the NSC’s Deputies Committee, IWGs are organized both along is-
sues of national importance—for example, on proliferation issues—
and along regional lines, to correspond to important national security
and foreign policy areas. Usually staffed at the assistant secretary
level, each IWG includes those departments and agencies that have
an interest in the issue of country of concern.INTERDEPARTMENTAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
(IIC).An executive directive, dated on 26 June 1939, consolidated
responsibility for espionage, counterintelligence, and sabotage mat-
ters in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
the military intelligence services. The directive also established the
IIC to coordinate and oversee these intelligence activities. By doing
so, President Franklin D. Rooseveltprobably hoped to bring order
to the chaos that had thus far marked the U.S. government’s response
to internal espionage threats. Despite the onset of war in Europe, IIC
members fought jurisdictional conflicts over their mandates, includ-
ing over covert action, which none of them wanted to take on. To
overcome their disputes, the IIC as a corporate body proposed an in-
terdepartmental and independent foreign intelligence organization,
but President Roosevelt instead ordered on 26 June 1940 that foreign
intelligence gathering be split between the FBI in the western hemi-
sphere and the military services in the rest of the world. The IIC con-
tinued to operate throughout World War II, becoming redundant
with the establishment of the Central Intelligence Group(CIG) in
January 1946.INTERNAL SECURITY ACT OF 1950.The Internal Security Act,or
McCarran Act, of 1950, named after Nevada senator Pat McCarran,
required communist and communist-front organizations to register
with the attorney general. It also stipulated that members of these
groups could not become citizens, and those who already were citi-
zens of the United States could be denaturalized.
President Harry S. Truman, who had imposed the loyalty order
on federal employees in 1947, intially vetoed the legislation, but
Congress overrode the veto. The Senate Internal Security Subcom-
mittee, working closely with J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI), conducted hearings for the next 27 years.INTERNAL SECURITY ACT OF 1950• 10105-398 (2) Dictionary.qxd 10/20/05 6:27 AM Page 101