NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR. PRESIDENTIAL COUNTRY FILES FOR LATIN AMERICA, 1974-77

The Presidential Country Files for Latin America is one of many subcollections that comprise the National Security Adviser Files.

During the Ford administration, the National Security Council (NSC) advised the President about domestic, foreign and military policies in relation to United States national security. It considered policies on matters of common interest to the departments and agencies of the Government concerned with the national security; and made recommendations to the President after discussing the alternatives on major issues requiring executive decision.

Within this context, the NSC Office of Latin American Affairs assisted in the formulation and coordination of United States policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. The office had a wide range of responsibilities on political, economic, intelligence and security matters of importance to the United States government in the region. It also played an important role in coordinating federal agency participation within the interdepartmental environment of Latin American policy formulation.

Stephen Low, a career Foreign Service Officer on detail from the Department of State, served as Senior Staff Member in charge of the Office of Latin American Affairs from August 1974 to June 1976. Following Mr. Low’s departure to become United States Ambassador to Zambia, David Lazar assumed the responsibilities of Senior Staff Member until the end of the administration. Mary Brownell assisted Low and Lazar.

Scope and Content of the Materials
The Presidential Country Files for Latin America contain substantive materials on United States policy and relations in Latin America on a bilateral and multilateral level. Materials on the Caribbean are minimal, both in terms of substance and quantity. The bulk of the collection is arranged by country name, with separate sequences for NSC documents and State Department telegrams, but materials are also filed under the general headings of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Latin America.

The NSC documents consist mostly of high-level finished products, especially memoranda, created by the Senior Staff Member and addressed to the Assistant or the Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, or created on their behalf and addressed to the President. These materials were processed through the NSC Secretariat and later forwarded to a secure document storage area operated by NSC staff in the West Wing of the White House. Aside from the State Department telegrams, the files contain only a minimum of the supporting materials received from other agencies and used in formulating the finished products. The supporting materials are primarily located in the unprocessed (October 2001) collection “NSC Latin America Staff: Files.”

Related Materials (October 2001)
Related materials on Latin America are located in the processed segments of other National Security Adviser Files collections. These materials will continue to grow as Library staff members make progress in opening materials through systematic review and mandatory declassification review. Additional materials are located in the White House Central Files Subject File, Presidential Handwriting File, Arthur Burns Papers, William E. Simon Microfiche of Papers, and numerous White House staff files. PRESNET search reports listing all open materials on a specific country or topic are available upon request.