Big Brother Is Watching You!

OCTOBER 2004: I have researched and studied numerous subjects the last eight years that cover, what I feel, are major areas that will have an effect on your future and the future of your children's generations. My main area of interest has concentrated on the issues of technology and the genocide of global human rights and privacy leading humanity into a One World Government where humans will be marked, monitored, and tracked. I was reading numerous periodicals covering science, mathematics, politics, and religion. I wanted to study more on the Bible, The Torah, and The Koran. All three versions of this religions have one binding theology. That God created the universe, and the biblical patriarch Abraham was the father of Ishmael  ( who's mother was Hagar, a Egyptian maid servant ) and that Abraham was the father of Isaac ( who's mother was Abraham's wife Sarah ). If you have ever wondered when the Israel and Arab conflict began, it was here over 3,800 years ago. The Muslim world feel they are the descendants of Ishmael, while the Christian world believe they are the descendants of Isaac. Thus, we have a family feud filled with hatred and wars, bombings and terrorists attacks. This conflict has been going on for almost 4,000 years with no end in sight. For 13 centuries Islam has considered the land of Israel to be Muslim territory. After Muhammad's death in 632 A.D. his successor Abu Bakr formed a army which would conquer the world in the name of Allah, this conquest almost came true. In 732 A.D. during the Battle of Tours, the Christian army of Charles Martel turned back the armies of Islam and their quest for world domination came to an end. This Islamic war ended just as Adolf Hitler's did. His ambitions to rule the world ended in 1945 when Germany was defeated in World War II.

-------------------------------THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE
The TORAH, sometimes called The Law is presumed to be written by Moses. The Law consists of the first five Books of The Old Testament, which are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The last Book of The Old Testament is Malachi which is believed to be written almost 400 years prior to the birth of Jesus. The NEW TESTAMENT was believed to be written in the periods of 20 to 96 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. The New Testament is a composed book of writings based on the life and teachings of Jesus and the promise to all believers of a eternity in Heaven. The last Book of the New Testament is Revelation, which was written around 96 AD. The KORAN is the Muslim Book of religious beliefs and was based on the Arab patriarch Mohammed around 650 AD. The Koran also refers to God, Jesus, and The Virgin Mary.

The origin of today's Bible which is composed of both The New and Old Testament is believed to have been put together as One Book around 367 AD by a powerful bishop named Athanasius of Alexandria. In closure, the origin of today's Bible which consists of 66 Books, is around 1,607 years old. There were numerous other Books which were left out of the Bible that include The Gospel of Hebrews, The Gospel of Mary, and The Infancy Gospel of  Thomas, which were writings of  Jesus as a child. These and other gospels which were left out were defined as Pseudonymous, according to Bart Ehrman, the author of " Lost Christianities " and " Lost Scriptures "

The translations of  names, the meaning and origin of words and their spellings, biblical names and locations differ in many places of the Bible due to the different languages used throughout history, which included Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin.. This was the method used in which the English version translation was derived from. The original written texts of  The Old & The New Testament have never survived or have never been found. As of  2004 A.D. the oldest known copied biblical texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in the caves of Qumran along the Northwest shore of the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.  Johannes Gutenberg developed the first moveable type printing press in 1450 A.D. The first book ever to be printed using this device was The Gutenberg Bible. The Gutenburg Bible used the fourth century translated version by St. Jerome, which was translated from Hebrew and Greek Text into Latin. The King James Version (KJV) is an English translation of the Holy Bible, commissioned for the benefit of the Church of England at the behest of King James I of  England. The King James Bible gradually replaced the Geneva Bible. The King James Bible, first published in 1611, is perhaps the most influential English version used in the world today. Below are two examples of word origins;

Lucifer:  Lucifer is Latin for "Light Bringer". The Hebrew for the same, Haleal, means "adversary." The passage in Isaiah (the only place in the Old Testament that mentions Lucifer) uses the Hebrew term for the Morning Star (ie, the planet Venus). The passage refers to the King of Babylon sarcastically, saying that he considered himself to be like God, just as the Morning Star is a bright light in the sky, but pales in comparison to the sun.

Robot:  Robot comes from the Czech word "robot," which means "worker." In 1923, Karl Capek, a well-known, Czech, science-fiction writer at the time, wrote a futuristic thriller about a nightmarish scenario in which the machines have taken over (a la, the "Terminator") and implanted circuitry in humans to make them into mindless zombies willing to serve them as workers or "robots."

-----------THE ANTICHRIST  ARMAGEDDON   GOG & MAGOG
The word ANTICHRIST is mentioned only four times in The Bible. The word Antichrist is found in the Books of John I and John II of the New Testament. The word ARMAGEDDON is mentioned only once in the Bible, in The Book of Revelation. These two words are probably the best known in the world when it comes to evil and a final cataclysmic war, and both words are usually misinterpreted in their meeting. The word ANTICHRIST in The Books of John I and John II do not specify an individual. The word AntiChrist refers to people who deny or reject The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. The word ARMAGEDDON is perceived as a war or the metaphoric name of a  future conflict, which is not the case. ARMAGEDDON is geographic area in which a cataclysmic war will take place. Armageddon is located in the geographic area of Megiddo which is 90 miles northwest of  Jerusalem. The Mound of Megiddo is the Greek translation for the word Armageddon. The words Antichrist and Armageddon are used in today's language by many as metaphoric identities for the final war and a worldly individual empowered by Satan. The phrase The Battle of Armageddon should perhaps be identified as The Battle at Armageddon.. Another battle in the Bible, using a metaphoric name for a war known as Gog and Magog. This war is commandeered by a entity named Gog. Gog is the ruler of Magog and aligns itself with other nations to invade a nation, probably Israel. The location of Magog mentioned in the bible states it is the land area north and northwest of Israel.

ARE THE NUMBERS 7 AND 12 GOD'S NUMBERS?

