2. Executive Office of the President · Minor
Make politically vetted appointees the NSC's day-to-day interagency managers
Printed page 51 2. Executive Office of the President
“Accountable senior officials, themselves either political appointees or a minimum number of career detailees, who are selected and vetted politically and report directly to political staff should be the main day-to-day managers for interagency coordination and implementation of their assigned national security policy objectives.”
What has happened
- Not started
The structural half of this ask was already the design NSPM-1 adopted — NSC staff chair the Policy Coordination Committees, which are "the main day-to-day fora for interagency coordination" — but the ask is about who those managers are, and on that the order is silent. NSPM-1 nowhere requires PCC chairs to be political appointees, nowhere caps the number of career detailees, and nowhere requires them to report to political staff. Nor has any later directive done so. The one thing the record does show cuts against the premise: by mid-2025 the NSC had been reduced to fewer than fifty policy staff of any kind, so the question of how the day-to-day managers are vetted has been answered mostly by there being far fewer of them.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Leveled separately from #60, which is about accountability structure; this Quote is about the political vetting of the people filling it, and nothing addresses that. Lawfare’s account of the NSC purge (https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-the-white-house-broke-the-nsc-and-how-to-fix-it, 13 July 2026) reports political figures installed in senior director roles; it is used as Evidence on #59 and #69 and noted here as context rather than as delivery of this ask.
- Action
- appoint
- Object
- NSC day-to-day interagency managers
- ID
- 61