NSC Is Easy to Abuse but Crucial to the Presidency

What is to be done with the NSC? Those initials used to stand for the National Security Council, but now seem to mean the Nation’s Secret Cowboys.

A powerful organ of government, operating in secret and beholden only to the President, the NSC staff is easy to abuse. The Iran- contras affair is not the first time that it has gotten into trouble--the “plumbers” who started the Watergate scandal were run from the NSC staff.

But the NSC is also crucial to the presidency. It was created after World War II to enable the President to pool the best judgments of our diplomats, soldiers and spies.

Frank Carlucci, new NSC chief, is already cleaning house and making changes. The Tower Committee of “wise men” will propose more reforms, and both House and Senate may legislate even more. Unfortunately, several proposed “reforms” would do more harm than good. The bad ideas:

Restrict the NSC staff solely to policy coordination. Of course, it should be barred from conducting covert action. But the staff has a vital role in monitoring clandestine activities, and often must dig into the operations of State and Defense to make sure that they are doing what the President has ordered. It also must be allowed to assist presidential envoys, as it did during Henry A. Kissinger’s secret trips to China. Often, foreign leaders will deal only with White House aides close to the President. The bureaucrats like none of this and have their knives out. They should be ignored.

Subject the NSC adviser to Senate confirmation. Another losing proposal. He must be the President’s man. That is the source of his clout with the bureaucracy. It is the reason the President trusts him with his most powerful secrets. Once the NSC adviser must curry favor with the Jesse Helmses of the Senate, the President will lose a precious confidant.

Strip NSC staff members of executive privilege. Absent wrongdoing, they should not routinely testify before Congress. The Constitution wisely grants each branch of government some privacy to do its business. Juries and judges deliberate in secret. Congressional committees hammer out laws behind closed doors. The President must have a staff that can give frank advice without fear of being hauled before Congress. Otherwise Presidents will have to rely on the amateur advice of a “kitchen cabinet,” and our foreign-policy problems will get worse.

The needed reforms are more a matter of attitude than of rules and regulations:

Restore professionalism in the NSC staff. Kissinger kept several pros from the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, and Jimmy Carter retained Gerald R. Ford’s deputy NSC adviser as his Soviet expert. But Ronald Reagan fired everyone of consequence, replacing professionals with ideologues and hot spurs. The NSC must once again become an elite staff to which the best in government service aspire.

Rebuild the “Chinese Wall” separating the White House and NSC staffs. Rubbing elbows with the “run and gun” political operatives at the White House is heady stuff for civil servants and lieutenant colonels. It can cloud their judgment and corrupt their objectivity. We should return to the days when NSC staffers had no White House mess privileges, no parking passes for Executive Avenue, no invitations to state dinners and private screenings.

Establish the principle that the NSC’s secret power must be exercised with restraint. The best thing that President Reagan could do for the NSC staff is admit that it has been abused, not only in the Iran-contra affair but also in using a military officer on active duty--Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North--to orchestrate private covert paramilitary operations to circumvent Congress. Unless this President makes self-restraint a cardinal rule of the NSC, future Presidents inevitably will fall prey to the same temptations as he and Richard M. Nixon did, and ultimately the NSC staff will be destroyed.

Americans are inclined to think that every problem requires new laws or procedures. But these cannot prevent Presidents from making mistakes or foolish decisions. If Reagan did not know what was going on in the NSC staff, there would be no law that could make him pay attention.

Fortunately, our democracy provides a remedy for national policy that has gone awry. It’s called elections.