Request Autist's help with DIGG on Q1083
The following may relate to Q1083 in response to Q1082 The "Start"
Not sure if Q's drop with C_A doc link was relating to "Earth Satellite Program" and/or "Mr. Furnas" or something else, but found some interesting stuff on Mr. Furnas, including document discussing Israel's Nuclear program and other stuff (see attached) and below, which makes ref to "SIG" Senior Interdepartmental Group within The State Department. Was Q meaning this group when he wrote "SIG Intercept" in Q1083?
THE KENNEDY IMPACT written by HOWARD FURNAS (1968)
Kennedy came into office determined to loosen the structure and to restore competition to the making of policy. He promptly reduced the large NSC staff. Formal meetings of the National Security Council became a rarity. Ad hoc groups were created to handle specific problems, such as the Executive Committee for the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Special Group (Counterinsurgency) to keep abreast of trouble spots in the underdeveloped world. The Kennedy staff was replete with people who were sublimely confident of their own foreign affairs competence, and more or less openly contemptuous of the performance of the bureaucracy, particularly the Department of State. The President played an active day-to-day role in the conduct of foreign affairs, and his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs came to be thought of more as a major policy adviser than a coordinator. Under his direction, the rump NSC staff became a personal foreign affairs staff to the President, the "little State Department in the White House." The big State Department became increasingly frustrated not only by "White House interference" in "State Department business", but by the State Department’s inability to compete successfully with the Department of Defense in inter-agency conflicts. The Tuesday Luncheon, the gathering at the White House of the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, and the President’s Press Secretary, became the major device by which the President received the counsel of his senior advisers. Staff work was minimal, and the focus of attention was on immediate problems and operations. Although under President Johnson, the formal arrangements in the White House stayed much the same, Johnson took a major initiative in reorganizing the conduct of national security affairs. Every President since Roosevelt has, at one time or another, expressed the wish that the Department of State would assert more leadership. Johnson determined to make the wish a reality.
NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM NUMBER 341
In March of 1966, [President Johnson] issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 341 (NSAM 341). Clearly, his intent was to enable-perhaps to force-the Department of State to assert its dominance in the Washington foreign affairs community.
[The highest level under Secretary of State was the] Senior Interdepartmental Group (SIG). Chaired by the Under Secretary of State, the SIG consists of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Directors of the Agency for International Development (AID), the CIA, and the United States Information Agency (USIA). Here, too, the Chairman has full powers of decision, save that a member can ask that the matter be referred to "the next higher authority"; That authority is specifically named in NSAM 341 as the Secretary of State, and he is charged merely with giving the problem "appropriate handling"; NSAM 341 notably does not provide for referral of a problem to "the next higher authority" beyond the Secretary of State. It is difficult to imagine a much broader delegation of presidential authority than this, short of some constitutional restructuring of the position of the Secretary of State.
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an excerpt from here
Furnas, H. (1968). The President: A Changing Role? The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 380(1), 9–15.
doi:10.1177/000271626838000102
url to share this paper:
scihub.bban.top/10.1177/000271626838000102
Note: Words in brackets are [MINE]