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---------------------------------------------------ARTICLE BEGINS HERE
WHAT IS A THREAT TO NATIONAL
SECURITY?
THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY
ACT
NOVEMBER 2004:: The phrase " threat to national security" and it's
meaning guided me to analyze it's origin and it's political
concept as defined by our current federal government. One aspect of a
threat to national security is the presidential power to
impose martial law on american citizens during a national crisis.
Other " threat to national security" examples may contain the
suppression of free speech if it suggests a over throw of the
government. After careful review, one word seems to be missing
from this " threat to national security" , and that's the citizens of
the United States. It only covers certain government agencies
and their policies. My fear is when people realize what is happening
to their rights in which hundreds of thousands of military
men and women have died for to protect our freedoms, and they are
still dying in Iraq. The biggest threat to our national
security are these governmental policy makers of The United States.
The White House's definition of a terrorist is not a black
and white profile, but a gray profile where the identify is so vague
the government can lock up anyone they choose who oppose
their political agenda. Due to the many interpretations of these vague
laws, makes those government agencies who abuse the
law immune from any criminal act or the threat of being prosecuted.
This type of legislation that protects those in power can not
be contained as it is a cancer and a parasite on The Constitution and
the abuse of these laws are growing rapidly, which in
some cases, the legal murdering and torturing of human beings.
Incidents like Ruby Ridge, Waco, the 2004 military torturing of
prisoners in Iraq at The Abu Ghraib prison. Timothy McVeigh, was given
the death sentence in the Oklahoma City federal
building bombing. McVeigh's death sentence was due to the federal ATF
agents who were killed in the blast, and not the other
150 civilians who were killed. American citizens are viewed as sub
humans and those in The White House, The Senate,
Congress view themselves as deities in our current form of government.
Any criminal act against the government or on federal
land carries a much harsher treatment than crimes committed against a
citizen in their own home. This is one of numerous
reasons I wanted to do research on the 60th Anniversary of The
National Security Act. THE FULL ARTICLE MAY BE VIEWED AT
WWW.JAYSNET.COM BELOW ARE JUST A FEW ANTIDOTES IN MY RESEARCH
The National Security Act of July 26, 1947, created the National
Security Council under the chairmanship of the President, with the
Secretaries of State and Defense as its key members, to coordinate
foreign policy and defense policy, and to reconcile diplomaticand
military commitments and requirements. This major legislation also
provided for a Secretary of Defense, a National Military
Establishment, Central Intelligence Agency, and National Security
Resources Board. The view that the NSC had been created to coordinate
political and military questions quickly gave way to the understanding
that the NSC existed to serve the President alone.The NSC staff tended
to emerge as a separate, contending party.The NSC played an effective
role during such major developments as the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the unification of Germany, and the deployment of American
troops in Iraq and Panama.For 50 years, 10 Presidents have sought to
use the National Security Council system to integrate foreign and
defense policies in order to preserve the nation's security and
advance its interests abroad.The National Security Council was created
by Public Law 80(253, approved July 26, 1947, as part of a general
reorganization of the U.S. national security apparatus the NSC offered
the hope of evolving into a collegial policy making body to reinforce
the President.Even President Truman's overhaul of the machinery in
1949 did not create a National Security Council that fulfilled the
role originally envisioned.
Depending on the subject under discussion, as many as a score of other
senior Cabinet members and advisers, including the Secretary of the
Treasury, the Chairman of the JCS, and the Director of Central
Intelligence, attended and participated. The agenda included regular
briefings by the Director of Central Intelligence on worldwide
developments affecting U.S. security. President Eisenhower created the
Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) to follow up on all NSC decisions.
The OCB met regularly on Wednesday afternoons at the Department of
State, and was composed of the Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs, Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Directors of CIA, USIA, and
ICA, and the Special Assistants to the President for National Security
Affairs and Security Operations Coordination. The OCB was the
coordinating and implementing arm of the NSC for all aspects of the
implementation of national security policy.The Special Assistant was
an essential facilitator of the decision making system, but, unlike
the National Security Adviser created under Kennedy, had no
substantive role in the process.
In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of
designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of
State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert
operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412
Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security
Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named
"303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later
Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA
covert operations. President Eisenhower also created the position of
staff secretary with the responsibility to screen all
foreign policy and military documents coming to the President. The
strength of the NSC system under Eisenhower was that
it provided for regular, fully-staffed, interagency review of major
foreign and national security issues, culminating in discussion and
decision at the highest level of government. Critics of the Eisenhower
NSC system have argued that it was inflexible, overstaffed, unable to
anticipate and react to immediate crises, and weighed down by
committees reporting in great detail on long checklists of minor
policy concerns.
