62. Memorandum for the Record0
Judge Patterson called me this afternoon following the meeting of the Committee of Three,1 with reference to the State Department proposal for a National Intelligence Unit. He said that the State Department was not united behind the McCormack plan and there was a strong feeling on the part of many people in the State Department that this intelligence activity should be integrated or scattered through the different divisions of that Department. He stated that any such proposal was totally unacceptable to him and that while he did not object to a State Department official heading the organization that he would insist on a straight line separate organization. While he recognized that the State Department was engaged in widespread intelligence activities, he felt that it was wrong to parcel out this new organization among the various desks, divisions and committees of the State Department or to get it involved in the State Department system in any way. Nor would he favor, he said, the multiplicity of committees which are proposed in the State Department plan. He felt that this method of working would not produce the results desired.
If Colonel McCormack is to be the man to head up the new organization, he did not believe he should be the head of the State Department intelligence activity although he had no objection to him being employed as an official of the State Department. The head of the new agency should work with the State Department intelligence organization in the same manner as he works with War and Navy Department organizations. He [Page 155] also objected to any Board which would have members from Treasury, FBI, etc.
He instructed me to get together with Colonel McCormack and Mr. Correa of the Navy Department to see if we could produce an agreed plan by the time Mr. Byrnes returns from Moscow.
- Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 263, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency, Troy Papers. No classification marking.↩
- See the first paragraph to Document 65.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