189. Memorandum of Meeting Between Eisenhower and Gray1
1. I took up with the President the Record of Actions of the NSC meeting of July 30, 1959. I reported to him that the Defense Department wished to add some language to paragraph 16 which he approved. I also pointed out that the Defense Department wished to delete the qualifying clause of paragraph 62 b. The President instructed me to leave the language as it was written and asked me to remind the Defense Department that this was language that he had suggested in the Council meeting. The President also approved the small change in the language of the Record of Actions which related to paragraph 58 of NSC 5906 (Mobilization Base).
With respect to paragraph 62 on Outer Space, I reported to the President that there was some unhappiness among the operators, including specifically Mr. Harr and the OCB Staff, about the Council action in deleting references to psychological values. The President had said that he had not intended to eliminate psychological factors and thought that the word “political” adequately took care of the situation. However, he said that in order that no one misunderstand he would put a footnote to the word “political” which would read substantially as follows: “The term political includes consideration of psychological factors.”
2. In connection with space problems, I said to the President that I was concerned about the adequacy of our machinery for dealing with some of the very difficult questions which we will be confronted with in the future. I expressed the view that the Space Council could not be as fully effective as some people had hoped. The President reminded me that he had not sought the creation of the Space Council but had been forced to accept it as a compromise with the Democratic leadership. I indicated that it was not clear to me just what space responsibilities the NSC now had. The President agreed that there probably would arise jurisdictional problems and asked me to prepare a [Facsimile Page 2] directive for his signature which would go to the Space Council and other appropriate agencies under which the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs would be made a sitting member of the Space Council and be given the specific responsibility of dealing with problems arising out of either conflict of jurisdiction or lack of clearly defined jurisdiction. The directive would provide [Typeset Page 807] that any problems the Special Assistant could not solve with respect to machinery should be taken to the President.
3. I discussed two 5412 matters with the President, which are the subject of a separate memorandum.
4. I presented to the President a draft of a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, Chairman, JCS, and the Director, OCDM concerning the President’s request for a study of the requirements of the mobilization base under conditions of a nuclear exchange. The President approved the memorandum with one editorial change that he made.
Special Assistant to the President
cc: Mr. Lay
- Source: Basic national security policy; Space Council/NSC coordination. Top Secret. 2 pp. Eisenhower Library, White House Office Files, Project Clean Up, Staff Memos.↩