President Kennedy, who was strongly influenced by the report of the
Jackson Subcommittee and its severe critique of the Eisenhower NSC
system, moved quickly at the beginning of his administration to
deconstruct the NSC process and simplify the foreign policy making
process and make it more intimate. In a very short period after taking
office, the new President moved to reduce the NSC staff from 74 to 49,
limit the substantive officers to 12, and hold NSC meetings much less
frequently while sharply curtailing the number of officers attending.
The Operation Coordination Board was abolished, and the NSC was, at
the President's insistence, pulled back from monitoring the
implementation of policies. The Department of State's apparent failure
effectively to coordinate the administration's response to the Bay of
Pigs crisis in early 1961 led to a series of measures aimed at
providing the President with better independent advice from the
government. It also sparked the NSC process to reenter the arena of
monitoring the implementation of policy. More than anything else, the
Sit Room allowed Bundy and his NSC staff to expand their involvement
in the international activities of foreign affairs community and
become, in essence, "a little State Department" Early in 1961 the
President appointed General Maxwell Taylor to serve as his military
representative and provide liaison with the government agencies and
defense and intelligence establishments on military-political issues
confronting the administration. The Kennedy administration abandoned
the Eisenhower-era efforts at long-range planning in favor of a heavy
reliance upon ad hoc interagency working groups functioning in a
"crisis management" atmosphere. The leadership in these special groups
did not automatically fall to the State
Department. The most significant aspect of Bundy's tenure as Kennedy's
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs was that he headed an
aggressive Presidential staff that believed its job was to protect the
President's interests, provide him with independent advice, and lead a
recalcitrant bureaucracy toward his policies. In addition, Bundy was
an effective channel to the President for his activist staff.
Disinclined to use the Council meetings for advice, Johnson, like
Kennedy, relied heavily on his National Security Advisers: McGeorge
Bundy, who remained in office through February 1966, and Bundy's
successor, Walt Rostow, who served to the end of the administration.
Indeed, scholars looking at the evolution of the NSC from its
inception to the 1970s contend that the National Security Adviser and
his White House centered staff increasingly assumed a more prominent
role than the official National Security Council and that Johnson,
like Kennedy before him, played a key role in this development.
Following the outbreak of the Six Day War, for example, he established
an NSC Special Committee, modeled on the NSC Executive Committee that
met during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to coordinate U.S. policy in the
Middle East for several weeks. But none of these arrangements
substituted fully for the functions that the NSC's Planning Board and
the Operations Coordinating Board provided under Eisenhower. In March
1966 the Johnson White House sought to remedy this situation through
issuance of NSAM 341, the brainchild of General Maxwell Taylor. NSAM
341 assigned the Secretary of State official responsibility for the
overall direction, coordination, and supervision of
interdepartmental activities overseas and created a mechanism to carry
out the responsibility consisting of the Senior Interdepartmental
Group (SIG), chaired by the Under Secretary of State, and several
Interdepartmental Regional Groups (IRGs) beneath it, each chaired by
an Assistant Secretary of State.
President Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger,
dominated the making of U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon
Presidency. As Nixon recalled in his memoirs: "From the outset of my
administration, I planned to direct foreign policy from the White
House. Therefore I regarded my choice of a National Security Adviser
as crucial." Henry Kissinger worked through a National Security
Council apparatus he revised and fashioned to serve his needs and
objectives and those of the President. The close relationship between
the President and the National Security Adviser was the basis for
their ability to carry out American foreign affairs leadership around
the world. The two men developed a conceptual framework that would
guide foreign policy decisions. Kissinger's intellectual ability, his
ambition, and his frequent discussions with Nixon were all factors in
increasing within the government both his own power and the
unchallenged authority of the NSC system he personally directed.
Kissinger moved quickly to establish the policy dominance of the NSC.
He expanded its staff from 12 to 34; not only was it the cadre for his
centralized policy making, but it was also his antennae throughout the
bureaucratic structure. In the President's name, Kissinger set the NSC
agendas and issued the numerous National Security Study Memoranda
(NSSM) that set forth the precise needs for interagency policy papers.
