U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL INSTITUTIONAL FILES, (1969) 1974-77 (1980)

The National Security Council was established by the National Security Act of 1947 in recognition of the need for coordination of political, military, and economic considerations in the development of national security policy in the post-World War II period. By the Reorganization Plan of 1949, the NSC was placed in the Executive Office of the President.

The statutory function of the NSC is to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security. It is the instrument of the President and he may use it as he chooses. During the Eisenhower administration the NSC system became highly structured and formal. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson preferred a more informal, flexible system. The Nixon administration developed a system which combined the Eisenhower administration’s formality with the flexibility of the Kennedy and Johnson years, and established the position of Staff Secretary. Jeanne Davis, Director of the Secretariat Staff at the State Department, was detailed to the NSC to organize and direct a Secretariat. She served as Staff Secretary from June 1970 to the end of the Ford administration.

When Gerald Ford became President, he modified the Nixon system to suit his style. He wanted a system which would provide a sound, orderly basis for the decision-making process and ensure that he heard all the appropriate voices on major issues. Dissents and disagreements were to be identified and discussed and not buried in bureaucratic consensus. The NSC acted as the principal forum through which major issues of national security policy were brought to the President for decision. It served as the mechanism for identifying and analyzing national security issues, defining U.S. objectives, developing viable alternative courses of action, obtaining the views and recommendations of the departments involved, presenting those views to the President for decision, and ensuring implementation of presidential decisions.

President Ford chaired the NSC and the Vice President and Secretaries of State and Defense were statutory members. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff served as statutory military adviser to the Council, the Director of Central Intelligence as its intelligence adviser, and the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as adviser on arms control matters. Other Cabinet officers and Agency heads were often invited by the President to attend NSC meetings when issues of concern to them were on the agenda. Henry Kissinger and then Brent Scowcroft, as Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs, were the chief supervisory officers of the NSC system. An NSC staff of approximately forty professionals, primarily career officers detailed from foreign affairs and national security agencies, did the staff work for the President and his Assistant for National Security Affairs.

Three sets of sub-groups (Interdepartmental Groups, Intermediate Groups, and Operational Groups) were under the NSC umbrella. Six Interdepartmental Groups at the Assistant Secretary level, one for each geographic area, formed the base of the system. These groups prepared the basic papers defining the issues for decision. Five senior-level Intermediate Groups (Senior Review Group, Verification Panel, Defense Review Panel, Committee on Foreign Intelligence, and Operations Advisory Group), reviewed the work of the Interdepartmental Groups and considered issues which cut across geographic lines. The Operational Groups were the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) and the Under Secretaries Committee. WSAG, chaired by the Secretary of State, was a crisis management group responsible for coordination of U.S. activity in crisis situations. The Under Secretaries Committee, chaired by the Deputy Secretary of State, was responsible for overseeing implementation of the President’s decisions and developing operational programs and recommendations.

A typescript entitled Coordinative Staff Work provides background for the organizational structure of the NSC and describes how the system functioned. It is located in “Davis, Jeanne W. – Personal File – Coordinative Staff Work (1)-(3),” Box 84.

Scope and Content of the Materials
The Ford NSC Institutional Files were retained by the NSC at the end of the administration to provide continuity to the ongoing operations of government. At the end of the Clinton administration institutional files from earlier presidencies were transferred to the custody of the National Archives and at President Clinton’s request, were eventually transferred to their respective presidential libraries. The Ford Presidential Library received its institutional files in June 2004, but intelligence related files remain with the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Institutional Files include material directly related to the institution of the NSC and the NSC system. These files consist of, but are not limited to: records of deliberations of the NSC and its auxiliary bodies, boards, and committees; all decisions issued by or in the name of the President as Chairman of the NSC; and all agency and NSC staff material submitted in response to NSC directives. Examples of these types of materials are National Security Study Memoranda (NSSM) and National Security Decision Memoranda (NSDM), responses to NSSMs, material prepared for meetings of the NSC and its sub-groups, records of actions and minutes of such meetings, and Under Secretaries Committee responses to NSC directives. Institutional Files also include Congressional and General Accounting Office inquiries addressed to the NSC staff in its statutory role, FOIA and Privacy Act requests submitted to the NSC, and administrative and personnel records.

Subject content of the files covers the broad range of foreign policy and national security issues addressed within the NSC system. Topics include U.S. relations with individual nations, U.S. interests in various regions of the world, arms transfers, and SALT negotiations with the Soviet Union. A series called Institutional Files – Secretariat includes NSC administrative materials and files of Staff Secretary Jeanne Davis.

Related Materials (December 2007)
Related and duplicative materials are found throughout wholly and partially processed sub-collections of National Security Adviser Files. Additional related materials will undoubtedly become available as processing continues in these files.