177. Letter From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Bundy) to the Under Secretary of State (Ball)0
Dear George: I am writing this private letter to amplify my thinking about State Department policy control of the foreign aid program.
You know the history of this. The coordination resided in Doug Dillon when he was Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, and moved up with him when he took your present job. Thereafter, Jack Bell and his people handled the matter under you (the so-called BFAC) and it was rather petering out by the fall of 1962 and tending to move somewhat into Jeff Kitchen’s hands. Then, when Dave Bell took over from Fowler, the Executive Order specifically lodged the coordination authority in him1 and it has been exercised by a group under the leadership of Hollis Chenery, with Joe Wolf acting on the military side.
What I would say about this arrangement does not in any way reflect on the tremendous competence and national-mindedness of Dave Bell. But the plain fact is that there have been what seemed to be two substantial difficulties:
- a.
- Putting the military under a whole group of economic-minded people has meant that we have not had nearly as strong a political input as used to be the case when the coordination was in the State Department itself. A specific example, now out of date, would be the continuing pressures on us to sanction transfers from the military account to economic aid. More recently, and still true, we have found it very difficult to get proper clearance of credit sales activities even after these had the policy approval of the relevant Assistant Secretaries in the State Department, with Dave’s people taking the position that they had a veto right down to the last million dollars of where money should be applied. Moreover, despite what Dave says about any failure in State Department influence being due to the Assistant Secretaries not doing their job, the fact is that any system that forces them to work through AID in order to reach our program inevitably tends to inhibit their influence and indeed their degree of knowledge and participation in the Military Assistance Program. I do not mean to suggest that one should lightly yield to the constant fears of an Ambassador or an Assistant Secretary, but there have been political [Page 394] factors that might well have affected the size and composition of specific programs more than has in fact been the case. I think we in ISA fairly well represent the State Department’s position, but this is really no substitute for hearing it strongly expressed from the Department itself. I would even go so far as to say that the budget requests in the last two years might have been slightly higher had the Department’s voice been heard loudly, although I say this believing that Bob McNamara would probably not agree.
- b.
- While I am not a full judge of what has gone on before the Committees on the Hill, my people who follow them closely confirm my impression that the economic program particularly has suffered through not having the hard-headed political interest and policy of the US constantly expressed. After Dean’s opening blast, usually restricted by its being an open hearing, the matter devolves solely to the Assistant Secretaries and on occasion lower still. The kind of constant shepherding and personal intervention that I believe Doug Dillon used to provide in 1958-61 has simply not been present, and all the last-minute cannonades in the world cannot make up for that lack. Although Dave himself has always been thoroughly familiar with the Department’s policy and positions, he is necessarily identified as predominantly economic in approach, and this has tended to obscure the often completely persuasive Realpolitik of particular programs.
Thus, both conceptually and because of the practical difficulties stated above, I myself would be highly sympathetic to the creation of what might be called an “Under Secretary for Programs” within the Department. I prefer this title to Henry Owen’s “Under Secretary for Economic Affairs” because the responsibility of the position should extend deeply into the military field and might well embrace a few other odds and ends of a non-economic character as well (science?).
But the question is also one of personalities. When Dave got his present coordination authority in 1962, Alex Johnson was swamped and George McGhee would have been badly miscast in the coordination role. Now that you have Averell carrying a real share of the top load, I would myself think that Alex Johnson, with a lot of support from Jeff Kitchen and his people, could do this job admirably. It would, of course, mean that as a practical matter Dave Bell would move to No. 5 instead of No. 4 in the Department’s pecking order, but this I would regard as virtually inevitable in the circumstances. The point is that Alex has the necessary force and knowledge to bring home the specific national interest of the country and the vital effect on foreign policy of cuts to the important swing Congressmen. I need hardly say that we would have utmost confidence in him from the standpoint of wise and effective policy guidance on the military assistance side, and this part would fit particularly naturally into the hitherto somewhat uneasy charter that Jeff Kitchen has had.
[Page 395]This letter is obviously what we used to call in the War a “burn before reading” note. It really is not for me to suggest ways of reorganizing the Department, and I don’t want to sound at all critical of Dave—who I think would actually benefit from having his hands freed to run the economic show alone and not have to worry his head constantly about the miscellaneous coordination problems.
Yours ever,
- Source: Department of State, S/S Briefing Books, 1962-1966: Lot 66 D 219, Executive Branch Committee on Foreign Aid. Personal and Confidential. An undated note in the Secretary’s handwriting to Ball, attached to the source text, reads: “A good statement of this point. DR”↩
- Reference is to Executive Order 10973, November 3, 1961.↩