Domestic Council Created

The Ash Council recommendations for reorganizing the White House were unveiled on March 4, 1970, in a White House briefing to cabinet and sub­cabinet officials; the immediate reaction was concern, voiced most vocally by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney and Vice President Agnew, that such a structure would serve as a barrier to cabinet members being able to meet directly with the president. This in fact was pre­cisely what Nixon had in mind. On March 12, the president sent a message to Congress announcing his intent to establish “a Domestic Council to coor­dinate policy formulation in the domestic area.” This White House body would be provided with its own staff, and to a considerable degree would be a domestic counterpart to the National Security Council.1

John Ehrlichman was named the executive director of the Domestic Council. Ehrlichman during 1969 had steadily risen in influence among President Nixon’s advisers. He had been named Nixon’s top assistant for domestic affairs in November 1969; the creation of the Domestic Council, with Ehrlichman as its director, completed his ascendancy to Nixon’s inner­most circle of advisors. Creating the Domestic Council gave Ehrlichman a formal role in developing space policy, since NASA was considered a domes­tic agency. Even so, Assistant to the President Peter Flanigan, who during 1969 had had primary responsibility within the White House for overseeing NASA, continued with that role, operating outside the Domestic Council framework and retaining direct access to the president. This situation created some uncertainty with respect to space policy oversight, but Flanigan and his staff and Ehrlichman and his staff worked closely together on space issues in the ensuing months. In addition, Ehrlichman and the Domestic Council staff used the Office of Science and Technology (OST) for advice on techni­cal issues, including space; later in the year Ehrlichman would ask new sci­ence adviser Ed David, “since policy, as opposed to programs, is so difficult to define,” to list for him “those issues which could be considered domestic policy which are currently under study by OST. I have in mind matters such as our manned space program.”2