Nixon also increasingly bypassed the Department of State to supervise
personally sensitive negotiations in order
to avoid what he and President Nixon agreed were likely bureaucratic
disputes and inertia. The President made clear that he wanted the
National Security Adviser to conduct important matters directly out of
his office. Nearly every foreign ambassador called upon Kissinger at
least once. With Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, Kissinger maintained a
special relationship that completely bypassed the Department of State
and Secretary Rogers. Dobrynin was told by Kissinger to deal with the
Secretary of State only on a limitedrange of less vital matters.
Kissinger also maintained similar relationships with Chinese leader
Chou En-lai and IsraeliAmbassador Rabin.In carrying on his activist,
operational undertakings, Kissinger relied upon special controlled
communications. CIA communications were used for his "back channel"
messages so that the Department of State was kept in the dark. He also
used the White House Communication Agency including the use of special
aircraft as communicationcenters. With his negotiations in Paris in
1971 regarding Vietnam, with Israelis and Arabs after 1973, and with
the Soviet Union in advance of summit meetings, Kissinger was a
traveling negotiator, and the NSC was a system on the move. Jeanne
Davis, the NSC Executive Secretary, also facilitated the handling of
sensitive correspondence by propelling the NSC staff into the computer
age with a document tracking system unheard of by Kissinger's
predecessors. The waning of Nixon's power during the Watergate affair
further increased Kissinger's influence. On September 22, 1973,
Kissinger became Secretary of State, replacing Rogers. For the first
time, one individual held simultaneously the positions of National
Security Adviser and Secretary of State.
President Ford managed a toned-down version of the Kissinger NSC
system that was compatible with the Secretary of State's role as the
President's chief foreign policy adviser. Many of the most aggressive
members of Kissinger's NSC team also made the move to State, allowing
Scowcroft to fashion a staff that reflected the new relationships.
Carter began his term determined to eliminate the abuses he ascribed
to the Kissinger NSC under Nixon and Ford. He believed that Kissinger
had amassed too much power during his tenure as NSC Adviser and
Secretary of State, and effectively shielded his Presidents from
competing viewpoints within the foreign policy establishment. The
actual operation of the NSC under Carter was less structured than
under previous Presidents. The Council held few formal meetings,
convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years
of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Critics have contended that the
Carter NSC staff was deficient in certain respects. The NSC's emphasis
on providing advice was effected at the expense of some of its other
functions, particularly its
responsibility to monitor implementation of the President's policies.
Also, the President's and some of his principals' commitment to arms
control skewed the formation and execution of a broad range of foreign
policy options on national security questions. Withoutany
clearly-developed foreign policy principles beyond a commitment to
arms control, he often changed his mind, dependingon the advice he was
receiving at the time.Carter's preference for informality and openness
increased the diversity of viewshe received and complicated the
decision-making process. Every Friday, for example, the President
breakfasted with VicePresident Mondale, Secretary of State Vance,
Secretary of Defense Brown, Brzezinski, and several White House
advisers. Noagendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of
these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of
thedecisions actually agreed upon. This problem led to one of the most
embarrassing episodes of the Carter administration in which the United
States had to retract a UN vote involving Israel and Jerusalem.
On inauguration day, Secretary of State-designate Alexander Haig
presented a draft National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) on the
organization of U.S. foreign policy to Presidential Counselor Edwin
Meese III. The intent of Haig's draft was to place overall
responsibility for the direction and implementation of U.S. foreign
policy within the Department of State. Relying on his experience in
the Nixon administration, Haig wanted to ensure Department of State
control of the interagency groups within the NSC because they were the
"key to the flow of options to the President," and thus to policy
control. Haig's initiative, which he repeated on several occasions,
was never responded to. Senior members of the White House staff,
Counselor Meese, Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, and Michael Deaver
were concerned that the proposed reorganization took too much power
out of the President's hands and that an activist Secretary of State
operating with wide powers could eclipse the President in his public
role as the chief enunciator of U.S. foreign policy. Changes were made
in the NSC from the outset of the Reagan presidency. At a February 25,
1981, meeting chaired by Meese, Cabinet-level heads of the major
foreign affairs agencies agreed on a plan to establish three Senior
Interdepartmental Groups (SIGs) on foreign, defense, and intelligence
problems, chaired respectively by the Secretaries of State and Defense
and the
Director of Central Intelligence. One example of a failed effort to
create a new NSC organ in the hopes of improving interagency
coordination and reducing friction among the Departments of State and
Defense, the CIA, and the NSC, was President Reagan's order on March
24, 1981, naming Vice President George Bush as chair of a proposed
administration crisis management team. In another effort to improve
policy coordination during the summer of 1981, the President
authorized the creation of a National Security Planning Group (NSPG)
composed of the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense,
the Director of Central Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and the National Security Adviser. This group met weekly
with the President and shaped policy prior to formal meetings of the
NSC. In January 1982, following the resignation of National Security
Adviser Allen, the President appointed a close personal friend, Deputy
Secretary of State William Clark, as his new adviser. The brief
episode of the weakened National Security Adviser was over. Clark
would report directly to the President and not through Meese or the
other two members of the triumvirate of Baker and Deaver as Allen had
done. President Reagan issued a written directive (NSDD(2) in January
1982 outlining the structure and functions of the National Security
Council. The directive placed responsibility for developing,
coordinating, and monitoring national security policy with the
National Security Adviser in consultation with the NSC members. The
NSC system under Clark did not solve the coordination problems.
