THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2024 35 1946 1950 Report on the United Nations The faith placed in the United Nations by the people of the 51 countries whose representatives signed the Charter at San Francisco has been more than justified in London by the accomplishments of the first meetings of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. … The work of the Delegation in London was greatly aided through the tact, experience and wide contacts of a hard-working group of Foreign Service officers who acted as political advisers to the Delegation. —Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr., March 1946 AFSJ. Establishing the Policy Planning Staff —September 1947 AFSJ. Mr. X Speaks to the FSJ Serving in Moscow after the war, in the winter of ’46, the ambassador was gone and I was chargé d’affaires. I had written for Harriman three longer articles about how I saw the Soviet Union, coming back after seven years’ absence. They were not regular dispatches; they were rather literary papers. And then I wrote this long telegram, which for some reason struck this very, very responsive bell back in Washington. And during that time General Marshall came into office as Secretary of State, made his trip to Europe and came back extensively worried. He decided to set up a planning unit in the Department of State. He could not go through the bureaucracy if he wanted to move quickly. So he said, “I want you immediately to set up a small staff in the Department of State. I want you to tell me, within a matter of two to three weeks, what this government should do about Europe.” I gathered together a small group from within the Department. And we threw ourselves into this work, and submitted a report to the Secretary. And the significant wording of that whole report appeared unchanged in his Harvard speech and did set in certain very fundamental ways the whole framework of the Marshall Plan. I also wrote the “X” article for Foreign Affairs at this time. —George Kennan, in an interview with FSJ Editor Bob Guldin, May 1999 FSJ. The McCarthy Years Few people who lived through the McCarthy era in the Department of State can ever forget the fear, intimidation and sense of outrage which permeated Foggy Bottom. As an officer of the Foreign Service, I found myself caught up in that political whirlwind in which reputations were placed in jeopardy, integrity questioned, and disloyalty frequently presumed rather than proven. “Positive loyalty” was demanded by our highest officials in the Department of State. —John W. Ford, FSO and head of State Department Security during the height of the McCarthy period, November 1980 FSJ. 1946 Manpower Act allows lateral entry of 250 officers into Foreign Service, despite AFSA objections. Rogers Act is replaced by Foreign Service Act of 1946, which creates a Foreign Service staff corps and a Foreign Service Reserve corps, and provides detailed regulation of personnel management, compensation, and allowances. AFSA does not accept members of staff or reserve corps as active members of AFSA until 1949. 1947 National Security Act creates National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency. Intelligence function passes from State to CIA. Hoover Commission on Reorganization of the Executive Branch recommends merging the Foreign Service and Civil Service within the State Department to correct what it calls a “cancerous cleavage.” However, no action is taken. 1950-1953 During McCarthy era and Lavender Scare, State Department fires more than 500 employees as security risks, most on suspicion of being gay, not disloyal.
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