The 7  Days of Creation-------------------------------------The 12 Tribes of Israel
The 7 color spectrum in the rainbow-------------------------The 12 Hours of the day-night ( 24 hours.)
The 7 Continents of the world-------------------------------The 12 Apostles
The 7 days of the week--------------------------------------The 12 months of the year.
The 7 notes of the musical scale------------------------------The 12 signs of the Zodiac

I could go on forever where the number 7 and 12 an multiplication's of  both numbers have a significant meaning in our world. While doing research on the Bible I wrote down the direct generations of Adam to Jesus below;

ADAM-SETH-ENOS-CAINAN-MAHALALEEL-JARED-ENOCH-METHUSELAH-LAMECH -NOAH-SHEM-ARPHAX-SALAH-EBER-PELEG-REU-SERUG-NAHOR-TERAH-ABRAHAM-ISSAC-
JACOB-JUDAS-PHARES-ESROM-ARAM-AMINADAB-NASSON-SALMON-BOOZ-OBED-JESSE-
DAVID-SOLOMON-REHOBOAM-(ABIJAM a.k.a ABIAH ) ASA-JEHOSHAPHAT-JORAM-
OZIAS-JOATHAM-ACHAZ-EZEKIAS-MANASSES-AMON-JOSIAS-JECHONIAS-SALATHIEL-
ZOROBABEL-ABIUD-ELIAKIM-AZOR-SADOC-ACHIM-ELIUD-ELEAZAR-MATTHAN-JACOB-
JOSEPH HUSBAND OF MARY-JESUS

What is interesting in this direct descent of Adam to Jesus is there are 61 generations of  father-to-son. Thus the number 61,  when added 6+1 =7  which I myself found interesting. (  If  I added correctly. )

--------------------------------IS THERE A BIBLE CODE ?
Michael Drosnin who has been a investigative reporter with The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post was the author of the book, "The Bible Code".  Michael Drosnin states with certainty that there is a code in the Bible, that in a few dramatic cases exactly foretold the assassinations of Anwar Sadat, John & Robert Kennedy, Israel Prime Minister Yizthak Rabin and other events as The Gulf War and the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. Drosnin used two different computer programs, both written by a Israeli mathematician. The code was discovered by Dr. Eliya Rips, one of the world's leading experts in group theory, a field of mathematics that underlies quantum physics.  The code only exists in Hebrew, because that is the original language that the Bible was written in. Rips stated the first hint of the code was founded 50 years earlier by a Czechoslovakia rabbi named Weissmanndel. H.M.D.  Rabbi Weissmanndel noticed that if he skipped 50 letters, then skipped another 50 letters, the word Torah was spelled out at the beginning of the Book Genesis, and again spelled out in the Book of Exodus, the Book of Numbers, and the Book of Deuteronomy. The word Torah means "Law" as in the law or word of God. In conclusion, if their is or isn't a code hidden the Old Testament, this theory has achieved one thing. Many people have began reading the Bible searching for their own conclusions of this suggested code hidden within the Bibles' text.. Perhaps this possible code's intent was to achieve that very purpose.

-----------------------THE 3 TRINITIES OF EVILS
The Red Dragon    The Two Beasts   The Image of The Beast    The Great Harlot  The False Prophet
The three trinities of God, Jesus, and The Holy Ghost, also known as The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost are, in my opinion, the three main entities of the bible associated with all that is good. The three trinities of evil are referred to by many as Satan, The Beast, and The False Prophet. Both of these two groups of three are in direct opposite contrast of each other. For every thing that is Holy, there is it's equivalent to every thing that is unholy. In The Book of Revelation, there are symbolic images associated with the ultimate forms of evil, which are:

Satan ( The Red Dragon ) A war in heaven mentions a Red Dragon with 7 heads, 10 horns, 7 crowns upon his heads Rev:12: 3

A Beast that rises from the sea with 7 heads, 10 horns, 10 crowns and the name blasphemy upon his heads. Rev: 13: 1 This Beast has the same symbolic images as The Red Dragon except it has 10 crowns while The Dragon in Rev 12: 3
has 7 crowns.

A Second Beast Rises From the Sea  he has two horns like a lamb and spoke as a Dragon This second Beast execiseth all power to the first Beast.  Rev: 13:11  This symbolic image may represent The False Prophet, The False Church, A False Religion, The Ultimate form of The AntiChrist or a combination of all.

An  Image of The Beast is Made and he gave life unto This Image that it could speak. The people were to worship this Image and death came to those who did not worship The Image of The Beast. Rev 13: 15

The Great Harlot is described as a whore that sits on many waters. The Harlot was arrayed in purple and scarlet color and sits upon a scarlet colored Beast with 7 heads and 10 horns . Rev: 17: 3

A angel interprets this symbolic image of The Harlot in Rev: 17~The Harlot is a great city. (  This city is described as a city that reigneth over the kings of the earth. ) The waters are multitudes of people and nations. (  This symbolic word of waters  representing nations or people is used numerous times in the Bible. )  The 7 heads are 7 mountains  ( The 7 mountains perhaps indicates the city of  Rome. Rome actually sits on a geographic area with 7 mountains. The 7 hills may represent the 7 Continents, thus the whole land mass of the world. )  The 10 horns are 10 kings that receive power as kings one hour with the Beast. The word AntiChrist is no where to be found in The Book of Revelation. (  The Beast on which the Harlot rides has the same number count of heads and horns, but it is without crowns.  )  Numerous theories of these images and their meaning are still a mystery, but numerous theologians have drawn these conclusions. Below are a few theories:

A. The First Beast is a revived Roman Empire, which many feel is the current United States of Europe, known as The European Common Market. The ECC or The EU.

B. The Second Beast is The False Prophet, The False Religion, or The metaphoric symbol as the ultimate form of  The AntiChrist.

C.  The Beast Image  is created and then given life and the ability to speak may be a statue, a computerized or robotic machine. Some means of unknown technology or the power of illusion gives this image the ability to live and speak and those who do not worship this image are put to death.

D. The Great Harlot is a major city of the earth. This city may represent Rome, Jerusalem, New York City, or it may be a network of computers. The Internet, The World Wide Web is often referred to as a Global Community.

E.  666 known as the Mark of the Beast, the number of The Beast, the number of a man mentioned in Rev 13: 18  has mystified scholars for centuries. This Mark of The Beast has been identified over the centuries as a tattoo, a brand, a social security number, a computer chip implant. All of these theories have some valid truth to them, but 666 may simply be the ultimate identity of evil. The number 666 may simply signify man's day and man's defiance of God under Satan's power, the culmination identity of all that is wicked and unholy is the symbolic number of 666.

----------THE FINAL ANALYSIS

WHAT IS A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY ?

