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To better manage the paper flow a position of “Executive Secretary to the NSC” was formed. When Truman requested permanent NSC member status to the frequent attendees (CIA Director, JCS Chair and the Treasury Secretary) he did the same for his newly-minted Executive Secretary position. The National Security Act doesn't mention a “National Security Advisor” position. NSA 1947 did envision a small permanent NSC staff to facilitate meetings but the substantive work was to be done by Defence and State based on intelligence scrutinized by the CIA. While Truman's “front room” dealings with foreign policy were increasingly formally managed by his Executive Secretary however much real policy was still hammered out in “backroom” meetings with Truman, access to whom was controlled by railway magnate Averill Harriman.

Much got done by Truman's NSC whether he attended or not. The NSC's first action (NSC1/1) was to authorize and bankroll an NSC-approved multi-million dollar covert operation to prevent the Italian Left from winning elections. Truman relied heavily on his capable subordinates like Secretary of State George Marshall, he of the “Marshall Plan” of Western European reconstruction, which Marshall commenced June 1947 and successfully micro-managed to its conclusion in 1952. Truman's NSC also produced NSC 68 “United States Objectives for National Security” in February 1950. There were definitely some shenanigans by the State Department in forming the sub-committee commissioned to draft this document resulting in the committee being chaired by State's poet laureate, Paul Nitze. This countered a full-court press by Defence Secretary Forrestal to have a military team write this crucial document. NSC-68 became the Cold War blueprint; the basic operating program for Anglo-American foreign policy and military doctrine for the next 45 years.

Forrestal resisted unification as best he could. But in 1949 the NSC accepted a stronger, more unifying “Department of Defence” (DoD) as part of their team thereby replacing the paper NME and threatening to provide effective civilian oversight over military spending. In 1949 Congress amended the National Security Act reducing the military presence at the top by eliminating statutory NSC membership privileges for the three armed service leaders. A civilian Secretary of Defence and a uniformed JSC Chair were deemed sufficient to represent the military point of view on the Council. (The amended Act also made the Vice President a statutory NSC member.) This snub coincided with the cancellation of the Navy's super-aircraft carrier project causing the “revolt of the admirals” with leading officers openly denouncing the Commander-in-Chief. Forrestal jumped out a high story window. So we're told.

This was Korean War eve. The jury's still out, but I.F. Stone argues convincingly in Hidden History of the Korean War that it was a large-scale attack from the American-controlled south that kicked off the Korean War. Defence spending went from $14 billion in 1950 to $49 billion in 1953. Everyone was happy.

Seventy-year old war-horse Douglas Macarthur III called the Korean War a “gift from Mars”. Macarthur was in a clique of top military brass (including fellow legend cigar-chomping “Bomber General” Curtis LeMay, then in charge of the new Strategic Air Command) who pooh-poohed the patient approach put forward by State Department pansies in NSC-68 preferring instead Total War with the Soviets while America still had vastly more atomic bombs. Some of this tendency sat on the NSC, others frequently addressed the Council, or had their views channelled through the JCS or DoD.

Truman handed Macarthur the “UN policing mission” to Korea. War was never declared. As the War effort exploded to consume the bulk of US military force Macarthur effectively usurped Truman as Commander-in-Chief. At first the old General was a hero with his daring, successful amphibious landing at Inchon allowing him to sever the North Korean army. However his attacks on the Chinese and their subsequent entry into the war, and his strafing of Vladivostok, led to bitter public and private bickering between Macarthur and NSCers, particularly Truman. Macarthur's admitted he “started a new war” and he was attempting to expand it. Macarthur was no easy soldier for a civilian President to stare down. He was born in a US Army Fort in New Mexico, attended military prep school when he was 13, West Point when he was 18, commanded his first combat force age 23, was Army Chief of Staff under Hoover at age 50, Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific under Roosevelt until his 60s. Truman fired Macarthur April 11, 1951. The General returned to a massive hero's parade and was allowed to address both Houses of Congress. But the door on the NSC was slammed shut and Macarthur soon faded into a long and pleasant retirement.

