409. Memorandum From the Deputy Special Assistant (Howe) to the Secretary of State’s Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence (Armstrong)0
SUBJECT
- Crisis Estimates
In conversation with General Magruder, he said that he took a very gloomy view of the paper presently before the NSC on Crisis Estimates [Page 1055] and he read from a draft of a briefing memo which he proposed to send to Secretary Johnson.1 The gist of his comment was that the proposed paragraph for NSCID 1 was wholly inadequate to the important problem of crisis estimates and that among other reasons because it diffused the responsibility. He did recommend in the memo, however, that the Secretary agree to the paragraph only on an interim basis, pending the establishment of a group within CIA which could adequately produce national intelligence estimates.
I pointed out to General Magruder the following:
- 1.
- That crisis estimates could only be as sound as the whole of the national intelligence estimates procedure; that until we had made the fundamental corrections in national intelligence procedures, probably no useful purpose would be served by trying to adjust crisis estimates.
- 2.
- That his recommendation might well offer a risk on which Hilly could throw his hat; namely that CIA already has a facility for producing national estimates, therefore everything is just fine.
- 3.
- That the reason that the paragraph is going into the NSC at all is because the Military wanted the lever placed upon top officers to supply critical information to the intelligence arms and to CIA.
- 4.
- That the Department had been indifferent on whether the matter was taken up to the NSC and that we had recommended the Under Secretary agree, believing that no useful purpose would be served by trying to adjust crisis estimates until national estimates had been corrected.
General Magruder seemed willing to revise his recommendation to state simply that the Defense agreement was an interim one pending “an adjustment of national intelligence procedures on which crisis estimates must be based.” He did think, however, that the record should be kept clear, that crisis estimates and national intelligence estimates as a whole were still not satisfactory, so that an NSC agreement of crisis estimates would not imply that the NSC was satisfied with the procedures as a whole.
P.S. Do you think that the fact that Johnson may raise some question on this matter at the NSC meeting indicates that we should prepare to brief the Secretary on it?