THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S GROWING REACH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230046-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 26, 2011
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: September 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/04/26: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230046-8
ASSOCIATED PRESS
23 September 1985
THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S GROWING REACHI
BY DALE NELSON.
WASHINGTON The National Security Counc'1's behind-the-scenes
0 maneuvering in the release o an American clergyman e d hostage in
Lebanon illustrates the operational side of the White House policy
making body.
Organized nearly four decades ago primarily to process paperwork
for
the president the staff of the little-known White House agency at
times undertakes tasks that could be assigned to the State and Defense
Departments or the Central Intelligence Agency.
The NSC staff is far less accountable to Congress and operates
outside of the public eye. But its influence inside the government
appears to be growing.
The council staff was especially active in the Middle East hostage
crisis arising from the hijacking of a TWA jetliner and in the
kidnapping of Americans in Lebanon.
Asked about the efforts to free the Rev. Benjamin weir who was
released Sept. 14 and six other Americans who are still being held
hostage in Lebanon, a usually well-informed State Department official
pleaded ignorance.
It's an NSC_ operati-on._.xo_ one hereknoms.--about it,'' said the
official, who spoke on condition he no identified.
Some academic experts and aides from former administrations believe
the NSC staff has become too embroiled in day-to-day management in
recent years and should be attending more strictly to policy making,
leaving the operational details to the State and Defense Departments.
Others say the council staff is just doing what it has been doing
more or less steadily at least since the Kennedy administration, and
it's role is no cause for concern.
But observers in both camps agree that the staff of the council,
which was established in 1947, is doing much more than it did in its
early days under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
The NSC's members are-President Reagan, Vice President George Bush,
Secretary of State George P. Shultz an secretary of e ense as ar W.
Weinberrger. CIA Director William J. Casey an A dm. i iam J. Crowe
rchairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are advisers.
The council is supposed to help the president formulate foreign and
military policy.
Robert C. McFarlane, the president's national security adviser,
heads the NSC staff but is not a member of the council. The staff
includes about 35 foreign policy experts and about 100 other employees
who provide administrative assistance and run the white House Situation
Room.
In recent months, in addition to the NSC staff's role in secret
to free the hostages, staff members who have made news have
included:
Lt. Col. Oliver North, an NSC staff aide who reportedly provided
some military advice to rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist regime and
helped them raise money from outside sources.
Donald R. Fortier, deputy assistant to the president for national
security a?fairs, who was dispatched to India and Pakistan this month
along with Michael H. Armacost, undersecretary of state for political
affairs, to discuss nuclear proliferation and other problems.
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02)
McFarlane, named along with White House Chief of Staff Donald T.
Regan to had a coordinating council preparing for the president's
summit meeting in Geneva on Nov. 19-20 with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev.
The sharpest questions have been raised over North's role in
X Nicaragua.
I think there is something new afoot if you are sending someone
down to Central America for God knows how man weeks on end to
coordinate the activities o the Contras or liaison with them or things
like that,'' said William Quandt, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution-who was on the NSC staff during the Carter administration.
That's the kind of stuff that in my day would have been done by
CIA,'' said Quandt. We would not have gotten involved in any way at
all in things s e that.''
Burton M. Sapin, professor of international affairs at George
Washington University and a former State Department aide, said of
North's role, "That struck me as inappropriate. It seems to me it is
not the sort of level at which people in that staff ought to be
working.''
The House and Senate intelligence committees and a House Foreign
Affairs subcommittee have announced ans to invests ate North's ro e
des ite assurances from McFarlane that no one on his st-a-fT ever acted
as a go-between'' for private aid to the rebels.
Sen. David Durenberger, R-Minn., Inte igence Committee chairman,
said the an elis invests atin North's mission to see wet er or not
e stepped out of line' and expects to make a public re ort but he
believes that NSC staff members are for the most part performing
their traditional role.''
George A. Carver Jr., a former CIA official who is now a senior
fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Stu ies at
Georgetown University, said, The notion of quietly dispatching
someone from the white House staff to take care of something that a
president ... has considered delicate and wou 12reter not to navC
lea a is a precedent t at as some three decades of tradition behind
it, so don't regard a repetition of it in a particular instance in
1 to be necessarily surprisin or necessarily sinister.''
Several scholars Said staff members had traditionally been
active in preparation for summit meetings and accompanied high-ranking
government officials on missions abroad.
Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who was on the NSC staff under Henry Kissinger,
said he thought Fortier's trip to the Indian subcontinent was ''very
much in the tradition of the NSC staff.''
And another former Kissinger NSC staffer, Morton Halperin, now
director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties
Union, said the council, rather than confining itself to policy making,
been an operating agency for a very long time; it's just gotten
bigger and more bureaucratic.''
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/04/26: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230046-8