Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Henry Byroade, and George W. Perkins

29 B. o. Sec. 3(E) 7-3-74 wy Hei 245 TOP Sconni August 30, 1950 ARCHIVES `'NATIONAL RECORDS AND MEMORANDUM FOR S/S SERVICE* In a meeting this morning, at which Mr. Nitze, Mr. Byroade and Mr. Perkins were present, the Secretary reported on a conversa- tion he had with General Bradley this morning regarding work resulting from the President's letter of Saturday. Work on this project has been assigned to Messrs. Perkins, Byroade and Nitze for the Department. The Secretary went into some detail as to the discussion he had with General Bradley on the general problem of working relation- ships between State and Defense. He said that he urged on the General, need for very close coordination of political and military aspects of any given problem. I reported the details of this portion of the conversation to Mr. Webb and do not think any further distribution of it is necessary. The Secretary discussed the memorandum which the JCS prepared as the result of the President's letter. With regard to the first question (whether we were prepared to commit additional US forces to the defense of Europe) the Secre- tary said that he thought the JCS position was satisfactory. With regard to the second question (whether we would support the concept of European Defense force, etc.), the Secretary said that he thought the JCS position was somewhat confused. He mentioned specifically that he did not know what was meant by basès" and by "controlled status". The Secretary said that General Bradley had said that the issae so far as national bases was concerned is who pays for the troops, who recruits the troops, who clothes them, etc. The Secretary said that the State Department had always recognized that there must be administrative headquarters. He said the real issue was the point in recruiting and supplying troops when we reached a danger point in so far as creating again the old German power.