United States National Security Council
U.S. federal executive national security and intelligence forum
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the national security council used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and presidential cabinet officials.
Since its inception in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman, the function of the council has been to advise and assist the president on national security and foreign policies. It also serves as the president's principal arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies. The council has subsequently played a key role in most major events in U.S. foreign policy, from the Korean War to the war on terror.
History
The immediate predecessor to the National Security Council was the National Intelligence Authority (NIA), which was established by President Harry S. Truman's Executive Letter of January 22, 1946, to oversee the Central Intelligence Group, the CIA's predecessor. The NIA was composed of the secretary of state (James F. Byrnes and George C. Marshall), the secretary of war (Robert P. Patterson), the secretary of the Navy (James Forrestal), and a personal representative of President Truman (William D. Leahy, the chief of staff to the commander in chief).
The National Security Council was created in 1947 by the National Security Act. It was created because policymakers felt that the diplomacy of the State Department was no longer adequate to contain the Soviet Union in light of the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States. The intent was to ensure coordination and concurrence among the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and other instruments of national security policy such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also created in the National Security Act.
The public source identifies “United States National Security Council” as u.S. federal executive national security and intelligence forum. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around United, States and National.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q851756. VIAF identifies the subject as 155402045. The Library of Congress control number is n79061302. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States National Security Council” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.