PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “NSC 68 & 114”
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
NSC Meeting: Council Action on NSC 135/1 1
At the Council meeting this afternoon, the President directed the approval of the recommendations in NSC 135/1 and the creation of an ad hoc group composed of State, Defense and DMS to carry out the studies recommended in Paragraph 9(a) of the paper. The paper itself was referred back to the Senior Staff for certain editorial changes and for an addition referred to below.
I left with Mr. Lovett and Mr. Lay copies of the proposed directive which Mr. Lay will go over and issue in due course if upon study Mr. Lovett through Mr. Noyes finds no objection to the wording. I informed Mr. Lay that Mr. Harriman agreed.
In regard to substance, the NSRB view put forward by Mr. Gorrie and answered by Mr. Lovett resulted in no action.2 Mr. Gorrie became satisfied that everything was being done which could reasonably be expected along the lines of his request. Some of the matters to which Defense will direct the attention of the Senior Staff, as mentioned by Mr. Lovett, were as follows:
Paragraph 1—Reference to the fundamental purpose, as stated in 68, and the three specifications (a), (b) and (c) were criticized because they ought to indicate that a primary objective of U.S. policy was the maintenance of peace.
The next passage mentioned was the last paragraph of 9(b). Mr. Lovett pointed out that the object of the draftsman was commendable but the statement as written seemed somewhat absurd. The last paragraph mentioned by Mr. Lovett was Paragraph 15, which to him carried the connotation that we regretted the inability to fix the date for the opening of the preventive war. Defense may have other suggestions also.
Mr. Wadsworth, representing Civilian Defense, said that he would submit to Mr. Lay some editorial changes in Paragraph 7 which were designed to protect the Civil Defense Administration from the erroneous belief which might be held by the Budget Bureau that their request for funds should be cut even lower than at present. It was agreed that such changes would be made.
Mr. Harriman requested that a paragraph be inserted somewhere to indicate that questions of economic policy were both [Page 125] pressing and intimately related to security matters and that work on these questions was going forward both in the State Department and in DMS, and that together and with the help of other agencies of the Government a paper or series of papers would be prepared outside of the NSC so that the importance of this matter and the ideas of the various agencies would be available at the outset of the new Administration. The President approved of this effort and also approved of the idea that it might be wiser not to attempt to work out a complete governmental recommendation for the next Administration, but a series of papers which would enable the new Administration to go forward with its own program in this respect in the light of the necessities of strengthening the free world through a wise economic policy in the United States.
It developed that some fifty or more copies of the large volume of annexes had been distributed. The President requested that all copies be returned to Mr. Lay, who would reissue them on a “need to know” basis to the agencies particularly concerned with future work ordered.