---60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT

Since the end of World War II, each administration has sought to develop and perfect a reliable set of executive institutions to manage national security policy. Each President has tried to avoid the problems and deficiencies of his predecessors' efforts and install a policy-making and coordination system that reflected his personal management style. The National Security Council (NSC) has been at the center of this foreign policy coordination system, but it has changed many times to conform with the needs and inclinations of each succeeding chief executive. The National Security Act of 1947 mandated a major reorganization of the foreign policy and military establishments of the U.S. Government. The act created many of the institutions that Presidents found useful when formulating and implementing foreign policy, including the National Security Council (NSC). The act also established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which grew out of World War II era Office of Strategic Services and small post war intelligence organizations. The CIA served as the primary civilian intelligence gathering organization in the government. Later, the Defense Intelligence Agency became the main military intelligence body. The President's Special Counsel, complained about "the failure of the bill to define in clear terms the sense in which the word 'intelligence' is used. For example, 'intelligence,' 'foreign intelligence,' 'intelligence relating to the national security,' 'strategic and national policy intelligence,' 'the national intelligence mission,' and 'intelligence affecting the national security,' are used indiscriminately as though they were synonymous."  The failure to distinguish between 'intelligence' and 'foreign intelligence'" would "lead to the suspicion that the 'National Intelligence Authority' and the 'Central Intelligence Agency' and The FBI will attempt to aquire control, with the powers granted to them.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff plan clearly envisaged a Presidential directive; the McCormack plan appeared to do so; and when the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy reached agreement in January 1946, they also recommended action by Presidential directive. Secretary of State Byrnes apparently believed that the Reorganization Act of 1945 gave the President the authority he required and needed for the necessary authority and standing to develop, support, coordinate and direct an adequate Federal intelligence program. Ever cautious about separate legislation on intelligence, the White House drafted the armed forces unification bill included the establishment of a Central Intelligence Agency as one of its provisions. The White House continued to fear that a Central Intelligence Agency might prove controversial in the Congress and resisted efforts to expand the scope of the bill, hoping to keep the intelligence provisions as inconspicuous as possible and preferring that more detailed enabling legislation be submitted to Congress at a later date. The National Security Act of 1947 entered into force on September 19, 1947, and the Central Intelligence Agency came into being as a statutory body the next day. In creating the National Security Council, the National Security Act of 1947 provided the President with an invaluable forum for the consideration and coordination of domestic, foreign, and military policies related to America's security. In 1997, President Clinton of the United States of America,  proclaim September 14 through September 20, 1997, as a time to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the National Security Act of 1947.

The National Security Act of 1947

President Bush brought his own considerable foreign policy experience to his leadership of the National Security Council, and restored collegial relations among department heads. He reorganized the NSC organization to include a Principals Committee, Deputies Committee, and eight Policy Coordinating Committees. The NSC played an effective role during such major developments as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, and the deployment of American troops in Iraq and Panama. The Clinton administration continued to emphasize a collegial approach within the NSC on national security matters. The NSC membership was expanded to include the Secretary of the Treasury, the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, the newly-created Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (who was also head of a newly-created National Economic Council or NEC, parallel to the NSC), the President's Chief of Staff, and the President's National Security Adviser. For 50 years, 10 Presidents have sought to use the National Security Council system to integrate foreign and defense policies in order to preserve the nation's security and advance its interests abroad. Recurrent structural modifications over the years have reflected Presidential management style, changing requirements, and personal relationships. The National Security Council was created by Public Law 80(253, approved July 26, 1947, as part of a general reorganization of the U.S. national security apparatus. Proponents of the reform realized that no institutional means for the coordination of foreign and defense policy existed, and that the informal management techniques employed by President Roosevelt during the war and President Truman after the war were not suitable for the long haul. The State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) had been established in 1944 at the Assistant Secretary-level, and by 1945 the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy began holding weekly meetings. President Roosevelt had tended to trust White House aides like Harry Hopkins and Admiral William D. Leahy to carry on necessary day-to-day coordination. President Truman for a time relied upon Special White House Counsel Clark Clifford to provide the Hopkins(Leahy type of personal coordination. Clifford, who was dismayed by the disorder among agencies taking major post-war policy-making decisions, was a key figure in establishing the National Security Council to give institutional stability to national security policy-making. The National Security Act of 1947 created the National Security Council under the chairmanship of the President, with only the following seven officials as permanent members: the President, the Secretaries of State, Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. The President could designate "from time to time" the Secretaries of other executive departments and the Chairmen of the Munitions Board and the Research and Development Board to attend meetings. While the new Central Intelligence Agency was to report to the NSC, the Director of Central Intelligence was not a member, although he attended meetings as an observer and resident adviser. The function of the NSC as outlined in the 1947 act was to advise the President on integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security and to facilitate interagency cooperation. At the President's direction, the NSC could also assess and appraise risks to U.S. national security, consider policies, and then report or make recommendations to the President. The act created a small permanent staff headed by a civilian Executive Secretary appointed by the President. In neither the National Security Act of 1947 nor subsequent amendments was there provision for the position of National Security Adviser. Initially, the permanent NSC staff had no substantive role in the formulation, let alone implementation, of national security policies.

The NSC did, however, serve other purposes beyond its stated goal of advising on policy formulation. For Forrestal and the Navy, who were opposed to a strongly unified Department of Defense, it provided top level coordination of the three armed services without integration or unification. For Defense officials, it ensured a continuing military voice in formulation of related foreign and domestic policies during peacetime. For those, especially in Congress, who doubted Truman had adequate experience in foreign affairs or even doubted his abilities in general, theNSC offered the hope of evolving into a collegial policy making body to reinforce the President. Truman was clearly sensitive to this implied criticism and jealous of his prerogatives as Chief Executive. He did not like the idea of Congress legislating who could advise him on national security. Truman, therefore, kept the NSC at arm's length during its first 3 years. He attended the first session of the NSC on September 26, 1947, and then stayed away from all but 10 of the next 55 meetings. Truman continued to rely on a succession of personal White House advisers (George M. Elsey, Rear Admiral Robert Dennison, and W. Averell Harriman(to coordinate for him major foreign policy matters. Initially, Truman named the Secretary of State as the ranking member of the Council in his absence and expected the Department of State to play the major role in formulating policy recommendations. This decision disappointed Defense officials who hoped that the Secretary of Defense would be allowed to preside in the President's absence and had offered to locate the NSC staff in the Pentagon. Clifford managed to resist Secretary of Defense Forrestal's efforts to gain control of the NSC. Procedures established during the Truman administration set the basic bureaucratic pattern which lasted through the Eisenhower administration: draft NSC papers written primarily by State's Policy Planning Staff, discussion at the NSC meeting, approval by the President resulting in an NSC Action, and dissemination to relevant parts of the bureaucracy. During its initial years, the NSC suffered from haphazard staffing and irregular meetings and was sometimes bypassed entirely. The executive secretaries of the Council had no real authority or influence beyond managing the staff process. In 1949, the NSC was reorganized. Truman directed the Secretary of the Treasury to attend all meetings and Congress amended the National Security Act of 1947 to eliminate the three service secretaries from Council membership and add the Vice President(who assumed second rank from the Secretary of State(and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who became permanent advisers to the Council. NSC standing committees were created to deal with sensitive issues such as internal security. The NSC staff consisted of three groups: the Executive Secretary and his staff who managed the paper flow; a staff, made up of personnel on detail, whose role was to develop studies and policy recommendations (headed by the Coordinator from the Department of State); and the Consultants to the Executive Secretary who acted as chief policy and operational planners for each department or agency represented on the NSC. Even Truman's overhaul of the machinery in 1949 did not create a National Security Council that fulfilled the role originally envisioned. Truman was partly to blame. He insisted on going outside NSC channels for national security advice, relying directly on his Secretaries of State and Defense, and increasingly on the Bureau of the Budget. Attendance at NSC meetings gradually increased to a point where the Council became too large for free discussion and degenerated into a bureaucratic battleground of departmental rivalries. NSC lines of authority, never clear, became increasingly blurred. By not attending most NSC meetings, Truman ensured that Council members would seek him out to press their own viewpoints privately.

