THE ADDRESS INDICATES WHY YOU'LL HAVE TO PUT UP WITH MY HUNT-AND-PECK TYPING.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T00268R000800120028-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 10, 2014
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: July 15, 1957
• Content Type: LETTER

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/15: CIA-RDP86T00268R000800120028-3
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STAT
MASSACHUSETTS iNST/TUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Center for International Studies
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge 39, Massachusetts
15 July 195?
" ? I
1
Dear Bobby:
The address indicates why you'll have to put up with my hunt-and-peck
typing.
Dinner last Thursday was extremely pleasant. It was kind of you to
arrange it. I trust your energy has returned with a rush and you can
dispense with both thoee remarkable horse pills and with the ginger ale.
Fred Dearborn and I had an extra forty minutes or so together which
I found profitable as well As pleasant; for what we did was to march down
an array of possible devices for initiating new ideas La the Executive
Branch noting their strengths and weaknesses as we wont. He suggested
that I put them on paper and send them along.
More or less, they went like this.
I. An Inside Staff. This Lathe conventional proposal many have
made, including myself, for a group within the White House
having the right to produce substantive papers on issues over-
lapping the jurisdiction of any one department and to get them
on the NSC agenda. The boss should either be the same chap who
chairs the Planning Board or a subordinate of his. The advantages
of this direct approach are obvious; the major disadvantages are
three -- first, in a town where careers are built in departments
or services it would be extremely difficult to get and to hold the
absolutely topnotch men necessary to make the staff perform
properly; second, the town might well unite to do the buggers in;
third, the staff might become as rigidly fixed and committed to
special positions as any departmental staff.
1
\
An Inside Board. This would be an extension to the NSC of Allen
Dulles' technique with the NIE's; that is, a group of independent
critics, within the government part-time at least, to serve as a
collective super-ego, without however doing independent or
? competitive staff work. The advantage is that such a Board might
keep the minds of the NSC and its committees open to a. wide range
or possibilities and help prevent major issues from getting fudged in
negotiated language. And they might do these things as critics,
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without raising the competitive difficulties of Solution I. The
disadvantage is that a group of this kind, cut off from day-to-
day work in the government, might find it difficult to make
thoroughly relevant observations in a professional context; and
there might, as in the case of Solution 1, be difficulties in
maintaining quality.
3. An Outside Board. The notion here is that a group of chaps of
the Lovett-McCloy-Killian-Gaither variety most regularly and,
when they feel so moved, have the right to place on the NSC
agenda an item they feel deserves governmental attention oi
action. As compared with Solution 2, this one has the advantage
of guaranteeing first, rate men and complete independence of the
bureaucracy, the disadvantage of even greater remoteness from
the government's day-to-day business. The relative virtue of
this device might well depend on an issue Fred and I did not
discuss; that is, whether the Outside Board had a staff of high
quality. It might then function like an exalted committee of the
New York Council on Foreign Relations or the top committee of
Nelson Roc.kefeller's current wIngding. Like an activist
secretariat in an international organisation, this Board would
require extraordinary tact, competence, and selectivity of issues
to work well.
4. An Ad Hoc Outsider. The notion here is that when a major issue
requiring Innovation arises the NSC call in & top-level coutsider
(of major cabinet post stature) for (say) 3-6 months; but that his
staff be drafted from inside the government. Operating under
direct Presidential mandate, this remarkable fellow would pick
a first rate staff from all relevant departments of the government
- they would not be assigned to him, nominated at most. The
outside chap and his staff would be instructed from on high to free
Ito mind of departmental vested interests for the duration. The
advantage would be that the great creative potential within the
bureaucracies would be tapped by freeing men from routine and
putting them under a free soul; and that the hard-working insider
would have a crack at the glamorous issues, to the advantage of
long run morale. Moreover the staff would require no elaborate
briefing and it would not easily be fooled. The difficulties center
on the problem of getting co-operation between the Outsider and
the Great Chieftains; and on the problem of getting the Indians
to behave like truly free men for the duration of the project, since
they would be doomed to return to the old departmental ruts.
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Ad Hoc Outside Board and Stifl. This one Fred and I did not
dLscuss since It Is the current favored technique; e.g.. the two
Quantico reports (although they reported to* single insider
rather than the NSC), Gaither, Fairless, etc. Its major weaknesses
- aside from the problem of advocacy and acc-eptance within the
goversunent-e,re-first, the government itself must decide it's in
pretty bad trouble before initiating some fresh thought; second,
the government must spend a lot of high class time briefing the
outside cheracters.
As said to Fred on the way to the station, I would ventur. only one
firm piece of advice: whatever device or devices you choose to experbnent
with, set the first experiment up with special care; for the result is going
to depend more on the quality of the men involved, the issues first chosen
for consideration, and the soundness of the preparations within the
bureaucracy than on the theoretical correctness of the administrative
method. Administration, as you well know. is merely the organised
projection of human personalities; and since blessedly we are all different
there is no single correct way to do business.
A final word, Bobby. Reflecting on our dinner conversation I
concluded that we may well hays been arguing at crass-purposes.
believe you are impressed (as am I) with the extent to which the steady
grinding of the NSC machinery, under & President who uses it, has
brought men in town to understand the legitimacy of each other's problems
and bureaucratic perspectives. On any issue coming up for decision it is
easier to balance and to mesh the various professional perspectives than
It was at any earlier time (except to the extent that the three services or
the Treasury keep their sensitive issues off the agenda and simply kibitz
on the State Department). But I'm worried about a somewhat different
question: who in the government is free to do the sustained staff work on
issues that are not yet hot, where departmental positions may not yet
have been formed up, and which may require a lot of hard creative work
(not merely committee discussion) before the shape of an approprtate
national policy can be discerned. These are the ones we ofton let slide
until mild or severe crisis is upon us; and then, no matter how bright the
Planning Board - and Ws plenty bright - the range of action open to the
nation is radically narrowed - as in Algeria, or at Sues, or at Dienbienphu;
or as it will be If the Indian Second Five Year Plan falls or the Polish Army
marches to Berlin or the Baltic Coast.
Again many thanks. I hope this report of Fred's further d scu SiOn with
me - which he can easily correct and supplement - Le of some use to you both.
Yours,
vrwr itywr V/ IV etiateraw
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/15: CIA-RDP86T00268R000800120028-3