Marines are here. We are 

guests. We are sorry we have done things wrong. We would really hope that you would 

accept our request for Nana Vati and bless the lambs and sheep and say, “Okay, we are 

going to try to start this from scratch and not blame each side anymore because there is 

still blood chits for any member that is killed in the Pashtun areas.” We—to include the 

governor and the deputy governor—went over to Sherzad because our problem area 

was Khogyani so we were trying to put pressure, and I actually had members from the 

Wazir tribe which is the tribe from the wild, wild west there, and they are Khogyani 

but they do their own thing outside the Khogyani. They were in both of those Nana 

Vati ceremonies. And so both elders in Sherzad and Pachir Wa Agam came up with the 

document with all the signatures that said, “We are going to divide up our province 

into safe zones of responsible elders that are going to take control of those elders and 

we are going to guarantee you safe passage.” The intent was to go to Khogyani but 

unfortunately I ended up rotating out before we could get to Khogyani. But the story 
with that was we left that system in place for the next guys coming in. We also saw 

significant reductions in IEDs against the Marines moving in those areas because word 

got out that, “Hey, the PRT and the Marines actually understand Pashtunwali.” I know 

you still have to kill bad guys. We all understand that and there are bad guys to kill, 

but if the Afghan government and the police and the ANA (Afghan National Army) are 

not the lead in going after those guys, and the US is seen as going after that, those are 

the tactics that have changed in 2007 and 2008, then maybe that is not necessarily the 

best way. I used to challenge the Special Forces guys because they would go after low 

value targets and kick in doors. “Hey, guys just tell me who you want and if I cannot 

get them here through the government system then go kick in the door.” And so I challenged them and they eventually gave in and they did and guess what? We got the guy 

that they were wanting and they did not kick in any doors. There are techniques to all 

of this and there are strategies. I am not advocating that we not do kinetics but we have 

to balance the kinetics with the non-kinetics and I think that the PRTs should expand. 

If I would have been able to have three or four more security platoons so that I could 

move in the districts and a helicopter to get to places where I needed to get to quickly, it 

would have made my life much easier. Maybe the brigades become a super PRT in the 

provinces and that is where you put the emphasis because you have to have balance. 

396 
Day 3—Featured Speaker
 

Interagency at the Washington, DC Level
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Mr. Mark T. Kimmitt
 

Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs
 

United States State Department
 

Well, what comes around goes around and it is good to see my return to Fort Leavenworth is for the coveted after lunch spot. That could only be attributed to the fact 

that my classmate and good friend, Bill Caldwell, is the Commander here—a friend 

of mine for almost 36 years now, somebody who I have had a tremendous amount of 

respect for over the years and I can just tell you that you are very lucky to be at Fort 

Leavenworth at a time when Bill Caldwell is out here because I think you are going 

to find extreme innovation tempered with combat experience so it is not a theoretical 

exercise. Everything that is being done out here is being done for the right reason and 

has direct application. I am sorry to have missed the earlier discussions but as I read 

through the symposium notes and the agenda, it looked like a significant amount of 

the discussion was about interdepartmental interagency operations at the operational 

and tactical levels. Most of the discussions of the symposium seemed to be focused on 

agencies on the ground that have been developed over the last few years—Provincial 

Reconstruction Teams (PRT) inside both Iraq and Afghanistan, Joint Interagency Task 

Forces at combatant commands in the field and at their headquarters, and joint agency and other country teams with the United States Embassies. But that is simply not 

enough. These are important to get the interagency piece right down at that level, but 

what I would like to talk today is about what happens in Washington, DC at the interagency-level and talk about what is going right and what is going wrong. I would say 

that if these operations, and the guidance that is getting down to our troops in these 

interagency constructs on the ground, are not guided as an outcome of DC-based interagency decisions, then no matter how many times you put the teams together on 

the ground, no matter how much work you do trying to integrate, no matter how much 

enthusiasm is shown by those teams, if at the end of that meeting, the members of that 

meeting go back to their offices, call their organizations back in Washington, DC and 

get separate and sometimes contradicting guidance that reflects more agency equities 

than it does synchronization of military operations, interagency operations, then it is 

just not going to work. If we do not get it right at the top, it will never work itself right 

at the bottom. Now this is a military audience and quite frankly, you should be familiar 

with this challenge. It is a challenge for any commander that operates in a coalition 

environment and as Clausewitz said, “Always attack the coalition when given two options.” Coalitions have inherent strengths but they also have inherent weaknesses. We 

see that today in Iraq, and we see that today in Afghanistan and the Balkans. No matter how many orders you give to other national forces in the coalition, one can expect 

that they will call back to their capitals for permission or refusal. These national red 

cards diminish the ability for forces to synchronize on a coalition battlefield and quite 

frankly, those national red cards that are pulled out are very similar to what I would 

consider the departmental red cards that are raffled off and pulled out by our fellow 

agencies on the ground. So with that in mind, I would like to spend a few minutes on 

the impact on operations of the processes and personalities inside of DC reflecting on 

the role of the departments, the National Security Council staff and the translation of 

interagency decisions made at the highest level of our command authority into actions 

on the ground, because as I said, if we cannot get it right in DC, it does not get better 

on the ground. Now before that, among this group talking about interagency, I would 

like to offer a brief public service announcement. I hope that as you have discussed 

interagency discussions, you have not only talked about the horizontal integration of 

government agencies into operations, but that you have also explored the notion of vertical integration as well. Frankly, our mission sets are becoming vertically integrated 

as well and they are expanding. Those missions that the military either participates in 

directly or indirectly are getting bigger and more numerous. When one brings in State, 

USAID, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Treasury, that implies that the 

commanders on the ground are directly or indirectly taking on missions done by these 

agencies. When doing so it is probably as a result of the demand by a commander on 

the ground who understands the importance of what these teams can bring to the battlefield. Nonetheless, we might as well call it what it is. We are back in the business of 

building nations, and nation building will probably remain a core competency for some 

time to come. Now while this is not the time or place to normatively debate that issue, 

it does emphasize that as we are doing nation building, we need to get these decisions 

right in DC. But those decisions also must simply not be idiosyncratic but they ought to 

be based on sound principles and policies. If we do not get the policy right as I said earlier, no amount of ad hocracy on the ground by an enthusiasm by our officers and our 

troops will get it right. And this is the impetus behind a policy paper that we have been 

developing inside of DC between State, USAID, and DOD. This policy paper reads: 

Provide State, DOD, USAID, and other policy makers and practitioners with guidelines for planning and implementing security sector reforms with partner nations, reform efforts directed at the framework, institutions, and forces that provide security 

and promote the rule of law. 

This expanded view of security, one that not only seeks to achieve a tolerable level of 

violence inside of society, but actively promotes and facilitates activities to establish 

and respect the rule of law, supporting the establishment of relevant legal frameworks, 

planning, oversight, civilian management, and budgeting capacities will be an instrumental part of this policy development and how our troops operate in the field. 

That is a pretty ambitious set of objectives but I think if we take a look at what our 

troops are doing on the ground right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is exactly what 

they are doing and in many ways it is a disappointment that the troops are ahead of the 

policy. It is our hope that in this process we can get some policy out finally, between 

398 
State and DOD, USAID and others to provide that backbone for the decision making process. We came across a quote that was very, to our mind, instrumental to this. 

This quote says, “It reflects the imperatives for our soldiers to know something about 

strategy and tactics and logistics, but also economics and politics and diplomacy and 

history. Our soldiers must know everything they can know about military power and 

must also understand the limits of military power. They must understand that few of 

the important problems of our time have in the final analysis been finally solved by 

military power alone.” Anybody know where that quote came from? That quote was 

delivered by John F. Kennedy to the graduating class of 1961 at the US Naval Academy. That is something we seem to have known for about forty-seven years, at least at 

the presidential level. And our troops certainly understand it at the ground level. And 

our view is it ought to be time that we get everything in between right for them. 

So with that in mind, I would like to move on to a couple of points regarding the 

interagency process as it currently exists and has existed in the recent past. There is 

a cottage industry out there for people that are promoting interagency reform and I 

am not here to join in that industry but simply to offer an insider’s perspective. Over 

the last two years, I have either participated in or prepared my principle, either the 

Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State, for over two hundred PC’s (Principles 

Committee), DC’s (Deputies Committee), or PCC’s (Policy Coordinating Committee). 

