Monday, May 22, 2023

Project Four Leaves NSAM 261 Revisited

  

Project Four Leaves NSAM 261 Revisited

Some years ago, in 2008, I learned about a top secret government project code named Four Leaves, the subject of National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM)261  signed by President Kennedy in late September 1963. The only published or posted reference I could find about it was where I learned about it - on the JFK Presidential Library web site where there is a mention of it in the digital on line vesion of JFK’s office Rolodex desk date book.

Later they posted the original NSAM 261 and basic information about it that we are allowed to know:

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKNSF/342/JFKNSF-342-005

One guy who goes by the name of Izambeni, found my blog by doing an internet search for Project Four Leaves, came up with my 2008 post and on May 13, 2023 wrote to me:

“You have just about the only info on NSAM 261, Project Four Leaves on the internet. Thank you for the info you have pulled together about it. So, it's a DPA project and has something to do with communications. I was just looking at all 3 pages in that file at the JFK library. The first page gives the vague request for approval of Four Leaves, the third page has been removed from the file. (Hmmmm...) But the 2nd page outlines who is to get a copy and it: One copy goes to the VP/the Chairman of NASA, one copy to the to the Administrator of NASA, one copy to the Secys of State, Defense, & Commerce, one to the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, one to the Director Bureau of Budget and one to the Director Office of Emergency Planning. One has to ask why it's such a complete mystery 60 years later.”

Izambeni continues: “ Given it mentions NASA twice, and has something to do with communications - this never crossed my mind in the past when pondering it - but I wonder if it could be some top secret plan to communicate with UFOs/aliens? Just a thought given the Pentagon has finally admitted that they are real, well at least UFOs are...they're still in denial about ETs. Somehow they dance around that topic. If UFO's are indeed real, then WHO do they think made them?! Obviously a far advanced race of beings who make us look like Neanderthals.”

BK: Well, personally, I don’t think it was about UFOs or Aliens, but rather an arm bending attempt by the administration to get some major defense contractors to do something that’s really necessary for national security, and now, sixty years later, we should know what that is.

Then Ixambeni asked a key question - “Has anyone ever FOIA'd Four Leaves?”

BK: I must admit I was neglegant in not submitting an FOIA about Four Leaves in 2008, but it’s never too late.

Izambeni: “Addendum: Was just reading a bio of Roswell Gilpatric (who signed/sent the NSAM 261 memo to JFK) on the Historical Office Office of the Secretary of Defense site. This might mean something (or not), but I thought it could be significant, given my above theory. It says ‘McNamara also delegated to him certain areas of responsibility, including Pentagon relations with the Central Intelligence Agency and NASA’.”

Yes, Roswell Gilpatrick is a key player, who also worked closely with General Dynamics on the TFX jet fighter contract, but here he is put into a position of handling Pentagon relations with CIA and NASA, that makes me think this has something to do with satellites.

Here’s what I wrote in 2008:

Project FOUR LEAVES & the DPA

After reading the September 25 Higgins memo re: FitzGerald briefing of JCS, which mentioned a secret memo from Bundy orally read to the JSC, I looked to the JFK Library at Bundy's papers and JFK's Diary to see if anything relevant is published there.

SUBJECT: Assignment of Highest National Security Priority to Project FOUR LEAVES

In response to a recommendation by the Secretary of Defense, the president, under the authority granted by the Defense Production Act of 1950, today established the program listed below as being in the highest national security priority category for development and production.

FOUR LEAVES

McGeorge Bundy

THE WHITE HOUSE DIARY
SEPTEMBER 23 1963

http://www.jfklibrary.org/White%2BHouse%2B...eptember/23.htm

“President Kennedy assigns the highest national priority to Project FOUR LEAVES to develop and produce a military communications system.

[A tip of the hat to Robert Howard for the White House date book and diary reference.]

 I also came across the fact that Gen. Taylor wasn't at the JCS briefing because he was on his way to Vietnam with McNamara.

