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Encyclopedia entry: National Security Council Memoranda
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to American Military History
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to American Military History 2000, originally published by Oxford University Press 2000. (Hide copyright information)
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National Security Council Memoranda.
Soon after President
Harry S. Truman
established the
National Security Council
(NSC), its participants developed an extended series of memoranda recording basic policy on diplomatic, intelligence, and military issues. Most comprehensive and ambitious was NSC 68, 14 April 1950, “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” which called for massive increases in military spending to support the U.S. position in Europe and East Asia. Besides the policy papers, Truman's NSC institutionalized National Security Intelligence Directives (NSIDs) that specified tasks for the intelligence establishment. For the most part, NSC ...