And as a result, I can tell you that these observations are not drawn from any particular 

expertise or native intelligence but simply, on-the-ground experience. Of these three 

observations to this industry of interagency reform, I think two of them are a little bit 

controversial but I hope I can convince this audience of the thought process behind 

them. 

The first point that I want to make is that the NSC (National Security Council) staff 

are advisors to the President and should not have a fixed role. There is a suggestion out 

there that we ought to have a roles and missions definition for the NSC staff, that they 

ought to have exactly the same roles and missions from administration to administration. People talk about the halcyon days, the NSC staff before the first Gulf War, the 

experiences of the Berger NSC, and what was going on under Rice, and now Hadley. 

Each of these are different and equally valid models for the NSC because each of them 

reflect the President that they serve and attempting to formalize or cookie cutter the 

staff would not be helpful to the process nor would it serve the President. The second 

point that I would like to make concerns the notion of the War Czar. The selection of 

a War Czar to run the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan was one of the most 

controversial decisions taken by the President with regards to the NSC during his eight 

years. While it has been controversial, I think history will bear it out to be probably one 

of the best decisions that was made and I will explain. And third, my view is that Goldwater-Nichols legislation to impose better behavior and outcomes on the interagency 

is not the answer. The executive branch did not want an external actor to come in and 

clean up the interagency and Congress will not allow for a more efficient process. 
Let me first start talking about the issue of the NSC staff and the roles of personalities. On this role of the staff and the departments, I suspect you have already talked 

about the 1947 National Security Act and the statutory responsibilities of the National 

Security Council. But it is important to recognize that the staff is first and foremost 

part of the President’s personal staff. It is an advisory body to the chief executive. The 

cabinet members who make up the NSC by contrast are nominated by the President, 

they are confirmed by the senate, and they are subject to request for testimony in front 

of the United States Congress. They serve the President, but they also answer to the 

will of the Congress, particularly when it comes to resources. By contrast, the NSC 

staff is not confirmed by the senate, cannot be subpoenaed by the committees, and does 

not testify in front of Congress. As a result, there is a dual nature between those two 

elements that make up the National Security Council and the supporting staff for it. 

And then of course, there is the third element, and a very important actor in this entire 

process, the Vice President who not only has a role inside the executive branch and also 

has a role inside the United States Congress. Because of the latest controversy about 

what his authorities and responsibilities are, I am not going to get into that subject. All 

I would say is that this current office of the Vice President has significant influence and 

has a significant voice at the table for all of the National Security Council debates and 

decisions. So what I would tell you is that who a President picks as his Vice President, 

who he picks as his National Security Advisor and his cabinet Secretaries will, in a 

large sense, dictate how the National Security Council staff interprets and implements 

its role. You take a look at the role that was held by the National Security Advisor and 

the cabinet Secretaries for the first Bush, there you had James Baker as Secretary of 

State, you had Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense, strong personalities, and all held 

the confidence of the President. As a result, you saw Brent Scowcroft as the National 

Security Advisor, someone who saw his role more as a facilitator, and you saw the 

National Security staff somewhat like a weak battalion staff working for a strong battalion commander and strong company commanders, in somewhat of a backward role. 

But just because it was a backward role or a back foot role, it did not see itself as a 

decision making body, it did not see itself as an authoritative body, but it is often recognized as one of the most effective National Security Councils and National Security 

Council staffs in interagencies that we have seen since 1947. If anybody would like 

to read more of that, and I recommend this highly, it is the Living History Project, the 

National Security Council project that was run by Ivo Daalder up at Brookings where 

he brought a significant number of people in to talk about those days and what went 

right and what went wrong. And what was remarkable, particularly since I do not think 

a lot of people recognized this or realized it, nor did I for that matter, is inside this 

seventy-eight hundred and fifty-page document, there is a little subtext to all of this 

and it was the role of Brent Scowcroft’s Deputy and his role running the DCs, was able 

to elevate the DCs to Under Secretary-level, and was a tremendous catalyst in getting 

these meetings done right and getting these meetings done effectively, efficiently, and 

one that to this day, (this study was done about fifteen years after that), where people 

continue to point out this individual as a catalyst for making this all happen. Anybody 

have an idea who Brent Scowcroft’s Deputy was? The current Secretary of Defense, 

400 
Bob Gates, is roundly seen as the hero of this entire story and the hero of the National 

Security Council in the interagency process during the first Bush administration. Well 

worth reading. Clinton was a little bit different. The Clinton era seemed to put more 

emphasis on the role of the National Security Advisor and when you take a look at the 

cabinet Secretaries, that might explain why. The cabinet Secretaries at that time did 

not necessarily have as much . . . you had Les Aspin, Madeleine Albright . . . these 

were not really dominant figures at the NSC table. As a result, when you needed things 

to get done, you went to Sandy Berger. Sandy Berger kind of cracked the whip and 

kept things going and as a result, the National Security staff reflected that as well. I 

remember as a young Army lieutenant colonel sitting in a PCC being run by Susan 

Rice and this was about the time of the Burundi situation and I can tell you, you went 

away from that meeting knowing what your homework was, you knew what you had 

to turn in, and if you did not get it right you were going to hear from the NSC staff. 

They were not there to facilitate. They were there to orchestrate, and they were there 

to make decisions that would then go to the President to underwrite. There was a little 

bit of resentment in the first Bush administration. In fact, perhaps not resentment, but 

it was probably more of a difference in tact. I do not know if most people recognize 

that there was an article about seven years ago where Condi Rice and Steve Hadley 

laid out their view of how the National Security staff should operate and used the word 

facilitators. There have been a lot of people that have criticized the current National 

Security staff as one that just has a lot of meetings and doesn’t really demand action 

and implementation the way the previous NSCs did and the interagency meetings did. 

I think if one takes a look at the National Security team that the President chose, that 

is understandable, a very strong Secretary of State in the form of Colin Powell, a very 

strong and verbal Secretary of Defense, and Condoleezza Rice, while an academic, 

really was not one that was going to be forcing her opinion at that table. So it really 

was the staff supporting the subordinate commanders, so to speak, in the forms of the 

Secretaries and the President and the staff facilitating those decisions, moving them 

up to the President. I bring that out simply because I think as there are some out there 

who would be prescriptive about the way the National Security staff should run and the 

way the interagency should run, it is important to recognize that first and foremost, it 

remains an advisory staff whose responsibility is to the President and prescribing their 

behavior or describing their behavior, I think, does not do good service to either the 

National Security staff nor, more importantly, the President nor the cabinet Secretaries. 

So my first observation is, I would treat with great suspicion any project that came forward and said, “We are going to improve the interagency by dictating and demanding 

that the National Security staff operates in this particular way.” 

The second point is the issue of the War Czar. It is very controversial. There were a 

number of people that were asked to be the War Czar and chose not to be the War Czar, 

and Doug Lute finally stepped up to the plate. The role that the War Czar has played 

has not been necessarily in taking over the war responsibilities from the departments, 

but following through on the decisions made by the National Security Council. For 

anybody that has ever worked in the interagency, it is great at coming up with decisions 
and absolutely lacking when it comes into implementation. It is an organization, there 

are probably, five to ten DCs and PCs every week and at each one of those decisions 

are made. The decisions are made at the principles level, deputies agree, the PCCs 

analyze, but at the end of the day you would think that by the end of the week, you 

would have a nice set of decisions that would percolate through the chain of command 

because that is the way it works in the military. It absolutely does not work that way 

inside the interagency process. Great decisions are made, but in the past very few of 

those decisions have been implemented or followed through. For anybody that knows 

Doug Lute you know that first and foremost this is a former J3 at numerous levels and 

he is a guy that tracks decisions. You go to the meetings with Doug Lute and he is going to ask where your homework is. If you say, “My dog ate it,” there is going to be 

some naming and shaming and blaming at the table. He is a guy that understands that 

it is not simply enough at the highest level of the government to make decisions, but 

those decisions not only have to be executed and implemented, but they have to go 

down the chain of command. Or you end up with the paradigm we talked about earlier, 

the simple issue is, if you go into the interagency decisions, make those decisions and 

if the principles walk away back to their departments and stay focused upon their own 

department equities and hope that decision never comes back to haunt them, you get 

away with a lot. Doug Lute does not let things ride and when decisions are made by the 

principles, the decisions are made and you move out smartly. There are many in this 

community that would suggest that is not the way to go, that is an unbridled granting 

of power to a uniformed officer, and it does not necessarily have to be a uniformed officer. There are significant numbers of areas that you have to ask, “Who goes to sleep 

at night worrying about this particular issue? Who wakes up in the morning and says, is 

this going to get done?” It seems normal to all of us in the room that that would happen. 

