Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume IV, National Security Policy

67. Memorandum From William Odom of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Aaron)¹

Washington, July 15, 1978

SUBJECT

• Planning and Coordination: Crisis Management

This is in response to your memorandum on planning and coordination which requested a list of issues for discussion. The following issue areas are appropriate for crisis management:

I. White House Emergency Procedures.

General: This area is in reasonably good shape, but it is important to have another IVORY ITEM exercise sometime before late fall.

Plan D: This concerns successors and continuity of government. It is a travesty of neglect. Mitchell, Director of FPA, has discovered this and wants to do something. So does OMB. Short-term “fixes” may be possible this fall, but a larger solution is possible as FPA goes into the new Federal Emergency Management Agency. By late summer I hope to have a scheme for launching a major but closely held review of these Plan D deficiencies.²

C3I: This area is the revolutionary front. The DOD is beginning to wake up to it. I get into it through both WHEP and telecommunications policy. How we approach C3I will be indicative of how we intend to structure our forces, strategic and general purpose, for the rest of the century. It will also be indicative of continuity or change in our military doctrine. Presently, our C3I vulnerabilities are staggering, even for only a retaliatory doctrine. This year’s C3I budget issue review is an upcoming opportunity to do something in this area. I am working with Utgoff on it.

II. Telecommunications.

General: This has been a quiet front. OSTP has the emergency preparedness management functions [6 lines not declassified]. Possibilities are:

— Leasing satellites for DOD instead of buying them.

— Tactical radio systems and Commerce’s role in setting the standards.

— [1 paragraph (4 lines) not declassified]

— [1 paragraph (3 lines) not declassified]

— [1 paragraph (6 lines) not declassified]

III. Terrorism.

General: Things are in overall good shape. That is, we have a structure in place. The way it works is not always satisfactory. The following list identifies some of the problems:

— We have a new Executive Committee Chairman, Tony Quainton, at State. This is a promising change.

— DOD now has a rather impressive military capability but how it will be tied to the other elements in an incident is not all that well worked out. McGiffert and others in DOD, including the General Meyer, cry out for national level exercises, CPXs. I have been less enthusiastic for this before DOD decides its own internal questions. For example, does the Secretary of the Army have the executive agent responsibility as he does for “domestic order”? Or is the link to Harold Brown and the JCS? Justice has procedures for working with the Army but not with JCS. I will be pressing on this front.

— Responding to foreign requests for counter-terror training. This one may get sticky. CIA already has its own rather broad program which is not understood by State. Quainton, following Isham’s lead, wants State to “coordinate” our counter-terrorism foreign training policy. Quainton has asked for all agencies to report what programs they have abroad. This is leading to a possible clash between State and CIA. I am in touch with Henze to try to prevent it.

— Intelligence for terrorism. The Executive Committee is believed by many to handle counter-terrorism intelligence. I set it up so that an informal sub-group of the committee can do so. The only problem is that when something like the question of aid for Italy comes up, I am not kept abreast of what you and Hunter are doing. Thus, things were not always under control, and the agencies gradually learned that we were not tied together properly at the NSC. The impression of disconnection got as far as some of the Senate Intelligence Committee staff apparently. I would like to pull intelligence for terrorism together. I have pushed the CIA to stop taking a purely passive attitude to intelligence on terrorism and to look for positive ways to use what we know more effectively. Their reaction is favorable, but they hesitate about how to respond. After a day with the DDO, the IAD chief, and the head of terrorism group, I came away with a better, but not encouraging, sense of the realities out there. I greatly need your support and backing in this area, and I would like to push it.

— A related item, not terrorism but intelligence, is the beginning of a coordinated CI effort on our embassy construction in Moscow. Sam Hoskinson expressed unusual enthusiasm for some of my schemes in approaching this task. I did the background work for that SCC item, learning that in fact my schemes are feasible and highly desired by the agencies. Unless they are laced together by a small group—one representative from CIA, State, DOD, and the NSC—they will not succeed, and only then will they succeed if they are executed with full awareness of all other US-Soviet activities.

IV. Net Assessment.

I am back into this area for the update of PRM 10.³ The need for a net assessment capability on the NSC was not apparent to me for some time. Now I see why it is. Without it, our intelligence appreciation for longer run policy and strategy will be no better than the PDB, NID, and the INR Summary, i.e., current events. I don’t know where you want to go in this area, but it merits some thought. Some practical examples:

— Awareness of the oil technology transfer issue to the USSR comes from net assessment.

— Sensitivity to the C3I vulnerabilities comes from net assessment.

— The DOD targeting study flounders because it is not driven by net assessments.

— Where we go with the PRM–31⁴ results will depend on continuing net assessments which exploit the directed new FBI and CIA attention to technology.

V. Crisis management at the in-between-levels (i.e., between SIOP and the small terrorist event).

General: Our ad hoc system works reasonably well I suppose, but it could have more rigor. I would prefer to talk rather than write about this one.

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Box 15, Crisis Management; 8/77–10/78. Top Secret. Outside the System.
2. An unknown hand drew two vertical lines in the right margin next to this sentence.
3. See Document 4.
4. See Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. XX, Eastern Europe, Document 13.