National Security Adviser

The National Security Adviser (NSA) serves as the principal adviser to the President on national security matters, supervises the staff of the National Security Council (NSC), and organizes the meetings of the NSC. The NSA prepares initial drafts of National Security Decision Directives (NSDD) for NSC consideration and monitors the implementation of national security decisions made by the President. Appointed by the President without Senate consent, the NSA is a White House aide with no statutory powers or duties and is not a member of the National Security Council.

The NSA may play several different roles in Presidential decision making. President Dwight Eisenhower used Robert Cutler, his special assistant for national security affairs, as a “custodian manager” to see that all options were being considered, especially for long-range planning. Cutler also had to ensure that the elaborate staffing method Eisenhower put in place (with 76 aides to the National Security Council) was operating smoothly.

President John F. Kennedy used Mc-George Bundy as one of his key advisers and policymakers. Bundy was less concerned with process and paperwork than with policy advocacy, especially in short-term crisis management. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson used Walt Rostow as a policy advocate for escalating the Vietnam War and as a defender of that policy before Congress.

President Richard Nixon relied on Henry Kissinger as his principal adviser in foreign policy and national security, sent him on a top secret diplomatic mission to the People's Republic of China, and entrusted him with negotiating arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. Kissinger used the NSC staff to dominate interdepartmental committees concerned with arms control negotiations with the Soviets and with defense budgeting.

President Jimmy Carter used Zbigniew Brzezinski to formulate his foreign policy goals and as a counterweight to his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, making him the first national security adviser with cabinet rank. Brzezinski presided over NSC committees dealing with intelligence, arms control, and crisis management.

During Ronald Reagan's administration, two advisers with a military background, marine colonel Robert McFarlane and navy admiral John Poindexter, took operational control of policy when they oversaw the sale of arms to Iran and the transfer of some of the profits to the Contra resistance movement in Nicaragua. Instead of developing policy proposals for the President and the NSC, the NSA and the Political-Military Affairs Directorate of the NSC developed policies and implemented them on their own.

In the aftermath of the Iran-Contra affair, President Reagan appointed Frank Carlucci and then Colin Powell as NSA. They implemented the recommendations of the Tower Commission, the panel appointed by Reagan to investigate the affair. They dissolved the Political-Military Affairs Directorate, making the NSA accountable to all members of the NSC; allowed all departments to present policy options to the President; and served as impartial custodians of the national security advisory process.

See also Commander in chief; Cuban Missile Crisis; Decision making, Presidential; National Security Council; Secretary of state

Sources

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).
• Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979)