It is very abnormal inside Washington, DC, but I think quite frankly, what you want 

to do is you want to have more of these czars. They may not have that particular term, 

but there has to be somebody who holds responsibility for implementing and monitoring the decisions that are made by the National Security Council. It is not being done 

and it needs to be done. All I would say is for anybody that wants to be a czar, always 

remember, when it comes to czars, the nobles normally hate them and the peasants 

normally assassinate them. 

The last point I would like to make before taking some questions is the notion of 

Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency. I would like to throw this thought out and just 

quite simply say, my personal view is it would not work. We do and we are making 

incremental improvements inside interdepartmental operations and interagency operations, but Goldwater-Nichols is not the ultimate solution. First of all, for those of us 

that lived through the Goldwater-Nichols era, in many ways, the results of GoldwaterNichols are a success, but the very fact that the services had to have an external force, 

the United States Congress, legislate what needed to be done, you have to consider 

that to be a failure. The services knew what to do. We all knew what to do. We knew 

the importance of working in a joint environment, but the incentives systems and the 

rewards were not set up for either acting joint and certainly not for going joint. There 

402 
were a couple of wise old heads inside the United States Congress that recognized that 

they could use the power of the purse to do this. They recognized the necessity to get 

the services to act joint and I think twenty years hence, we can all look at that as a success. But I would also tell you that trying to take that extension from the United States 

military into the interagency is bound for failure. The primary reason it would not work 

is number one, Congress will not allow it to happen because what Congress would be 

allowing to happen is granting more authority to the President of the United States. In 

fact, it is more of a comparison to the separation of powers clause in the Constitution 

and not Goldwater-Nichols. Congress intentionally limits the power of the President 

and limits the power of the department by separating the structures by which the different departments respond to Congress. That is the reason you have a 600-700 billion 

dollar defense budget while the State Department has about a 55-60 billion dollar budget. Different committees operate, different committees appropriate, different committees obligate money to those organizations and it does not seem, in my mind, rational 

that we would expect the United States Congress to give up that power to the President 

to be able to take money from the Department of Defense, give it to the Department 

of State or do anything that would make it more efficient. This separation of powers, 

these checks and balances currently held by the United States Congress which would 

be forfeited if we had a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency, just does not seem to 

pass the common sense test. People say, “Well, what is wrong with ultimate synchronization? Why shouldn’t that power be consolidated under the responsibility of the 

President?” Well, if you really want to do that, the ultimate form of synchronization, of 

course, is the dictatorship and I do not think America is going to be heading to a dictatorship anytime soon and I do not think that we are going to see a Goldwater-Nichols 

for the interagency anytime soon. It just does not seem to be the right way to do it and 

it just quite frankly, does not seem that it would be plausible in the first place to expect 

it to be achieved. But with that in mind, let me give some summary comments. We 

clearly have a lot of work to do in DC with regards to the interagency, and I think that 

there is a lot of internal work that needs to be done because until it is done, I cannot 

be confident that it is going to take care of the soldiers in the field and the interagency 

mechanisms that we are setting up on the ground. That is particularly acute given that 

there is a new administration that will be coming in town and it is going to have a 

completely new interagency National Security team. It will emerge, it will not look 

anything like the one we currently have, and I would expect that the National Security 

team under an Obama administration would look very different from one that would 

emerge under a McCain administration if he is elected. I think both of them could go 

from either the very strong managerial model that we saw under Sandy Berger. It could 

perhaps be the case that under a very strong McCain administration with very strong 

service Secretaries and department Secretaries, might seek somebody who is less assertive and less demanding upon the departments in the form of the National Security 

Advisor. We will certainly find that out in the next six months or so. But before I do 

finish up and turn it over for questions, I think this issue that you have taking on for 

the last couple of days is extremely important, and what I very much appreciate is sort 

of the top to bottom approach that you have taken. There is a tremendous amount of 
success going on at interagency, whether it is down at the PRT level, whether it is brigade-level headquarters inside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the JIATFs (Joint Interagency 

Task Force) that have been set up at CENTCOM (United States Central Command) 

and other places and frankly, the interagency which is a joint interagency task force 

inside of Washington, DC. What I suspect is you have taken a look at which way to go 

in the future on the ground. All of us recognize there is still a lot of work that needs 

to be done at the highest levels, and quite frankly, it is not entirely inaccurate to suggest that Washington, DC does not yet know that, does not yet understand it because, 

quite frankly, Washington, DC is not on a war footing. But I would tell you that there 

are still small pockets of individuals out there and groups that never fall asleep at 

night nor wake up in the morning without thinking about these issues because of the 

consequence it has for our soldiers in the field. And I just want to finish up by again 

remarking on the importance of our soldiers in the field. They are carrying the work of 

a nation in their rucksacks and we should be enormously proud of what they are doing. 

If this conference marginally improves, in any way, the interagency capability of this 

nation, insofar that it facilitates and supports what our troops on the ground are doing, 

then I would consider this conference a tremendous success. God bless those troops for 

what they do. They are the ones that ought to be the first people we think of as we try 

to improve interagency operations and we should just be enormously grateful for what 

they are doing every day. So thank you very much and rather than take the entire hour 

and a half to talk, I thought it might be helpful, either to let you guys get out early or 

take a number of questions in the interim, so thank you very much. 

404 
Day 3—Featured Speaker
 

Question and Answers
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Mr. Mark T. Kimmitt
 

Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs
 

United States State Department
 

Audience Member 

If you could comment briefly and I know you have only been at State now since the 

beginning of August it looks like. What do you feel like as you move from Defense? 

Do you have a sense yet from State? Is there an institutional perspective that you as 

an individual feel that you are going to be pressured to do things with State that you 

would not have had to do with Defense or vice versa? How does interagency work for 

an individual who has moved back and forth between both departments? 

A/S Kimmit 

That is a good question. First of all, we have to be loyal to our institutions. We have 

to be loyal to our leaders. As I said at my swearing in, it is remarkable that when you 

take the oath of office as an Assistant Secretary of State, it is almost word for word the 

same oath of office you take when you are commissioned as a United States officer or 

promoted. You swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not 

the Department of State, not the President of the United States, but the Constitution 

of the United States. The last time I checked, when I drove over the bridge and got to 

the other side, it was still the same Constitution that the Department of State and the 

Department of Defense adheres to. That was point one. Point two, it was remarkable 

and perhaps [loss of audio]. I have often had the Under Secretary from policy call me 

up and say, “Mark, I want to talk to you about the paper.” I said, “What paper? I have 

not even seen it yet.” But that is just the way it works and you have to learn to live 

with that. But fundamentally, I do not see . . . well, let me put it this way, there are 

old-time State Department types out there that do not believe in all this interagency 

stuff. There are old-time senior Army officers that do not believe in this interagency 

stuff. Well, what is remarkable is this young generation of Foreign Service Officers and 

Army captains and majors that have served together, worked together, lived together, 

ate together, and in many cases, been shot at together, that are growing up inside these 

organizations and it is very refreshing. In fact, you get a bunch of young Foreign Service Officers together with a bunch of military officers and soldiers at a social occasion 

where they have served together in combat and you would not be able to differentiate 

one from the other. So what I would say is, those sharp distinctions which used to exist 
between our departments, war creates strange bedfellows and in this case that is a good 

thing. So I would just tell you that I was refreshingly . . . well, when I got over to State, 

I was not brought into a secret cloak room, given the secret handshake and told to say, 

“Okay, everything you did over in DOD does not apply here.” It is very similar. I think 

that we all work at the same objective, we all serve the same President, but most importantly, it is important to defend the same Constitution. So that was a very refreshing 

observation to learn that after I had been there about two weeks. 