In 1949, events reinforced the need for better coordination of national security policy: NATO was formed, military assistance for Europe was begun, the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb, and the Communists gained control in China. The Department of State seized the opportunity to review U.S. strategic policy and military programs, overcoming opposition from Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and his allies in the Bureau of the Budget. Initially sidestepping formal NSC channels, State won approval of an ad hoc interdepartmental committee under its Policy Planning head, Paul Nitze. Their report, NSC 68, was submitted directly to Truman in February 1950, who sent it to the NSC for a cost analysis. An NSC committee authorized to consider costs and broader implications of NSC 68 began its work, but before it could be completed the Korean war broke out. The war in Korea dramatically changed the functioning of the NSC under Truman. Thereafter the Council met every Thursday and the President attended all but 7 of its 71 remaining meetings. Truman limited attendance to statutory members plus the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the JCS, the Director of Central Intelligence, two special advisers (Averell Harriman and Sidney Souers), and the NSC Executive Secretary.

The Secretariat was retained, but the Staff and the Consultants were eliminated in favor of a Senior Staff, Assistant Secretary level or higher(supported by Staff Assistants. Truman reiterated that the NSC was to be the channel for all important national security recommendations. During the first year of the Korean war, the NSC came as close as it ever did under Truman to fulfilling that role. Nonetheless, Truman still looked outside the formal NSC mechanism for advice and recommendations, relying on the NSC as much for staffing and coordination of interdepartmental views as for primary recommendations.
Truman made additional structural changes in the NSC in late 1950 and in 1951. He directed the head of the newly-created Office of Defense Mobilization to attend NSC meetings and then made him a member of the Senior Staff. With the Mutual Security Act of 1951, the newly-created Director for Mutual Security (Harriman) became a statutory member with the right to appoint a Senior Staff member. The Bureau of the Budget sent a representative to some Senior Staff meetings. In 1951, the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), made up of the deputies at State and Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence, was created to coordinate the response to Soviet unconventional Cold War tactics. The PSB worked closely with the NSC in managing America's covert psychological counterattack. In his retirement President Truman denied any responsibility for "cloak and dagger operations" but it was during his Presidency that covert intelligence operations in support of foreign policy objectives was undertaken on an ever broadening scale. The NSC's first action (NSC 1/1) authorized covert action in the Italian elections. The formal institutionalization of covert actions was established as NSC 4 in December 1947, and NSC 10/2 of June 1948. During Truman's last year, the Council and the Senior Staff met less frequently and NSC activity abated. Much interdepartmental planning on the NSC books was never completed by the end of the Truman administration. During this period, the NSC reflected Truman's sense of frustration as a lame-duck President caught in a stalemated war.

Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1961

President Eisenhower created the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) to follow up on all NSC decisions. The OCB met regularly on Wednesday afternoons at the Department of State, and was composed of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Directors of CIA, USIA, and ICA, and the Special Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs and Security Operations Coordination. The OCB was the coordinating and implementing arm of the NSC for all aspects of the implementation of national security policy.NSC action papers were assigned to a team from the OCB for follow-up. More than 40 interagency working groups were established with experts for various countries and subjects. This 24 person staff of the OCB supported these working groups in which officials from various agencies met each other for the first time. The President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, a post held under Eisenhower by Cutler, Dillon Anderson, William H. Jackson, and Gordon Gray, oversaw the flow of recommendations and decisions up and down the policy hill, and functioned in Council meetings to brief the Council and summarize the sense of discussion. The Special Assistant was an essential facilitator of the decision making system, but, unlike the National Security Adviser created under Kennedy, had no substantive role in the process.The NSC staff managed by the Special Assistant grew during the Eisenhower years, but again had no independent role in the policy process. President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations. President Eisenhower also created the position of staff secretary with the responsibility to screen all foreign policy and military documents coming to the President. While Colonel Andrew Goodpaster held this position, he tended to eclipse the Special Assistant for National Security. The strength of the NSC system under Eisenhower was that it provided for regular, fully-staffed, interagency review of major foreign and national security issues, culminating in discussion and decision at the highest level of government. The resulting Presidentially approved NSC papers provided policy guidance at every level of implementation. Eisenhower felt that the regular policy discussions kept his principal advisers fully informed, in step with one another, and prepared to react knowledgeably in the event of crisis. His commitment to the system was such that he chaired every Council meeting he could attend (329 of a total of 366). The NSC meetings, including prior briefings and subsequent review of NSC Actions, constituted the largest single item on his weekly agenda. Secretary of State Dulles, on the other hand, had reservations about the NSC system. He was the strongest personality in the Eisenhower Cabinet and jealously guarded his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy. He had constant, direct access to the President and did not feel that some of the most sensitive issues should be discussed in groups as large as were involved in most NSC meetings. He drew a sharp line between the NSC policy review process and the day-to-day operations of foreign policy, which he maintained were the province of the Department of State. Dulles and his deputies were not comfortable with the scope the NSC review system gave to Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, another strong figure in the Cabinet, to intrude budgetary limitations into policy considerations. And Dulles successfully resisted a proposal to substitute the Vice President for the Under Secretary of State as chairman of the OCB, arguing that such a change would impinge on his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy. Critics of the Eisenhower NSC system have argued that it was inflexible, overstaffed, unable to anticipate and react to immediate crises, and weighed down by committees reporting in great detail on long checklists of minor policy concerns. The most thorough critique of the system emerged from the hearings conducted in 1960(1961 by the Senate Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, known as the Jackson Subcommittee for its chairman, Senator Henry Jackson. Cutler and NSC Executive Secretary James Lay testified in support of the effectiveness of the system, but their testimony was offset by that of former Truman administration officials such as George Kennan, Paul Nitze, and Robert Lovett. They argued that foreign policy was being made by a passive President influenced by a National Security Council rendered virtually useless by ponderous, bureaucratic machinery. Basically, they argued, the NSC was a huge committee, and suffered from all the weaknesses of committees. Composed of representatives of many agencies, its members were not free to adopt the broad, statesmanlike attitude desired by the President, but, rather, were ambassadors of their own departments, clinging to departmental rather than national views. To make matters worse, critics added, the NSC system by its very nature was restricted to continuing and developing already established policies and was incapable of originating new ideas or major innovations. The critics suggested replacement of the formal, "over-institutionalized" NSC structure with a smaller, less formal NSC which would offer the President a clear choice of alternatives on a limited number of major problems. Eisenhower was certainly not a passive President, dominated on foreign policy and national security issues by his Secretary of State. In fact, Eisenhower was actively in command of his administration, and the NSC system met his instincts and requirements. There is substance in the criticism that the Eisenhower NSC became to some extent the prisoner of a rigidly bureaucratic process, but the criticism misses the point that Eisenhower and Dulles did not attempt to manage fast-breaking crises or day-to-day foreign policy through the NSC apparatus. An examination of several of the major foreign policy problems that confronted the Eisenhower administration reveals that the NSC system was used to manage some and was virtually bypassed in others. When the question involved a policy debate between departments with strongly-held, contending positions, as it did in the case of the debate between the Departments of State and Defense in 1956(1957 over whether to introduce a more modern generation of weapons into Korea, the NSC process focused debate and produced an agreed decision after discussion of three draft policy papers. Crisis situations, however, such as the Suez crisis of 1956, the off shore island crises of 1955 and 1958, and the Lebanon crisis of 1958, were typically managed through telephone conversations between Eisenhower, Dulles, and other principal advisers, and through small meetings with the President in the White House, normally involving Dulles and other concerned advisers. Eisenhower sometimes used trusted NSC staffers to serve as an intermediary to gain information outside the chain of command as he did with Colonel Goodpaster during the Quemoy crisis in 1955. There was great similarity between this process of crisis management and that adopted by subsequent Presidents, such as Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, except for the fact that the ad hoc meetings in the Eisenhower White House did not involve a National Security Adviser as a substantive participant. And in the event that aspects of crisis management depended on contact with the critical man-on-the-spot, as it did in 1958 when Deputy Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy was dispatched to Lebanon to attempt to defuse the crisis, his instructions came from the Department of State and he reported to the Secretary of State rather than directly to the White House, as became the practice during the height of the Vietnam conflict. When Eisenhower briefed President elect Kennedy on the NSC system, and when Gray briefed his successor McGeorge Bundy, they emphasized the importance of the NSC machinery in the management of foreign policy and national security affairs. They might have been more persuasive had they pointed to the fact that the NSC system was essentially limited to policy review and was not used to manage crises or day to day foreign policy.

