62. Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations (Dutton)1
With the press almost daily anticipating “another shake up in the State Department,” I want to offer a few unsolicited comments as one of those cast here in the last shake up.
1. Tinkering with the Department in a few places will have negligible effect at best . . . and could even result in a worse, not better, situation.
If the White House wants to use one of the high positions here, as George McGhee’s, to get sort of another special assistant to the President, as for global troubleshooting, that can be justified for its own sake. But it will not have any significant effect to strengthen the competence, creativeness or responsiveness of the State Department. Rather, another of the principal officials supposed to help give executive direction to this intricate organization will have been taken away much of the time for tasks elsewhere.
If the Department is largely to be written off during this Administration (and an arguable case can be made for that), then the top slots should be skimmed off; and the rest of the organization will drift off into limbo for the most part. But in that event the decision [Page 115] should deliberately be made that this place is to be recast as just a research and representational agency; and primary responsibility for conceiving and proposing policy in depth, as well as making final decisions on it, will be vested in the executive offices. I realize that much of the initiative for pulling together even the rough strands of policy has already had to be taken up by the White House; but the question presented by taking away another key Departmental official is whether the present level of executive prodding and coordination in the Department is to be allowed to drop even lower, and how much is the White House able and willing to take up the additional slack resulting from that.
Personally, I would guess that the world is too various, the international tempo too fast and the White House already too burdened with pressing domestic as well as foreign concerns to take on this more detailed function. But it seems to be an inescapable consequence of tinkering with a few appointments here without undertaking at the same time to strengthen the Department in a basic and comprehensive way.
2. State’s troubles are principally institutional, not individual personalities; and the White House must accept a considerable part of the responsibility for these institutional difficulties getting worse, not better, in the last two years.
The key officials and the overwhelming bulk of the foreign service are dedicated, competent individuals. But the Department does not come close to adding up to the sum of its parts.
Some of the Department’s difficulties obviously result from the incredibly complex and mercurial problems with which it works. But some of its deficiencies are also the historical and contemporary consequence of the foreign service, which is really quite a “remote society” from the rest of this country and most of the rough tough elements in the world, being allowed to direct, instead of being directed in, the political institution for which its members work. Even John Foster Dulles, who usually ignored the career service, left it independent of direction; and it ran the State Department while he ran Eisenhower.
The need for pioneering insights, vigorous executive initiative and incisive political skills in our foreign policy apparatus is not likely to be met in the present set up very often. Most career officials place too high an emphasis on job security to get caught outside the worn ruts that already exist here; they generally seek to protect themselves against changing tides in Washington and wherever else they are assigned in the world. They are forever mindful, for instance, (and understandably) of some in their ranks who expressed critical opinions of Chiang Kai Shek in the 1940s and paid a high personal and family price. The dilemma of having to report on the Batista-Castro “facts” of the 1950s is a more recent example that is cited.
[Page 116]The basic caution here is aggravated by the usual tendency toward conformity in a career service, the natural by-product, in fact, of almost any closed system. The domination of promotion boards and personnel channels by career people helps make the group even more inbred. Finally, even as to its strong points the system is intellectual, analytical, tentative—but not very creative, intuitive or politically perceptive. As one of the Department’s best friends on the Hill, Hubert Humphrey, said recently in a moment of exasperation, “The goddam place is rational, maybe, iffy at best.” In the same vein I sometimes wonder why everyone so uncritically takes the reports of career officers on the politics of the Congo, Laos or Italy when they obviously are so lacking in understanding about American politics, which exist in an environment whose assumptions and conditions they really must know far more about.
I believe the White House must accept a considerable share of responsibility for the present shortcomings of the Department. And that does not flow just from the overall responsibility for operation of the executive branch. The truth of the matter is that some of the key people in our Administration started out with a feeling the foreign service had to be made up to for what happened in the McCarthy and Dulles periods, as though even more recognition and free reign would somehow cause it to be more competent and responsive.
Far worse, merit appointments have increasingly been considered to be synonymous with career appointments—and the result, has been some senior foreign service mediocrities going up to the Senate for confirmation as Presidential appointees. Below that level, career officials have moved in mass into exempt positions that at least theoretically exist to allow changing Administrations flexibility and the opportunity for its own people to give direction in depth in a Department already 99% foreign service and civil service. Personnel offices have been left totally made up of career officials. The overall result, as several FSOs have told me, is that the Department is now even more in the grip of the foreign service than when Loy Henderson presided on the inside instead of in absentia from the Metropolitan Club.
Finally, practically every statement issued to Department personnel from the executive offices has been solicitous and reassuring of the foreign service even while the White House has privately been most frustrated over the quality of the work here. This is a strange and unfortunate contradiction for a supposedly tough and objective Administration. I urge that a little frank talk, direct and to the point, will be a healthy tonic with many career people more interested in just keeping, than compulsively trying to make something of, their jobs.