Audience Member (Blogosphere) 

Sir, if you could comment about what your feelings are about the National Center for 

Strategic Communications that would be the premier education and training facility for 

both DOD public affairs and Department of State public diplomacy. There have been 

congressional movements to establish this center to unify the strategic message across 

the USG (United States Government). 

A/S Kimmit 

In terms of a process or a building, I am indifferent. But in terms of an outcome, I think 

all of us have recognized, and Bill Caldwell and I in particular who have spent our last 

combat tour at a podium, understand the importance of information. And it is becoming such an incredible component of what we do on the ground. General Caldwell and 

I were talking about it over lunch. The first people he introduced me to this afternoon 

were some of the people that had worked with him in Iraq, supporting him in his job. 

I see Matt [inaudible] who was my right arm while I was in Iraq, who taught me how 

important it was to get the information out, be first with the truth. There are many that 

still may think, “This ‘five o’clock follies,’ press conference stuff is not what real military men are all about, what real military women are about. They are wrong. It is an 

essential part of what we do when we are fighting somewhere around the world—tell 

our message, get our message out, and be first with the truth. If for no other reason than 

the fact that even if you do not believe it, your enemy does. Your enemy is probably 

reading that same blog right now and trying to figure out how he or she can use a blog 

to disseminate this information to unwilling and unfriendly neighbors. So if there is a 

movement afoot to try to formalize this in a building, in a process, in an organization, 

I think that is great as long as it achieves the outcome which we all seek which is a 

core of foreign service, military, and civil service professionals that are able to get up 

in front of audiences, whether they are newspapers, whether they are our own citizens, 

whether they are our own press, or whether they are foreign nationals and explain what 

we are doing, why we are doing it, and why our soldiers are putting their lives on the 

line to do it. That is, in my mind, an absolute essential aspect of leadership for the 21st 

century. And if people do not get it, they do not get it. But your enemy does, and if for 

no other reason, you ought to understand that. 

406 
Audience Member 

You mentioned that Washington is not on a war footing. How would you compare and 

contrast the level of war footing between Defense and the State Department? 

A/S Kimmit 

Listen, do not go into the Pentagon hallways at 4:30 on a normal afternoon. You will 

get run over. I would not necessarily put the cloak of purity on the Department of Defense. If you are working in the policy shops for East Asia, life is not bad. If you are 

working in the policy shops for the Middle East, you work a little bit harder. I think 

everybody recognizes that we are in a war. I do not think people recognize that we 

are at war. I would say that comment applies in every bureau and remarkably, there 

are some departments that you would never expect to be thinking that they are at war 

that are so incredibly important these days. If you want to find some of the toughest, 

meanest people in Washington, DC fighting this war on terrorism, go to the Treasury 

Department. You run into guys like Stu Levy who spends every day of his life trying 

to figure out where the money flows are coming from in Iran and where they are going 

to. These guys are absolutely vicious. So I think as I said in my final comments, there 

are small pockets out there that really understand, not only that we are in a war, but we 

are at war. Then there are larger pockets that understand we are in a war, and then there 

are some other people that just acknowledge, “Hey, that is somebody else’s business 

and I am not worried about it.” So short answer is, not enough people understand we 

are in a war, not enough people understand that we are at war. But I would not make 

that department specific. 

Audience Member 

Earlier this academic year, we received a brief from Dr. Thomas Barnett and he spoke 

to us about his idea of creating a SysAdmin force which I understand to be an extreme 

form of interagency cooperation, a force structure that is able to deploy anywhere 

around the world with military, DOD, State Department, and other agencies. How do 

you feel about that idea? Is that something that is even possible with the current structure? 

A/S Kimmit 

Maybe I got confused on this notion of a SysAdmin force. I thought you were going to 

take me down into the cyber space fighting environment, but he is suggesting that we 

ought to have a stand-by capability to deploy anywhere in the world? 

Audience Member 

Yes Sir, in a joint interagency force that has . . . 
A/S Kimmit 

I absolutely agree with you. In fact, that is one of the initiatives that is being pushed 

right now to the Civilian Reserve Corps at the Department of State. Oddly enough, the 

European Union figured this out ten years ago. They have a quote, “Rapid Reaction 

Force” of not only soldiers but lawyers, economists, so on and so forth. That is the 

effort that is being pushed by Ambassador John Herbst right now in S/CRS (Office 

of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization) inside the State Department. 

It is probably not getting as much traction as it needs, but it is certainly the case that, 

depending on a civilian RFF (Request for Forces) process to try to find yourself an 

economist, a forensics expert, and a foreign policy advisor once the war starts is not the 

right way to go. I think there is debate in Washington, DC, there is actual money that 

has been put against that project, but it does not seem to have the traction that I think 

both of us would recognize that it needs over time. 

Audience Member 

I want to ask you about dynamics within the State Department. Robert McNamara 

made the argument once that in the 1950s we gutted the Asian specialists. As a consequence of that when we went to Vietnam, we were not as knowledgeable as we should 

have been. Another argument has been made as we went into Iraq that we did not have 

sufficient number of Arabists, people that had a view from the position of Arabs in the 

Middle East. As a consequence of that, we did not have all the information we needed 

and all the understanding that we needed when we went into the Middle East. And 

the argument has been that within the State Department there is a dynamic that these 

various areas of the world have friction between them and one becomes dominant and 

influences policy more so than others. Have any comment on that? 

A/S Kimmit 

You brought up a couple of points there and different points. It is true that inside the 

State Department and the regional bureaus, there is somewhat of a hierarchy within the 

regional bureaus and much of that hierarchy is personality dependent. Obviously, right 

now the Near East Bureau, under David Welch, gets a lot of attention and gets a lot of 

resources because of what is happening inside the Middle East. By contrast, Secretary 

Jendayi Frazer down in Africa is always having to make the argument that, “Look, 

this is all about phase zero operations. Let’s prevent the next war rather than spend all 

our efforts fighting the current war.” But I think you are going to find that in all organizations, it was certainly the case in OSD policy, that as the DAS (Deputy Assistant 

Secretary) for the Middle East, I probably was able to secure more of what I needed 

whether it was resources, focus, attention, than say, the DAS for Western Hemisphere. 

So, true. The other point you made, I think, is even more important, which is developing that cultural base of expertise early on because cultural and language skills, to use 

the Japanese term, are not a “just in time” inventory. You cannot just call up and all of a 

408 
sudden get a hundred Asian specialists, a hundred Arabic speakers, so on and so forth. 

And even if you can quickly get the language speakers, the time it takes to develop the 

cultural expertise well surpasses the amount of time you are going to have in advance 

warning. This is something that General Caldwell and I were talking about at lunch and 

I was impressed to hear the initiatives that the Department of the Army in general, but 

Leavenworth in particular, are pushing in that regard. So I wish I could disagree with 

you, but I think in both cases, in terms of the cultural requirements, that we are going 

to need in the future and in terms of the bureaucratic behaviors inside the State Department and other departments, I think you are spot on. 

Audience Member 

Sir, could you talk a little bit more about the cultural difference between your thirty 

plus years in DOD and what you are now seeing as far as the culture within the Department of State and specifically about the career incentive programs within the Department of State. Are you rewarded for these types of tours, career progression patterns, 

etcetera, and is there some cultural resistance within Department of State to not only 

interagency but just deployments in general? 

