419. Memorandum from Moorman to AID Administrator, November 91
SUBJECT
- NSAM 150—Use of Military Engineers
In Mr. Coffin’s memorandum of October 30 to Mr. Bundy there are two courses of action proposed which are to be reduced to a participating agency agreement with the Department of Defense. I find that point No. 1 generally agrees with the intention of the Executive Staff as expressed in the minutes of September 25. However, point No. 2 reads as follows:
“2. A mechanism should be established to give each USAID direct and immediate access to a specific military engineer district headquarters as a source of engineering advice, and, where necessary, of full-time engineering staff.”
In considering what point No. 2 means to this Agency I can only conclude that the intention is to set up a mechanism which would permit each Mission Director (by “direct and immediate access”) to go to the nearest military engineer district headquarters to obtain advice and full time engineering staff. This could be done without consulting AID/W and indeed without the knowledge of the Regional Bureaus. It will immediately generate conflicting opinions on engineering and construction problems and robs the Regional Administrator of control of engineering operations in his Region. I can think of nothing more disastrous to the orderly administration of capital development projects than to turn the engineering operations over to an organization which has no grasp nor background in the objectives of the AID program and which is completely beyond the control of the Administrator.
I would like to call your attention to some other matters which I believe you should consider. This Agency has approximately 645 engineers in the field in various Missions around the world. These engineers are not answerable in any fashion to the engineering organizations in the Regional Bureaus. They work under the Mission Director [Typeset Page 1694] and to the [Facsimile Page 2] extent that there is any backstopping from Washington engineers, it is couched in such organizations as Agriculture and Natural Resources Division, ESD; Health Division, ESD; Industrial Division, ESD; Public Safety Division, ESD; and Transportation Division, ESD. The only relationship with the engineering staff of the Regional Bureaus comes about through professional interest and personal friendship. I am not able to say how well they do their job; however, in terms of the contribution they make in relation to capital development their efforts more often result in confusion than in any helpful contribution. This is accounted for by two factors: lack of understanding of the program and lack of ability on the part of the regional engineering staffs to provide the direction so necessary to bring about a reasonably orderly operation.
In addition to the above, I understand from our conversation of November 7, that you hope to develop recommendations from a group of private industrialists of very high caliber toward a better system of implementation of the capital development program. It appears from my limited information that so far their recommendations have been pointed toward the substitution of a consulting engineers staff for an agency staff in the implementation of capital development projects. From my knowledge of available talent and skill in the private consulting engineer field except for perhaps 10 or 12 firms which are exceedingly broad in their capability, it would not be possible to find the kind of experience which this Agency needs to carry on its operations. It may very well be that limited application of this suggestion might be successful in a few places. At the same time it would seem desirable for the Agency to consider the proper organization and effective use of the talent which it already has in the organization in large numbers to do this job.
It seems to me that we are in a position of the juggler who has three balls in the air but doesn’t have time to scratch his head. I hope that in the consideration [Facsimile Page 3] of this problem you will consider all of the possibilities and not fail to recognize the latent capability within the present organization which could be brought to bear on engineering problems simply by an adjustment in the organizational relationships of engineers to engineers and engineers to operating functions.
I appreciate this opportunity to put my views on this important matter before you.
- Discussion of Coffin’s October 30 memorandum on use of military engineers. Confidential. 3 pp. Washington National Records Center, RG 286, AID Administrator Files: FRC 67 A 1530, Chron Files, Nov. 9–19, 1962.↩