59. Memorandum of discussion at the 367th NSC meeting1
SUBJECT
- Discussion at the 367th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, May 29, 1958
Present at the 367th NSC Meeting were the President of the United States, presiding; the Acting Secretary of State; the Secretary of Defense; and the Director, Office of Defense Mobilization. Also present were Mr. Fred C. Scribner, Jr., for the Secretary of the Treasury; the Acting Director, Bureau of the Budget; the Special Assistant to the President for Atomic Energy; the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Director of Central Intelligence; the Deputy Secretary of Defense; Assistant Secretary of Defense McGuire; the Assistant to the President; the Deputy Assistant to the President; the Director, U.S. Information Agency; the Director, International Cooperation Administration; the Special Assistants to the President for Information Projects, for National Security Affairs, for Science and Technology, and for Security Operations Coordination; the White House Staff Secretary; Assistant Secretary of State Smith; Assistant Secretary of Defense Sprague; the Naval Aide to the President; Mr. Harrell B. Altizer and Mr. Donald Schwartz, Department of Defense; the Executive Secretary, NSC; and the Deputy Executive Secretary, NSC.
There follows a summary of the discussion at the meeting and the main points taken.
[Omitted here are agenda items 1–2.]
[Facsimile Page 2]3. STATUS OF MILITARY MOBILIZATION BASE PROGRAM
(NSC Actions Nos. 1680 and 1698; NSC 5707/8, paragraph 47; NSC 5810/1)
General Cutler briefed the National Security Council on the subject item. (A copy of General Cutler’s briefing note is filed in the minutes of the meeting, and another is attached to this memorandum.) He then called on Assistant Secretary of Defense E. Perkins McGuire, who read his report with the assistance of visual aids. (A copy of Secretary McGuire’s report is filed in the minutes of the meeting.)
At the conclusion of Secretary McGuire’s report, General Cutler first called on Secretary McElroy, who complimented Secretary McGuire and said he had nothing to add.
[Typeset Page 206]Mr. Gordon Gray commented that Secretary McGuire’s office was doing a splendid job on those responsibilities for the mobilization base which pertained to the Department of Defense. On the other hand, ODM was gravely concerned about the three problem areas which Secretary McGuire had mentioned in his report, and particularly the last one, namely, the lack of any bomb damage assessment.
Mr. Gray said that ODM was also concerned about a matter relating to the prepositioning of military supplies. While some protection was being afforded to military materiel prepositioned overseas, there was no adequate protection for military materiel prepositioned in the United States.
The President noted that one reason which clearly explained the need for affording greater protection to existing military supplies had derived from the conclusions of the studies by the Net Evaluation Subcommittee. These results had indicated that even after a not too devastating Soviet nuclear attack on the United States it would be extremely difficult to go on producing any single military end-item because components which went into the production of the end-item were manufactured in a variety of different cities, all of which would be target areas in a Soviet attack. Mr. Gray said that the subject of the President’s comment—the so-called vertical factor of production—also concerned him. The component situation had not improved.
Secretary McElroy predicted that it would not improve in the future, and suggested that there were good reasons why it should not improve.
Mr. Gray then pointed out what he considered to be a development which needed to be watched and which was under study in the ODM. It would appear that under the new mobilization planning concept if we could assume that limited war would last for as long [Facsimile Page 3] as three years the United States would not be confronted, as in past wars, by the familiar conflict between guns and butter. Instead, it might face a serious unemployment problem. This was true because under the new mobilization planning concept we no longer assume full-scale mobilization daring a war.
The National Security Council:
Noted and discussed an oral report on the subject by the Department of Defense, prepared pursuant to NSC Action No. 1680–b, as presented by Assistant Secretary of Defense McGuire and commented upon by the Director, Office of Defense Mobilization.
[Omitted here is the remainder of the memorandum.]
- Source: Agenda item 3: Status of Military Mobilization Base Program. Top Secret; Eyes Only. Extracts—3 pp. Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Records.↩