Office of the Historian

700.5 MAP/12–450

Memorandum by the Director of the Office of South American Affairs (Warren) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Miller)

top secret
Washington, December 4, 1950.

Subject: Attached paper on NSC 68/1, Annex 1,1 Estimates of MDAP Requirements

I attach a copy of a Top Secret memorandum2 from Mr. John H. Ohly, Acting Director, Mutual Defense Assistance, to Major General S. L. Scott on the subject NSC 68/1, Annex 1, Estimates of MDAP Requirements.

You will note that the memorandum called for a discussion of the paper at a meeting of the FMACC for 2 o’clock this afternoon. The paper reached me at 2 p. m. I glanced at it hurriedly and found the pertinent part for ARA was paragraph 28 “The Other American Republics” on Page 9.I checked with Mr. Jamison and Mr. Halle immediately and got to the meeting, which was already under way, at 2:30 p. m.

[Page 678]

I spoke on paragraph 28 with a result that it was amended. It will go to the NSC in the following form:

28. The Other American Republics. The inter-American community is a source of both immediate and reserve political and economic strength. Its military strength is limited although not negligible. Its military manpower and the equipment presently available is essential to the maintenance of internal security in the other American states. Properly trained and equipped, the manpower of these countries could be used to maintain the security of lines of communication in the inter-American area and possibly to contribute forces to overseas operations. Although a specific estimate of training requirements and urgent equipment needs has not been included in the estimates given above, it is believed that nominal amounts of funds should be made available if and when necessary to meet training and selected equipment requirements of the other American states in accordance with the policies laid down in NSC 56/2.3

I believe the rewritten paragraph meets all the ideas which have been expressed to me in ARA. At any rate we will now have a definite statement to go to NSC.

  1. Not printed, but see the memorandum of September 26, 1950, Miller to Nitze, p. 654.↩
  2. Of December 4, 1950, not printed. (700.5 MAP/12–450)↩

  3. In the memorandum mentioned in the preceding note, the main clause of the last sentence of the equivalent paragraph read as follows: “… it is believed that nominal amounts of funds might be made available, perhaps on a matching grant basis, to meet training and selected equipment requirements of the other American states in accordance with the policies laid down in NSC 56/2.”

    In NSC 68/3, December 8, 1950, an equivalent paragraph in Annex 2 agrees in substance with Mr. Warren’s suggested revision. For text of the Annex, see p. 433.

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