The manager of America’s airborne and space reconnaissance programs. The NRO now contracts for, builds, controls, and uses the hardware that goes into airborne and space reconnaissance. It also constructs and uses sensors for the exploitation of intelligence information from emissions of factories, nuclear power plants, nuclear explosions, and the like, and from foreign military equipment (materiel exploitation). In addition, the NRO manages satellite systems designed to intercept communications from space, a field known as Space SIGINT. As the agency that contracts for and operates vastly expensive satellite and other hardware systems, the NRO probably spends the bulk of the intelligence community’s financial resources.
The NRO was established on 25 August 1960 after the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the air force, and the Department of Defense (DOD) agreed to joint responsibilities for satellite reconnaissance. This agreement was in response to recommendations from a Defense Department panel that such an organization was in the national security interest of the United States, particularly after the 1 May 1960 downing of the U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union. The decision to form a “national” agency was intended to ensure that the interests of all parties, including the military and civilian intelligence communities, were taken into account. By 1961, the CIA and the air force had established a working relationship for overhead reconnaissance systems through a central administrative office, whose director reported to the secretary of defense but accepted intelligence requirements through the United States Intelligence Board (USIB). By informal agreement, the air force provided launchers, bases, and recovery capability for reconnaissance systems, while the CIA was responsible for research, development, contracting, and security.
This arrangement proved unsatisfactory, since it gave the CIA the bigger say in deploying particular systems. Ensuing intense negotiations over control of the NRO resulted in another agreement in 1965 that created a three-person executive committee (EXCOM) to administer overhead reconnaissance. Its members included the director of central intelligence (DCI), an assistant secretary of defense, and the president’s scientific advisor. The EXCOM reported to the secretary of defense, who was assigned primary administrative authority for overhead reconnaissance systems.
This arrangement recognized the DCI’s authority as head of the community to establish collection requirements and to process and utilize data generated by overhead reconnaissance. In the event of disagreements, the DCI could appeal to the president. The agreement represented a compromise that provided substantive recognition of the DCI’s national intelligence responsibility.
This arrangement has worked relatively well but has not addressed the bureaucratic competition over technical collection systems. The NRO is actually a federation of intelligence and military organizations that maintain their separate identities and loosely cooperate in the common task of exploiting imagery and other information derived from its collection systems. Because the NRO spends large sums of money on physical assets, each organization eagerly and jealously guards its access to its portion of the reconnaissance pie.
The NRO’s existence was a closely held secret for much of its lifetime. In 1994, the White House made public the existence of the NRO, but the organization remains, along with the National Security Agency (NSA), one of the least known of the intelligence community agencies.
NATIONAL RESETTLEMENT OPERATIONS CENTER (NROC).
A part of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that handles defector resettlements.
NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947. Considered to be the foundation legislation for U. S. intelligence, the 1947 National Security Act created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the authority of the National Security Council (NSC), which it also created. It also combined the war and navy departments along with the newly independent air force into a single bureaucratic unit, the National Military Authority, and provided for the position of a civilian secretary of defense. It provided for unified military commands but prohibited the merger of the military services into a single force. As amended in 1949, it created the Department of Defense (DOD) and institutionalized the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1959. Enacted on 29 May 1959, the legislation allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide employment incentives, without regard to the civil service laws, in order to encourage the hiring of scientifically and technically capable individuals. Congress passed the act in the wake of the launching of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, which alarmed the U. S. government that the United States was falling behind in technical and scientific education. In order to enable the NSA to compete effectively with the private sector, the act authorized the secretary of defense to set the pay of certain officers in the NSA commensurate with private sector standards.
NATIONAL SECURITY ASSISTANT. See ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS.
NATIONAL SECURITYAGENCY (NSA). Established in November 1952, the NSA, America’s cryptologic organization, manages signals intelligence (SIGINT) programs, ensures the safety and confidentiality of government communications, and employs sophisticated technology to break the codes and encryption systems of foreign governments.
The NSA’s early work led to the first predecessors of the modern computer and pioneered efforts in flexible storage media, such as the tape cassette. Its research in semiconductors has made the NSA a world leader in many technological fields. As a cryptologic organization, the NSA employs mathematicians, who design American cipher systems and decode adversaries’ systems. To remain at the cutting edge of technology, the NSA runs the National Cryptologic School, which trains cryptologists in the latest developments. According to the NSA, the school not only provides unique training for the its workforce, but also serves as a training resource for the entire Department of Defense (DOD). It also sends its employees for further education at America’s top universities as well as the war colleges.
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (NSC). Established by the National Security Act of 1947, the NSC is at the center of the foreign policy coordination system. The act stipulated that the NSC serve as an advisory body under the leadership of the president, with the vice president and secretaries of state and defense as its statutory members. It was to coordinate foreign and defense policy and reconcile diplomatic and military requirements. This mandate over the years gave way to the view that the NSC existed to serve the president alone. In its nearly 60 years of existence, the NSC also has evolved from a body intended to foster collegiality among departments to an elaborate organization that the president could use to manage and control competing agencies.
The NSC organization encompasses the NSC staff, headed by the assistant to the president for national security affairs (APNSA), commonly referred to as the national security advisor. The role of the NSC advisor has likewise expanded from advisory to a critical member of the president’s foreign and national security policy team.