Kennedy Administration, 1961-1963

The Department of State's apparent failure effectively to coordinate the administration's response to the Bay of Pigs crisis in early 1961 led to a series of measures aimed at providing the President with better independent advice from the government. It also sparked the NSC process to reenter the arena of monitoring the implementation of policy. The most important step in this direction was the establishment of the Situation Room in the White House in 1962. The Sit Room, located next to Bundy's office in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, was directly linked to all the communication channels of the State Department and the Department of Defense, as well as to some of the channels of the CIA. The Sit Room allowed the President and his foreign affairs advisers to keep abreast of all the cable traffic from overseas posts. More than anything else, the Sit Room allowed Bundy and his NSC staff to expand their involvement in the international activities of foreign affairs community and become, in essence, "a little State Department. As National Security Adviser, Bundy divided his work with his Deputy, Walt Rostow (and later Carl Kaysen). While Bundy dealt with the immediate day-to-day crises and the range of European affairs, Rostow focused upon long-term planning with a particular concentration on Latin American affairs. Kaysen focused upon foreign trade and economic affairs matters that became increasingly important in the latter part of the Kennedy Presidency. In addition to Bundy and the NSC staff, President Kennedy reached out still further for foreign affairs advice. Early in 1961 the President appointed General Maxwell Taylor to serve as his military representative and provide liaison with the government agencies and defense and intelligence establishments on military-political issues confronting the administration.Taylor in effect took up the role filled by Admiral Leahy in the Roosevelt White House. General Taylor advised the President on military matters, intelligence, and Cold War planning and paid special attention to the continuing Berlin crisis and growing difficulties in Indochina. The Taylor(Rostow mission to Indochina at the end of 1961 and the resulting report led to military decisions on aid to South Vietnam and the entry of the United States into the Vietnamese quagmire. Taylor had a very personal connection with the President and was not replaced in 1962 when he left. But in 1962 Kennedy appointed former State Department Under Secretary Chester Bowles to serve as his Special Adviser on Foreign Affairs. Bowles had not survived conflicts with Secretary of State Rusk and his appointment to the White House was partly compensatory. His brief was seemingly intended to be the development of policy toward the Third World, but after a year he left Washington to become Ambassador to India.

The NSC continued to meet during the Kennedy Presidency, but far less frequently than had been the case under his predecessor. It met 15 times during the first 6 months of 1961, then averaged one meeting a month for the rest of his Presidency, reaching a total of 49 meetings. "Much that used to flow routinely to the weekly meetings of the Council is now settled in other ways, Bundy reported in September 1961. Some of the NSC activities were taken up by a smaller, more select body called the Standing Group. This small NSC coordinating panel was chaired by the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and included the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Bundy. It considered a wide range of foreign affairs issues at 14 meetings the last of which was in August 1962. The Standing Group resumed in April 1963 with Bundy as its chairman and with the added membership of the Attorney General, the Chairman of the JCS, the Under Secretary of the Treasury, the Director of USIA, and Administrator of AID. It also met 14 times during the remainder of the Kennedy Presidency. The Kennedy administration abandoned the Eisenhower-era efforts at long-range planning in favor of a heavy reliance upon ad hoc interagency working groups functioning in a "crisis management" atmosphere. The leadership in these special groups did not automatically fall to the State Department. Trusted officials from other agencies or outside the foreign affairs community often took the lead. There were special groups on counter-insurgency (chaired by General Taylor), on Vietnam, and the Berlin crisis, the latter presided over by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExCom) was established in the autumn of 1962 to manage the emerging Cuban Missile Crisis. A much smaller group than the NSC, it consisted of the President as chairman, the Vice President, the Secretaries of State, Defense, and the Treasury, the Attorney General (the President's brother), the Director of Central Intelligence, and Chairman of the JCS as well as National Security Adviser Bundy. After the missile crisis was successful weathered, the ExCom continued to meet with Cuba as its primary subject but with discussions of other matters during its 42 meetings between October 1962 and March 1963. U.S. covert actions and paramilitary activity during the Kennedy administration were administered generally outside the NSC system. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco in early 1961, the President reconstituted the 5412 Committee that monitored covert actions as the Special Group. Chaired by National Security Adviser Bundy, the new body included the Director of Central Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Under Secretaries from the State and Defense Departments. This body reviewed and endorsed a number of covert action projects in the first 2 years of the Kennedy Presidency. President Kennedy also added to the responsibilities of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), originally created by President Eisenhower in 1956. Kennedy met with the Board 12 times and conferred frequently with individual members. The Board reviewed a wide range of intelligence matters and made some 120 recommendations to the President. In effect, Bundy had the first and last words on policy. He worked in close proximity to the President who valued highly his competence and opinions; he served on most major ad hoc committees and the Executive Committee, and he attended the occasional formal meetings of the National Security Council. It is possible to overemphasize Bundy's substantive skewing of Presidential policy formulation. Most observers credited him with being scrupulously fair in presenting opinions of the agencies to the President, even when they conflicted with his own. He offered his views to Kennedy only when specifically asked. Bundy's influence was oblique rather than direct. Essentially, he served an administrative function and did not seek to advance a personal overview of American security and foreign policy. The most significant aspect of Bundy's tenure as Kennedy's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs was that he headed an aggressive Presidential staff that believed its job was to protect the President's interests, provide him with independent advice, and lead a recalcitrant bureaucracy toward his policies. In addition, Bundy was an effective channel to the President for his activist staff.

