49

minimum precaution would be the retention of the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board and the representative of the CIA who now serves the
Special Assistant as a liaison officer on current clandestine activities
and works closely with the successor to the Special Assistnat. This
point will be dealt with further in connection with the recommendation
for an Intelligence Advisor.

These then are essential elements. Whoever, by whatever title
succeeds the Special Assistant will, of course, need help, for even
the bare essentials above cannot be handled by one man. At a minimum
provision should be made for capability to do Presidential drafting
or redrafting of records of action, Presidential correspondence, and
statements. Because of the potential importance of anything with a
Presidential level which touches on national security--whether it is
a toast delivered at a dinner for a foreign leader or a Presidential
proclamation on Memorial Day--there must be someone on the national
security staff available to advise and assist on such matters.

-52-

## 5. The Options

The foregoing is the minimum essential support which any new President should have. Anything additional will depend upon the President's intended role in the process and the means by which he wishes to relate himself to the heads of the department and agencies. The following subsections suggest some of the possibilities which he should consist both in terms of function and staffing.

### a. Policy Staff

If the President chooses to utilize formal policy directives as a means of reviewing previous policies and providing continuing guidance to the operation of the process, he will need to decide how policy proposals should be generated.

The optimum arrangement would be a panel of Presidentially appointed planners under the supervision of an outstanding private individual directly responsible to the President. The group should be based in the Executive Office building and have full access to any information which would assist in ensuring relevance to operations, identifying emerging problems, and following the execution of current policies.

The chairman should be a man with considerable knowledge and experience in foreign affairs but not predominantly identified with any of the permanent operations. He should share, to the fullest extent possible, the President's interests and priorities. His primary contribution would be to ensure the fullest possible exploration and sharpening of alternatives, elaboration of consequences, and integration of foreign, military and budgetary considerations.

The planning members could be drawn from the public sector and/or from the departments. A mix would be preferable.

-53-

Conceivably, the successor to the Special Assistant could preside over this process. His greatest asset would be his unique familiarity with the President's views and priorities. Similarly the combination of the two functions would minimize unrealistic separation of policy from operations. The obverse of this advantage would be the extreme difficulty which he might encounter in trying to do both jobs at once. Probably the best answer would be the designation of a "Deputy Special Assistant for Planning". If this solution were adopted it would be important for him to maximize his familiarity with the operational side of the national security staff's business yet remaining outside those responsibilities and pressures.

If the planners were not Presidentially designated and located, at least the Chairman should be someone responsible only to the President.

## b. Analysis and Coordination

A basic decision which the President will face will be whether or not to take his advisor's proposals at face value. As a minimum, he may wish to have them reviewed for consistency and relevancy to policy. This would involve approximately the type of function performed by General Goodpaster for President Eisenhower. The other extreme is the type of analysis being performed by the present staff. In part the answer to this question turns on the type of memoranda which he receives from the departments. If what he gets reflects an appreciation for his knowledge of the subject matter, priorities, and constraints-- foreign and domestic-- as well as his format preferences, he may not need staff for this purpose. Such a feel is difficult for the bureaucracy to acquire at long distance, and it is not easily conveyed to them.

-54-

A particularly difficult type of memorandum is that which involves conflicting positions of various agencies. A neutral presentation is required, one which fully explores and compares the alternative positions on their merits. Such papers are very difficult to come by in the bureaucracy, particularly if the opposing parties must concur in the same presentation. Each is likely to want to do its own paper in which case the individual presentations may come up looking like apples and oranges. Presumably, without a staff, the President himself would have to sort this out. A way of summarizing the foregoing is that the President should not make decisions to which there is more than meets the eye.

On very important issues which involve interagency differences the President will, of course, have his principal advisors in for discussion or use the Council. If the SIG/IRG mechanism has been continued, it could present the issue to him in a coordinated manner.

Many problems arise on a lesser order of business which does not engage the personal attention of the President's principal advisors and for which there is no effective guarantee of handling which safeguards the President's interests.

To the extent that other remedies are not available to deal with such matters, the President will find a staff useful. It need not be large or particularly active, but it must have access to the departments and agencies and their internal information.

As suggested earlier, the SIG/IRG mechanism created by NSAM 341, could be tasked with identifying such problems, fixing responsibility for their handling, and resolving them if possible. The composition of SIG is ideally suited for this purpose. The inclusion of the Special Assistant in the SIG membership and of NSC staff members (if there are any) on the regional IRG's would provide the President

-55-

with an excellent means of monitoring internal operations in a manner
potentially less disruptive than the present more uninhibited mode of
NSC staff operation. Assuming the staff's continuing full access to
information, and the inherent advantages of their broader perspective
and feel for Presidential wishes, they could be effective and useful
members of the SIG/IRG system.

