Office of the Historian

66. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Aaron) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski)1

Washington, June 16, 1977
Zbig,

This memo from Vance2 gives me real heartburn. It misses the entire point of the problem of USIA, which is that its information programs are totally out of date, obsolete and overstaffed.

On the cultural side, I disagree with Paul Henze. CU and Joe Duffey are going to be far more creative and far more aggressive in pursuing a cultural contact than USIA has ever been. In fact, the whole trend in USIA has been to throttle their more creative younger officers. One example of this is the fact that they have been shutting down cultural centers across Europe. Since Europe is the one area of the world undergoing the most important and fundamental political changes from the standpoint of our security, and since these cultural centers are our best source of access to the younger generation of intellectually alert people in Europe, USIA’s actions on this score are a typical example of what you will get if they continue to operate independently.

The Stanton report3 was based on the assumption that USIA’s information programs are largely obsolete. I happen to agree with that assumption. If USIA is supposed to continue these operations they should be required to justify them on a zero-based budget arrangement.

[Page 180]

I believe the memorandum to the President should be rewritten so as to stress the inadequacies of the memo with the view towards having Vance’s reorganization study identify certain personnel reduction targets in streamlining. Unless we do that now, we are just going to recreate the old monster.

David Aaron4
  1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Agency File, Box 17, State: 6/77. Confidential. A notation in an unknown hand in the top right-hand corner of the memorandum reads: “Paul Henze—Staff D.A. comments as well (per D.A.) ZB has not yet seen.”↩
  2. See Document 64.↩
  3. See footnote 3, Document 1.↩
  4. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