Editorial Note
Point IV appropriations became available under Public Law 759 (approved September 6, 1950) which was the general appropriation [Page 680] act for Fiscal Year 1951 (64 Stat. 595). The $34.5 million total appropriation was within the $35 million limit of new funds authorized and existing funds designated for technical assistance by the Act for International Development, approved June 5, 1950 (64 Stat. 204).
From the total appropriation, funds were allocated to other American republics through several channels. Public Law 759 appropriated $5 million expressly for programs of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. The Technical Cooperation Administration (established within the Department on October 27, 1950, to supervise all technical assistance) allocated $1 million as the United States share of the IA–ECOSOC multilateral technical assistance program. TCA had set aside, as of December 31, 1950, $5.2 million for new and existing bilateral programs, in addition to those of the IIAA. Finally, $12 million of the total Point IV appropriation went to the United Nations, which undertook some technical assistance projects in the Western Hemisphere. Most of these monies had not been spent by the end of fiscal year 1951.
At the close of 1950 the United States had signed general or “umbrella” technical assistance agreements with Brazil (in Rio De Janeiro, December 19), Nicaragua (at Managua, December 23), Panama (at Panama City, December 30), and Paraguay (at Asunción, December 29). All four Agreements entered into force on the day signed. For the respective texts, see Department of State, United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (UST), volume 2, page 851; 1 UST 906; 1 UST 899; and 2 UST 383.
During 1950 questions relating to the future role of the IIAA received considerable attention within the United States Government. The IIAA had been an instrument of United States technical assistance since 1942. Originally a government corporation with a Delaware charter, it had received a federal charter under Public Law 369, approved August 5, 1947 (61 Stat. 780). The Secretary of State appointed all Directors and in 1950 Mr. Miller was Chairman of the Board.
(Documents in file 820.50 for 1949 include several in which Departmental officers discussed the advantages they believed to inhere in the corporate form of organization.)
IIAA projects were primarily in the fields of health, education, and food production. They were ordinarily carried out by means of “servicios”: units attached to the appropriate ministries of host countries, to whose funds and personnel both the host and the United States contributed.
A number of memoranda in file 820.00 TA for 1950 indicate that officers of the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs attempted to have [Page 681] all operating functions of the expanded bilateral technical assistance program in the other American Republics consolidated under the IIAA. Apparently at some point this request was denied, for in a letter of November 29, 1950, to Ellen S. Woodward, Director of the Office of International Relations in the Federal Security Administration, Ambassador Capus M. Waynick, Acting Administrator of the TCA, said in part “… that we had limited the role of the IIAA in Latin America to the management of such projects as were specifically assigned in the fields of the Institute’s developed interest and that in no case was the Institute assigned exclusive responsibility area-wise or subject-wise in Latin America.” Mr. Waynick further assured Mrs. Woodward that in those projects for which it had operating responsibility, the IIAA was to consult with interested federal agencies on programming and personnel selection. (820.00 TA/11–2250)
However, in a memorandum of December 20, Ivan B. White, Economic and Finance Adviser to the ARA, informed Mr. Miller in part that the International Development Advisory Board and the new permanent Administrator of the TCA, Henry G. Bennett, “… had agreed in principle on a consolidation of Point IV activities in Latin America under the IIAA.” (820.00 TA/12–2050) There the matter rested at the end of 1950. (The IDAB was a board of outside consultants to TCA headed by Nelson Rockefeller; Mr. Bennett, appointed November 14, had assumed his duties early in December.)
In the administrative chain of command at the end of 1950, the IIAA was responsible to the TCA. Yet IIAA retained its corporate identity, and it had a seat on the Interdepartmental Advisory Council on Technical Cooperation.
Considerable additional information regarding the role of the IIAA, the relation of technical assistance programs to United States diplomatic missions, and other issues touching on Point IV is contained in decimal files 120.43, 361, 800.00 TA, and 820.00 TA, and in Lot 103. However, documentation is not such as to enable an exhaustive reconstruction of decision-making regarding the administrative organization of hemisphere Point IV programs during 1950.
Excerpts from remarks on technical assistance by Mr. Miller and Mr. Waynick, made on September 28, 1950, before a Plenary Session of IA–ECOSOC, are printed in Department of State Bulletin, October 9, page 589. Full texts of their statements are included in Department of State Press Releases, 1950, Nos. 1008 and 1009, September 28, under date.
A compilation concerning the overall Point Four program is scheduled for publication in volume I.