What is the significance of the national security act

The CIA served as the primary civilian intelligence-gathering organization in the government. Later, the Defense Intelligence Agency became the main military intelligence body. The law also caused far-reaching changes in the military establishment. However, each of the three branches maintained their own service secretaries.

In the act was amended to give the Secretary of Defense more power over the individual services and their secretaries. Menu Menu. Home Milestones National Security Act of Unmentioned by Truman were the provisions of the bill that turned out to be perhaps even more consequential: the creation of the CIA and the National Security Council.

Their obscurity stemmed in part from their vague mandate and uncertain purposes. The legislation birthed the CIA as a small clerical entity underneath the National Security Council, chartered only with coordinating and disseminating any intelligence produced by other departments.

Truman had actually opposed the creation of the National Security Council because he feared it might undermine his executive authority and surreptitiously transform the presidency into a parliamentary system where decisions were made collectively by a majority of cabinet members rather than the commander-in-chief. No one really understood what had been agreed upon on July 26, The legislation had established a new institution to assist the president in the coordination of foreign and defense policy, but it was up to the president to decide how to use it, or whether to use it at all.

The phrase seems to have entered the American lexicon in the late s. This was especially trenchant in an era of totalitarianism, when ideologies such as Nazism and Soviet communism threatened the very existence of democratic capitalism, and when the United States sought to marshal all elements of national power in response — including instruments that had been little used previously, such as intelligence and ideological warfare.

Almost as soon as the act became law, its provisions began to shift and adapt, subject to the incessant buffeting of bureaucratic politics at home and global events abroad. Numerous policy entrepreneurs within the government began exploiting its ambiguous mandates, while several advisory commissions recommended further amendments and revisions.

Global challenges over the next 20 years such as the Berlin blockade, Korean War, and Cuban missile crisis would force successive presidents to adapt their tools of statecraft in response to each event.

Article 1. This Act is enacted to ensure the national security and maintain the stability of society. Unless otherwise provided herein, the provisions of other relevant laws shall apply. People are prohibited from carrying on detection, collection, consignation or delivery of any confidential documents, pictures, information or articles or developing an organization for official use of a foreign country or Mainland China, for its militaries, party duties, or other official organizations, or the institutions established and specified by the foresaid organizations, or the civil groups entrusted by the foresaid organizations.

The police or the Coast Guard authority shall be entitled to fulfill inspections of the following people, items, and means of transportation when necessary: 1. The entry and exit of passengers and the items carried by them. The entry and exit of vessels, aircrafts, and other means of transportation.

The vessels, rafts, aircrafts, and goods voyaging within the territory of the Republic of China. The seafarers, crew members, fishermen or other employees in the preceding subparagraph 1, 2 and the items carried by them.