TOP SECRET
Mr. Cutler finished his briefing with a discussion of the
Financial Appendix to NSC 576, and then suggested that the Council
dispose of the question as to whether or not to include paragraph 23
in the agreed policy paper.
Apropos of this matter, he said he had
understood that the Air Force had gone to the Bureau of the Budget
and had agreed not to go ahead with the construction of additional
U. S. military installations in Libya.
Secretary Wilson took sharp
issue with Mr. Cutler, and said that the decision to forgo further
construction had been made in the Department of Defense. Admiral
Radford pointed out that the Defense Department was restrained in
its expenditures all around the world by budgetary considerations,
and he therefore saw no reason for including this paragraph dealing
specifically with Libyan construction.
It should not be forgotten
that the Defense Department, as well as other agencies, was careful-
ly scrutinizing the expenditure of money.
The President said that this might indeed DE. ETUC. but thet
there was some evidence to the contrary.
Mr. Cutler suggested @ solution of the problem by proposing
that the Council agree to delete paragraph 23 of NSC 5716, but have
the Record of Actions of the Council meeting indicate that the substance of paragraph 23 had been discussed at this meeting. Mr. Cut-
ler then asked the Secretary of State and other members of the Counceil if, subject to the above-mentioned amendment, the remainder of
the policy report was satisfactory.
Secretary Dulles indicated that
the remainder of the report was satisfactory, but suggested that Mr.
Hollister might wish to comment on it.
Mr. Hollister stated that he merely wanted to point out
that in adopting this policy on Libya the Council was moving in the
reverse direction from what we always hoped to do.
To be more precise, we generally hoped that if we increased police and internal
security forces in a country we were assisting, we could achieve
commensurete reduction in the force levels of the regular anny. We
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were not doing this in Libye, and that was all that Mr. Hollister
wished to point out.
Mr. Cutler replied that the paper did indicate
that as we built up the Federal Army of Libya we could cut dow on
the provincial forces, as indicated in paragraph 20-a.
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