Johnson Administration, 1963-1969

The small, informal, Tuesday luncheon meetings were much more to Johnson's liking than formal NSC meetings and quickly gained a prominent place in the decision-making process. Embracing the Secretaries of State and Defense and the National Security Adviser, the Tuesday Lunch Group met 27 times between February and September 1964. In all Johnson convened some 160 Tuesday luncheons during his Presidency, and the group was gradually expanded to include his press secretary, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The participants uniformly praised the "strong collegial sense" at the meetings and the opportunity for "extraordinary candor," but subordinates often complained that the secrecy and informality that encouraged candor also made it hard for them to prepare their superiors properly for the meetings and implement the decisions that were reached. Upon succeeding Bundy as National Security Adviser in 1966, Rostow came to grips with the issue of how to make effective use of the formal Council, which by then was virtually moribund. He advised Johnson neither to pretend to use the Council meetings for making major decisions nor to focus on day-to-day operations. Instead he proposed regular, "anticipatory-type" sessions devoted, as Johnson explained at the first of the new series, to "discussion of complex problems requiring careful exploration before they were to come to him for decision." Clearly intended to complement rather than challenge the primary advisory roles of the Tuesday luncheons and the National Security Adviser and his staff, NSC meetings for the balance of the administration considered a broad range of anticipated rather than pressing issues and gave little attention to Vietnam. As one NSC staff member put it, Council members now convened for "reflective and educational discussions, rather than decision-making meetings."

When not relying for advice and support on the Tuesday Lunch Group and the National Security Adviser and his small staff, Johnson turned to a variety of ad hoc groups and trusted friends inside and outside the government. Following the outbreak of the Six Day War, for example, he established an NSC Special Committee, modeled on the NSC Executive Committee that met during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to coordinate U.S. policy in the Middle East for several weeks. But none of these arrangements substituted fully for the functions that the NSC's Planning Board and the Operations Coordinating Board provided under Eisenhower. In March 1966 the Johnson White House sought to remedy this situation through issuance of NSAM 341, the brainchild of General Maxwell Taylor. NSAM 341 assigned the Secretary of State official responsibility for the overall direction, coordination, and supervision of interdepartmental activities overseas and created a mechanism to carry out the responsibility consisting of the Senior Interdepartmental Group (SIG), chaired by the Under Secretary of State, and several Interdepartmental Regional Groups (IRGs) beneath it, each chaired by an Assistant Secretary of State.But following a fast-paced start, the SIG entered a period of quiescence that saw it meet only three times from late July 1966 to mid-July 1967, reflecting in part Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach's initial hesitancy to exploit its possibilities upon taking office in October 1966. The SIG gained new vitality in mid-1967, however, and together with the more active IRGs played a complementary and supporting role to the Secretary of State and the NSC, especially in easing the burdens of the national security adviser and his staff with respect to interagency coordination and follow-up. The innovations of a Presidential administration often do not survive its close, reflecting as they do the distinctive views and management style of the President and his immediate advisers. The close of the Johnson administration brought an end to several of the adaptations it had made to manage foreign policy: Tuesday luncheons, anticipatory-type NSC meetings, and the SIG/IRG structure.

Nixon Administration, 1969-1974

Nixon also increasingly bypassed the Department of State to supervise personally sensitive negotiations in order to avoid what he and President Nixon agreed were likely bureaucratic disputes and inertia. The President made clear that he wanted the National Security Adviser to conduct important matters directly out of his office. Nearly every foreign ambassador called upon Kissinger at least once. With Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, Kissinger maintained a special relationship that completely bypassed the Department of State and Secretary Rogers. Dobrynin was told by Kissinger to deal with the Secretary of State only on a limited range of less vital matters. Kissinger also maintained similar relationships with Chinese leader Chou En-lai and Israeli Ambassador Rabin.
In carrying on his activist, operational undertakings, Kissinger relied upon special controlled communications. CIA communications were used for his "back channel" messages so that the Department of State was kept in the dark. He also used the White House Communication Agency including the use of special aircraft as communication centers. With his negotiations in Paris in 1971 regarding Vietnam, with Israelis and Arabs after 1973, and with the Soviet Union in advance of summit meetings, Kissinger was a traveling negotiator, and the NSC was a system on the move. Jeanne Davis, the NSC Executive Secretary, also facilitated the handling of sensitive correspondence by propelling the NSC staff into the computer age with a document tracking system unheard of by Kissinger's predecessors. The waning of Nixon's power during the Watergate affair further increased Kissinger's influence. On September 22, 1973, Kissinger became Secretary of State, replacing Rogers. For the first time, one individual held simultaneously the positions of National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.Under these unique circumstances, Kissinger strengthened his institutional base as the administration's principal foreign policy adviser. Kissinger later admitted, however, that the union of the two positions did not work. Department of State representatives were his subordinates while he wore his Secretary of State hat. When he chaired a meeting, they had to represent his point of view or else all interdepartmental matters would be outside his control. Kissinger indicated he was in an inherently absurd position of either pushing his Department's views as chairman or dissociating himself from his subordinates.