It has been suggested that the Special Assistant chair the SIG.
If this were done, and he exercised the power of decision, it would
mean a major reversal of the trend to center more responsibility in
the department heads, particularly the Secretary of State. On the other
hand, if the next President decided on anything resembling the "First
Secretary of Government" or "Vice President for Foreign Affairs" approach,
the person holding the new title would exercise the primary coordinating
function.

### c. The Innovating, Prodding and Herding Function

As the sub-title might suggest, these are functions which would
be required if the President (a) wants to put something more into
the system than he feels he will otherwise get out of it; (b) fears
he is not getting all that he should out of the bureaucracy; and (c)
finds it is not working together as it should.

The innovating function, i.e., implanting new ideas or encouraging
those which might otherwise not survive the natural selection process,
is clearly an optimal feature. The need for prodding and herding may
arise only through experience. Because this is the type of staffing
which begins to interject noise in the system, the White House staff

-56-

should only be employed as a temporary expedient until necessary corrective
action -- in terms of organization or personnel -- can be taken.

d. Follow-Up and Evaluation

One of the shortcomings most frequently attributed to the national
security process by those interviewed is the absence of adequate follow-
up and evaluation procedures. This is a type of activity which individual
elements of the process should engage in for their own purposes, but
experience indicates that they cannot be counted on to report their
shortcomings to the President. One interviewer likened this to "telling
the goat to watch the cabbage patch". As in many areas of the process
this is not so much a problem on the great issues where Presidential
and cabinet interest (and therefore scrutiny) is intense. It is a
problem, however, on middle range matters. Two examples come immediately
to mind. In the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy
found that the Jupiter missiles he had ordered removed from Turkey were
still there. In 1964, a decision was taken to develop alternate tracking
facilities to replace those in a country with which our relations were
expected to deteriorate. In 1968 it was discovered that the alternate
facilities had never been acquired.

In 1961, shortly after the inauguration, the Kennedy administration
instituted a system of National Security Action Memoranda (NSAM's). A
procedure for reporting on their implementation was established but in
a few years it was forgotten about. Everyone was too busy with his
daily business.

The reintroduction of a follow-up system is desirable but its
effectiveness will depend in part upon the systematic recording of

-57-

decisions. The latter is a practice which has also fallen by the
wayside and should be revived by a new administration.

The logical place to center the system is the White House because
that is the best place to record Presidential decisions. The question
of how best to initiate corrective action will depend in part on what
coordinating mechanisms are being utilized, since this would appear
to be the logical point of attach.

Evaluation is a more complicated matter. The first requirement
of an evaluation system is the specification of objectives which are
precise enough to permit comparison with results. At present this is
feasible only in certain areas of activity, primarily those involving
foreign assistance but then only to a limited degree. This general
problem is discussed in Chapter IV in connection with PPBS. It seems
logical, however, that whatever is done in this field should be cen-
tered in the White House; possibly in collaboration with the Bureau
of the Budget.

6. The Future of the National Security Council

Much of the comment over whether the NSC is a "bureaucratic
veriform appendix" or a neglected asset is really irrelevant. As
both Eisenhower's and Kennedy's Special Assistants have written, it
is an instrument which each President may use as he sees fit.

There is nothing wrong, for example, with an "educational" NSC
meeting. Although this is a description applied to some contemporary
NSC meetings, its educational function was extremely valuable to Eisenhower
as it well might be to the next President and his advisors. For example,
it would be a logical forum for a systematic review of existing policy

-58-

and a coordinated look at future policies. In this way the new President could establish with his principal advisors a shared view of the world.

At the same time there is nothing about NSC meetings that makes them any more useful to the participants than other gatherings of the same people. Similarly the holding of regularly scheduled meetings does not guarantee that the time involved will be profitably employed. The argument for a systematic occasion on which the President meets with his advisors to discuss important matters of mutual concern does not stand or fall on whether the Council is the chosen vehicle. Nevertheless, organized meetings of the council do have certain peculiar advantages not the least of which, as Theodore Sorensen put it, "are the increased public confidence inspired by order and regularity and the increased esprit de corps of the participants".

It would be desirable to amend the National Security Act to allow the President more freedom in designating who will attend council meetings. The specification of statutory members has been a continuing problem because of shifting organizational patterns and powers within the national security community. The presence of the Director of the OEP in the Council is not warranted at the present time, but the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Bureau of the Budget should be included. In practice they are, of course, but the President should not have to go through an elaborate ballet in order to select the group he wants at any given time.

One of the complicated aspects of the Council membership problem is the status of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They have chaffed at their second class citizenship on the Council but they might view with apprehension the complete removal of this guarantee of their presence -- invidious as it is.

-59-

The next President, like his predecessors, can use the Council
however he chooses. As noted earlier it could be used for the systematic
consideration of policy papers. Another suggestion is that the SIG/IRG
mechanism, if retained, refer certain problems to the council for further
consideration. This would be a useful means of providing the Council
with coordinated staffing on problems of a more immediate nature than
those dealt with by a policy planning staff.