Office of the Historian

72. National Security Action Memorandum No. 1320

Washington, February 19, 1962.

TO

  • The Honorable Fowler Hamilton
  • The Administrator
  • Agency for International Development

SUBJECT

  • Support of Local Police Forces for Internal Security and Counter-Insurgency Purposes

As you know, I desire the appropriate agencies of this Government to give utmost attention and emphasis to programs designed to counter Communist indirect aggression, which I regard as a grave threat during the 1960s. I have already written the Secretary of Defense “to move to a new level of increased activity across the board” in the counter-insurgency field.1

Police assistance programs, including those under the aegis of your agency, are also a crucial element in our response to this challenge. I understand that there has been some tendency toward de-emphasizing them under the new aid criteria developed by your agency. I recognize that such programs may seem marginal in terms of focusing our energies on those key sectors which will contribute most to sustained economic growth. But I regard them as justified on a different though related basis, i.e., that of contributing to internal security and resisting Communist-supported insurgency.

I am further aware that police programs, as a relatively minor facet of the functions of the aid agency, may have tended to receive little emphasis as a result. Therefore, I would like you to consider various ways and means of giving the police program greater autonomy within AID, if this seems necessary in order to protect it from neglect.

[Page 250]

I fully recognize that police programs must be looked at on a case-by-case basis and that in some instances they can indeed be cut back or eliminated. I simply wish to insure that before doing so we have taken fully into account the importance of the counter-insurgency objective as I view it.

In sum, I should like AID to review carefully its role in the support of local police forces for internal security and counter-insurgency purposes, and to recommend to me through the Special Group (Counter-Insurgency) what new or renewed emphases are desirable.2

John F. Kennedy
3
  1. Source: Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 70 D 265, Interdepartmental Committee on Police. Secret. Copies were sent to Rusk, McNamara, Robert Kennedy, McCone, Bell, General Taylor, and the Director of the Peace Corps. Another copy of this memorandum indicates that it apparently was sent as a letter to Fowler. (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, National Security Action Memoranda, NSAM 114) Several NSAMs with lower numbers have later dates. A February 19 note from Komer to Bundy states that Komer drafted this text. Komer commented: “Frank Coffin’s weak follow-up on police programs last Thursday convinces me that now is the time for a hortatory JFK prod to Hamilton.” Coffin was Deputy Administrator of AID. Parrott’s memorandum for the record of the meeting of the Special Group (Counter-Insurgency) held on Thursday, February 15, is in Department of State, Special Group (CI) Files: Lot 68 D 451, SG(CI) 1/1-7/31/62.↩
  2. Document 67.↩
  3. In NSAM No. 146, dated April 20, President Kennedy tasked the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Attorney General, and the Directors of Central Intelligence and the Bureau of the Budget with establishing an interagency committee to recommend means of aiding police forces in “newly emerging countries to assure that they can maintain order without excessive use of violence.” In addition, the committee was to consider “whether the organizational location of technical assistance on police training should remain under AID or be handled in some other manner.” (Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 72 D 316, NSAM 146) The memorandum accompanying the report of the Interagency Committee on Police Assistance Programs is Document 99.↩
  4. Printed from a copy that indicates Kennedy signed the original.↩