1418 



already institutionalized in the NSC system. While the new organ will report 

 directly to the Secretary of State, the largest beneficiary is the Under Secretary, 

 who is afforded increased staff assistance to oversee State Department operations 

 and to keep pace with matters coming before the Review Group and the Under 

 Secretaries Committee. The Planning and Coordination Staff is to serve the Sev- 

 enth Floor of the Department of State. Its participation in foreign and security 

 policy can be expected, correspondingly, to be initially shaped and guided by 

 State Department, rather than by NSC system pressures. Its work has already 

 been placed under tighter State Department control. The access of the NCS 

 staff and the President's Special Assistant to the papers of the Planning and 

 Coordination Staff formally passes through the State Department. The more 

 direct access characterizing the initial practices of the NSC system has now been 

 curtailed to some degree. These changes tend to reinforce the autonomy of the 

 State Department although how much they will buttress its apparently sagging 

 institutional position in the NSC system is difficult to predict at the moment.'^^ 



Other students have suggested reducing the size of the pUmning 

 staff and bringing it into closer association with the Secretary, or 

 transferring the function to an interdepartmental or White House 

 Policy Council. All these suggestions, and the periodic changes in the 

 planning staff" itself, suggest that the Department and its friends have 

 not yet reached a consensus on how the planning staff' should be 

 organized, where its product should be directed, or what its product 

 should be. In view of the growing volume of scientific and techno- 

 logical issues in the portfolio of diplomatic business, resolution of the 

 matter of a well conceived and accepted policy planning staff has 

 bearing on the subject of this stud3^ 



Policy Planning Staff, Departmental "Think Tank" 



When it was first created in 1947, by Secretar}- Marshall, the Policy 

 Planning Staff was assigned five functions: 



1. Formulating and developing, for the consideration and 

 approval of appropriate officials of the department, long-term 

 programs for the achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives. 



2. Anticipating problems which the department may encounter 

 in the discharge of its mission. 



3. Undertaking studies and preparing reports on broad po- 

 litical-military problems. 



4. Examining problems and developments affecting U.S. 

 foreign policy in order to evaluate the adequacy of current policy 

 and making advisory recommendations on them. 



5. Coordinating planning activities within the Department of 

 State. 



By 1960 the policy planning institution was 1.3 years old. At this 

 time an assessment by a group at the Brookings Institution v^as 

 critical of the planning apparatus that had evolved over these years. 

 Too many people wanted to influence the planning. Planners were 

 discouraged from challenging prevailing doctrine. Speech writing and 

 the NSC paper mill consumed time and energy. The Brookings study, 

 performed at the request of the Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 

 tions, saw the policy planning task as one of "looking ahead to identify 

 major problems, to appraise alternative approaches, and to recommend 

 preferred courses of action." The rapidity of change in the world 

 environment made the task more difficult. The concept had always 



'3« Kolodziej,"The National Security Council," Public Administration Review, p. 580. 