Historically, the NSC’s importance has varied with the amount of attention each president has given it. The Department of State dominated President Harry S. Truman’s NSC, while the military took center stage in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s NSC. President John F. Kennedy, who preferred interpersonal groups for policymaking, permitted the NSC advisor to take the leading role in coordinating policy but largely ignored the rest of the NSC in policy matters, a course President Lyndon B. Johnson pursued with greater vigor than had President Kennedy.
Under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, Henry A. Kissinger’s expanded NSC acquired a great deal of influence. Dr. Kissinger kept the important issues for himself and devolved the less important to the Department of State and Department of Defense (DOD). He also fed President Nixon’s desire for formal written expositions rather than interpersonal groupings. Dr. Kissinger at first attempted to restore the separation between policymaking and implementation but eventually found himself personally performing both roles.
Under President Jimmy Carter, the national security advisor became a principal source of foreign affairs ideas and the NSC staff was recruited and managed with that in view. The Department of State took the lead and provided institutional memory and served as operations coordinator. The Ronald Reagan administration, on the other hand, emphasized a collegial approach to government decision making and allowed the White House chief of staff to supercede the national security advisor in coordinating national security and foreign policy.
President George H. W. Bush brought his own considerable foreign policy experience to the NSC, reorganized the council to include a Principals Committee, Deputies Committee, and eight Policy Coordinating Committees. 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.
The William J. Clinton administration continued to emphasize a collegial approach within the NSC on national security matters. The NSC membership was expanded to include the secretary of the treasury, the U. S. representative to the United Nations, the newly created assistant to the president for economic policy, the president’s chief of staff, and the national security advisor. President George W. Bush continued this emphasis and relied on the NSC structure even more during the difficult years of his administration.
For 60 years, presidents have sought to use the NSC system to integrate foreign and defense policies in order to preserve the nation’s security and advance its interests abroad. Recurrent structural modifications over the years have reflected presidential management style, changing requirements, and personal relationships.
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DIRECTIVE (NSCD) 4-A. Issued in December 1947, the directive assigned responsibility for covert action in the emerging Cold War to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had been established the previous September. President Harry S. Truman and his national security advisors had become alarmed over Soviet psychological warfare (PSYWAR) operations and, to counter the threat, issued the directive to establish, for the first time in U. S. history, a covert action capability during peacetime. NSCD 4-A made the director of central intelligence (DCI) responsible for psychological warfare actions against the nascent Soviet threat. However, opposition to the entire idea of psychological operations, led by the Department of State, sparked a government-wide debate and led to the issuance of National Security Council Directive 10/2, which superceded NSCD 4-A in June 1948.
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DIRECTIVE (NSCD) 10/2. Issued on 18 June 1948, NSC 10/2 created the semiautonomous Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct U. S. covert actions. It replaced the emphasis on psychological warfare (PSYWAR) with the broader concept of covert actions, to include propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action such as sabotage and demolition, subversion against hostile states, and support of indigenous anticommunist elements in threatened countries. The directive required that covert action be run by the OPC under the guidance, in peacetime, of the Department of State, and, in wartime, of the Department of Defense (DOD). In addition, NSC 10/2 outlined a convoluted chain of command, nominally under the leadership of National Security Council (NSC), State Department, and CIA officials.
In practice, however, George F. Kennan, director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and, later, the author of the containment policy, dominated meetings, claiming that political warfare is essentially an instrument of foreign policy and any office conducting it should function as an agent of the State Department and the military. Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Roscoe Hil-lenkoetter acceded to this view, so long as he was informed of all important projects and decisions. According to some experts, NSC 10/2 was essentially a treaty between the secretaries of state and defense that gave the OPC two competing masters. National Security Council 68 (NSC 68) eventually superceded NSC 10/2.
NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL 68 (NSC 68). NSC 68 was a National Security Council (NSC) document produced in April 1950 that defined the course of American foreign policy during the Cold War. President Harry S. Truman asked for an intensive examination of Soviet military capabilities and intentions in the immediate aftermath of the communist takeover of China and the Soviet test of its atomic bomb in the fall of 1949. The resulting study compared the two powers — the United States and the Soviet Union—from military, economic, political, and psychological standpoints. The study defined American national interests largely in moral terms, arguing that America’s strategic objectives were morally worthy. However, it identified Soviet interests primarily as retaining and solidifying absolute power, both in the Soviet Union itself and in its satellite countries. It asserted that the Cold War was a real war and envisaged the contest between the U. S. and the USSR as one of ideas, in which American fundamental values must dominate. This could be done, according to the document, by enhancing American military readiness and taking actions to foster fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet System. Nuclear war being unacceptable, it advocated a variety of actions to boost American security at home and through bilateral and multilateral negotiations. It also advocated undermining Soviet state power structures by implementing an affirmative program of diplomacy, covert action, and military actions. See also CONTAINMENT POLICY.
NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION DIRECTIVE (NSDD). NSDDs were policy instructions and guidance issued to the foreign policy and national security agencies during the Ronald Reagan administration. See also NATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTIVE; NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE; PRESIDENTIAL DECISION DIRECTIVE.
World History