A/S Kimmit 

Interesting question and first of all, it was more of a cultural leap for me to take off my 

uniform and work as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense than it was to go from 

wearing a tie in Department of Defense to working in the State Department. It was a 

tremendous leap between the two and some of the mistakes I made were what caused 

me to be delayed a little bit in my confirmation process, well deserved. That said, I 

think you would be remarkably impressed by the similarities in the cultures between 

the two places. Although the rules are different, the norms are very similar in terms 

of organizational loyalty, how you can progress, what is the path for success in the 

military versus the path for success in the State Department. And that is something that 

the State Department is examining right now. The State Department, in a lot of ways 

internal to itself, is going through a Goldwater-Nichols examination of itself. What do 

I mean by that? I also run the POLAD Program (Political Advisor Program). We just 

got finished selecting a new group of political advisors. As I was talking to a couple 

of them the other day, it sounded like twenty years ago, before Goldwater-Nichols, 

“Oh gosh, getting off the regional bureau track is going to hurt me.” Or the ones that 

are there, “This is the best job I have ever had, but it is not going to get me anywhere 

in the State Department.” And you take away the term “POLAD” and you put in the 

word “joint” and it is very similar to us. What I have been trying to amplify because 

I certainly did not invent this, but this notion that within the State Department that if 

they truly want to acknowledge how important interagency tours are, they have to be 

rewarded. People by and large are going to go where the motivations and incentives 

lie. Twenty years ago, we would not have gone to a joint assignment; it would be the 

kiss of death. Nobody gets promoted, nobody gets selected for command. And in many 
ways in the foreign service, the answer is to be in a bureau, start off as a desk officer, 

go to an Embassy, work as a political officer, come back to the bureau, become a director, go back to an Embassy, be a DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) or to a different 

one, and go back and forth. While that sounds nutty, I bet if you talked to most senior 

officers in the United States Army, we grew up in an environment where you go to 

a battalion, you go to a brigade, you go to successive commands. You do something 

crazy like working joint or take a White House fellowship and you are putting yourself 

at risk. We got over it inside the military and I think the State Department is trying to 

get through it now. I would tell you though, that they have not yet taken the final step 

which is to establish incentives, motivations, and penalties for those that do not, and I 

would suggest that human nature will say, “Until you actually penalize those who do 

not and reward those that do, you are not going to get anywhere.” They made a couple 

of steps two years ago when we were coming out of Iraq. Almost every award given 

that year in State Department was given to somebody who had served in Iraq, so they 

are getting rewarded. Just as we went through this in the Army, as we transitioned over 

to joint, they are going through that now. Does that help? I am absolutely impressed 

with this crowd for one that started at one o’clock in the afternoon right out of lunch. 

I was very carefully watching to see if anybody nodded off. Anybody in the class of 

1976 that ever had a class with me knows that between the hours of one o’clock and 

three o’clock, I could be found at my desk with my head on the desk, drooling from 

the side of my cheeks as I was falling asleep, so if for no other reason, thank you very 

much for the opportunity to speak today, thanks for what you are doing out here, and 

congratulations on a great symposium. 

410 
Day 3—Closing Remarks 

Conclusion
 

(Transcript of Presentation)
 

Dr. William Glenn Robertson
 

Director, Combat Studies Institute
 

In the Army pedagogical technique known as the Staff Ride, there is a brief but 

critical phase known as the integration phase. It begins the process of integrating all 

that we have learned through disparate means into a coherent framework. Let me very 

briefly begin that process of integration here at the close of our symposium, knowing 

that the integration process will go on individually within your minds as you leave 

this symposium, and further as you interact with others on this very important topic. 

What have we heard here this week? The interagency process is, first of all, not a 

new phenomenon, stretching back centuries. We’ve also learned that it is difficult to 

accomplish successfully. We’ve learned that personality difficulties and differences 

complicate the interagency process. Time and again, speakers have commented on 

the role of personality. We’ve learned that structural differences between and among 

agencies complicate the process. We’ve learned that organizational cultural differences 

complicate the process. But the good news is that we’ve also learned that people of 

good will and great skill can overcome all these difficulties; and when those difficulties are overcome, the synergies available in service to our nation are immense. The 

historical record is clear. Indeed, it’s a commonplace. So, why don’t we learn? Or, if 

we do learn why do we forget? How can we institutionalize what works and avoid 

or discard what doesn’t? These are hard but critical questions, and this symposium 

has made a contribution toward framing an answer. The papers and discussions that 

have taken place over the last three days have told us what happened in the past. 

You have heard examples transcending single centuries and single places. You have 

heard those examples examined for significant insights and the details that each of 

them brings to the table, but the question of institutionalization remains. How does 

historical insight translate into policy? This symposium has turned up the rheostat 

on an already bright light. We may have to leave it to others to direct that light onto 

the path that is the future. Still, we’ve made a beginning, and I want to thank all of 

you—participants and attendees alike—for a most stimulating symposium. Next year, 

we have tentatively selected for our topic, “The Military and the Media in Wartime: 

Historical Perspectives.” We hope you will find the time to attend. Our proceedings of 

this symposium we hope to have published by the end of December. I want to add my 

thanks to those people that Ken Gott thanked, and I want to extend my thanks to Ken 

as well for managing this symposium so well. 

Day 1

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix A
 

Conference Program
 

Day 1 

Tuesday, 16 September 2008 

0800 – 0825 Registration 

0825 – 0835 Welcome/Administrative Announcements 

0835 – 0845 Opening Remarks 

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV 

Commanding General, 

US Army Combined Arms Center 

Keynote Address 

0845 – 1000 Keynote Presentation 

Interagency Coordination 

Brigadier General Robert J. Felderman 

Deputy Director J5, Plans, Policy & Strategy, 

USNORTHCOM 

1000 – 1015 Break 

Panel 1 

1015 – 1145 The Difficulties in Interagency Operations 

The Interagency Process and the Decision To 

Intervene in Grenada 

Edgar Raines, Ph.D. 

US Army Center of Military History 

The Interagency in Panama 1986-1990 

Dr. John T. Fishel 

National Defense University 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1015 – 1145
 

1145 – 1300 

1200 – 1230 

1300 – 1430 

1430 – 1445 

1445 – 1615 

Panel 1 (cont’d) 

Lebanon and the Interagency 

Lawrence Yates, Ph.D.
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

Moderator
 

Richard Stewart, Ph.D.
 

US Army Center of Military History
 

Lunch 

Optional Virtual Staff Ride Demonstration – 

Operation ANACONDA (Room 2104) 

Mr. Chuck Collins 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

Panel 2 

The Interagency Process: Southeast Asia 

The Interagency Process and Malaya: 

The British Experience 

Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Ph.D. 

University of Arkansas 

The Interagency Process and Vietnam: 

The American Experience 

Jeffrey Woods, Ph.D. 

Arkansas Tech University 

Moderator 

Donald P. Wright, Ph.D. 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

Break 

Panel 3 

Interagency Efforts at the National Level 

21st Century Security Challenges and the 

Interagency Process: Historical Lessons about 

Integrating Instruments of National Power 

Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D. 

Strategic Studies Institute 

414 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming in 2009

1445 – 1615 Panel 3 (cont’d) 

The Independence of the International Red 

Cross: The Value of Neutral and Impartial Action 

Concurrent to the Interagency Process 

Mr. Geoffrey Loane 

Head of Regional Delegation of the United 

States and Canada for the International 

Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 

Moderator 

Mr. Kelvin Crow 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

1615 – 1630 Administrative Announcements 

d 

A Different Kind of War: The United States Army Operation 

Enduring Freedom (OEF) September 2001-September 2005 

By the CSI Contemporary Operations Study Team 

CSI’s study of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) examines US Army 

operations in Afghanistan between September 2001 and September 2005. 

Focusing on the operational and tactical levels of war, this work follows the 

evolution of the Army mission in OEF as it moved from limited involvement 

in combat and humanitarian operations toward a more comprehensive full 

spectrum campaign directed at defeating insurgent forces and fostering stability 

in the new Afghanistan. Like On Point II, CSI’s study of OEF is based on a 

large collection of primary sources including hundreds of oral interviews and 

unit documents. 
Day 2

Wednesday, 17 September 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2 

Wednesday, 17 September 2008 

0800 – 0830 Registration 

0830 – 0845 Administrative Announcements 

0845 – 1000 Featured Speaker 

Richard Stewart, Ph.D. 

Chief Historian 

US Army Center of Military History 

1000 – 1015 Break 

Panel 4 

1015 – 1145 Interagency Case Studies 

Approaching Iraq 2002 in the Light of Three 

Previous Army Interagency Experiences: 

Germany 1944-48, Japan 1944-48, and 

Vietnam 1963-75 

Lieutenant General (Ret.) John H. Cushman 

A Mile Deep and an Inch Wide: Foreign Internal 

Defense Campaigning in Dhofar, Oman, and 

El Salvador 

Mr. Michael P. Noonan 

Foreign Policy Research Institute 

Moderator 

Mr. John J. McGrath 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

1145 – 1300 Lunch 

Panel 5 

1300 – 1430 Post-War Germany 

Role and Goal Alignment: The Military-NGO 

Relationship in Post WWII Germany 

Major Tania M. Chacho, Ph.D. 

