Growth in the Deep State and Decline

Former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration, John Lehman, has published a commentary on the National Security Council in the Wall Street Journal for February 18, 2020.

“Read it and weep” for growth in NSC professional staff has adversely affected the National Security of the United States.  As a young staff member of the NSC during the Nixon Administration, Lehman writes that the NSC included Henry Kissinger, “one deputy, 32 policy professionals and 60 administrators.”

These appointees were not mere Deep State bureaucrats !

“By my count,” Lehman writes, “alumni of [Kissinger’s] NSC include two secretaries of state, four national security advisors, a director of national intelligence, a secretary of the Navy, and numerous high-ranking officials in the State, Defense and Treasury departments as well as the Central Intelligence Agency.”