58. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy1

SUBJECT

  • “Personnel for the New Diplomacy”—Report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs Personnel

Because of your deep interest in a foreign affairs staff which can meet our demanding international requirements now and in the foreseeable future, I think you will find the enclosed report highly significant.2

“Personnel for the New Diplomacy” is the result of more than a year’s work by the Committee on Foreign Affairs Personnel, a group of knowledgeable private citizens whose chairman was Governor Herter. The Committee operated independently of the Department, financially and otherwise. It was sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The report and its recommendations have been studied by our experts who share my view that the report is impressive and that it will be extremely useful to us in upgrading the whole area of foreign affairs personnel. We welcome unqualifiedly the majority of the recommendations. Especially welcome is the proposal for a single foreign affairs personnel system instead of the dual foreign service and civil service systems with which we now work. Equally helpful are the recommendations directed to greater compatibility of personnel policies and practices between State, United States Information Agency, and Agency for International Development.

The Department is proceeding promptly to act on the report and in so doing to provide a coordinated approach with the other two agencies most concerned, the Agency for International Development and the United States Information Agency.

Dean Rusk3
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies Series, Department of State, General, 12/16/62–12/31/62. No classification marking.
  2. Not attached. The Committee on Foreign Affairs Personnel was established in late 1961 under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and chaired by former Secretary of State Christian A. Herter. The Committee’s report was published in December 1962 as Report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs Personnel—Personnel for the New Diplomacy (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1962), 161 pages. Excerpts from the report are printed in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1962, pp. 1545–1553.
  3. Printed from a copy that indicates Rusk signed the original.