A/MS Files, Lot 54 D 291, TCA Program
The Director of the Office of United Nations Economic and Social Affairs ( Kotschnig ) to the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs ( Hickerson )
Subject: Arguments for Keeping Point Four in the Department of State.
1. The Point Four program as a major part of U.S. foreign policy has great public support both in this country and throughout the world. If the program is administratively merged with the agency identified as the one responsible for economic support of military programs the unique place of Point Four in U.S. foreign policy and its universal humanitarian appeal will be difficult to maintain.
2. The long-run character of the Point Four program argues for its being kept in a permanent Department rather than being transferred to a short-run emergency agency.
3. Since Point Four is essentially a self-help program designed to raise living standards, it is operated on a substantially different basis from grant-aid programs which are directly related to military assistance.
4. Transfer of Point Four to ECA would have serious implications for the United Nations program if it meant transfer of the control of the funds to be contributed to international organizations by the United States. Such a transfer would remove from the State Department responsibility for and control of a substantial segment of the work of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies and of the Organization of American States, which are major instruments of American foreign policy. The technical assistance activities of these organizations are closely related to their regular programs from which they cannot be separated. It is not acceptable, therefore, for the [Page 1648] control of a program which, in some cases, is nearly as large as the regular budgets of the organizations to be placed outside the Department of State. To do so would terminate much of the responsibilities of the Department for relations with the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies.
5. The economic content of technical assistance programs and our relationship to this part of the work of the organizations cannot be separated from the political considerations which must govern our relations with the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies. Any such separation could jeopardize the coherence and consistency of U.S. policies in these organizations and thus seriously weaken the United States in an important segment of its foreign policy.