Within Control Numbers
Why Some Eisenhower Top Secret Memos Had No Number
Authentic Eisenhower-era memoranda show that presidential Top Secret paperwork could survive without the control-number format seen at intelligence agencies.
On this page
- Goodpaster memoranda as documented exceptions
- Copy accounting without a conventional control block
- What presidential records change in the MJ 12 debate
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Introduction
Authentic Eisenhower White House records show that a Top Secret document did not invariably carry a visible control number on its face. The clearest examples are memoranda prepared by Colonel Andrew J. Goodpaster, Eisenhower’s Staff Secretary and one of the officials closest to the President on national-security matters. Surviving records include plainly marked Top Secret memoranda whose reproduced pages show no conventional intelligence-agency-style control-number block. One November 1954 example recorded an extraordinarily sensitive meeting involving Eisenhower, Allen Dulles and General Nathan Twining; an April 1960 example recorded presidential authorisation for another U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union.[Wikisource]en.wikisource.orgPage:Memorandum of Conference with the President at 0810 on November 24, 1954 - NARA - 186476.jpg - Wikisource, the free online…
That matters to the alleged MJ-12 documents because it defeats an overly broad authentication rule: “no visible Top Secret control number” cannot, by itself, establish that a 1950s presidential document is false. Eisenhower’s own security order demanded rigorous accountability for Top Secret material, but it required agencies to devise appropriate accountability procedures; it did not prescribe one universal control-number format that had to appear visibly on every Top Secret page.[The American Presidency Project]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
Goodpaster memoranda provide documented exceptions
Andrew J. Goodpaster is particularly useful for this comparison because he was not an incidental White House correspondent. The Eisenhower-era archival collections identify him among the officials whose records make up the White House Staff Secretary files, while the President’s Whitman File preserves numerous memoranda that Goodpaster drafted after meetings with Eisenhower. The State Department’s published Foreign Relations of the United States series repeatedly identifies such documents as Top Secret and traces them directly to the Eisenhower Library’s presidential papers.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the Historian…
A striking example dates from 24 November 1954, only a few months after the date of the disputed Cutler–Twining memorandum. Goodpaster recorded an 8:10 a.m. conference attended by Eisenhower, the Secretaries of State and Defense, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott, General Nathan Twining, Lieutenant General Charles Cabell and others. The subject was authorisation to proceed with the development of thirty high-performance reconnaissance aircraft — part of the programme that produced the U-2.[Wikisource]en.wikisource.orgPage:Memorandum of Conference with the President at 0810 on November 24, 1954 - NARA - 186476.jpg - Wikisource, the free online…
The surviving reproduced page is revealing as an artefact. It has TOP SECRET stamped at the top, the date, the heading “MEMORANDUM OF CONFERENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT”, the meeting time, attendees, Goodpaster’s text and his signed initials. It also bears later declassification markings. What is not apparent on the reproduced document is a conventional Top Secret control number of the kind familiar from tightly registered intelligence-agency paperwork.[Wikisource]en.wikisource.orgPage:Memorandum of Conference with the President at 0810 on November 24, 1954 - NARA - 186476.jpg - Wikisource, the free online…
This was hardly an inconsequential memorandum whose loose handling might explain the difference. It documented presidential approval of a highly sensitive intelligence aircraft project, with the Director of Central Intelligence and senior Air Force officials present. The CIA’s own later release identifies the archival source as the Eisenhower Library’s Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary, describes it as Top Secret and states that it was drafted by Goodpaster on 24 November 1954.[CIA]cia.govEisenhower Library, Whitman File, Ann WhitTop Secret. Drafted by Goodpaster on November 24, 1954. 2 Printed from a copy that bears Goo…
Another Goodpaster memorandum, dated 1 December 1954, concerned the deployment and custody of atomic weapons. The official Foreign Relations edition identifies its source as the Eisenhower Library’s Eisenhower papers, Whitman File, and gives its original classification as Top Secret. Goodpaster recorded Eisenhower discussing the handling of nuclear weapons with Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss and Joint Chiefs chairman Arthur Radford.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the HistorianDecember 1, 1954…
These records establish something narrower but firmer than a general assertion about 1950s paperwork. Within Eisenhower’s own presidential record-keeping system, Goodpaster created Top Secret records of extremely sensitive meetings that do not necessarily conform on their surviving face to the conspicuous control-number format seen in some CIA, NSA or military documents.
Copy accounting did not require the same visible control block
The distinction becomes clearer when Eisenhower’s own classification rules are read closely. Executive Order 10501, signed on 5 November 1953 and effective from 15 December, required unbound classified memoranda and letters to display their classification conspicuously at the top and bottom of each page. It separately required good accountability records, minimisation of copies and particularly severe controls over Top Secret material.[The American Presidency Project]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
For Top Secret material specifically, the order said that departments and agencies were to prescribe whatever accountability procedures were necessary and that Top Secret Control Officers were to be designated as required to receive, maintain accountability registers for and dispatch such material. That is strong evidence that Top Secret documents were meant to be controlled. But the order does not say that every Top Secret document must display a standard numerical identifier on its face. The mandatory visible marking provision concerns the classification itself; the accountability provision concerns registers and procedures.[The American Presidency Project]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
That difference between accountability and a visible document number is not merely theoretical. A remarkable White House example appears during the Suez crisis. On 31 July 1956 Eisenhower wrote British Prime Minister Anthony Eden an extremely sensitive Top Secret letter warning against immediate military action in Egypt. The official source note records a typewritten copy-accounting notation: “1 copy only retained. This.”[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the Historian…
The surrounding record shows just how deliberate that limitation was. Eisenhower told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the message was to be seen only by Dulles and the Under Secretary; at the White House only Goodpaster had seen it, and only one copy was to remain in White House files. The President revised part of the letter shortly before Dulles departed for London.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the Historian…
This is valuable evidence because it shows a different form of control. Rather than relying solely on a conspicuous serialised control block, the White House could exercise security through drastically restricted reproduction, named-person access and explicit accounting for the sole retained copy. Executive Order 10501 itself encouraged this approach in principle by requiring the number of classified documents and reproduced copies to be kept to a minimum.[The American Presidency Project]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
A later Goodpaster record makes the point even more vividly. On 25 April 1960, days before Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, Goodpaster wrote a one-page “MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD” stating that, after checking with Eisenhower, he had informed CIA official Richard Bissell that one additional reconnaissance operation could be undertaken before 1 May. The Eisenhower Library’s reproduced document is stamped TOP SECRET at top and bottom and bears Goodpaster’s name and later declassification markings, but no conventional Top Secret control-number block is visible.[Eisenhower Presidential Library]eisenhowerlibrary.govOpen source on eisenhowerlibrary.gov.
