National Security Act of 1947
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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. The majority of the provisions of the Act took effect on 18 September 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense.
The Act merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment (NME) headed by the Secretary of Defense. It was also responsible for the creation of a separate Department of the Air Force from the existing United States Army Air Forces. Initially, each of the three branches maintained quasi-cabinet status through their individual secretaries, but the act was amended on 10 August 1949 to assure their subordination to the Secretary of Defense. At the same time, the NME was renamed as the Department of Defense.
Aside from the military reorganization, the act established the National Security Council, a central place of coordination for national security policy in the Executive Branch, and the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States' first peacetime intelligence agency.
The act and its changes, along with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, were major components of the Truman administration's Cold War strategy.
The bill signing took place aboard Truman's C-54 presidential aircraft Sacred Cow, the predecessor of Air Force One. [1].
