Letter from Washington

Year-end is the season to be jolly. Alas, it is al-so, for Ronald Reagan, the season to purge. Ten months have elapsed since he became the nation’s chief executive officer. Nearly one-fourth of his first term has entered history. By any management standard, it is time to appraise his organization, to restructure, reshuffle, cut losses. Such actions will make the government ready for a fresh start in the New Year.

Of all the Executive Branch’s major entities, the prime candidate for organizational scrutiny is (and here we depart from some of our colleagues at NR) the staff of the National Security Council. Established in 1947, the NSC currently employs about seventy people, is budgeted at $4 million, and is headed by Richard V. Allen, NSC Advisor; James Nance, Allen’s deputy; and Allen Lenz, Staff Director. By statute, the NSC’s function is to coordinate policy initiatives of State, Defense, and all other agencies of the Executive Branch—domestic and foreign—insofar as they have national-security dimensions. At present, the NSC staff under Allen is suffering from grave problems of structure, of personnel, and of performance.

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Year-end is the season to be jolly. Alas, it is al-so, for Ronald Reagan, the season to purge. Ten months have elapsed since he became the nation’s chief executive officer. Nearly one-fourth of his first term has entered history. By any management standard, it is time to appraise his organization, to restructure, reshuffle, cut losses. Such actions will make the government ready for a fresh start in the New Year.

Of all the Executive Branch’s major entities, the prime candidate for organizational scrutiny is (and here we depart from some of our colleagues at NR) the staff of the National Security Council. Established in 1947, the NSC currently employs about seventy people, is budgeted at $4 million, and is headed by Richard V. Allen, NSC Advisor; James Nance, Allen’s deputy; and Allen Lenz, Staff Director. By statute, the NSC’s function is to coordinate policy initiatives of State, Defense, and all other agencies of the Executive Branch—domestic and foreign—insofar as they have national-security dimensions. At present, the NSC staff under Allen is suffering from grave problems of structure, of personnel, and of performance.