119. Memorandum From Peter
Rodman of the Planning Group, National Security Council
Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs
(Kissinger)1
Washington, September 8, 1970.
SUBJECT
- Improving the Efficiency of the Department of State
Attached are two reports produced in the Department of State on the
subject of reform and reorganization of the Department.2
Rogers brought them to the
President’s attention; he wrote a brief note to you on the front page of
each, suggesting that we might want to look them over to see if they
contain anything useful.
The documents are:
- —(Tab B) A report on “Management Tools,” by a Task Force
chaired by Robert A. Hurwitch. [The President wrote on it:
“Maybe there are some goods ideas here.”]3
- —(Tab C) A paper by Robert Dickson Crane entitled “The New
State Department: Harnessing Research and Resources to
Policymaking.” [The President called Crane “a bright (erratic)
guy,” and suggested “perhaps we should look this over”.]
I have done brief summaries, which follow at Tab I (in the form of a
memorandum to the President, which you might want to send him in view of
the interest he expressed).4
The papers are mediocre and cluttered with jargon. The Hurwitch Task
Force report does, however, contain some concrete recommendations. Of
particular interest are its critical comments on the NSC system, which I have extracted for you
(but not for the President) at Tab II.5 (I have given them to Dick
Kennedy as well.)
I see no need for further action. Since both papers are State products,
the Department is presumably in a position to benefit from whatever [Page 261] wisdom they contain. This is
not the occasion for a White House démarche to State on State’s
reorganization.
Recommendation: That you sign the memorandum to
the President at Tab I if you think his expression of interest warrants
a reply.
Attachment
Comments on the NSC
System
From Report of Task Force XIII
I. State’s Role in the NSC System
The Task Force found that while there are some concerns in the
Department that the re-invigorated NSC machinery has usurped certain State Department
functions and responsibilities, on balance, this machinery, if
properly used, provides excellent opportunities for the Department
to exercise leadership in the foreign affairs community. The
principal advantage of the NSC
machinery is that it provides the Department with a Presidential
enabling authority for exercising leadership in reaching and
enforcing policy decisions in an interdepartmental context at all
levels of the NSC system.
Both in the Department and elsewhere in the foreign affairs
community, we found a growing appreciation that the number of U.S.
agencies involved in foreign affairs and the complexity of foreign
affairs problems required some inter-agency system such as the
NSC mechanism to ensure full and
orderly examination of the issues. However, procedures that
prescribed a channel from the Bureau Assistant Secretaries’
(Inter-departmental Groups—IG’s) to
the NSC Review Group without Seventh
Floor involvement were found to be unrealistic in practice and
potentially disruptive of the Department of State as an integral
institution. A further weakness in the NSC system is the absence of an explicit direct
relationship between IG’s and the
Under Secretaries’ Committee. For example, in the process of
formulating annual AID programs, the
interaction between political considerations and economic
development considerations takes place at the Bureau level. But
there is no entity on the Seventh Floor that is adequately staffed
to vet the total AID package or
military and intelligence programs against world-wide political and
foreign economic policy considerations. The 7th Floor is obliged to
play a relatively passive role in reviewing these programs and other
similar matters. This type of situation, resulting largely from
inadequate Seventh Floor staff, was found to be one of the major
reasons why many entities in the foreign affairs community either no
longer looked to the Department of State for leadership or found it
inadequate when they sought it. (p. 35)
- 1.
- The Task Force recommends that Seventh Floor principals
deliberately promote wider use of regional and functional
IG’s to forge [Page 262] policies by
referring to them issues that involve more than one agency
of the foreign affairs community. The IG’s should also act as the vehicle through
which regional components of the planning process outlined
in part A of this chapter (“Decision-Making”) would be
determined and integrated into the various planning and
program budgeting cycles of the other agencies.
- 2.
- The Task Force recommends that the Under Secretaries
Committee (USC) be empowered
to consider policy issues of a broad functional nature
and/or involving more than one region that are beyond the
scope of a regional or functional IG and do not need to go directly to the NSC. Also it would act as the
next court of appeal for issues that could not be resolved
at a lower echelon. This recommendation will involve
modification of the USC
Charter as set forth in NSDM 2.6
Adoption of this recommendation would result in a series of
hierarchically dependent decision centers, proceeding from the
IG’s to the USC, finally to the NSC (through the Review Group) and
ultimately to the President. Such a system would be analogous to the
practice of jurisprudence which has appropriately layered courts and
the built-in provision for appeal to higher authority.
The value of a hierarchical appeals system is that it will expedite
decision making by inducing decisions to be made at the lowest
possible level so that higher levels can concentrate on broader
issues. This appeals system would not prevent issues from being
introduced at other points in the NSC mechanism as required by the nature of the issue.
(p. 46)
2. Identifying Issues
In the foreign affairs community as a whole the principal formal
tools which now exist for issue identification are the National
Security Study Memoranda (NSSMs)
issued by the NSC and the Country
Analysis and Strategy Paper (CASP)
used in the Latin American area. The NSSMs reflect issues of concern to the President and
NSC staff and have generated
some longer-range planning on an inter-agency basis. This process,
which is almost always in response to an initiative from outside the
Department, now encompasses the bulk of the Department’s
longer-range issue identification. But it is not a systematic method
of identifying long-range issues, and several officials we
interviewed felt that issues were often poorly posed in the NSSMs. (p. 22)
3. Implementation
Specific decisions are generally communicated promptly and clearly to
the implementing units. On occasion, however, the implementing unit
is not specified precisely, and the system suffers. More [Page 263] often, the specific
decision is transmitted without reference to the broader objectives
which should guide the action office in carrying it out. Action
offices thus must rely on rather rough and ready guidance of their
own making, extrapolating from the specific decision and the very
broad-brush generalizations contained in public pronouncements by
the President and the Secretary. The result can be either
inconsistency in implementation or excessive caution. One reason for
this lack of guidance is that Departmental inputs to NSSMs are often not framed in such a
way as to produce it. Also the Department usually does not
participate in the drafting of National Security Decision Memoranda
(NSDMs) which it is required to
implement.
Problems in the NSC machinery
compound this difficulty. There was almost universal agreement among
those interviewed that the NSC
mechanism is not as effective in downward communication of its
decisions as in the upward flow of decision-making. If, as
frequently happens, the mechanism operates slowly, conditions to
which the decision was originally applicable may have changed.
Over-classification often means that not all the action areas
affected by a decision are fully aware of it. (pp. 25–26)
