103. Letter From Director of Central Intelligence McCone to Gordon Gray1

Dear Gordon:

Just a note to tell you how delighted I am that we will work together on the problem you and I have been discussing, immediately upon my return from a trip of great personal importance, which I am starting on today.2

I have discussed our telephone conversation with General Carter and Walter Elder, and Walter will arrange appropriate office accommodations for you and secretarial service. Also, there are several recent studies and reports having to do with community coordination, which I feel it might be constructive for you to peruse.

I can appreciate, and feel it completely acceptable, that your work be done on a consultative basis under a consulting contract with a per diem remuneration, and in so doing would involve no official appointment, nor will it involve a resignation or a leave from your other activities, including the President’s Board. Of course this will be with the full understanding that your work is being undertaken at my initiative, [Page 205] and involves my responsibility in fulfilling the President’s directive to me, which was made after his review of a great number of recommendations of the President’s Board.3

To reiterate the objectives of this exercise, it is my feeling that the Deputy Director for Coordination is, and will be, a most important and effective post. However, if it is filled, as it has been in the past, without careful exploration of the manner in which the office is to function, and a thorough understanding with the secretaries of the departments involved, principally State and Defense, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the effort will fail. However, I believe, as I have told you, because of your broad experience and the respect you command throughout government, you can approach the problem in a way that will command support of all involved rather than indifference, and from your effort there will evolve “terms of reference” for the office which will endure.

I feel this will be brought about best by seizing upon specific problems of an inter-service nature, dealing with them, resolving them, and by so doing establish a pattern which could apply to all future problems. In addition, Gordon, there is the question of selection of the man who will fill the job on a permanent basis. I am sure you will be of great assistance to me in this regard.

I will return on September 24th. You will have been back about ten days by then, and hence I believe the timing will be such that we can move forward aggressively.

With warm personal regards.

Sincerely

John
  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Gordon Gray Papers. No classification marking.
  2. Gray and McCone had agreed in a telephone conversation on August 21 that Gray would assist McCone in “examining and developing the manner in which the coordination and guidance responsibility given to him as DCI by the President can best be discharged.” Gray would also assist and advise McCone in selecting his Deputy for Coordination. (Memorandum for the file of a telephone conversation with John McCone, August 21; ibid.) In a subsequent telephone conversation, Gray explained the arrangement to McGeorge Bundy, who expressed “pleasure” and also informed Gray that he had cleared the matter with the President. (Memorandum for the file of a telephone conversation with McGeorge Bundy, August 21; ibid.)
  3. In his telephone conversation with McCone, Gray had agreed that his actions undertaken on behalf of the DCI would be separate from those undertaken as a member of PFIAB, nor would he participate in Board consideration of matters specifically relating to his assistance to McCone. Bundy, in a September 18 letter to PFIAB Chairman Killian, commented that “any work that Gordon may do in this job would not limit the President’s own freedom of judgment, and I myself am really unable to see why individual advisory assignments of this kind do not fit right in with the concept of the President’s Board and its role in helping him with the broad issues of the intelligence community.” (Ibid.) Gray recalled in 1974 that other PFIAB members felt that his position with McCone constituted a conflict of interest with his membership on PFIAB and that Gray should resign from the Board. Gray also recalled that McCone did not plan to stay permanently in the CIA and hoped that Gray would succeed him. (Memorandum from Gray to Wheaton B. Byers, December 10, 1974; ibid.)