United States Military Academy 

416 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1300 – 1430 Panel 5 (cont’d) 

Between Catastrophe and Cooperation: 

The US Army and the Refugee Crisis in 

West Germany, 1945-50 

Adam R. Seipp, Ph.D. 

Texas A&M University 

Moderator 

Curtis King, Ph.D. 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

1430 – 1445 Break 

Panel 6 

1445 – 1615 The Interagency Process in Asia 

Post-Cold War Interagency Process in East Timor 

Major Eric Nager 

United States Army, Pacific 

Joint Military-Civilian Civil Affairs 

Operations in Vietnam 

Nicholas J. Cull, Ph.D. 

Director, Master of Public Diplomacy Program 

University of Southern California 

Moderator 

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Farquhar 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

1615 – 1630 Administrative Announcements 
Day 3

Thursday, 18 September 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 3 

Thursday, 18 September 2008 

0800 – 0830 Registration 

0830 – 0845 Administrative Announcements 

Panel 7 

0845 – 1015 Interagency Process Within the United States 

Cold War Interagency Relations and the Struggle to 

Coordinate Psychological Strategy 

Robert T. Davis II, Ph.D. 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

“Our Most Reliable Friends”: Army Offi cers and 

Tribal Leaders in Western Indian Territory, 

1875-1889 

Mr. William A. Dobak 

US Army Center of Military History 

Moderator 

Ricardo A. Herrera, Ph.D. 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

1015 – 1030 Break 

Panel 8 

1030 – 1200 Military Governments and Courts 

Army Lawyers in the Interagency: Three Case 

Studies of Military Tribunals 

Colonel Gary M. Bowman 

US Army Center of Military History 

Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT): 

A Grass Roots Interagency Counter-Insurgency 

Methodology in Afghanistan 

Lieutenant Colonel Lynda Granfield 

Former PRT Commander for Jalalabad 

Moderator 

Mr. Robert Ramsey lll 

US Army Combat Studies Institute 

418 
 

 

 

 

 

 

1200 – 1300 Lunch 

1300 – 1430 Featured Speaker 

Mr. Mark T. Kimmitt 

Assistant Secretary of State for 

Political-Military Affairs 

US Department of State 

1430 – 1440 Administrative Announcements 

1440 – 1500 Concluding Remarks 

Dr. William G. Robertson 

Director, US Army Combat Studies Institute 

Appendix B
 

Conference Program
 

About the Presenters 

Gary M. Bowman, Colonel, JA, US Army Reserve, is the Deputy Commander (IMA) at the 

US Army Center of Military History. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and he 

earned his law degree and his Ph.D. in government at the University of Virginia. He is the 

author of Highway Politics in Virginia and numerous articles on legal, military, and political 

topics. He practices law in Roanoke, Virginia, is a member of the Consulting Faculty at 

the US Army Command & General Staff College, and has deployed four times during the 

Global War on Terror. 

William B. Caldwell IV, Lieutenant General, US Army, serves as the Commander of the 

Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, the command that oversees the Command and General Staff College and 17 other schools, centers, and training programs 

located throughout the United States. The Combined Arms Center is also responsible for: 

development of the Army’s doctrinal manuals, training of the Army’s commissioned and 

noncommissioned officers, oversight of major collective training exercises, integration of 

battle command systems and concepts, and supervision of the Army’s center for the collection and dissemination of lessons learned. His prior deployments and assignments 

include serving as Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Effects and spokesperson for the 

Multi National Force – Iraq; Commanding General of the 82d Airborne Division; Senior 

Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense; Deputy Director for Operations for 

the United States Pacific Command; Assistant Division Commander, 25th Infantry Division; 

Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Commander, 1st Brigade, 

10th Mountain Division; a White House Fellow, The White House; Politico-Military Officer 

in Haiti during Operation RESTORE/UPHOLD DEMOCRACY; Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Operations, 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division during Operations DESERT SHIELD and 

DESERT STORM; and Chief of Plans for the 82d Airborne Division during Operation JUST 

CAUSE in Panama. Lieutenant General Caldwell graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1976. He earned Master’s Degrees from the United States 

Naval Postgraduate School and from the School for Advanced Military Studies at the United States Army Command and General Staff College. Lieutenant General Caldwell also 

attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University as a Senior 

Service College Fellow. 

Tania M. Chacho, Ph.D., Major, US Army, is an Academy Professor and the Director of the 

Comparative Politics program in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military 

Academy, West Point. She serves in the US Army, with previous experience as a Military Intelligence Offi cer and then a Foreign Area Offi cer, specializing in Western Europe. Her last assignment was as a Special Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, working out of the 

Political Advisor’s office in Mons, Belgium. Her past assignments include tours at Fort Bragg, 

Fort Huachuca, and Germany, and she has deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo. She has published 

articles on soldier motivation and a book chapter on European defense initiatives. 
 

Nicholas J. Cull, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Diplomacy and Director of the Masters Program in Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He took both his B.A. 

and Ph.D. at the University of Leeds. While a graduate student he studied at Princeton 

in the USA as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York. His research 

and teaching interests are broad and inter-disciplinary, and focus on the the role of culture, 

information, news and propaganda in foreign policy. He is the author of The Cold War and 

the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-

1989 (Cambridge 2008). His fi rst book, Selling War (Oxford University Press, New York, 

1995), was a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor, and 

was named by Choice Magazine as one of the ten best academic books of that year. He is 

the co-editor (with David Culbert and David Welch) of Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: 

A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500-Present (2003) which was one of Booklist magazine’s 

reference books of the year, and co-editor with David Carrasco of Alambrista and the USMexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants (University of New 

Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2004). He has published numerous articles on the theme 

of propaganda and media history. He is an active film historian who has been part of the 

movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources. He 

is President of the International Association for Media and History, a member of the Public 

Diplomacy Council and has worked closely with the British Council’s Counterpoint Think 

Tank. 

John H. Cushman, Lieutenant General (Ret.), US Army. General Cushman enlisted in 

the US Army in 1940 and in 1944 graduated from the United States Military Academy. He 

earned a Masters degree in Civil Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then attended the US Army Engineer School. From 1976 to 1978, General Cushman 

commanded I Corps (ROK/US) Group. He retired in 1978 and has since been a writer and 

consultant. He is the author of many books, papers, and articles on strategy, multiservice 

and multinational operations, warfare simulation, and military command and control most 

notably his 1993 pamphlet Thoughts for Joint Commanders. In 1994 he was named “Author of the Year” by the US Naval Institute Proceedings. 

Robert T. Davis II, Ph.D., is a historian at the Combat Studies Institute. He received a B.A. 

in History from the University of Kansas in 1998, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio University in 2003 and 2008, respectively. He is the author of The Challenge of Adaptation: The 

U.S. Army in the Aftermath of Confl ict, 1953-2000 and has recently completed a study on 

military-media relations in the 20th century. He is currently revising his dissertation, “The 

Dilemma of NATO Strategy, 1949-1969,” for publication. 

William A. Dobak worked at the National Archives in Washington, DC, for nearly six years before joining the US Army Center of Military History in 2002 as a historian. He is the author of Fort Riley and Its Neighbors: Military Money and Economic 

Development (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) and co-authored, with Thomas D. 

Phillips, The Black Regulars, 1866-1898 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001). His articles have appeared in Kansas History, Montana, Prologue, and the Western Historical 

Quarterly. 

Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D., joined the Strategic Studies Institute in June 2007 as Research 

Professor of National Security Affairs. He previously served on the US Army War College 

faculty as a Visiting Professor (1994-96) and as Professor of National Security Policy and 

422 
Strategy in the Department of National Security and Strategy (1997-2004), where he also 

held the General Maxwell D. Taylor Chair (1999-2002) and served as Department Chairman (2001-2004). Dr. Dorff has been a Senior Advisor with Creative Associates International, Inc., in Washington, DC, and served as Executive Director of the Institute of Political 

Leadership in Raleigh, NC (2004-2006). He is the author or co-author of three books and 

numerous journal articles. Professor Dorff holds a B.A. in Political Science from Colorado 

College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill. 

