Institute, including the senior seminar which is the Foreign Service Institute equivalent of a senior war college course and the interdepartmental seminar on problems of development and internal defense.

The State-Defense officer exchange program initiated in December 1960 is now entering its second round. Most of the State and Defense Department officials who participated in the initial 2-year tours of duty as exchange officers have now completed these tours and returned to their own agencies. It is generally agreed that the program, to this point, has been an outstanding success, and it seems wellestablished as a long-term arrangement. At this writing, 21 State Department officers are either on duty in the Pentagon or have completed a tour there; the total of military officers and Defense Department civilians in this category is 19. The State Department has attempted to monitor the program very carefully, in terms of the quality of personnel sent to the Defense Department, the positions opened up to the Defense exchange officers, and the follow-on assignments provided to returning State Department exchangees. The Deputy Under Secretary, the Politico-Military Affairs Staff acting on his behalf, and the personnel office of the Department have worked closely together on this problem.

G/PM has provided a "home away from home" for the State Department officials assigned as faculty members at the war colleges and as political advisers (POLADS) to major military commanders. A POLAD is defined as

a Foreign Service officer who has been assigned to the staff of a U.S. unified or specified military commander on the basis of formal agreement between the Departments of State and Defense and who is responsible solely to the commander.

The POLAD is not an institutional representative of the Department of State nor is he a Department of State liaison officer serving with the command.

The function of the POLAD is to advise and consult with the commander on political, politico-military and economic matters affecting the commander's theater of operations. In performing this function, he provides a specialized expertise and source of information to the commander in the same way as any other special staff officer.

There are at present eight designated positions as POLAD's, all filled by senior Foreign Service officers. They are located at the following military commands: European Command; Pacific Command; Atlantic Command; Southern Command (Canal Zone); Strategic Air Command; Strike Command; Military Air Transport Service; and U.S. High Commissioner, Ryukyus.

The Department has been actively engaged in strengthening the POLAD program. The goal has been to upgrade qualitatively the personnel assigned to these jobs by selecting, through an exhaustive review process, officers with the stature, background, and experience which would enable them to function effectively as senior advisers to key commanders.

The POLAD's represent one effort to strengthen politico-military collaboration and staffing in the field. In oversea diplomatic missions where there are important military problems confronting the ambas sador, Foreign Service officers with the necessary politico-military

"POLAD's Role With the Military," Department of State Newsletter, No. 31 (November 1963), pp. 7 and 30.

background and experience are now being assigned to political sections or as special assistants and advisers to the ambassadors in this field. There are considerable variations in title, job description, and actual functioning, but the essential purpose is to strengthen the ambassador's ability to integrate effectively the military aspects of country team activities. In one recent case, a Foreign Service officer who had just completed a 2-year tour in the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the exchange program was sent to a key post in southeast Asia as politico-military special assistant to the ambassador. It is anticipated that this will be an increasingly typical assignment pattern, following up an exchange position in the Defense Department with some closely related oversea or Washington assignment. Along somewhat similar lines, a senior Foreign Service officer who had been on the G/PM staff has been transferred to Embassy London as counselor for politico-military affairs.

Another device that is being experimented with as a means of improving communication and understanding about major politico-military problems between Washington and oversea missions is the regional conference of embassy politico-military officials and responsible State and Defense officials from Washington. The first of these conferences a 3-day session involving embassy politico-military officers and POLAD's in Europe and devoted to a broad but intensive review of existing and anticipated politico-military problems affecting the U.S. Government-took place in Paris in October 1962. It proved highly successful. A similar politico-military conference will be held in Europe sometime early in 1964 and in the Far East sometime later in the year. Thought is also being given to holding such conferences in other regional areas, depending upon the availability of funds.

THE FUTURE

It should not be inferred that the Department of State has perfected its organization and skills for these difficult and challenging politicomilitary tasks, or that the State and Defense Departments have developed a fully satisfactory basis for their multiple and complex relationships. It is clear that the range of foreign policy problems and relations with foreign nations affected in one way or another by military decisions and activities is broadening rather than narrowing. The Department of State's politico-military competence must, as consequence, continue to be strengthened. The personnel programs noted above do provide the basis for keeping abreast of this substantial and expanding challenge.

In order to discharge its leadership and coordinating responsibilities in the foreign policy field, the Department of State should be in a position to formulate specific policy guidance within which the Department of Defense can develop its detailed military programs as well as to advise the Defense Department on the foreign policy implications of proposed military policies and actions. This implies substantial, continuing involvement with military policies and problems and increasing ability to analyze and assess them in broader national policy terms. It also implies increased organizational and personnel resources devoted to this area, and continuing experimentation with the most effective institutional arrangements for doing the job.