Ford Administration, 1974-1977

Carter Administration, 1977-1981

The actual operation of the NSC under Carter was less structured than under previous Presidents. The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations.Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the NSC Adviser, and the chief domestic adviser. The President counted on the free flow of ideas, unencumbered by a formal setting, to increase the chances of an informed decision. Critics have contended that the Carter NSC staff was deficient in certain respects. The NSC's emphasis on providing advice was effected at the expense of some of its other functions, particularly its responsibility to monitor implementation of the President's policies. Also, the President's and some of his principals' commitment to arms control skewed the formation and execution of a broad range of foreign policy options on national security questions. Without any clearly-developed foreign policy principles beyond a commitment to arms control, he often changed his mind, depending on the advice he was receiving at the time.
Carter's preference for informality and openness increased the diversity of views he received and complicated the decision-making process. Every Friday, for example, the President breakfasted with Vice President Mondale, Secretary of State Vance, Secretary of Defense Brown, Brzezinski, and several White House advisers. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. This problem led to one of the most embarrassing episodes of the Carter administration in which the United States had to retract a UN vote involving Israel and Jerusalem.Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with Secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of careful notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions. At the outset of the administration, Brzezinski successfully persuaded Carter to make the National Security Adviser chairman of the SCC. This meant that Brzezinski was given oversight responsibility for the SALT negotiations, which became an important focus of the Carter administration's foreign policy. Brzezinski's coordination of the arms control process also gave him major input into the administration's policy toward the Soviet Union. Thus from the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezenski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.
Vance voiced his displeasure with this arrangement, which threatened to diminish the role of the Department of State on arms control. The SCC, however, functioned fairly smoothly on arms control. Following Vance's visit to Moscow in March 1977 to present new arms control proposals, which the Soviet leadership abruptly rejected, the SCC developed and refined arms control proposals for U.S. negotiators at the SALT talks in Geneva. President Carter carefully monitored the work of the SCC, which met with increasing frequency from 1977 to 1979. The President's personal commitment to SALT II ultimately overcame fundamental differences between the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of State. Brzezinski wanted to link arms control to other security issues, such as the administration's commitment to the development of the MX missile and normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China. Vance, however, did not want SALT linked to other Soviet activity. When the SALT II negotiations with the Soviet Union verged on success, an NSC working group, including a Department of State representative, formulated the subject areas for an agenda at the Vienna Summit (June 1979), at which Carter and Brezhnev signed the SALT II Treaty and discussed other bilateral and Third World issues. Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to normalize U.S.-China relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon. In other areas the NSC system did not work effectively. The reasons stemmed less from inherent institutional defects than from strong policy differences within the administration and President Carter's inability to discipline his advisers and forge a more coherent response to the crises of the last few years of his Presidency. The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 further damaged the Vance(Brzezinski relationship. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed. The Iranian revolution provided the coup de grace to the disintegrating Vance(Brzezinski relationship. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Khomeini regime. As a consequence Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. Brzezinski continued, however, to promote his views, which the President eventually accepted. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission undertaken over his objections to rescue the American hostages in March 1980 was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinki and Vance.

Reagan Administration, 1981-1989

To assist the SIG(FP, the Secretary of State set up Interagency Groups (IGs) for each geographic region, political and military affairs, and international economic affairs. The IGs, in turn, created full-time working groups. The two other SIGs followed a similar structure under the leadership of the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence. Over the next 5 years, the Reagan administration established an additional 22 SIGs and 55 IGs within the NSC system. Some committees met only once. Observers pointed out the overuse of SIGs and the increasing snarl of responsibilities that led to enterprising NSC officials like Colonel Oliver North developing their own sub-domains within the policy-making system. Zbigniew Brzezinski described the NSC as entering its "Mid Life Crisis" during the Reagan years. Clark took a very active role in coordination of policy among the agencies in such areas as intelligence and the protection of classified security information. He replaced a number of senior NSC staff members and reorganized his office to create three "clusters" to deal with political, military, and intelligence matters. Clark emerged as a major spokesman for Reagan administration foreign policy, particularly with the Congress. He publicly reaffirmed President Reagan's stated policy that the Secretary of State would be the primary "formulator and enunciator of foreign policy." At the same time, however, Clark insisted that the role of the President as the final arbiter on matters of foreign policy be kept in front of the public. He also asserted NSC staff jurisdiction over long-range policy review, formerly a Department of State function. The NSC system under Clark did not solve the coordination problems. Friction between the Department of State and the NSC continued and came to a head during the intense debates within the administration over how the United States should act in the Lebanon crisis in the spring of 1982 following the Israel invasion. The disputes resulted in Secretary Haig's resignation on June 25, 1982, and President Reagan's appointment of George P. Shultz as his new Secretary of State. In his July confirmation hearings, Shultz emphasized the primary role of the President in the formulation of policy and stressed the collegial nature of policy formulation in the Reagan administration. Shultz also referred to the delegation of authority as laid out in NSDD(2 as the source of his own responsibilities and authority. The apparent resolution of the dimensions of the Secretary of State's authority ironically coincided with ever increasing activities in the foreign affairs field. The NSC frequently disagreed with the Department of State over the management of daily U.S. foreign relations problems. One observer called the NSC a "bee hive of activity." An NSC-chaired group took over arms control responsibilities from a State-chaired group (SAC/G) and ramrodded the tough negotiating position favored by ACDA Chief Fred Ikle and Richard Perle of the Defense Department. Deputy National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane replaced Philip C. Habib as the chief U.S. Middle East negotiator in July 1983, and The National Security Adviser became directly involved in the operations of foreign policy. It led to a major change in how the NSC system worked.

