82. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Administration (Russell) to Secretary of State Byrnes0

A Departmental Order prescribing the future organization of the Office of the Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence must be issued by January 1, 1946, at which time the interim organization must terminate.

The Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence proposes the following organization:

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Personnel
(authorized by FY 1946 budget)
The Office of the Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence (immediate office of Special Assistant, executive office, programming group and special estimates staff). 67
The Office of Research and Intelligence and 7 divisions:
The Office of the Director of R and I 35
Division of American Republics Intelligence 35
Division of British Commonwealth Intelligence 17
Division of Europe, Near East and Africa Intelligence 118
Division of Far East Intelligence 117
Division of USSR Intelligence 74
Division of International and Functional Intelligence 47
Division of Map Intelligence and Cartography 105
Sub-Total for R and I 548
The Office of Intelligence Collection Dissemination consisting of 5 divisions:
Office of the Director of I C and D 0
Intelligence Reference Division } 173
Division of Intelligence Acquisition & Distribution
Division of Biographic Intelligence
Presentation Division 74
Outpost Division (4 in U.S./70 overseas) 74
Sub-Total for I C and D 321
TOTAL 936

The organization proposed by the Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence for his immediate office and for the Office of Intelligence Collection and Dissemination is generally acceptable to all Offices of the Department.

An irreconcilable difference of opinion exists with respect to the organization of the Office of Research and Intelligence with its five geographic divisions.

The position of the geographic Offices as stated by both Mr. Dunn and Mr. Braden and shared by their subordinates is that the geographic intelligence divisions of the Office of Research and Intelligence should be integrated into the geographic and functional Offices. Their view is:

“Research activities in the Department of State, except for a relatively small general research group, must be tied organizationally with operations in order to be of real value. The work of nearly one thousand persons now proposed for research and intelligence work of the Department can be made useful, and barren efforts avoided, if a good part of the personnel is integrated closely with the operating offices of the Department.

“Moreover, if the research personnel is retained in a central organization, a difficulty more serious than wasted talent is likely to result. To retain able research men, they must be given a voice in recommending policy. Those now being brought into the Department should be given such a voice. But the policy recommendations of a research unit which is not organizationally integrated with operations are very likely to be theoretical judgments with little basis in reality. Policy, to be sound, must be based on the closest contact between day-to-day operations and good basic research.

“It will hardly be argued that policy recommendations from two points of view, operations and research, would be useful to the executive offices of the Department in making their policy decisions. Not only do [Page 205] the executive offices have no time to devote to selection, but more important, recommendations based either on operations or research exclusively are bad, and two bad policy recommendations are not useful material from which to make a good selection. What is needed is a linking of operations and research in the closest feasible manner. We are convinced, through experience and judgment, that this can never be done as long as the two branches are organizationally separate.”1

The economic Offices, although sharing in part the views of the geographic Offices, suggest that the proposed organization of the Office of Research and Intelligence with its geographic intelligence divisions be temporarily approved subject to a future review of the basic difference between the geographic Offices and the advocates of the highly centralized organization.

The position of the Special Assistant for Research and Intelligence may be summarized as follows:

“The intelligence organization should work as one central block. There should be no thought of breaking it down into geographical and functional units and distributing these among parallel operating units in the Department. The chief argument against such a fragmentation of forces is that maintenance of present research standards would be difficult if not impossible. Today the major part of the staff in question has had some four and one-half years of common experience; the work of one unit has been continuously compared to that of others; recognized standards of performance have emerged with standard editing and styling practices. Above all, the stimulus and cross-fertilization of minds working on a variety of problems has been of general benefit and has broadened and deepened the treatment of subject matter all around. With a destruction of staff unity these standards and practices would be hard to reestablish and the loss of them would be irreparable. The centralization of intelligence research in offices which have the entire responsibility for the research and intelligence field, and which have no responsibility for operating decisions, makes it possible to attain an independence and integrity of judgment which would not be possible if research were the responsibility of the operating offices. Research subordinated to offices whose primary responsibility is operating decisions would inevitably tend to reflect policy views.”2

In addition, the Special Assistant stated that Judge Patterson will accept this Department’s proposal for a unified intelligence authority only on the condition that the State Department establish an integrated and independent departmental intelligence organization. The Special [Page 206] Assistant believes that if the proposal of Mr. Dunn and Mr. Braden is adopted, the Department of State will not have an integrated and independent intelligence service which will meet Judge Patterson’s demand.

There are four alternative solutions to the controversy:

(1)
The organization proposed by the Special Assistant may be adopted.
(2)
The organization proposed by the Special Assistant may be established for a period of three months, at the end of which period the geographic and functional intelligence divisions of the Office of Research and Intelligence shall be transferred to the geographic and functional offices of the Department.
(3)
The organization proposed by the Special Assistant may be adopted temporarily upon the express understanding that a final decision on the ultimate location of the Office of Research and Intelligence will be made on or before March 31, 1946.
(4)
The proposed Office of Research and Intelligence may be transferred immediately to the geographic and functional Offices.

The arguments in favor of alternatives 2 and 3 are that:

a)
The changes and moves in the physical location of Offices necessary for effective integration of the geographic and functional intelligence divisions of the Office of Research and Intelligence with the geographic and functional Offices can not be accomplished in less than three months, and
b)
The suggested delay of three months would enable the Special Assistant to recruit, train and organize research personnel so that the geographic and functional Offices would receive trained intelligence staffs with common standards and techniques.

Personally, I recommend the approval of alternative 2 (i.e., the organization proposed by the Special Assistant will be established for a period of three months, at the end of which period the geographic and functional intelligence divisions of the Office of Research and Intelligence shall be transferred to the geographic and functional Offices of the Department).

I believe that research at the geographic level must be under the immediate direction of those who are to use it. In my judgment, the divorce of research from the policy action taken after the evaluation of information will lead inevitably to wasteful duplication and to competing evaluations of information which will breed confusion and disorganize the operations of the Department. If this reasoning be sound it would be unwise to adopt an improper departmental organization in order to secure Judge Patterson’s approval of the Department’s proposal for a united intelligence authority. I believe that the Special Assistant will continue to have under my proposal (alternative 2) a sufficient central intelligence organization to meet Judge Patterson’s stipulations.

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The immediate integration of the proposed Office of Research and Intelligence into the geographic and functional Offices as required under alternative 4 would be impractical because of the lack of office space in the State Department building which would be required immediately. It would also deny the Special Assistant the reasonable opportunity to recruit and train the intelligence personnel along the line of uniform standards of performance.

Whatever alternative may be approved, the divisions of the Office of Research and Intelligence should be changed to conform to the geographic pattern established for the other Offices of the Department. No justification can possibly exist for different geographic breakdowns. It would place the Department in a ridiculously inconsistent position to approve a geographic division for a new Office of the Department wholly different from that established and approved for the traditional Offices of the Department.3

The Department order to implement alternative 2 is attached.4

D.R.
  1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research: Lot 58 D 776, Birth of the Intelligence Organization in the Department of State. No classification marking. Also sent to Under Secretary Acheson.
  2. The document from which this quotation is taken has not been identified.
  3. McCormack criticized this quotation as an inadequate statement of his views in Document 83.
  4. See also the endorsements of Russell’s position by Assistant Secretaries Braden and Dunn in memoranda to Secretary Byrnes, both December 31. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research: Lot 58 D 776, Birth of the Intelligence Organization in the Department of State) Both are in the Supplement.
  5. Not found.