Robert J. Felderman, Brigadier General, US Army, is Special Assistant to the Chief, National Guard Bureau, detailed as the United States Deputy Director of Plans, Policy & 

Strategy for North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern 

Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Prior to his current assignment, General 

Felderman served as the Operations Deputy Director for National Guard Matters at United 

States Northern Command. General Felderman was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant upon graduation from the Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia 

in 1977. He was previously enlisted in both the Army and the Air National Guard, having 

achieved the rank of Sergeant. General Felderman is a Master Army Aviator, with over 

2,200 flight hours throughout twenty-two years of aviation duty. He has commanded at 

the company, battalion and brigade level, and is branch qualified infantry, armor (cavalry), 

aviation, medical service corps and strategic plans. He is a graduate of the National War 

College, National Defense University, Washington, District of Columbia. 

John T. Fishel, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus from the National Defense University, was 

Professor of National Security Policy and Research Director at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies of the National Defense University from December 1997 until August 

2006. He is also Professor Emeritus (Adjunct) from the School of International Service of 

American University. He has specialized in security and defense policy as well as Latin 

American affairs throughout his career focusing on issues of national development and 

stability operations of various kinds. He has written extensively on civil military operations and peacekeeping and is the author (with Max G. Manwaring) of Uncomfortable 

Wars Revisited (2006), Civil Military Operations in the New World (1997) and the editor 

and co-author of “The Savage Wars of Peace:” Toward a New Paradigm of Peace Operations (1998), and with Walter E. Kretchik and Robert F. Baumann the author of Invasion, 

Intervention, “Intervasion” (1997) (a study of the Haiti peacekeeping operation of 1994-

95). While he was on active duty as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army he served in 

the United States Southern Command where he was, successively, Chief of the Civic 

Action Branch of the Directorate of Policy, Strategy, and Plans (J5), Chief of Research 

and Assessments of the Small Wars Operations Research Directorate (SWORD), Chief 

of the Policy and Strategy Division of the J5, and Deputy Chief of the US Forces Liaison 

Group. Concurrent with the latter position he served as Special Assistant to the Commander, US Military Support Group-Panama and to the Commander, US Army-South. 

Dr. Fishel received his Ph.D. in Political and Administrative Development from Indiana 

University in 1971, his M.A. in Political Science, also from Indiana in 1967, and his A.B. 

from Dartmouth College in International Relations in 1964. 

Lynda M. Granfield, Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, earned a B.S. from University of Nebraska and M.S. in International Relations from Troy State University in 2001. She has 

served over the past 15 years as an active duty civil affairs officer. Her earlier assignments 
include Assistance Chief of Staff, G-9, Civil Military Operations for the Southern European 

Task Force (SETAF) in Vicenza, Italy; Assistant S-5, ARCENT-Kuwait; Headquarters Company Commander, 3d Battalion, 1SWTG; Tactical Civil Affairs Team Leader, Delta Company, 96th Civil Affairs Battalion; and Civil Affairs Planner, DCSOPS, USASOC. Lieutenant 

Colonel Granfi eld has also served in Operations DESERT SHIELD/STORM, UPHOLD DEMOCRACY, JOINT ENDEAVOR, PROVIDE PROMISE, and CJTF-Liberia. Her most recent 

deployment was to Jalalabad City, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan where she served as 

the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Commander from June 2005-May 2006. 

Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arkansas. He received his doctoral degree from Duke University in 

May 2006, after which he taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke and 

a Lecturer at North Carolina State University before coming to the University of 

Arkansas in July 2007. In 2004, Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon published his first book, 

The Irish Experience during the Second World War: An Oral History (Irish Academic Press), which was named a Book of the Year by the Sunday Irish Independent. His second book, based on his doctoral dissertation, was published in 2007 by 

Palgrave Macmillan, titled Turning Points of the Irish Revolution: The British Government, 

Intelligence, and the Cost of Indifference, 1912-1921. Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon has also published articles in The Historian (2003), Terrorism and Political Violence (2004), Hemisphere 

(2004), Peace and Change (2005), The Journal of Intelligence History (2006), and Perspectives on History (2008), as well a chapter in the book Defending the Homeland: Historical 

Perspectives on Radicalism, Terrorism, and State Responses (West Virginia University 

Press, 2007). His current project, provisionally titled Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty 

Wars and the End of Empire, explores British counterinsurgency campaigns in Palestine, 

Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, and Aden in the years 1945 to 1965. 

Mark T. Kimmitt, Brigadier General (Ret.), US Army, was sworn in as Assistant Secretary 

of State for Political-Military Affairs on August 8, 2008. Prior to assuming this position, 

he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy, responsible for 

military policy development, planning, guidance and oversight for the region. Mr. Kimmitt served for over 30 years as an officer in a wide variety of command, operational, and 

policy positions with extensive operational experience abroad before retiring with the rank 

of Brigadier General in the United States Army in 2006. His assignments included Deputy 

Director of Strategy and Plans at United States Central Command and Deputy Director 

of Operations and Chief Military Spokesman for Coalition Forces in Iraq during Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM. Mr. Kimmitt is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. He 

holds a Master’s Degree (with Distinction) from Harvard Business School. He holds additional Master’s Degrees from the School of Advanced Military Studies and the National 

Defense University, and earned a certification as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) while 

serving as Assistant Professor of Finance and Economics in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy. 

Geoffrey Loane is the current Head of Regional Delegation of the United States and 

Canada for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In this capacity he oversees ICRC visits to the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and is responsible for 

day to day working relationships with the United States Government. Mr. Loane has also 

worked in the Balkans, Middle East and spent more than a decade in the Horn of Africa 

during the major conflicts there. These include Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda. 

424 
He has also served as the Head of the Emergency Relief Unit of the ICRC in Geneva. He 

has published books on the unintended consequences of humanitarian assistance and has 

conducted extensive field research in assistance operations. 

Eric Nager, Major, is the Deputy Historian for the US Army, Pacific Command. A member of the US Army Reserve, he is a graduate of the Combined Arms and Services Staff 

School and the Command and General Staff College (ILE). Prior to his current assignment 

he served in the J4 section of the US Pacific Command; as Company Commander of the 

375th Transportation Group; in the Support Operations section of the 167th Corps Support 

Group; and as the executive officer for Service Battery in the 3/83rd Field Artillery Battalion. 

Commissioned in 1989 through the ROTC program at Washington University of St. Louis, 

Major Nager is a graduate of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, from which he holds a 

Bachelor of Arts in business administration and history, with a minor in Latin American studies. He also earned an M.B.A .from the University of South Alabama in 1991, and a Master 

of Liberal Arts (A.L.M.) from Harvard in 1999. He has been an adjunct faculty member for 

Faulkner University and Huntingdon College, teaching primarily undergraduate business 

courses. 

Michael P. Noonan is the managing director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on National Security. His current research focuses on civil-military relations, defense 

transformation, and the military’s role in the war on terrorism. As a Captain in the US Army 

Reserve, in June 2007 he returned from a 14-month deployment to Texas, Kuwait, and Iraq, 

where he served on a Military Transition Team (MiTT) with an Iraqi light infantry battalion 

in and around the northern city of Tal`Afar. Among other professional affiliations, he is a 

member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a fellow of the Inter-University 

Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 

and has consulted for the Institute for Defense Analyses. Mr. Noonan is a doctoral candidate in political science from Loyola University, Chicago; his dissertation deals with foreign 

internal defense, civil-military relations, and political-military effectiveness. His writings 

have appeared in Orbis, The American Interest, Parameters, National Security Studies 

Quarterly, FPRI Wire, and FPRI E-Notes. 

Edgar Raines, Ph.D., US Army Center of Military History, is a graduate of Southern Illinois 

University and the University of Wisconsin where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1976. 

He served as an assistant academic dean at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 

and as a historian at the Office of Air Force History before joining the US Army Center of 

Military History in November 1980. He co-authored (with Major David R. Campbell) The 

Army and the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Evolution of Army Ideas on the Command, Control, 

and Coordination of the U.S. Armed Forces, 1942–1985 (1986) and Eyes of Artillery: The 

Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II (2000). He is currently working on a 

manuscript tentatively titled “The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, October–December 1983.” Dr. Raines has written numerous unpublished special 

studies as well as several articles in military and social history. 

