106. Letter From Secretary of Agriculture Freeman to the Under Secretary of State (Bowles)0
Dear Chet: Pursuant to our conversation of yesterday morning at the Cabinet meeting,1 the enclosed are forwarded for your perusal as you review the whole matter of the new economic aid agency this weekend.2 I believe they are self-explanatory.
Two points really are made. First, that food and agriculture are fundamental to any economic aid program for any developing country. This includes the food, as such, as an element of nutrition and capital investment, and also the matter of technical agricultural development and assistance. Second, the whole matter of how an aid agency should operate is vital we think, and the report of the Labouisse Committee, in my judgment, is very seriously lacking in a number of respects.3 I believe it very important that responsibility be centralized but that operations be specifically delegated to operating agencies. On the surface, these may seem like conflicting principles, but in practice they need not be, and if a program is properly administered it can combine the centralization of responsibility necessary to resolve operating conflicts in the field with the effective operation that will flow from getting the best personnel, together with the resources of the operating department, behind a specific program which has been delegated to that operating department.
A third phase of all of this, of course, is the paramilitary and developing extra government organizations, to wit: cooperatives, trade unions, etc. Here I think we again find our greatest opportunity in agriculture and through cooperatives, and it’s an area in which I have special interest, having spent a bit of time in some of these nations during World War II.
All in all, I’m deeply concerned about this and I desperately hope that no final decision is made until it has been carefully reviewed for a mistake with the resulting conflicting jurisdictions, and competition between agencies I think will be very serious. Our resources are limited and we ought to use them to the best advantage and move in close coordination [Page 239] and harmony in the same direction. Anyway, do look this over, and I hope you will give me a ring sometime early next week.
Sincerely yours,
- Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 286, AID Administrator Files: FRC 65 A 481, Agriculture, FY 1962. No classification marking.↩
- No record of this conversation has been found.↩
- The enclosures are not attached nor further identified, but Bowles in his reply (Document 110) identified one as a May 5 memorandum from Freeman to the President. For text, see the Supplement.↩
- Regarding the Labouisse report, see Document 103.↩