Office of the Historian

215. Letter From the Ambassador to Finland (Sessions) to the Under Secretary of State (Dillon)0

Helsinki, February 2, 1960.

Dear Doug: I am attaching two copies of my “Suggested Plan For Finland”.1 The plan is responsive to your letter of January 4, 1960,2 in which you advised me of the program to expand U.S. exports. If implemented, I believe it will be of substantial assistance to U.S. firms in selling their goods and services in Finland.

Because I have submitted the “program” as a despatch and because I wanted our entire top staff to participate, certain observations were not included. Perhaps some of these may be of interest to you. They include:

1.
The U.S. program in Finland has “coasted” during the past few years, while the Russians in this period have made substantial gains on the political and economic fronts. I have often wondered if your characterization of Helsinki as a “listening post” came about through Washington listening to the snores of the personnel here!
2.
The U.S.I.S. program needs recasting and its operations should be expanded. The present program is largely cultural with academic leanings. I think we spend too much time with friendly groups such as the Finnish-American Society, Helsinki University, the business sector and the international Finns. The program should be enlarged to include other uncommitted groups and possibly some of the unfriendly groups. I am not sure how we will get this done unless we have a survey made in order to shake up the present complacency in Washington about our U.S.I.S. operation.
3.
Our officers spend too much time in Helsinki and not enough time in the provincial areas. Our inadequate travel allowance and small staff (who are snowed under most of the time with an avalanche of paper work of questionable value) may be partially responsible, but I think that we can do considerably better than we are doing as evidenced by the fact that last year the post only spent $1,324 of its $1,680 budget for travel and I believe a substantial portion of this was spent on officers’ travel to the American Days Festival.
4.
The new Chancery building program (construction was to start in July 1960) shows a lack of careful planning. I have sent Hughes and Loy Henderson a factual report on this program and have advised having the plans redrawn.
5.
The Department has acquired some questionable impressions about Finnish industry and one of these is in the OCB paper for Finland. The paper states, “Trade with the USSR is vital to Finland because it offers an outlet for high cost products of the Finnish metalworking and shipbuilding industries which were expanded after the war to meet reparations payments.”3 I have sent a letter to Bob Brandin of BNA correcting this statement.4 The facts are that many of the Finnish plants can produce as cheaply as their European or U.S. competitors, but some prefer to sell to Russia because:
(a)
They get a high price.
(b)
No competition is involved.
(c)
The Russians’ orders enable them to plan financing, inventories and production ahead for the entire year.

You may wonder why we have not presented the program as specific projects with the details spelled out. With our small staff this would take a minimum of three to six months. In addition, I have thought that [Page 560] the paper could be used as source data for the new OCB paper which is about to go into final draft.

There are a number of interesting facets about this situation, but I will hold them for a personal discussion at a later date. As this letter is on a personal basis, I would appreciate your not giving it any further circulation.

Incidentally, we hear nothing but laudatory comments about your handling of the difficult negotiations on the Six and Seven.

Sincerely,

Ed
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.60E/2–260. Secret.↩
  2. Document 216.↩
  3. Not found in Department of State files.↩
  4. This quotation is from Annex C of a working draft of the Operations Plan for Finland, forwarded to the Embassy on January 25. (Department of State, Helsinki Embassy Files: Lot 65 F 78, 320–OCB) This sentence was retained in Annex C of the approved Operations Plan, Document 222.↩
  5. The letter from Sessions to Brandin, February 1, is in Department of State, Helsinki Embassy Files: Lot 65 F 78, U.S. Program for Finland.↩