PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “Natl Sec (civil defense)”
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Bruce)1
Meeting of the National Security Council, Tuesday, October 14, 1952
The only subject on the agenda was that of a Continental Early Warning System. The President enjoined strict secrecy about what was discussed on all those present.
There was a very large assemblage, including the Chiefs of Staff, Messrs. Pace and Finletter, Messrs. Lovett and Foster, and a variety of Generals and Admirals from the Department of Defense as well as a scattering from other agencies of Government, including Messrs. Harriman, Gorrie of NSRB, Jerry Wadsworth of Civilian Defense, John Snyder, and, representing State, Paul Nitze and myself.
In the estimation of the Lincoln Summer School Project experts, their development has reached a stage where they think it would be feasible to establish warning stations.
An Air Force General presented the results of the Air Force study of this program, aided by appropriate charts. He was also spokesman for the Department of Defense in outlining that Department’s position. Its position was that this new invention should be encouraged and that four experimental stations should be equipped and manned. However, the Department of Defense did not favor the crash implementation of the scheme, which is what was advocated by Mr. Gorrie2 and by some of the scientists present. The Department of Defense favored a somewhat slow expansion of funds to be devoted to this purpose with the idea that this development would be pressed in step with the other dispositions now being made by the Department of Defense in other fields of advance warning.
The President closed the meeting by saying that he would like the Department of Defense and the NSRB to get together and make a recommendation to him.
[Page 165]Mr. Nitze asked a couple of questions and I asked one myself designed to produce more information as to why it would not be wiser to proceed on a crash implementation basis.
The real point at issue seems to me to be whether an overriding priority should not be given by the Department of Defense to this proposal instead of allocating to it a fairly minor sum almost on the theory of a convoy’s speed being determined by the speed of its slowest ship.
I spoke to the President for a minute or two after the meeting on the above basis and he said he would take this under consideration.
- copies to Nitze, Bohlen, Matthews, Sohm, and S/S. Bruce had met with the President on Oct. 13 and had discussed the question of an Early Warning System “which will be the subject discussed at the NSC meeting tomorrow.” Truman urged Bruce to bring any representatives from the Department of State that he wished, and “The President stated that he thought this was a matter of great importance and he was looking forward with interest to what would be developed at the meeting”. (Meeting with the President, Oct. 13, 1952, PPS files, lot 64 D 563, “Natl Sec (civil defense)”) The memorandum for the President, Oct. 15, containing the summary of discussion at the 124th meeting of the NSC on Oct. 14 is in the Truman Library, Truman papers, PSF–Subject file.↩
- See the attachment to the memorandum by the Secretary of State, Sept. 24, p. 141.↩