Office of the Historian

327. Letter From the Secretary of State’s Acting Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence (Armstrong) to Director of Central Intelligence Hillenkoetter0

Washington, October 29, 1947.

Dear Admiral Hillenkoetter: The following suggestions for the revision of current NIA directives are offered in response to paragraph 3 of your memorandum of 9 October 1947, subject: Initial National Security Council Directive to CIA.1

a.
Those provisions of NIA Directives 1–11, inclusive, and of IAB 1/2 which are not specifically included in the National Security Act and which have not become unnecessary through being overtaken by events, should be repeated in the new National Security Council directive or directives.
b.
The NSC directives should contain a definition of intelligence relating to or affecting the national security, which should conform to the definition of national intelligence as approved by the NIA.
c.
The subject of inspection should be clarified in detail. The provisions now contained in paragraph 2 of NIA #5 should be eliminated and substitution made as follows:

The Director of Central Intelligence is authorized and directed, in connection with his responsibilities for coordination, to survey the operations of the Federal intelligence agencies in order to ascertain what necessary intelligence functions relating to the national security are not being presently performed or are not being adequately performed or involve wasteful duplication of effort. Such a survey shall include a determination of the causes of any omissions, inadequacies or duplications. The conclusions of the survey shall serve as the basis of recommendations to the National Security Council for corrective measures. In his coordinating capacity the Director of Central Intelligence is responsible for insuring that existing facilities are adequate to meet the fair requirements both of the departments and of the National Security Council as determined by their several responsibilities. Normally, therefore, such corrective recommendations will be designed to strengthen the base of the overall intelligence structure by recognizing primary departmental needs and supporting the agencies directly serving them. Centralization of functions will be recommended only in cases when, by agreement among the departments and the Central Intelligence Agency, such functions are essential and are most beneficially and effectively accomplished on a centralized basis.

d.
The provisions of NIA #6 should be revised to accord with the recommendation of the Interdepartmental Committee already submitted to NIA, and those of NIA #8 should not be included in the new directives.
e.
The new National Security Council directives should make provision for clear recognition of the general principle that departmental intelligence agencies produce finished intelligence in the fields of their dominant interests and, as far as possible, CIA bases production of national intelligence upon utilization of finished departmental intelligence obtained from the agencies rather than upon CIA processing of source materials.
f.
The new NSC directives should provide for coordination of maintenance and servicing of intelligence document collections.
W. Park Armstrong, Jr. 2
  1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency Historical Files, HS/HC–806, Item 9. Secret.↩
  2. Not found.↩
  3. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