In October 1983, McFarlane replaced Clark as National Security Adviser, with Admiral John Poindexter as his deputy. The new National Security Adviser had a background in both military and diplomatic affairs. Retaining the NSC structural changes established by Clark, McFarlane played a highly active role in attempting to compromise interagency disputes. He lacked the personal ties with the President that Clark enjoyed, but continued to have direct Presidential access. During his tenure,the National Security Adviser stepped back from the previous high profile in public policy enunciation, but became more involved in the direct management of key areas of foreign policy. During 1985 and 1986, the National Security Adviser and certain staff members took a particularly activist role in the formulation and execution of policy in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Middle East. It was an activism run amok in the "Iran-Contra affair" that brought the NSC to a nadir of public trust and brought upon it Congressional investigation and the threat of prison for those involved. The Iran-Contra matter resulted from NSC-led efforts to develop a policy to befriend Iran and provide arms to that nation in exchange for its resistance to the Soviet Union and, more particularly to assist in the freeing of American hostages held by Moslem extremist groups in the Middle East. National Security Adviser McFarlane and Admiral Poindexter, who succeeded him in December 1985, played major roles in these matters. The efforts to provide arms for hostages eventually became connected, through the transfer of funds made with arms sales, with the NSC staff's ardent support for the Nicaraguan "Contras" in their civil war against the left-wing government of Nicaragua. Investigations in 1987 and thereafter by a Presidential Review Board (the Tower Board), the Congress, and a Special Prosecutor examined in great detail the activities of the NSC staff, as well as the actions and responsibilities of the President, the National Security Adviser, and the heads of agencies. The Tower Board, headed by Senator John Tower and including former Senator Edmund Muskie and former National Security Adviser Scowcroft, not only reviewed the events of Iran-Contra but made a body of recommendations for the reform of the NSC. NSDD(266 of March 31, 1987, adopted the Board's major recommendations: reduction of the size of the staff, appointment of a legal counsel, removal of the Crisis Pre-Planning Group, and its replacement with Policy Review Committee. The spirit of the reforms was given more content by the new NSC leadership appointed by President Reagan in November 1987: National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and Deputy National Security Adviser Lieutenant General Colin Powell. Carlucci reformed the NSC by replacing more than half of the professional staff within 3 months. Carlucci largely withdrew the NSC from its operational roles, but in the matter of Nicaragua, NSC continued to exercise the coordination that was not forthcoming from any of the agencies. In the autumn of 1988, Carlucci was called to the Defense Department to succeed Caspar Weinberger, and for the third time among his six appointments to the position of National Security Adviser during his presidency, Reagan promoted the Deputy. General Powell directed an NSC that strived to provide balanced coordination of major foreign policy presentations for the President. Managing the Policy Review Group and the National Security Planning Group that Poindexter had so favored in preparing the NSC for discussions, Powell conducted an NSC process that was efficient but low key. There were no longer free-lancers operating out of the NSC staff. Under Powell's direction, the President and his chief advisers weathered the Persian Gulf crisis in 1987(1988, the wind-down of the Nicaraguan Contra effort, and the Reagan-Gorbachev relationship culminating in the Moscow Summit of June 1988(the smoothest ever seen by observers at the time.

Bush Administration, 1989-1992

Clinton Administration, 1993-1997

The following acts are a just a few examples of what
   determines a terrorist by the federal government

Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 Sets up joint military, police, and intelligence community tracking systems for facial recognition, voice intercept, and other technologies useful in improving border security.
Executive Order on Terrorist Financing (September 18, 2001) Blocks and prohibits financial transactions designed to support terrorist groups not yet designated by the U.S. Department of State as foreign entities that support terrorism. Executive Order Establishing Office of Homeland Security (October 8, 2001) - establishes a new federal agency called the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive-1 (October 30, 2001) - Establishes a Council of Deputies and Principles for the review of intelligence analysis reports.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive-2 (October 30, 2001) - Sets up aggressive, new immigration policies to locate, detain, prosecute, and deport suspected terrorists.

Military Order for the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism (November 13, 2001) - Reserves law enforcement, judicial, and correctional authority to the Secretary of Defense.

Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951) - The constitutional right to free speech only applies to discussion or explanation of doctrines or ideologies that urge the overthrow of the government.  Speech that advocates such overthrow or interferes with vital matters of national security is not protected.

Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957) - To qualify as an indictable enemy of the U.S., a person must take some concrete steps toward harmful action, and not simply be expressing their opinions.

Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203 (1961) - Persons who belong to enemy groups with only a supportive, passive, or inactive role are just as indictable as those who play more active roles.

Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 97-1252 (1999)  Immigrants can be deported for engaging in terrorist or political activities where evidence supporting such claims is presented in secret.

Kiareldeen v. Reno, 71 F. Supp. 2D 402, 419 (D.N.J. 1999)  Immigrants on student visas can be deported on the basis of secret evidence that supports claims they are terrorists or dangerous.

 THE CIA

By law, the CIA is specifically prohibited from collecting foreign intelligence concerning the domestic activities of US citizens. Its mission is to collect information related to foreign intelligence and foreign counterintelligence. By direction of the President in Executive Order 12333 of 1981 and in accordance with procedures issued by the Director of Central Intelligence and approved by the Attorney General, the CIA is restricted in the collection of intelligence information directed against US citizens. Collection is allowed only for an authorized intelligence purpose; for example, if there is a reason to believe that an individual is involved in espionage or international terrorist activities. The CIA's procedures require senior approval for any such collection that is allowed, and, depending on the collection technique employed, the sanction of the Attorney General and Director of Central Intelligence may be required. These restrictions on the CIA have been in effect since the 1970s.  Likewise, only the president can direct the CIA to undertake covert action, and such actions usually are recommended by the National Security Council  when the NSC judges that foreign policy objectives may not be fully realized by normal diplomatic means and when military action is deemed to be too extreme an option.  Once tasked, the Director of Central Intelligence must notify the intelligence oversight committees of the Congress.  With terrorism, the CIA works with friendly foreign governments and shares pertinent information with them.  The CIA also plays a crucial role in combating drug trafficking by providing intelligence information to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department

 The CIA is organized as follows.  The Directorate of Operations (DO) is involved in travel and the study of different cultures.  The Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) is involved with technology that is always ahead of being state of the art.   The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) is involved with analysis and writing reports.  The Directorate of Administration (DA) employs specialists as well as generalists of many different talents. Oversight on the Legislative side is conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). These two committees, along with the Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, and the Armed Services Committees, are responsible for authorizing the programs of the CIA and other intelligence agencies and overseeing their activities. The CIA also works with the Appropriations Committees.  On the Executive side, it is answerable to the National Security Council, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the Intelligence Oversight Board. The National Security Council, like the CIA, was established under the National Security Act of 1947. The NSC advises the President on domestic, foreign, and military issues that relate to national security and provides guidance, review, and direction on how the CIA gathers intelligence. The President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense are permanent members of the National Security Council; the Director of Central Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are its advisers. Members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) are men and women from the private sector who are appointed by the President on the basis of their achievements, experience, and independence.  The Intelligence Oversight Board, established in 1976, ensures intelligence collection is done properly and responsibly. Its members assist the President in guaranteeing that any highly sensitive intelligence activities are legal and in accord with presidential directives. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) is the primary adviser to the President and the National Security Council on national foreign intelligence matters. He or she is the head of the Central Intelligence Agency and of such other staff elements as are required for the discharge of his Intelligence Community responsibilities.  The various deputy director offices are described next.  The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) acts for and exercises the powers of the Director in his absence or disability.  The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Community Management (DDCI/CM) develops the budget for collection, and also overseeing