I considered that Four Leaves may have to do with that trip when I read: There is the note that on September 25, 1963 "Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Saigon to investigate what effect the political problems in South Vietnam have had on the military situation. They are expected to visit the-country's four military regions. (3:1)"

Four Leaves, four military regions?

Mark Knight thought not, calling attention to the fact that the Defense Production Act doesn't just pertain to Vietnam, and that the reference to the DPA may be a key.

Then I came across this Yahoo! Group called coldwarrcomms@yahoogroups.com, who shoot the bull about cold war military communications.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coldwarcomms/message/7124NSAM

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coldwarcomms/message/7124

In the only open source reference to Project Four Leaves I can find, a guy named Sam asks, "Does anyone know what the DoD's Project FOUR LEAVES was? NSAM 261 from 9/23/1963 assigns it to the "highest national priority category for development and production" in response to a recommendation from the Secretary of Defense. I can't find any reference to the project other than the NSAM. Figured someone on this list may have heard of it."

In response, Albert writes, "I'd heard that name a few years ago, and looked into it a little. I nevercould find anything about FOUR LEAVES, but I came to the conclusion that the NSAM was actually referring to FALLING LEAVES. FALLING LEAVES was the Cuban Missile Early Warning System. It consisted of radar stations at Moorestown, NJ, Laredo, TX, and Thomasville, AL, with hotline links to the Pentagon, NORAD, and SAC. I learned of FALLING LEAVES purely by luck while reading a book titled "The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons" by Scott D. Sagan (1993), which devotes more than a dozen pages to the topic.


BK: I disagree with this assessment, that Project Four Leaves is actually Project Falling Leaves, for a number of reasons. For one, I don't think Mrs. Lincoln, who typed up the memo, would make such a mistake, or Bundy would make a mistake in such an important document - a National Security Action Memorandum.

So it's not a mistake, a typo or Mrs. Lincoln mishearing Bundy or the President, but it may be part or offshoot of the Falling Leaves program.

In addition, Falling Leaves was an October, 1962 circa project, a year earlier, and concerned miliary communications and nuclear mishaps, not the establishment of a military communications system. It concerned the estalishment of a number of rardars that could detect the launch of a ballistic missile in Cuba, since most of the miltiaray’s radars were directed north over the North Pole towards the USSR.

The standard history of military communicaitons also fail to mention Project Four Leaves, though it does account for the development of satelite communcaitons around the same time period.

Blitz wrote, "That is interesting, because I dont find much on it either. Prob still clasified. One can put a bit of light on it, as its immediately prior to VietNam...when they were still fumbling for reasons to be there...also it was just prior to the Kennedy assassination. Interestingly, shortly prior to it, in NSAM 252, the establishing of a National Communications system."

http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2002/01.html

So I went back to the Defense Production Act of 1950 to see more of what that was all about.

As Mark suggested, the DPA is a key. John Dolva started a thread on the subject at the Education Forum:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13902

Wikipedia: Defense Production Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act

 

BK: NOTE – I have also reposted the entire DPA at JFKCountercoup2.blogspot.

https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2023/05/defense-production-act-dpa.html

The Defense Production Act (Pub.L. 81-774) is a United States law enacted on September 8, 1950, in response to the start of the Korean War. It was part of a broad civil defense and war mobilization effort in the context of the Cold War. Its implementing regulations, the Defense Priorities and Allocation System (DPAS), are located at 15 CFR §§700 to 700.93. The Act has been periodically reauthorized and amended, and remains in force as of 2007.