Behind the scenes, in 1952 the Secretary of Defence sent Truman a detailed letter outlining problems within the military and calling for a larger better-staffed Department of Defence. This letter was on top of Eisenhower's desk when he took over. In early 1953 the Eisenhower-appointed Rockefeller Committee released a report the recommendations of which were soon law. There were to be 6 more Assistant Secretaries of Defence, each with staff, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to be furnished with funds for a small bureaucracy of their own.

Eisenhower immediately embraced the NSC. What was crucial was getting relevant agencies cooperating on specific projects which required the agencies to lend staffers to form inter-departmental working groups to both formulate plans and to follow up to make sure the work was getting done. The inter-departmental working groups recommended policy and helped carry out the orders of the NSC. They were a layer of government. Eisenhower had “Special Assistant for National Security Affairs” (Robert Cutler) oversee a galley of 40 inter-departmental committees that submitted reports to 24 NSC reviewers and condensers who would present the revised reports to the weekly NSC meetings. The NSC meetings frequently had over 25 people in attendance. Eisenhower chaired these meetings preferring an adversarial system wherein proponents of different weapon systems, foreign policy, or intelligence estimates would debate in front of the Council. He would then call for opinions of the statutory NSCers. Eisenhower chaired, gavel in hand, 329 of the 366 NSC meetings held during his watch.

Eisenhower believed in covert action. Ike's NSC organized regime change in Iran and Guatemala. As seamless as these coups appeared they were fraught with crisis, confusion and mishap requiring the NSC to make many quick executive decisions. To better facilitate crisis management Eisenhower formed “5412 Committee” made up of key NSCers and CIA specialists. Eisenhower created another executive position the “Staff Secretary Responsible for Foreign Affairs” and filled it with Colonel Goodpaster. Goodpaster became “our-man-in-Asia” during a number of 1950s crises and was delegated broad Presidential powers.

John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 and he jealously guarded State's role as principal foreign policy advisor to the President. Allen Walter Dulles, John's brother, headed the CIA throughout the Eisenhower era and the early part of the Kennedy administration. The Dulles Bros. owned the integrated packaging and distributing “United Fruit” conglomerate with its' vast Central American plantations. Allen's successor discovered all of Allen's CIA Director pay-cheques in a desk drawer, un-cashed. John Dulles' professional involvement in the State Department dates to 1907 when he was 19. Allen was in the OSS from 1942 to 1945 and in 1948 he chaired the three-member panel set up to explore the US intelligence community that designed the CIA.

John Dulles was a fervent anti-communist who carried around copies of Stalin's Problems with Leninism to prove the hegemonic intent of Bolshevism. John's Bible was NSC-68. Dulles travelled to many capitals. He was the face of US foreign policy. He worked hard to form anti-Soviet alliances to complement the work of NATO (such as SEATO, CENTO). Dulles put in particularly gruelling hours planning the UN, IMF and World Bank. He pushed himself even though terminally ill and died one month after resigning in April 15, 1959.

One underlying and consuming struggle within Eisenhower's NSC was Treasury's demand that all accounts be subject to their scrutiny which the Dulles brothers vehemently opposed. This became a Byzantine bureaucratic struggle. Treasury, and the people behind them, wanted to corral the Dulles gang by scrutinizing, or threatening to scrutinize, their covert operations accounts and therewith shift US foreign policy. But Treasury could not getting adequate presentation of their complaints about the Dulles' stonewalling before the President or the rest of the NSC because Dullsites controlled the subcommittee overseeing the 24 inter-agency report groups (the NSC bureaucracy by this time had 72 full-time staffers) hence they controlled what was, and was not, discussed at the weekly NSC meetings. The Treasury people then began a protracted campaign to have Vice President Nixon supervise the sub-committee report review process. Ike was unenthused.

Eisenhower was in his 60s when he became President, suffered a heart attack in 1955, and a minor stroke a few years later. During his latter Presidency he was criticized for spending too much time golfing and trout fishing. Increasingly he relied on a core group of delegates: the Dulles bros, Averill Harriman, Dean Acheson, and Colonel Goodpaster to run the ship. While he mastered and re-moulded the formal NSC system he still required a private “mini-NSC” to effectively run US foreign policy. But what worried the retiring Eisenhower the most was creeping militarism within the NSC. In 1961, January Ike's farewell address reads:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for a disastrous rise of misplaced powers exist and will persist.”

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