Office of the Historian

42. National Security Action Memorandum 1960

Washington, October 22, 1962.

TO

  • The Vice President
  • The Secretary of State
  • The Secretary of Defense
  • The Secretary of the Treasury
  • The Attorney General
  • The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • The Director of Central Intelligence

SUBJECT

  • Establishment of an Executive Committee of the National Security Council

I hereby establish, for the purpose of effective conduct of the operations of the Executive Branch in the current crisis, an Executive Committee of the National Security Council. This committee will meet, until further notice, daily at 10:00 a.m. in the Cabinet Room. I shall act as Chairman of this committee, and its additional regular members will be as follows: the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Ambassador-at-Large, the Special Counsel, and the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

The first meeting of this committee will be held at the regular hour on Tuesday, October 23rd, at which point further arrangements with respect to its management and operation will be decided.

John Kennedy
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, NSAMs. No classification marking. In addition to the recipients mentioned in the source text, copies were also sent to Ball, Gilpatric, Thompson, Sorensen, Bundy, O’Donnell, Salinger, Wilson, Rostow, and Nitze.↩