The National Security Act of 1947 authorized the creation of a National Security Council (NSC) "to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security . . ."* The Act did not speak to an intrinsically important subject that every administration has had to deal with: the integration of domestic politics with national security policy at the highest level. Surprisingly, there is no systematic scholarly treatment of this subject, perhaps because of the difficulty of acquiring reliable information.2 This article moves toward partially filling this gap.

Our principal focus concerns the interrelationships between the national security assistant (NSA)3 and White House political aides as well as aspects of their respective relations with the president. Among the issues examined are: the NSA's personal rela- tions with the White House staff and (often) the secretary of state, methods for in- tegrating domestic politics with national security policy, sharing of sensitive informa- tion, restrictions (if any) on the NSA's access to the president, and the impact of staff behavior on substantive foreign policy issues and dome