Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

67. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft) to Secretary of State Kissinger¹

Washington, January 30, 1976.

The Intelligence meeting this afternoon is a follow-on to the long session a couple of Saturdays ago. You will recall at that time there was general agreement on Option 4 as the preferred approach to restructuring the Intelligence community.² Option 4 did little more than create a second Deputy Director of CIA and strengthen the PFIAB and the NSCIC. Colby had a variant of Option 4 which would subsume a number of the various committees of the Intelligence community under a new Excom, chaired by him and with the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and State as members.

Following the meeting the President expanded on the Colby idea to the extent of abolishing all Intelligence committees—like USIB, IRAC, NSCIC—and having the Excom run the whole show.³ I objected to this approach, on grounds that policy review, evaluation of the adequacy of the product and some other aspects should not be done by the Intelligence community itself. I proposed instead a “super” subcommittee of the NSC, chaired by the Assistant and with Secretaries of State and Defense, the DCI, and the Director of OMB as members. This would be the policy review organization which would oversee the community and its product. Basically, it would be a glorified NSCIC, with the cosmetic elevation of the members to Cabinet rank to show that the President was putting his most senior officials in charge. Colby’s Excom would be a major committee under the supervision of this policy review committee. The proposal for this structure is at Tab A⁴ (the memo never actually went to the President). The President called a small staff meeting last Saturday to talk over some of these ideas.⁵ What came out of that meeting was a hybrid system which amalgamated the previous proposals, creating a policy review group but not putting it directly between the Excom and the President. The membership of the Excom was revised, with the DCI remaining as Chairman and the members being the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Assistant to the President—basically the membership of the old Excom but with the Deputy Assistant replacing the defunct Science Advisor to the President. Observers would be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Deputy Secretary of State and the Deputy Director of OMB. This Excom would replace the existing one, the IRAC, and USIB, thus giving it authority both over the management and the substance. In addition, the President proposed making the 40 Committee at the Secretarial level and adding the Attorney General either as a member or observor. An outline of the proposals coming from that meeting is at Tab B.⁶

There is nothing magic about any of these organizations. One basic principle, however, is that the Intelligence community should not be in the business of passing on the adequacy of its own product. Neither, in matters of resource allocation, management and programs, should the Intelligence community go directly to the President without having the NSC structure in some way as the mediator to organize the issues and to insure that the non-Intelligence principals are involved. My major problem with the proposed organization at Tab B, aside from considerable fuzziness about the relationship between the policy review group and the Excom (called the Foreign Intelligence Committee) is that it would replace the USIB. I think that the development and production of the substantive intelligence product should go through a separate system from issues of management, resource allocation, etc. If the USIB has functions other than the production of finished intelligence, those could be stripped out.

1. Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, John K. Matheny Files, Box 9, President’s Meeting on Intelligence Decisions, 1/76–2/76 (2). Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only. Printed from a copy that Scowcroft did not initial.
2. A reference to the intelligence reorganization meeting held January 10. See Document 64.
3. See Document 64 and footnote 3 thereto.
4. Not found attached. Printed as Document 64.
5. According to the President’s Daily Diary, Ford met with Buchen, Marsh, Scowcroft, Ogilvie, and Raoul-Duval on Saturday, January 24, between 1:35 and 3:45 p.m. (Ford Library, Staff Secretary’s Office, President’s Daily Diary) No other record of this meeting has been found.
6. Not found attached and not found.