The subject could scarcely have been more sensitive. The memorandum recorded direct presidential authorisation affecting covert aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union immediately before a major summit. Its survival without an obvious intelligence-style control number therefore cannot reasonably be dismissed as an example involving merely routine or marginally sensitive presidential business.
Presidential paperwork followed its own archival pathways
The Goodpaster examples also warn against treating “Top Secret document” as if it described a single administrative species. Eisenhower-era records now published by the State Department came from several distinct White House collections: the Whitman File, Staff Secretary Records, White House Central Files, records of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs and other presidential files. The Whitman File alone included Eisenhower Diaries, National Security Council records, international files, administration files and other series maintained by the President’s personal secretary, Ann Whitman.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the Historian…
That provenance matters. A document created as Goodpaster’s record of a conversation with Eisenhower could enter a presidential diary or White House file rather than travelling through precisely the same registry system as a CIA intelligence report or an Air Force headquarters document. Published Eisenhower records repeatedly demonstrate this pattern. For example, the State Department identifies Top Secret Goodpaster memoranda of presidential conferences on 28 July and 31 July 1956 as documents from the Eisenhower Library’s Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the Historian Historical Documents
The practice continued later in the administration. The official documentary record identifies Goodpaster-drafted Top Secret presidential-conference memoranda from January, March and June 1958, while other Top Secret material appears in Staff Secretary and special-assistant files. In other words, “the Eisenhower White House” itself contained multiple record streams rather than one uniform filing mechanism.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the Historian Historical Documents
This is consistent with Executive Order 10501. The President established government-wide requirements for classification markings, secure custody, dissemination and accountability, but directed heads of departments and agencies to prescribe the procedures needed to implement those requirements. The order therefore created a common security framework without imposing a single page-layout template for every Top Secret record throughout the executive branch.[The American Presidency Project]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
That distinction is essential when historical documents are authenticated from typography and administrative markings. A control convention demonstrated for one organisation or record series is strong comparative evidence for another document only when there is a reason to expect that document to have passed through the same procedure.
What the White House exceptions change in the MJ-12 debate
The Eisenhower records do not authenticate the alleged MJ-12 papers. They do something more limited: they remove one sweeping argument against them.
The broad claim would be that every genuine Top Secret document in the Eisenhower period necessarily carried a visible Top Secret control number, so any alleged Top Secret document without one must be counterfeit. The Goodpaster records show why that formulation is untenable. An authentic November 1954 White House memorandum about a highly sensitive intelligence programme visibly carries its Top Secret classification but no obvious conventional control number; the April 1960 U-2 authorisation provides another particularly clear example.[Wikisource]en.wikisource.orgPage:Memorandum of Conference with the President at 0810 on November 24, 1954 - NARA - 186476.jpg - Wikisource, the free online…
The Suez correspondence goes further by demonstrating that extremely restricted presidential material could carry explicit copy accounting rather than the sort of numbered control block sometimes expected from intelligence files. Only one copy of Eisenhower’s Top Secret letter to Eden was retained, and the contemporary record identifies who at the White House had seen it.[Office of the Historian]history.state.govOffice of the Historian Historical DocumentsOffice of the HistorianHistorical Documents - Office of the Historian…
This point has appeared in the MJ-12 controversy itself. MJ-12 defender Stanton Friedman argued that research with archivists at the Eisenhower Library and George C. Marshall collections uncovered Top Secret material without the control-number convention critics treated as universal. That argument should not be accepted merely because an advocate made it; the important point is that independently accessible Eisenhower records now permit the underlying proposition to be checked against authentic documents.[DocShare]docshare02.docshare.tipsDoc Share Flying Saucers and ScienceDoc Share Flying Saucers and Science
But the documented exceptions do not erase more specific control-number anomalies. Authentication depends on provenance. If an alleged document is supposed to belong to a particular record series that was itself organised by Top Secret register number, absence of the expected number remains potentially important. Conversely, a memorandum created and retained as a presidential meeting record in the Whitman File cannot automatically be condemned because it lacks a marking routinely encountered in another agency’s registered correspondence.
The most defensible historical test is therefore comparative rather than universal. Ask who created the document, what office handled it, where the surviving copy was filed, how many copies existed and what procedures governed that particular record series. Eisenhower’s White House papers demonstrate that Top Secret accountability could be real and stringent even when the surviving sheet carried no conspicuous conventional control number. For the MJ-12 debate, that means the absence of such a number is evidence whose significance depends on the document’s claimed bureaucratic pathway — not a standalone proof of forgery.[ucsb.edu]presidency.ucsb.eduThe American Presidency ProjectExecutive Order 10501—Safeguarding Official Information in the Interests of the Defense of the United Stat…
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Endnotes
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Additional References
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