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The National Security Act of 1947 signed July 26, 1947 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman realigned and reorganized the United States' armed forces, foreign policy, and intelligence community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II.It merged the United States Department of War and the United States Department of the Navy into the United States Department of Defense headed by the Secretary of Defense. It was also responsible for the creation of a separate United States Air Force from the existing United States Army Air Corps. Initially, each of the three branches maintained quasi-cabinet status through their individual secretaries, but the act was amended in 1949 to assure their subordination to the Secretary of Defense. The act also created the Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of the highest-ranking officers of all the branches of the United States armed forces, as a military advisory group to the President.
Aside from the military reorganization, the act established the National Security CouncilA National Security Council is an executive body which coordinates national security issues and typically includes the heads of departments involved in diplomacy and defense with a small staff. The most famous NSC is the United States National Security Co, a central place of coordination for national security policy in the Executive Branch, and the Central Intelligence AgencyThis article is about the foreign intelligence service of the United States of America. For other uses of the term CIA see CIA (disambiguation . The Central Intelligence Agency CIA is the United States' foreign intelligence agency, responsible for obtaini, the United States' first peacetime intelligence agency.
The act and its changes, along with the Truman DoctrineThe Truman Doctrine stated that the United States would support "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. President Harry S. Truman made the proclamation in an address to Congress on March 12, 1947 and the Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan known officially following its enactment as the European Recovery Program (ERP), was the main plan of the United States for the reconstruction of Europe following World War II. The initiative was named for United States Secretary of Stat, were major components of the Truman administration's Cold WarThe Cold War (c. 1945- 1991) was the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. On one side was the Soviet Union and its allies, often referred to as the E strategy.
United States legal history National Security CouncilA National Security Council is an executive body which coordinates national security issues and typically includes the heads of departments involved in diplomacy and defense with a small staff. The most famous NSC is the United States National Security Co
