Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IX, Foreign Economic Policy

154. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kaysen) to President Kennedy⁰

Washington, November 16, 1962.

Mr. President:

I should like to put in my 2# worth on the choice of a new Director of AID.¹ I know that Dave Bell is not eager to take the job, and his reluctance is a factor that naturally must weigh heavily with you. I wish to argue for appointing him despite it. AID is the major positive instrument of our foreign policy; it needs the best man we can get.

I think I know enough about the AID program and its problems, and I know Dave Bell well enough to make my observations of some value.

As I see it, there are three central tasks in the job:

a. To comprehend the purpose of the whole spectrum of aid activities and relate them to the broader purposes of our foreign policy, and to articulate this relation in a meaningful way, both for the agency itself and for the rest of the government;

b. To take a firm grasp on the managerial and administrative problems of the agency;

c. To provide Congress with an understandable rationale for aid expenditures, and to show immediately by argument and then by performance that there is some relation between spending money and achieving our objectives.

The three tasks are strongly interrelated. One reason for declining Congressional confidence in foreign aid is the lack of understandable purpose in the program. A succession of administrators has failed to produce a comprehensible account of the national interests served by foreign aid and how the programs they are defending will achieve them. This, in turn, has reflected the difficulty of explaining what they themselves do not understand. Our new emphasis in economic development is important, but economic development as such is only part of what we are doing in AID, and the promotion of economic development in every country of the world is not of equal interest to the United States. Generalized blanket explanations of the desirability of progress are poor justifications for particular programs. If AID is organized, operated, understood and explained only as a large collection of individual projects spread over 80 countries, its vulnerability to criticism will remain high.

Dave Bell combines better than anyone in sight the qualifications for doing all three tasks. His previous training and experience have given him both a deep understanding of what foreign aid can and cannot do, and direct practical experience of how it does what it can do. His work within the government has demonstrated his administrative and managerial talents. The difficult double task of relating the conception and design of our aid program to the rest of our foreign policy, and at the same time meeting the radically different operating requirements of running an aid program can be done better by someone who has seen both parts of the task from the inside, as Dave has.

I cannot, of course, speak to the question of Dave’s persuasive powers with the Congress from first-hand knowledge. He is not a novice: he now has had two years of experience in dealing with appropriations committees. My second-hand understanding is that he has won their respect, as he has won the respect and confidence of everybody in the Executive Branch with whom he deals.

The combination of experience and training that Dave brings to the job is such that there would be almost no start-up time involved in his taking over the management of the enterprise. He knows most of the top people and, what is more important, he knows and understands the problems. My own observation of Fowler Hamilton is that, for all his intellectual gifts, he never really did achieve a clear understanding of what he was trying to do. Finally, Dave has the physical and moral energy and drive needed for one of the most demanding and difficult jobs in the government.²

CK

0. Source: Kennedy Library, President’s Office File, Staff Memoranda, Kaysen. Confidential.
1. Fowler Hamilton submitted his resignation as AID Administrator on November 10, and he left office on December 7.
2. President Kennedy appointed David E. Bell to succeed Hamilton as AID Administrator on November 28. Bell took the oath of office on December 21. His confirmation hearing on January 22, 1963, is in Nominations of Christian A. Herter, William T. Gossett, and David E. Bell: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-eighth Congress, First Session (Washington, 1963). His appointment was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23 and confirmed by the Senate on February 19. Kermit Gordon succeeded Bell as Director of the Bureau of the Budget.