Robert L. Dennison Oral History Interview, November 2, 1971

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview

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This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened June, 1972
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: Admiral, let's discuss the Korean conflict. Now that started in June of 1950. Where were you when you first learned of the invasion?

DENNISON: Well, it turned out that that weekend was one in which the President had accepted an engagement to open Friendship Airport, which at that time was quite a few miles from nowhere.

HESS: There are those that say it still is.

DENNISON: I think the problem now is that a lot of nowhere has moved right next door to us, it is harder to get to.

HESS: I guess so.

DENNISON: But we went. As I recall, it was either Friday or Saturday, probably Saturday. At any rate, since we were so near to Annapolis I asked the President if he minded if I spent the next day or two in Annapolis and, as usual, he said, "Why, certainly, anything you want."

So that's where I was. I was in Carvel Hall Hotel when I got the word about Korea and, of course,

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I returned to Washington immediately and went to the White House. By that time...

HESS: President Truman had flown on to his home in Independence, Missouri right after the dedication of Friendship Airport.

DENNISON: Oh, he had?

HESS: Yes.

DENNISON: Well, when did he return to Washington, do you remember?

HESS: Sunday evening.

DENNISON: Well, that's when I got there. But things had moved pretty fast, as you know. He had already made up his mind what had to be done, and he did it. I wasn't with him when he made that decision, but I'm sure he followed the same formula that he had told me about, and I've told you, about how he did make a decision.

I've never heard him express an opinion as to whether Dean Acheson's remarks about our defense perimeter (not including Korea), had anything to do with what happened there, nor, of course, could we know or have planned on the fortuitous absence of the Soviets from the Security Council at that time. The President realized that he couldn't delay on this one.

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HESS: When did you first see President Truman after he arrived? Did you see him that Sunday evening?

DENNISON: It's been so many years ago. I believe I did, because there wouldn't have been any point in my coming back to Washington to just go on home.

HESS: There was a meeting at the Blair House on Sunday evening which several people attended; Dean Acheson, Secretary of Defense Johnson, the service secretaries, Frank Pace, Matthews, Finletter; the Joint Chiefs of Staff, [Omar N.] Bradley, [T. Lawton] Collins, [Hoyt S.] Vandenberg and [Forrest P.] Sherman, and Dean Rusk and John Hickerson, and Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup. They met on Sunday evening and they met again on Monday evening. Do you recall if there were there any advisers, that you heard about, who thought it best not to enter into such a conflict?

DENNISON: No, I don't. It's not very likely that anyone would have had any very strong views on our not getting in because this was clearly a danger and a threat, and if it hadn't been met forcefully and promptly it would have gotten completely out of hand. God knows it got far enough out of.hand as it was.

The thing about Korea that is also true about

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Vietnam (and it's going to be true in other places as well, I'm afraid), is that this was a limited war, limited in the sense that our objectives were limited, which people seem to have forgotten. That kind of a war isn't settled on the battlefield. It can't be. We're not fighting wars where we demand unconditional surrender, as we mistakenly did in World War II. We didn't even get an unconditional surrender there. It might have been a good policy at the time Roosevelt enunciated it, but only to satisfy our allies that we weren't going to make an independent deal for peace. But even there, in a battlefield war, it didn't work. And it would work even less now because we're not about to devastate countries and put in our own governments and that sort of thing. So it means that we've got to end up at a negotiating table. And, of course, the best way, the best position to have at the negotiating table is a position of strength. And here we are in Korea, no peace, still talking, and there isn't much hope of any successful negotiations in Vietnam, which is somewhat of a parallel I believe.

But to get back to your question. I don't recall, but I would seriously doubt, knowing these

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people whom you mentioned, that anybody in that group would voice any objection, or voice anything except approval and support. I have no idea whether any record or any minutes were kept, but some of these people I knew extremely well, Forrest Sherman and Hickerson, for example, and others.

HESS: Our troops actually went into Korea under the U.N. banner. Do you think that if U.N. backing could not have been arranged we would have gone into Korea unilaterally?

DENNISON: Oh, I'm sure we would. It was much better to have the blessing of the United Nations Organization if only to avoid having the organization, or parts of it, aligned against us, not militarily, but in disapproving of our policy, just as in the Cuban missile crisis where the Organization of American States underwrote our actions. Not only that, but several Latin American nations turned over ships to my command, so it made a token military contribution as well. But a deliberate, unilateral action, without an attempt to recognize our responsibilities to these world organizations, I think is unthinkable. It was then and I think it is now.

