Office of the Historian

148. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy0

Washington, July 11, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Coordination of Actions and Announcements on Economic and Other Assistance

I fully share your concern regarding the control and coordination of our foreign assistance actions to assure the accomplishment of our foreign policy objectives.1 I am calling together top State and A.I.D. officials to ensure that they understand your concern and that our procedures are responsive to the task.

I am also writing to the Secretaries of the Treasury and Defense, the Director of USIA, and the President of the Export-Import Bank to ask their cooperation in this matter. The Secretary of Defense has already assured me of his full cooperation not only in connection with military aid announcements or actions but also with respect to military sales arrangements.

Assistant Secretaries of the geographic bureaus of the Department will be assigned full responsibility for assuring that the full range of political and other foreign policy considerations are considered prior to foreign assistance action. A.I.D. Assistant Regional Administrators will have the responsibility for keeping their counterparts in the geographic bureaus apprised of pending aid assistance actions and announcements, including P.L. 480 programs. If an issue arises in the discharge of these responsibilities, the issue will be referred immediately to the A.I.D. Administrator, Fowler Hamilton, and, if necessary, to me. I will, of course, bring to your attention particularly sensitive matters.

I am asking each Assistant Secretary to give this matter his closest personal attention and exercise the tough-mindedness required for the advancement of American interests. This involves a high degree of judgment. This process must inevitably involve judgments as to what is in the national interest—both in the short-run and in the long-term.

Fowler Hamilton and I will be prepared to discuss this matter with you further after our meeting with State and A.I.D. senior officers.

Dean Rusk
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies Series, AID, 1/62-8/62. Confidential. A handwritten note on the source text indicates the memorandum was taken from the President’s weekend reading of September 13.↩
  2. See Document 145.↩