William Glenn Robertson, Ph.D., is the Director of the US Army Combat Studies Institute, US Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A graduate of the 

University of Richmond, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from the 

University of Virginia. Before joining the Combat Studies Institute in 1981, the Suffolk, 

Virginia native taught military history for ten years at colleges and universities in three 
states. Beginning in 1983, he led the resurrection of the Staff Ride teaching technique 

at the Command and General Staff College. Among his publications are two books, The 

Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and The Battle of Old Men and Young Boys, the Bull Run 

chapter in America’s First Battles 1776-1965, the monograph Counterattack on the Naktong, and the US Army’s guide to The Staff Ride. He has published articles and book 

reviews in numerous journals and periodicals, to include Military Review, Military Affairs, Civil War History, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, Civil 

War Times Illustrated, and Blue and Gray Magazine. He is currently working on River of 

Death: The Campaign of Chickamauga, a book-length study of that campaign, and two 

smaller works, The Blackwater Line, 1861-1865, and The Post of Albuquerque, 1846-

1867. His awards include Phi Beta Kappa (1966), Command and General Staff College 

Civilian Instructor of the Year (1993), and the Harry S. Truman Award of the Kansas City 

Civil War Roundtable (1995). He has been the Director of the US Army Combat Studies 

Institute since August 2008. 

Adam R. Seipp, Ph.D., joined the Texas A&M University history department in 2005 after 

completing his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His current research 

project focuses on the demobilization of European societies after the First World War. Dr. 

Seipp has published articles in War and Society, and The Journal of Contemporary History. He authored the “An Immeasurable Sacrifice of Blood and Treasure: Demobilization 

and the Politics of the Streets in Britain and Germany, 1917-1921” chapter in The Street as 

Stage: Protest Marches and Public Rallies since the Nineteenth Century, Matthias Reiss, 

ed., (London: Studies of the German Historical Institute, 2007). 

Richard Stewart, Ph.D., is currently the Chief Historian of the US Army Center of Military History. He has served previously at the Center as the Chief of Histories Division 

from 1998-2006, as the Command Historian, US Army Special Operations Command, Fort 

Bragg, North Carolina from 1990-1998, and Historian, Center for Army Lessons Learned, 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas from 1987-1990. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in history from 

Stetson University (1972), a Master’s degree in history from the University of Florida 

(1980) and a Ph.D. in History from Yale University (1986). Dr. Stewart also has a Master’s 

of Science in National Security Strategy from the National War College (2006). A retired 

Colonel in military intelligence, USAR, with 30 years of commissioned service, he has deployed as a combat historian to Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. 

Jeffrey Woods, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History at Arkansas Tech University. He received his doctoral degree from Ohio University, Contemporary History Institute 

in June 2000. He published his fi rst book, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and 

Anticommunism in the South, 1948-1968 (Louisiana State University Press) in 2004. His 

second book, Richard Russell, Southern Nationalism, and American Foreign Policy (Rowman and Littlefield) was published in 2007. He has also published articles in the Arkansas 

Historical Quarterly (1998), the Arkansas Times (2002), American Presidential Campaigns 

and Elections (2003), Disasters, Accidents, and Crises (2007), and Passport (2008). 

Lawrence A. Yates, Ph.D., is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. He received 

his Ph.D. in history from the University of Kansas in 1981, after which he joined 

the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During his 24 years 

with CSI, he taught and wrote about US military interventions, contingency and 

stability operations, and unconventional warfare. In 1989, he was in Panama during Op426 
About the Moderators

eration JUST CAUSE. He is the author of Leavenworth Paper No. 15, Power Pack: US 

Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966; The US Military’s Experience in Stability Operations, 1789-2005; The US Military Intervention in Panama: Origins, Planning, 

and Crisis Management, June 1987-December 1989; co-author of My Clan Against the 

World: US and Coalition Forces in Somalia, 1992-1994; and co-editor/contributor to Block 

by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations. He is currently working on a history of 

Operation JUST CAUSE. 

About the Moderators 

Kelvin D. Crow earned a B.S. from the University of Missouri in 1976. He served as an 

infantry officer with assignments in the Berlin Brigade, HQ US Army, Europe, and as a Staff 

Ride Instructor in the US Army Command and General Staff College. He earned an M.A. 

from Oregon State University in 1988 and an M.M.A.S. from the Command and General 

Staff College in 1989. Mr. Crow has published several articles in the popular historical 

press and a book, Fort Leavenworth: Three Centuries of Service (Command History Office, 

Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, 2004). Since 2002 he has served as the 

Assistant Command Historian for the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth. 

Charles D. Collins Jr. is an assistant professor and the Sioux Wars course author for the 

Staff Ride Team, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He received a B.A. 

in History from Southwest Missouri State University and an M.M.A.S. in History from the 

US Army Command and General Staff College. While on active duty, Mr. Collins served 

in various armor and cavalry assignments. He retired from the Army in 1996. Mr. Collins’ 

published works include The Corps of Discovery: Staff Ride Handbook for the Lewis and 

Clark Expedition; The Atlas of the Sioux Wars; and numerous articles on a wide variety of 

military topics. 

Scott Farquhar, Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, earned a B.A. from Providence College 

in 1985 and a Master of Arts degree in History from Kansas State University in 2007. An 

infantry officer, he has served in a variety of command and staff positions in the United 

States, Europe, the Balkans and Southwest Asia. His most recent deployment was to Iraq 

2007-2008 where he served as senior advisor to an Iraqi infantry brigade. 

Ricardo A. Herrera, Ph.D., joined the Combat Studies Institute’s Staff Ride Team in January 2006. A 1998 Marquette University Ph.D. in US history, he received his B.A. in history 

from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1984. Formerly Director of Honors at 

Mount Union College and Department Chair at Texas Lutheran University, Dr. Herrera also 

served as a Cavalry and Armor offi cer. He is the author of several articles and chapters on 

American military history. 

Curtis S. King, Ph.D., graduated from the US Military Academy (USMA) in 1982 with a 

B.S. in History and English Literature. He received an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then was an instructor at USMA for three years. In 1998, he became 

an associate professor, Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General Staff 
College. While at CSI, Dr. King received his Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history (1998) 

and spent a 6-month tour in Sarajevo, Bosnia (1999-2000) as a NATO historian. Dr. King 

retired from the Army in May 2002. In October 2002, he joined the Staff Ride Team, CSI, 

as a civilian associate professor and is an adjunct professor at Kansas State University. 

John J. McGrath has worked for the US Army in various capacities since 1978. After 

retirement he worked for four years at the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC, as a historian and archivist. Mr. McGrath is a graduate of Boston College and 

holds an MA in history from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is the author of 

numerous articles and military history publications including Theater Logistics in the Gulf 

War, published by the Army Materiel Command in 1994 and several works with the Combat 

Studies Institute, which he joined in 2003. He was also the General Editor for An Army at 

War: Change in the Midst of Conflict, published by CSI in 2006. He is currently pursuing a 

Ph.D. from Kansas State University. 

Robert D. Ramsey III retired from the US Army in 1993 after 24 years of service as an 

Infantry officer that included tours in Vietnam, Korea, and the Sinai. He earned an M.A. 

in history from Rice University. Mr. Ramsey taught military history for three years at the 

United States Military Academy and six years at the US Army Command and General 

Staff College. Mr. Ramsey is the author of Global War on Terrorism Occasional Paper 18, 

Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador ; Occasional Paper 19, Advice for Advisors: Suggestions and Observations from Lawrence to 

the Present; Occasional Paper 24, Savage Wars of Peace: Case Studies of Pacification in 

the Philippines, 1900–1902; and Occasional Paper 25, A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla 

Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in the Philippines, 1901–1902. 

Donald P. Wright, Ph.D., is the chief of CSI’s Contemporary Operations Study Team and 

a co-author of the recently released On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign—The 

US Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003–January 2005. Dr. Wright has also 

served in the Active and Reserve Components of the US Army as an infantry and military 

intelligence offi cer. 

428 
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