Office of the Historian

196. Memorandum From the Operations Coordinator (Bishop) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs (Allen)1

Washington, July 28, 1955.

For your information, there is quoted below an excerpt from my preliminary notes on yesterday’s OCB meeting:

“Pakistan 1290–d Report2

“Mr. Hoover referred to the State Department position presented in … the Pakistan paper and asked for Defense’s comments. Mr. Anderson replied that ‘here is another case in which we are spending money not for purely military or internal security purposes’. He emphasized that Defense felt that we need to know what we are buying and what we are getting for our money; that in this case we will not be spending this money for purely military purposes and we should recognize it as such. Mr. Hoover then remarked that while he had not been in on the development of the Pakistan program from the beginning, it had been his impression from his talks with people in Defense that the military felt that two countries in the Middle East were particularly well suited to military investment on the part of the United States. These two countries were Turkey and Pakistan. Mr. Anderson agreed entirely and said that in the case of Pakistan we are spending money faster than it could be absorbed for military purposes. The very time required for training soldiers to use this equipment prevented its effective use for military purposes at such a rapid rate. It was agreed to include the substance of the Department of State’s position as a subparagraph ….”

MWB
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 790D.5–MSP/7–2855. Secret.↩
  2. On December 21, 1954, the National Security Council directed the Operations Coordinating Board to develop a program for providing assistance to countries such as Pakistan that were considered vulnerable to communist subversion. This program, which was brought into being by NSC Action No. 1290–d, was designed to help those countries to develop indigenous forces adequate to combat any internal security threats. For NSC Action No. 1290–d, see Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. II, Part 1, p. 844, footnote 10. The report, entitled “Analysis of Internal Security Situation in Pakistan and Recommended Action,” was completed on January 4, 1956; it is in Department of State, OCB Files: Lot 62 D 430, Box 1376, Pakistan.↩