Personally, I have a great admiration for Secretary Rusk. He has to hold together and lead the disparate factors here. The White House, [Page 117] however, needs to provide the external executive influence to prevail over the inevitable internal institutional forces at work here.
In brief, instead of just railing against the State Department, I believe the White House needs to reassert itself here in major appointments, personnel channels and occasional commands.
3. Some constructive steps that should at least be considered are these:
a. Strengthen in Depth: Even while retaining the present conduct of foreign policy in the White House (and I would think a President in these times generally must be his own Secretary of State, as the press expresses this situation), I urge the Department be strengthened in depth internally and not just a few higher up changes be made, as the rumored Harriman shift.
b. Executive Officer: A high official should be designated to provide full-time, specific executive direction of the State Department under the supervision of the Secretary, who is already heavily occupied directly with the President, attending to his Congressional meetings and public and diplomatic obligations, and occasionally having to travel to conferences abroad. Ball is similarly preoccupied; and apparently McGhee’s slot is going to be similarly used. Either one of those, or a special assistant to the Secretary, or another position, needs to be given real authority to prod the policy machinery to define problems promptly, pull together study groups early in developing situations, break substantive bottlenecks, and keep providing the Secretary and White House with timely recommendations.
Personally I strongly urge that the task not be assigned to the Deputy Under Secretary for Administration. Executive direction of the policy-making channels is needed—this is a substantive, creative, program-oriented task that should be kept separate from cut and dried administrative attitudes and channels. A second reason for not using the Deputy Under Secretary for Administration is that however frustrating the policy bureaus are here, they are historically and at present far more responsive than the administrative sector of the Department. The Deputy Under Secretary for Administration and Assistant Secretary Crockett, who is really quite effective in his present office, are needed full time to improve the administrative channels.
A third reason is that the Deputy Under Secretary’s operation historically and now operates primarily through personnel offices dominated by career officials—in fact, it is the target of most of their lobbying. Increasing the authority of this office in the Department (as the Herter Committee recommends) will only tighten the hold of the institutional interests and influences that are the source of most of the Department’s deficiencies.
For a “substantive executive officer” for the Department I suggest someone like Bill Bundy or Ken Hansen, assistant director of the Budget [Page 118] Bureau, as possibilities. International subsidiaries of large U.S. corporate structures should be able to yield other possibilities with executive competence and relevant general background.
c. Personnel Office: Competent new personnel should be pumped into the Department in depth. This can most effectively be achieved by placing an exempt person from the President’s own staff in charge of the Department’s personnel office. I suggest Dan Fenn for this appointment. Even if it is not Dan, I personally think that obtaining control of the personnel office with a competent, exempt individual completely identified with this Administration is the most important single step that can be taken to reinvigorate the Department over the long haul ahead.
d. Major Appointments: Whenever a career ambassador or other major nomination is proposed by the Department, someone on the White House staff (as Ralph Dungan) or in the Budget Bureau, should prepare for the President’s consideration, along with the name proposed by the Department, at least one qualified outsider. This will assure that the stream of career recommendations from the Department is measured against specific competent individuals from private life—and that this Administration actually is encouraging merit appointments, not just career appointments.
e. Special Emissaries: Besides measuring career possibilities for ambassadorial slots against able individuals from private life, the same should be done with the major special assignments that come up from time to time, as recently with Merchant and Bunker. I find it difficult to reconcile the White House’s frustration over the State Department with the persistence with which it turns so often to career diplomats that are almost stereotypes of everything for which State is pilloried. Personally I think the criticism is fairly sound—but it is evidently neglected when personnel appointments are made. Surely a country with the size and vigor of ours can turn up competent, experienced, vigorous, new-style representatives from public life, business, the bar and universities for missions abroad.
f. Schedule C: Far more exempt positions in the Department on Schedule C should be filled by genuinely qualified, noncareer individuals, not foreign service people who want the special pay and status but will not accept noncareer risks, responsibilities and attitudes. As a rule of thumb, after a six month grace period, no more than 10 to 15% of these exempt positions should be filled with career personnel.
g. Middle Level Positions: If, as mentioned in the press, Harriman is to be moved up in the Department (and he is really a breath of fresh air here: direct, tough, no-nonsense), I hope that the other assistant secretaryships will also be looked at with a critical eye and any strengthening [Page 119] done in one major move. I would hope that at least eventually several of the President’s noncareer ambassadors who have proved themselves as really outstanding in the last two years might be brought back to invigorate the Department.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies Series, State Department, 3/7/63–3/31/63. No classification marking. Attached is a brief covering memorandum from Dutton to Bundy, March 5, which reads: “Mac: I hope the Harriman appointment (which is really excellent) will not be the lone move made to strengthen this Department. About a week ago I put together the attached memo and send it along only to try to provoke further improvements in depth in this place. Fred Dutton. P. S.: I sent a copy of this to Dungan in relation to his personnel work.” The appointment of W. Averell Harriman as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs was effective April 4, 1963.↩