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HESS: Do you recall if you ever heard President Truman make a statement to the effect that if the United Nations had not gone along he would have recommended our going in by ourselves?

DENNISON: Oh, in the first place, the answer to that is no. But in the second place: I can't imagine that they ever would because he was not going to recommend anything. He was Commander in Chief. He could order, it done, and I'm sure--as sure as I can be--that our going in was not contingent upon the United Nations action.

Suppose, for example, if it had not been for this circumstance of the Soviets being absent, we probably would have run into a Security Council veto. But our allies would have known, the world would have known, that we came clean on it. We felt that this was something we had to face. We asked for the United Nations participation and didn't get it because of the intransigence of one of'the permanent members of the Council.

But I can't imagine that the President would ever have considered recommending going in there. He didn't operate that way. And this is one of the reasons today,

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to get back to what I said about limited wars, that we are in this gray area of fighting without a declaration of war.

HESS: If we were ill-prepared to meet the situation that arose at the time of the Korean invasion, how did that condition come about?

DENNISON: It came about mainly through a belief on the part of some that World War II had pretty well settled everything and that things were going to be stable for a long time. And following World War II, as is true after so many wars, military strength seemed to be expensive and we really didn't need all the force we had. So Johnson really cut the heart out of the services in many ways. It was false economy, of course. Fortunately this happened so closely on the heels of World War II that we did have a lot of military strength that couldn't really be dismantled. But economy was the watchword and Johnson, of course, I think was motivated very largely by political rather than military considerations.

HESS: Did you ever hear any discussion about Secretary Johnson having political ambitions of running on the ticket for the presidential spot?

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DENNISON: No, I never did, but if he ever had such an aspiration it would have been absolutely ridiculous.

HESS: Do you think that was a little above him?

DENNISON: Oh, not even within sight, let alone reach.

HESS: At the same time that we sent forces into Korea references were made as to what we should do about Indochina, and just before the time, on May the 1^st of 1950, President Truman approved the allocation of ten million dollars for the Defense Department to cover early shipment of military assistance items for the French in Indochina.

Now, according to the Pentagon Papers that came out recently, that was the first crucial decision regarding U.S. military involvement in Indochina, May the 1^st of 1950. They may be wrong, but that's what they have said. And then on June the 27th of 1950, shortly after the invasion of Korea, President Truman issued a statement on a situation in which he had the following paragraph:

I have similarly directed an acceleration of the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina and the dispatch of a military mission to provide close working relations with those forces.

What was the view at this time? What was the

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President's view? What was the view of the people on the White House staff around him and of his advisers on the advisability of concerning ourselves with matters in Indochina?

DENNISON: Well, I couldn't read the President's mind. I do know the general atmosphere. There was one school of thought that believed very strongly that we should provide active support, militarily, to the French.

HESS: Who were the main backers of that school of thought?

DENNISON: Oh, I think Admiral Bradford was one. I wouldn't go along with the idea that this was a crucial decision leading to our further involvement. I think this was taking out insurance that didn't have to lead to the kind of involvement we later found ourselves in, and that this was in general line with his policies in other places. How about aid to Greece and Turkey? It took us into Greece but not "X" numbers of Army divisions plus military support, economic support. It didn't turn out that way in Vietnam, but this didn't really place any blame on President Truman. He didn't start anything. He was trying to stop something from growing.

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HESS: Did you ever hear the President make any observations on whether we should or should not assist the French in regaining Indochina after World War II?

DENNISON: Not specifically, but his whole attitude was that this was a lost cause. I mean this debacle at Dien Bien Phu and all that was stupid military action, and...

HESS: Yes, that battle came during the Eisenhower administration, correct?

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: Things weren't going well, even back in those days, however.

DENNISON: No. The French really didn't have anything to contribute in the Far East, just rescuing Indochina or strengthening them so they would be able to hold on. It seemed to a good many of us this would be a dead end. And then...

HESS: Well, one further question on that matter. This was a French colony, this was not France. The indigenous people of that area (whatever they called themselves at that time, the Vietnamese or what), were the natives of the area. Was it discussed that perhaps instead of dealing with a colonial power we

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should go in and try to find a citizen, or a group of citizens, indigenous to the country and try to work with them?