BUREAU OF THE BUDGET STAFF MEMORANDUM ON IMPROVEMENTS IN NATIONAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

(With transmittal letter by the Honorable Kermit Gordon, Director) EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,

Hon. HENRY M. JACKSON,

BUREAU OF THE BUDGET, Washington, D.C., December 23, 1963.

Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security Staffing and Operations, Committee on Government Operations, US. Senate, Washington, D.C.

DEAR SENATOR JACKSON: As you requested, I am enclosing a staff memorandum on some recent efforts toward the improvement of national security administration in which the Bureau of the Budget has participated. In view of the subcommittee's attention to "communications and the national security policy process," the first two items in this statement-the National Communications System and foreign affairs information management may be of special interest.

Also included is a brief discussion of a problem which the Secretary of State has discussed with your subcommittee the growing number and diversity of the oversea activities of both foreign affairs and domestic agencies. The memorandum contains an explanation of an approach to this problem which we are now attempting to work out with the State Department.

I hope that our comments will be of use to you in your continuing studies of national security operations. If you desire additional information or assistance, please do not hesitate to call on us.

Sincerely,

KERMIT GORDON, Director.

BUREAU OF THE BUDGET STAFF MEMORANDUM ON IMPROVEMENTS IN NATIONAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

The Bureau of the Budget, in carrying out its responsibilities for budgetary and management improvement matters, has participated in a number of efforts to improve the administration of national security and other foreign affairs activities. Following is a brief discussion of three subjects in this area with which the Bureau has recently been concerned.

1. National Communications System.-On July 11, 1963, President Kennedy issued a national security action memorandum (NSAM) directing that a National Communications System (NCS) be "established and developed by linking together, improving, and extending on an evolutionary basis the communications facilities and components of the various Federal agencies." (An unclassified version of this NSAM, signed by the President August 18, is attached.)

The establishment of the NCS is intended to ensure that the President and other key civil and military officials will have reliable, fast, secure, and survivable communications in all cases, including nuclear attack and other national emergencies. It is also expected that savings will be realized in the unit cost of information transmitted, and that technological advances in communications will be fully exploited to the benefit of all user agencies.

Creation of the NCS can be viewed as the latest step in a continuing effort to improve the organization and management of Federal Government communications. There have been two principal precursors to the NCS, both of which are now incorporated into it: The Defense Communications System (DCS) and the Federal Telecommunications System (FTS). The first was established by the Secretary of Defense in 1960 to serve the needs of the Defense Department and is administered by the Defense Communications Agency. The second was established in the General Services Administration to serve civil agencies in the United States pursuant to instructions of President Eisenhower in January 1961.

Evolution toward a unified national communications system was accelerated by the Cuban crisis, which revealed a number of significant deficiencies in national security communications. At the very beginning of that emergency, President Kennedy charged a task force headed by William H. Orrick, Jr., then Deputy Under Secretary of State for Administration, with providing for the creation of a national communications system which would make U.S. worldwide communications as prompt, reliable, and secure as possible. The Orrick committee brought about many significant improvements on an ad hoc basis. At the same time the Bureau of the Budget, working closely with the Orrick committee, undertook to consider alternative means of organizing a national communications system to attain the President's longer-term communications objectives."

Principal elements of the NCS are the DCS and FTS, mentioned above, and other civil agency communications, including NASA, FAA, and the diplomatic communications of the Department of State. The NCS will include all point-to-point telecommunications facilities owned or leased by the Federal Government which are necessary to meet national security needs either in peacetime or in a national emergency.

The President's NSAM of July 11, assigns responsibility for NCS policy direction and requirements determination to the Director of Telecommunications Management (DTM) whose position was established by Executive Order 10995 of February 16, 1962. Placing these functions in the Executive Office of the President was considered appropriate to the role of the DTM and to the need for coordination and supervision of the integration of the Government's major telecommunications systems.

To underscore the President's interest in national security communications, the DTM was given a second title, that of Special Assistant to the President for Telecommunications. Since the DTM's post is now vacant, Jerome B. Wiesner, Director of the Office of Science and Technology, is acting as Special Assistant to the President for Telecommunications.

Designing the NCS to satisfy approved requirements is the task of the Secretary of Defense, as "Executive Agent." To aid him as