The Act contains three major sections. The first authorizes the President to require businesses to sign contracts or fulfill orders deemed necessary for national defense. The second authorizes the President to establish mechanisms (such as regulations, orders or agencies) to allocate materials, services and facilities to promote national defense. The third section authorizes the President to control the civilian economy so that scarce and/or critical materials necessary to the national defense effort are available for defense needs.[1]

The Act also authorizes the President to requisition property, force industry to expand production and the supply of basic resources, impose wage and price controls, settle labor disputes, control consumer and real estate credit, establish contractual priorities, and allocate raw materials to aid the national defense.[1]

The President's authority to place contracts under the DPA is the part of the Act most often used by the Department of Defense (DOD) since the 1970s. Most of the other functions of the Act are administered by the Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security (SIES) in the Bureau of Industry and Security in the Department of Commerce.[2]

Korean War-era usage
The DPA was used during the Korean War to establish a large defense mobilization infrastructure and bureacracy. Under the authority of the Act, President Harry S. Truman established the Office of Defense Mobilization, instituted wage and price controls, strictly regulated production in heavy industries such as steel and mining, and ordered the disperal of wartime manufacturing plans across the nation.[3]

The Act also played a vital role in the establishment of the domestic aluminum and titanium industries in the 1950s. Using the Act, DOD provided capital and interest-free loans, and directed mining and manufacturing resources as well as skilled laborers to these two processing industries.[4]

Use as innovation tool
Beginning in the 1980s, DOD began using the contracting and spending provisions of the DPA to provide seed money to develop new technologies.[5] Using the Act, DOD has helped to develop a number of new technologies and materials, including silicon carbide ceramics, indium phosphide and gallium arsenide semiconductors, microwave power tubes, radiation-hardened microelectronics, superconducting wire, and metal composites.[4]

Defense Production Act of 1950
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Defense_Production_Act_of_1950

The Defense Production Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-774) was enacted due to "Rising wages and prices during the Korean War [which] caused serious economic difficulties within the United States. In an effort to expand production and insure economic stability, the Defense Production Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-774) authorized Governmental activities in various areas, including requisition of property for national defense, expansion of productive capacity and supply, wage and price stabilization, settlement of labor disputes, control of consumer and real estate credit, and establishment of contract priorities and materials allocation designed to aid the national defense. Under section 712, the Joint Committee on Defense Production was established to serve as a 'watchdog' over Federal agencies administering the various programs authorized by the act. The members of the committee were drawn from the Senate and House Committees on Banking and Currency."[1]

The Defense Production Act Title III Program "authorities were first used extensively during the early 1950s to expedite expansion of industrial capacity for many strategic and critical materials, machine tools, and a number of other critical items needed to satisfy evolving defense requirements. Despite (or, perhaps, partially because of) enormous successes in expanding needed domestic production capabilities, use of Title III declined markedly during the late 1950s and early 1960s and eventually ended altogether by the end of the 1960s. Congress revived and modernized the Title III authorities in the mid 1980s, and these authorities have been used since that time to promote improvement and expansion of industrial capabilities needed for national defense purposes."[2]

"Today's Title III Program differs in fundamental ways from the original program established in 1950. First, the original program was created in response to the national emergency resulting from the Korean conflict and Cold War tensions. Today's program focuses primarily on promoting the transition of new technologies from research and development to efficient and affordable production and the rapid insertion of these new technologies in defense systems."[3]

"Second, the original program was based on virtually unlimited authorities to encourage private investment in materials production and supply. Today's program is subject to a number of restrictions to ensure that Government action is needed and that Title III authorities are the best means to meet the national defense need. Moreover, proposed Title III actions are subject to prior review by Congress and are funded with moneys appropriated for Title III purposes."[4]

"Third, the original program was supported by a funding ceiling of $2.1 billion (in 1950s dollars) and was permitted to obligate these funds based on probable ultimate net cost to the Government rather than total contract liability. Today's program has been funded at an average annual rate of $20-$25 million and has been required to obligate funds at 100 percent of contract liability."[5]

"Despite the significant differences between the original program and today's, the basic purpose of the Title III authorities has not changed - to expand domestic production capabilities to meet defense needs."[6] And, some would argue, to specialize these domestic production capabilities only towards defense needs, assuming that control of global finance, trade and port facilities will continue to feed the civilian sector, and that there is no need, e.g. for US self-sufficiency in oil.


And John Dolva also calls attention to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) of the US DOD, which developed the Internet among other things.

 

In any case, we should, sixty years on, know what Project Four Leaves and NSA Memo 261 is.

 

Billkelly3@gmail.com



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