United States National Security Council

The United States National Security Council is a group of senior-level officials whose function is to advise the president of the United States on matters of national security and foreign policy. The council was created during the presidency of Harry Truman in the years after World War II (1939–1945) and has been refined several times by subsequent administrations. Members of the council consist of the president, vice president, and select members of the cabinet. These typically include the secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of the treasury, secretary of energy, and other cabinet officials appointed at the discretion of the president. The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serves as military adviser to the council and the director of national intelligence serves as intelligence adviser. Regular attendees of National Security Council meetings also include the national security adviser, White House chief of staff, attorney general, and other officials of the president’s choosing.

Background

Soon after the United States was born, the Founding Fathers gave the president the option of relying on a group of advisers to help him make important leadership decisions. Article II of the US Constitution allowed the president to “require the opinion, in writing,” of senior officials in the executive branch of the government. George Washington interpreted this statute as giving him the authority to organize a council of high-level advisers called the cabinet. Washington’s cabinet consisted of the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the attorney general. Although Washington established the precedent of a presidential cabinet, each president who held the office had the leeway of relying on his advisers as much or as little as he pleased. Washington was known to hold regular meetings with his cabinet and sought their counsel, while Abraham Lincoln famously dismissed advice from his secretary of state to make decisions on his own.

During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt was known for maintaining an informal approach to implementing foreign policy decisions. He relied on White House aides and military advisers to coordinate many of the day-to-day matters concerning those policies. After Roosevelt’s death in 1945, his successor, Harry Truman, employed a similar hands-off style. The seemingly disordered nature of the decision-making process concerned the secretary of state, secretaries of war and the navy, and members of Congress. They felt a permanent advisory council was needed to ensure the president received the proper intelligence information and was able to better coordinate the decision-making process.

Overview

On July 26, 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which officially created the National Security Council (NSC). In addition to the president, the council’s original core members were the secretary of state, secretary of defense, the secretary of the army, the secretary of the navy, the secretary of the air force, and the chairman of the national security resources board. The president had the authority to designate other members of the council as he saw fit. The head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—a civilian-run intelligence organization also created by the National Security Act of 1947—was to report directly to the council; the position was not yet a permanent advisory position.

According to the wording of the act, the council’s mission was to advise the president on “domestic, foreign and military policies relating to the national security.” The council had the authority to evaluate potential risks to the national security of the United States, discuss defense and foreign policy responses, and then make recommendations to the president. The act also created the position of executive secretary of the council whose initial responsibilities were to oversee a small staff. The position of the executive secretary was to be appointed by the president.

In 1949, the council was reorganized and moved under the control of the Executive Office of the President. The individual departments of the army, navy, and air force were done away with as separate cabinet positions and were consolidated under the secretary of defense. The vice president and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were added to the council as permanent members. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer in the United States and the nation’s chief military adviser. Committees within the council were created to discuss sensitive information that may require top-secret clearances. The secretary of the treasury was also directed to attend meetings.

At first, President Truman resented the fact that Congress had assigned him an advisory board on matters of national security. For several years, he rarely attended NSC meetings, preferring instead to rely on his policy advisers within the White House. He appointed the secretary of state to preside over the NSC in his absence. However, Truman changed his approach to the council in 1950 when the United States entered the Korean War (1950–1953). He established weekly meetings with the council and attended all but seven over the remainder of his term. Truman limited the council to its permanent core members, the director of the CIA, the secretary of the treasury, the executive secretary of the council, and two personal advisers.

In 1953, Truman was succeeded by Dwight Eisenhower, a lifelong military man who was the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Eisenhower was comfortable with the structured decision-making process used by the military and reshaped the NSC into a hierarchical system of policy-reviewing committees. Unlike Truman, Eisenhower used the council as his primary advisory body on national security. To coordinate the council, he created a special assistant for national security, better known as the national security adviser.

Under Eisenhower, the national security adviser shepherded policy decisions through the NSC committees and briefed the members of the council during meetings. After President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he took steps to reduce the bureaucratic nature of the council, but gave the national security adviser more power. The national security adviser became the president’s chief White House adviser on matters of national security issues—a role the position maintains into the twenty-first century. During the presidency of Richard Nixon, his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, became more influential than the secretary of state. In 1973, Kissinger was named secretary of state and held both positions until 1975.

President Jimmy Carter reduced the power of the national security adviser when he took office in 1977; however, he elevated its status when he made the post a cabinet-level position. That status was short-lived, as President Ronald Reagan downgraded the position back to an advisory role and placed more policy-making power in the hands of the secretary of state. The influence of the national security adviser fluctuated in later administrations depending on the importance the president placed on the position. In 1987, General Colin Powell became the first African American to be named national security adviser; in 2001, Condoleezza Rice became the first woman named to the post.

Starting in the early 1960s, the NSC began meeting in the White House Situation Room. The room was converted from a bowling alley in the basement of the West Wing by President Kennedy. The room is equipped with state-of-the-art communications and technology to monitor intelligence from around the world. The council is divided into three committees. The principals committee consists of the cabinet members and other core members of the council. The deputies committee consists of lower-ranking officials who review and consider policy decisions. The policy coordination committees are made up of staffers who oversee the day-to-day implementation of the policy decisions and coordinate those policies between government agencies.

The makeup and influence of the NSC as a whole vary with each administration, and are determined largely by the comfort level the president has with his advisers. President Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, attended briefings with the NSC but routinely relied on their national security advisers for policy advice. President Reagan pushed the council into the background and sought advice from his cabinet members and other members of their respective agencies. With its role diminished under Reagan, the NSC became involved in overseeing secret government operations such as the Iran-Contra affair. The incident involved the illegal selling of arms to Iran in order to free American hostages in the Middle East. The proceeds of the sales were then used to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua.

George H.W. Bush restored the NSC to its original function and re-established the committee structure. The subsequent administrations of presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden changed the makeup of the council, but each relied on the NSC for various degrees of policymaking advice. During these administrations, the council’s staff grew to more than four hundred employees. Under President Joe Biden, who took office in 2021, the NSC consisted of the president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of defense, secretary of energy, the assistant to the president for national security affairs, the assistant to the president and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security, and the representative of the United States to the United Nations.

While the structure of the NSC remained largely the same around this time, it did go through some changes. Notably, the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense, established by Obama in 2016 in response to the African Ebola outbreak, was disbanded in 2018 by the administration of Donald Trump. This decision attracted some criticism two years later as some in the US questioned the efficacy of the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which spread across the United States in early 2020. In 2021 Biden restored this position and added a new position, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, which also would sit on the NSC.

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