DENNISON: I never heard that. Of course, this is exactly what President Truman wanted to do in China. That's why he sent George Marshall there and that's where Marshall was when the President asked him to be Secretary of State. That was the hope there, and if it didn't work there, it couldn't really work anyplace else. In the first place it was too idealistic. We couldn't find a man that was acceptable to the people. We could never have found one in Vietnam and it was hopeless to try. But I never heard any suggestion like that.

HESS: Just a general question about any influence that George Kennan may have had on your thinking, on the thinking of the people around Mr. Truman. His so-called "long telegram" to the State Department when he was stationed in Russia came in February of '46. His "Article by X" appeared in the July 1947 issue of the Foreign Affairs, and, of course, as you know, that was the article on the containment of communism...

[125]

DENNISON: That's right.

HESS: I'm not sure that was the first time he used the word containment, but...

DENNISON: I remember it well.

HESS: What do you recall about George Kennan's views and did they have any influence on your thinking, either at this time or later, when you were in the White House?

DENNISON: Well, unfortunately, I never liked Kennan (not that likes or dislikes have much to do with it), but I didn't agree with some of the things that he was putting forward. I don't remember Kennan having any influence in my time in the White House. As a matter of fact, I don't even know where he was most of the time. Kennan was a peculiar individual. I sat with him on one occasion on a panel of the Foreign Policy Council or the Foreign Affairs Council of New York. I can't think of the name of it.

HESS: He headed the State Department Policy Planning staff from May '47 to late '49, for one thing.

DENNISON: I remember this one meeting that I'm talking about in New York. This was a panel and a number of knowledgeable and able people attended. Kennan was

[126]

one of them, and the idea was to discuss some of our problems in foreign affairs. This was kind of a stormy meeting. I was also present on a previous occasion when [Henry] Kissinger was the rapporteur, and I was ordered away from Washington after, I think, the second meeting.

But nobody told me, and I'm sure the rest of the panel didn't understand either, at that time, that any book was coming out like Kissinger's Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. So at this second one--Kennan as I recall wasn't in on the first one, although he might have been--again we went around the table and I said that this time I hoped that there would be no book or paper published unless the members of the panel approved it and cleared it. And everybody thought that was a good idea. Then they asked people to express their views in general on anything to get started. It came around to Kennan and he implied very strongly that he didn't think that military people really were qualified in this field.

So, not liking Kennan to begin with, this sort of infuriated me and...

HESS: Being a military person.

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DENNISON: So .I said, "Well, Mr. Kennan, if you want to go around the table and question the qualifications of each one of our members, I think it would be a great idea, and we might start with you." After all everybody there was qualified in some way. I'd been up to my neck in political-military affairs, actively. Somebody stepped in and got things calmed down a little bit. I came back to Washington and ran into Dean Acheson at the Metropolitan Club, and I was still put out and I said, "I've just in the last day or two had a very unfortunate experience with Kennan."

And he said, "Oh God, what has George been up to now?" Then I told him, of course. There wasn't anything we could do about it. It was just typically Kennan.

But no, to get back, I. don't really remember his having any influence, certainly not with President Truman.

HESS: Do you recall if you agreed then, or agree now, with his basic doctrine of the article of containment of the Communist menace, that's ever pressing . . .

DENNISON: Well, I...

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HESS: ...probing, looking for weaknesses?

DENNISON: I'd have to go back and review that "X" article. All I can do is recall what I thought at the time, that this, if it was any good at all, it was probably a very short-term solution. That's an attractive catchword, "containment," just like a lot of other words we've got.

But the real solution, I thought then and I still do, is an improvement in communications. You can't build a wall around anybody anymore, if you ever could. And our communication with Soviet Russia is either absent or pathetically weak. People should see people of other countries, and get an idea of each one's way of life, and what capitalism or free enterprise has to offer against what communism has to offer.

HESS: Well, to bring that up to date, that's extremely current at this time because last week Communist China was voted into the United Nations. Do you think it is a good idea to bring them in?

DENNISON: Well, it's pretty hard to say.

HESS: And to have better communications?

DENNISON: I think it was inevitable, at some time, because realistically here's a government that controls a

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large percentage of the population of the earth.

HESS: They say one-fourth, is that about right?

DENNISON: I don't know. I've heard that figure, but it's beside the point.

HESS: Sounds high.

DENNISON: Yes, it does.

So, it was inevitable, but I do think that we took a beating through ineptitude and through a misreading of our allies and a complete disregard on everybody's part for the terms of the United Nations charter.

