Editorial Note
At the conclusion of their first series of meetings, the 12 members of the Temporary Council Committee had agreed to create an Executive Bureau of three members which would be assisted by a Screening and Costing Committee (SCC), chaired by General Joseph T. McNarney of the United States Air Force. Aided by Sigurd Nielsen, Secretary of the TCC, General McNarney was instructed to appoint a staff and to formulate plans for operating this committee. For the text of General McNarney’s speech to the opening session of the SCC, which was held in Paris on October 20, see telegram Har 109, October 21, page 327. On October 26 the SCC was reorganized to include a fourth member representing a nation other than the three on the Executive Bureau; the new group was redesignated the Screening and Costing Staff (SCS).
One week after the decision was made to create the SCC, the Executive Bureau decided to appoint another committee to assist in the compilation and analysis of the economic and financial data gathered on each NATO member country. This working group, the Temporary Economic Analysis Staff, was largely comprised of personnel borrowed from the OEEC and NATO Secretariats and was to assist the Executive Bureau until December 1, 1951. This completed the formal structure of the TCC and its subordinate groups. The majority of the recommendations were to be made by the Executive Bureau, which was aided by its working groups, and these recommendations were then to be reviewed by the full TCC at periodic meetings to be held approximately every two weeks.
According to telegram Repna circular 1 from Paris, October 13, all telegrams sent from the TCC headquarters in Paris were to use the series indicator “Repto,” which was normally used for ECA cables, and were to note in the first line of the text that they were from the “USDel TCC”; the series indicator “Repsec” was no longer to be used for TCC telegrams. The distribution in Washington for all TCC communications was to include the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Bureau of the Budget, the Economic Cooperation Administration, and the Office of the Director of the Mutual Security Agency. (740.5/10–1351)