126. Editorial Note
On January 23, 1963, Secretary Rusk designated the Policy Planning Council as the center within the Department of State for coordinating country planning and for minimizing duplication of planning “on both a Departmental and interdepartmental basis.” This action followed agreement by the Tuesday Planning Group on September 1, 1962, of a series of “Experimental Strategic Country Studies” to be initiated by the Council. (Memorandum entitled “Strategic Country Studies,” attached to letter from U. Alexis Johnson to Nitze, January 23, 1963; Department of State, S/P Files: Lot 70 D 199, Policy Planning 1963) The Tuesday Planning [Page 463] Group was an interagency subcabinet planning mechanism chaired by Walt Rostow, with White House, Defense, Treasury, USIA, and CIA membership, generally at the rank of Assistant Secretary or equivalent.
On February 28, Rusk sent to the President a memorandum drafted by Walt Rostow entitled “Critical Planning Tasks.” The memorandum described the status of some 32 Basic National Planning Tasks (see Documents 70 and 83), 8 Strategic Studies on individual countries, all in Latin America and Africa, and 13 Political Contingency Plans. Rusk requested that the President “meet soon with a few of your key advisers to review the state of national security planning and, especially, to isolate those planning tasks you personally regard as critical.” (Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 70 D 265, BNSP 1963)
Although Legere reported, in his memorandum of the White House daily staff meeting on March 1, that “both Bundy and Komer felt that such a diffuse paper would not get very far with the President,” Bundy on April 12 forwarded the memorandum to the President with the suggestion that he meet the next week with Rostow, Rusk, and “a very few others.” Bundy’s “own guess” was that Rostow needed “a real sense of your own interest and some sense of priorities,” and he concluded that perhaps some long-range problems could be considered in the new Standing Committee (see Document 131). (National Defense University, Taylor Papers, WYS Chron File, and Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Standing Group Meetings General 4/63-5/63, respectively) No record has been found of any such meeting as Bundy proposed.
For additional information on this topic, see Document 135.