Friction between the Department of State and the NSC continued and
came to a head during the intense debates within the administration
over how the United States should act in the Lebanon crisis in the
spring of 1982 following the Israel invasion. The disputes resulted in
Secretary Haig's resignation on June 25, 1982, and President Reagan's
appointment of George P. Shultz as his new Secretary of State. The
apparent resolution of the dimensions of the Secretary of State's
authority ironically coincided with ever increasing activities in the
foreign affairs field. The NSC frequently disagreed with the
Department of State over the management of daily U.S. foreign
relations problems. The National Security Adviser became directly
involved in the operations of foreign policy. It led to a major change
in how the NSC system worked. The
National Security Adviser stepped back from the previous high profile
in public policy enunciation, but became more involved in the direct
management of key areas of foreign policy. During 1985 and 1986, the
National Security Adviser and certain staff members took a
particularly activist role in the formulation and execution of policy
in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Middle East. It was an
activism run amok in the "Iran-Contra affair" that brought the NSC to
a nadir of public trust and brought upon it Congressional
investigation and the threat of prison for those involved. The
Iran-Contra matter resulted from NSC-led efforts to develop a policy
to befriend Iran and provide arms to that nation in exchange for its
resistance to the Soviet Union and, more
particularly to assist in the freeing of American hostages held by
Moslem extremist groups in the Middle East.
After serving 8 years as Vice President and participating in the
momentous foreign affairs events of the Reagan administration,
President George Bush made many changes in the NSC machinery reformed
by Carlucci and Powell. On the date of his inauguration, January 20,
1989, President Bush issued NSD(1 providing the charter for NSC
administration. A Policy Review Group was enlarged to a Committee, the
Deputy National Security Adviser managed the Deputies Committee, and a
Principals Committee screened matters for the NSC to consider.Through
the collapse of the USSR and the unification of Germany, Operation
Just Cause which sent American troops into Panama in December 1989,
and Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the NSC worked
effectively in facilitating a series of American foreign policy
successes.
President William J. Clinton on January 20, 1993, the day of his
inauguration, issued Presidential Decision Directive l to departments
and agencies concerned with national security affairs. PDD l revised
and renamed the framework governing the work of the National Security
Council. A Presidential Review Directive (PRD) series would be the
mechanism used by the new administration to direct that specific
reviews and analyses be undertaken by the departments and agencies. A
Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) series would now be used to
promulgate Presidential decisions on national security matters. The
Bush administration's National Security Review (NSR) series and
National Security Directive (NSD) series were abolished. On January
21, 1993, in PDD 2, President Clinton approved an NSC decision making
system that enlarged the membership of the National Security Council
and included a much greater emphasis on economic issues in the
formulation of national security policy. The President, Vice
President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense were members
of the NSC as prescribed by statute. The new position of Assistant to
the President for Economic Policy, which had been promised by Clinton
during the election campaign, was intended to serve as a senior
economic adviser to coordinate foreign and domestic economic policy
through a newly-created National Economic Council (NEC). Robert E.
Rubin was the first to be appointed to this position. In January 1993,
Clinton appointed W. Anthony Lake as his National Security Adviser.
Lake, a former Foreign Service officer, served under Henry Kissinger,
President
Nixon's National Security Adviser, and as director of the Department
of State Policy Planning Staff during the Carter administration.
The National Security Council framework in the Clinton administration
included an NSC Principals Committee, a forum available to Cabinet
level officials to discuss and resolve issues not requiring the
President's participation. Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a
longtime foreign policy adviser to Clinton who had been Lake's deputy
since 1993, became National Security Adviser in March 1997, after
Clinton nominated Lake to be Director of Central Intelligence. Lake
subsequently withdrew from the nomination.
The current final result was the creation of a new agency called the
office of Homeland Security and the birth of The Patriot Act.
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