62. Memorandum From the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Nitze) to the Under Secretary of State (Webb)1
Mr. McWilliams asked me to set down briefly my ideas concerning the functions of the new Psychological Strategy Board.2 In particular I want to state my exceptions to Mr. Barrett’s memorandum to you of March 29, 1951, on the subject: Plans for Psychological Strategy Board.3
That memorandum speaks of the board’s jurisdiction as including “the development of proposals in the field of military, political and economic action geared for psychological effect and to the development of campaigns directed toward important psychological objectives and embracing action in these fields as well as the fields of purely psychological activity”. It envisages the board as operating as a central authority on political warfare—”as recommended by the Troy group”.4
The Troy group, you will recall, was originally given warrant to study the problem of defeating Russian jamming of the Voice of America. The group widened its own jurisdiction to include the content of the programs to be protected against jamming. The group interpreted this widened jurisdiction to include the substance of “political warfare”. The group interpreted “political warfare” to include the Marshall Plan, Point IV, ECA operations in the Far East, and the like. The group referred to political warfare as “inter-connected simultaneous use of all instruments of international action”. The group envisaged political warfare as the range of activities which, if successful, “will make an all-out shooting war impossible for Russia and unnecessary for us”.
The group then called for an “aggressive” political warfare program instead of the current efforts, which the group labeled “defensive”.
The group discovered a need that “the many elements of our national power, political, economic, military,” be “wielded as an integrated effort”. In the group’s phrasing, “We therefore urge the unification of political warfare”.
The group thus called for “some single authority”. This was to have “capacity to design a comprehensive program and power to [Page 132] obtain execution of this program”. The authority was to be “concerned with political warfare exclusively”, but the phrase, as we have seen, was interpreted to embrace all aspects of foreign policy.
The Troy group went vastly beyond its original terms of reference and explored a field for which it had no special competence and about which it had little information. In effect it proposed a new board to take over the jurisdiction of all the agencies operating in the foreign field, of the NSC, and in part of the President himself.
I think I have stated sufficiently my misgivings about the Troy report as a frame of reference for the new board. I have the same misgivings about the reference in Mr. Barrett’s memorandum to “the development of proposals in the field of military, political and economic action geared for psychological effect and to the development of campaigns directed toward important psychological objectives and embracing action in these fields as well as fields of purely psychological activity”.
In my view, if the board were to follow out the implications of the Troy report and the language cited from Mr. Barrett’s memorandum, the result would be a harmful duplication and conflict of authority with established agencies and a missing of the potentially very valuable objective set up for the board in the establishing directive.
The board obviously is not intended as a new agency to determine or formulate the ends of our foreign policy. Its primary jurisdiction has to do with means of our policy—those means devoted directly to affecting the state of mind within the adversary’s camp. I employ the word “directly” advisedly. I am aware that all of our policy—ends and means—relates in some way to the state of mind in the adversary’s camp. Certain of the means for carrying out that policy act indirectly on his state of mind as a collateral effect. I do not believe these means fall within the board’s primary jurisdiction. Other means are designed for direct effect on that state of mind. These clearly do fall within the board’s primary jurisdiction.
I believe the board should bring about a sharpening of effort in regard to our behind-the-iron-curtain information program, our defector program, our covert activities within the adversary’s fold, and the like. It should seek to ensure that no opportunity for such activities goes unexploited and that the activities are consistent among the various agencies carrying them out. When this part of our effort might be helped by a clarification of policy or broadening the effort to interpret that policy on some other front, the board should be alert to the opportunity to call the matter to the attention of the agency or agencies concerned. If the board should undertake to formulate programs “geared for psychological effect” in the field of military, political and economic action and “embracing action in these fields as well as fields [Page 133] of purely psychological activity”, there would be no stopping place short of assuming jurisdiction over the whole range of our foreign policy—ends and means.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, S/P Files: Lot 64 D 563, Chronological. Top Secret. Drafted by Marshall.↩
- See Document 60.↩
- The memorandum by Barrett has not been found. An unsigned March 26 draft prepared by Leon Crutcher of the Management Staff is in National Archives, RG 59, P Files: Lot 55 D 339.↩
- See footnote 5, Document 57 and Document 58.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