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primary responsibility for all economic and military assistance matters and the Western European specialist also deals with international trade and monetary questions.

Other officers have responsibilities primarily oriented toward other agencies or Executive Office entities, e.g., an officer who follows NASA and AEC matters. Finally, there are officers who function as integral parts of the staff but who belong to other entities and perform liaison and "cross-fertilization" functions. Among these are representatives of the Office of the Science Advisor, CIA, and the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (OCJCS).

Also present at these staff meetings are the Director of the Situation Room, a representative of the Bureau of the Budget, (usually the Deputy Director for International Operations), and an NSC staff officer who maintains liaison on national security matters with the White House Press Office and the public affairs offices at State and Defense.

There is no specific representative or liaison officer for the Department of Defense (as opposed to the OCJCS). This reflects a general characteristic of the staff operation: that it deals very little in the business of the Secretary of Defense. Of course staff officers working, for example, on military sales to the Indian sub-continent or on disarmament have dealings with Defense. But except for the frequent dealings of the Special Assist-

*This will be elaborated in next draft spelling out unique nature of coordination of joint Treasury-State-Defense issues.

**A description of NSC-BOB relations will be incorporated in the next draft.

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ant with the Secretary or Deputy Secretary and staff participation
in the "big" defense questions like the defense budget, defense
matters do not normally get into the hands of this group. ♀

The presence of a representative of the Office of the Chairman, JCS, among the staff dates back to General Maxwell Taylor's tour of duty as President Kennedy's military representative. When General Taylor left to become Chairman of the JCS, McGeorge Bundy asked him to leave behind a staff officer to assist Bundy in dealing with military matters. This position has now become institutionalized and is of undoubted utility to the Special Assistant as well as being a source of comfort to the Chairman, JCS. During the past two years of the Vietnam war, the current OCJCS representative (an Air Force officer) has been a key link in White House monitoring of military operations and an important source of analysis on military intelligence related to Vietnam.

The role of the CIA representative should be briefly noted. His primary function is to assist the Special Assistant in matters having to do with the "303 Committee". This group, composed of the Special Assistant, the Deputy Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Director of the CIA reviews all clandestine intelligences operations for the President. In normal practice the President personally approves only overall programs of operations and the 303 Committee reviews specific missions within these blanket authorizations. Proposed operations of unusual sensitivity or significance are reviewed by the Committee and referred to the President with recommendations.

*Next draft will further examine reasons for this.*

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(2) **Activities on the Staff.** Although the staff is involved in all the activities of the Special Assistant, there are two broad types of activity which encompass most of the others and occupy most of its energy. These are the preparation and/or review of information and action memoranda for the President, and the monitoring of current operations of the Departments and agencies.

(a) **Presidential memoranda.**

As a general principle, President Johnson has preferred to have requests for decisions presented to him--at least in the first instance--on paper. The vehicle for such decisions is usually a memorandum signed by his Special Assistant carrying boxes to be checked corresponding to various options. Practically nothing goes to him without at least a note ("chit" is the term used by the practitioners) indicating review of the paper by the Special Assistant. Even memoranda from cabinet officers are dealt with in this way. The notable exception to this in recent years has been memoranda from the Secretary of Defense--there were few such memoranda and if they were important, Secretary McNamara carried them himself. One of those in the best position to judge noted that Secretary McNamara's memoranda always bore his personal imprint whereas other cabinet officers "would send over anything".

State Department memoranda--even those personally signed by Secretary Rusk--rarely stand on their own two feet. Consequently, they undergo careful review by staff officers. This sometimes involves a complete

done, because their staffs are not adequate for this
~~purpose.~~ There is widespread agreement that this a
fundamental deficiency of the State Department. It is
howwhere more evident than from the perspective of the
White House.

This point will be elaborated in Chapter IV,
but it is highly relevant to the growth of the NSC staff
function. If the State Department was not to do the type
~~NO!~~ in the absence of State Department ~~only~~ job is
of analytical job required, it had to be done in the
White House.

This operation of the NSC staff does not necess-
arily under-cut State's position. Staff members have
usually been involved in, or at least aware of, most
issues before they reach the White House. Therefore, if
the staff man has views of his own (and the good ones
usually do), State officers will know them and take
them into consideration. , Frequently, the staff man is
of considerable assistance to Departmental officers by
virtue of his broader perspectives, his more intimate
"feel" for the President's views and his advice on how
best to present recommendations. Finally, if the staff
officer fully understands the State Department's position
he is better prepared to expedite and supports its memo-
randa.

The great majority of decision memoranda are
promptly disposed of by the President with a minimum of
personal consultation with his principal advisors. His
decisions are relayed to the departments informally and

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with a minimum of explanation. The NSC staff memo-
randa which are the vehicles for decision rarely, if
ever, go outside the White House. Although their
fears in this connection are mostly without foundation,
State officers are often at a disadvantage to understand
the rationale of decisions.

Under President Kennedy there was a fairly
consistent practice of recording Presidential decisions
in writing and disseminating them to the principal
departments in the form of National Security Action
Memoranda (NSAM's). Today most decisions are either
relayed by telephone from the Special Assistant to the
departments or communicated by the President directly,
either in a group or to one principal. This practice
makes conscientious bureaucrats nervous. They would
favor a return to more written guidance. Even the
Tuesday Lunch (to be described below) sometimes results
in conflicting interpretations.

Larger and more critical questions rarely come
to final Presidential decision on the basis of a single,
written presentation, although they may be initiated by
such a presentation. The President is quite likely,
however, to discuss it first with the Special Assistant
and then ask for additional work to be done, e.g. explora-
tion of a particular alternative or an effort to subdivide
the larger problem so that it can be dealt with in pieces.
[President Johnson's typewriter]
On the may engage in a wide range of personal consultation
both inside and outside government through individual