Office of the Historian

163. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, October 7, 1971.

SUBJECT

  • USC Activities

PARTICIPANTS

  • State: David Biltchik2
  • NSC: T.C. Pinckney

In pursuing our intent to get a closer follow-up of USC affairs, I called Dave Biltchik and requested current lists of USC study memos, decisions, and continuing actions.

Dave seemed happy to comply and promised to send them over right away. He went on to suggest that we in the NSC should assign more actions to the USC and illustrated his point by referring to a need for a presidential mandate on monitoring U.S. personnel abroad and to the absence of response to Under Secretary Irwin’s recent suggestion that the USC supervise policy for nuclear tests.

I assured Dave that I would look into both these matters, though not necessarily report anything to him. I also suggested that he call me if he had further thoughts on possible assignments for the USC. I promised to drop by and get acquainted when visiting the Department.

[Page 334]

Because (1) NSDM 23 states, “The NSC Under Secretaries Committee shall consider … matters pertaining to interdepartmental activities of the U.S. Government overseas … which are of an operational nature (in distinction to matters involving a substantial security policy question) …”4 and (2) the USC seems anxious to do more, perhaps we should keep in mind suggesting more frequently to Dr. Kissinger that they be assigned operational items. A spin-off benefit might be that if kept busy, they might not be as inclined to delve into policy matters.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–209, National Security Decision Memoranda, NSDM 2. Confidential. Drafted by Thomas Pinckney.↩
  2. Biltchik was a member of the Department of State Planning and Coordination Staff. Pinckney was a member of the NSC Planning Group.↩
  3. Document 11. ↩
  4. Ellipses in the source text.↩