The National Security Council (NSC) was established by statute in 1947 to create an interdepartmental body to advise the President on matters of national security. More specifically, the NSC was created to integrate domestic, foreign, and military policies related to national security, and to facilitate cooperation among the military services and other government departments and agencies in matters of national security. Currently, statutory members of the NSC are the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and, since 2007, the Secretary of Energy. Other senior officials participate in NSC deliberations at the President's request. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence are statutory advisers. The President clearly holds final decisionmaking authority in the executive branch. Over the years, however, the NSC staff has emerged as a major factor in the formulation (and at times in the implementation) of national security policy. Similarly, the head of the NSC staff, the National Security Adviser, has played an important, and occasionally highly public, role in policymaking. This report summarizes the evolution of the NSC from its creation to the present. The organization and influence of the NSC have varied significantly from one Administration to another, ranging from highly structured and formal systems to loose-knit teams of experts. Although it is universally acknowledged that the NSC staff should be organized to meet the particular goals and work habits of an incumbent President, the history of the NSC provides ample examples of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of policymaking structures. Congress enacted the statute creating the NSC and has altered the character of its membership over the years. Congress annually appropriates funds for its activities, but Congress does not, routinely, receive testimony on substantive matters from the National Security Adviser or from NSC staff. Proposals to require Senate confirmation of the Security Adviser have been discussed but not adopted. Successful national security policymaking is based on careful analysis of the international situation, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, military, and morale factors. Based on a comprehensive assessment, effective government leaders attempt to attain their goals by selecting the most appropriate instrument of policy, whether it is military, diplomatic, economic, based on the intelligence services, or a combination of more than one. Although this approach has been an ideal throughout the history of international relations, prior to World War II, U.S. Presidents focused primarily on domestic matters and lacked organizational support to integrate national security policies. They relied instead on ad hoc arrangements and informal groups of advisers. However, in the early 1940s, the complexities of global war and the need to work together with allies led to more structured processes of national security decisionmaking to ensure that the efforts of the State, War, and Navy Departments were focused on the same objectives. There was an increasingly apparent need for an organizational entity to support the President in looking at multiple factors, military and diplomatic, that had to be faced during wartime and in the early postwar months, when crucial decisions had to be made regarding the future of Germany and Japan and many other countries. In the postwar years, the United States' continuing worldwide responsibilities involved active diplomacy, sizable military forces, and sophisticated intelligence agencies, in addition to economic assistance in various forms. In response to these evolving responsibilities, the United States established organizational mechanisms to analyze the international environment, identify priorities, and recommend appropriate policy options. Four decades later, the end of the Cold War saw the emergence of new international concerns, including transnational threats such as international terrorism and drug trafficking, that have continued to require the coordination of various departments and agencies concerned with national security policies. Coordinative mechanisms to implement policy are largely creations of the executive branch, but they directly influence choices that Congress may be called upon to support and fund. Congress thus takes interest in the processes by which policies and the roles of various participants are determined. Poor coordination of national security policy can result in calls for Congress to take actions that have major costs, both international and domestic, but an uncertain outcome. Effective coordination, on the other hand, can help achieve policy goals with minimal losses while providing the opportunity to devote material resources to other needs. Until the 20 th century, most U.S. policy coordination centered on the President, who was virtually the sole means of such coordination. The Constitution designates the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (Article II, Section 2) and grants him broad powers in the areas of foreign affairs (Article II, Section 2), powers that have expanded considerably in the 20 th century. Given limited U.S. foreign involvements for the first 100 or so years under the Constitution, the small size of the Armed Forces, the relative geographic isolation of the nation, and the absence of any proximate threat, the President, or his executive agents in the Cabinet, provided a sufficient coordinative base. However, the advent of World War I, which represented a modern, complex military effort involving broad domestic and international coordination, forced new demands on the system that the President alone could not meet. In 1916, the Council of National Defense was established by statute (the Army Appropriation Act of 1916). It reflected proposals that went back to 1911 and consisted of the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor. The statute allowed the President to appoint an advisory commission of outside specialists to aid the council. The Council of National Defense was intended as an economic mobilization coordinating group, as reflected by its membership, which excluded the Secretary of State. His inclusion would have given the council a much wider coordinative scope. Furthermore, the authorizing statute essentially limited the council's role to economic mobilization issues. The Council of National Defense was disbanded in 1921, but it set a precedent for coordinative efforts that would be needed in World War II. The President remained the sole national security coordinator until 1938, when the prewar crisis began to build in intensity, presenting numerous and wide-ranging threats to the inadequately armed United States. The State Department, in reaction to reports of Axis activities in Latin America, proposed that interdepartmental conferences be held with War and Navy Department representatives. In April 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, formally proposed the creation of a standing committee made up of the second-ranking officers of the three departments, for purposes of liaison and coordination. The President approved this idea, and the Standing Liaison Committee, or Liaison Committee as it was also called, was established, the members being the Under Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and the Chief of Naval Operations. The Standing Liaison Committee was the first significant effort toward interdepartmental liaison and coordination, although its work in the area was limited and uneven. The Liaison Committee largely concentrated its efforts on Latin American problems, and it met irregularly. Although it did foster some worthwhile studies during the crisis following the fall of France, it was soon superseded by other coordinative modes. It was more a forum for exchanging information than a new coordinative and directing body. An informal coordinating mechanism, which complemented the Standing Liaison Committee, evolved during the weekly meetings established by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who took office in June 1940. Stimson arranged for weekly luncheons with his Navy counterpart, Frank Knox, and Cordell Hull, but these meetings also did not fully meet the growing coordinative needs of the wartime government. In May 1940, President Roosevelt used the precedent of the 1916 statute and established the National Defense Advisory Council (NDAC), composed of private citizens with expertise in specific economic sectors. As with the earlier Council of National Defense, the NDAC was organized to handle problems of economic mobilization; by the end of the year, it had given way to another organization in a succession of such groups. During the war, a number of interdepartmental committees were formed to handle various issues, and, while these did help achieve coordination, they suffered from two problems. First, their very multiplicity was to some degree counterproductive to coordination, and they still represented a piecemeal approach to these issues. Second, and more important, these committees in many cases were not advising the President directly, but were advising his advisers. Although their multiplicity and possible overlapping fit Roosevelt's preferred working methods, they did not represent coordination at the top. Roosevelt ran the war largely through the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who were then an ad hoc and de facto group, and through key advisers such as Harry Hopkins and James F. Byrnes, and via his own personal link with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The weekly meetings arranged by Stimson evolved, however, into a significant coordinative body by 1945, with the formal creation of the State, War, Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC). SWNCC had its own secretariat and a number of regional and topical subcommittees; its members were assistant secretaries in each pertinent department. The role of SWNCC members was to aid their superiors on political-military matters, and coordinating the views of the three departments. SWNCC was a significant improvement in civilian-military liaison, and it meshed well with the JCS system; it did not, however, concern itself with fundamental questions of national policy during the early months of the Cold War. SWNCC operated through the end of the war and beyond, becoming SANACC (State, Army, Navy, Air Force Coordinating Committee) after the National Security Act of 1947. It was dissolved in 1949, by which time it had been superseded by the NSC. The creation of SWNCC, virtually at the end of the war, and its continued existence after the surrender of Germany and Japan, reflected the growing awareness within the federal government that better means of coordination were necessary.