Just for one example, the charter itself, referring to the permanent members of the Security Council, names the Republic of China. They are one of the five original founding members having a right of veto. China, Communist China, I think, was legally excluded under the provisions of the charter because of her policies. But we laid our reputation on the line and got kicked around. There are only three NATO allies that were on our side, Luxembourg, Portugal and Greece. The rest of them were looking out the window.

Now, why we had Kissinger in Peking at the time

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it was debated is just completely beyond my understanding.

HESS: That weakened their argument just a little bit, didn't it?

DENNISON: Just a little bit. It pulled the rug out from under Bush completely.

HESS: All right. Anything to add to that general subject?

DENNISON: No, unless you have something you want to ask.

HESS: No.

All right, now moving on into the summer of 1950, there was a rather light moment there that was thought to be serious at the time. Do you recall the flap that arose in the summer when the President wrote to Congressman Gordon McDonough that the Marine Corps was the Navy's police force and that the Marines "have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's?" Do you recall that flap?

DENNISON: I certainly do, and do you know that that one incident, up to that time, drew more telegrams, telephone calls, mail, into the White House than any single incident? Of course, something like the

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Taft-Hartley Act, which just goes on for years, over the years has totaled more, but this really inundated the White House.

HESS: It shook up the Marines.

DENNISON: Oh God! And I was on the receiving end good deal of it because, being the President's Naval Aide, the good old mail room or somebody would dump most of this stuff on me. It was incredible to read some of it, but it represented a really bitter, emotional reaction.

This is an example of what we all were terrified about, of the President getting up early in the morning and going down and writing his own correspondence. I never asked him how he happened to write this character, but Bill Hassett, or somebody, told me that he thought that this man was an Army acquaintance of his. Whether this was true or not, or how he happened to pick him, I never knew. But the man released this letter and then all hell broke loose.

The President got enough of it and he sent for me and Charlie Ross. He said, "You've got to get me out of this."

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I was reminded of something that I didn't tell him, but I think it was good. Roosevelt had made a very unfortunate speech in Pittsburgh about labor in some way or another and he asked Sam [Samuel I.] Rosenman the same thing President Truman was asking me, and Rosenman was supposed to have told Roosevelt, "Mr. President, it's very simple. All you've got to do is deny you made the speech."

HESS: Just deny you ever said it.

DENNISON: Yes. But President Truman was really in trouble. He didn't mean to offend the Marines. With an Army background and so on, naturally, with...

HESS: That sounds like an old soldier talking.

DENNISON: Sure. Well, that's exactly what he was doing, and he never thought that what he took to be a personal letter was going to appear in the newspapers.

Well, I said, "Well, Mr. President, I can see only one thing to do, and that is to write a letter to Cliff [Clifton B.] Cates, the Commandant, and explain what you were trying to say, or why you said what you did, and in effect apologize."

Ross was horrified. He said, "Well, the President can't do that. He can't apologize."

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And the President said, "Well, I'm not so sure about that." And he turned to me and said, "Go out into the Cabinet Room, send for Winkler, anybody, and draft a letter."

I did, and that's a matter of record, but it did explain what it was all about. In the letter Cates was asked to give this wide distribution among the Marine Corps, or to anybody else.

Well, the President got the draft and whatever happened to the draft I don't know. He changed two or three words or made some minor correction in the first part of it, and out it went. At any rate, he signed it and it went on its way to Cates. So that was that.

A little bit later I got another call from the President to come over and see him, again with Ross, also the Secret Service. There may have been somebody else there, but Ross and I were the only ones really involved in it. The President said, "It seems to me that I was invited to a Marine reunion here in Washington. Is that correct?"

I said, "Yes, and also in accordance with your policy of not being able to attend all these things, you regretted. It's at the Statler Hotel."

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The President said, "Well, I'm going." It was to be the next morning.

Even I thought this unwise, but I didn't say so and I let the Secret Service take care of that. They had all the reasons why he shouldn't do it; that emotions were so high that somebody might throw a beer bottle at him or embarrass him or something. And he said, "Well, I don't care about that. I'm going to go."

Then he turned to me and said, "What time is this meeting?"

"Oh," I said, "I don't know, I think it is 9 o'clock."

"Call up General Cates and ask him to stop by the White House and pick me up."

Well, I was used to that kind of stuff, so I didn't deliver that one literally.

Cates was pleased, of course, and he appeared at the White House and Charlie Ross, the Secret Service and Cates and I went on to the Statler.

It all happened so fast that nobody had any idea that the President was anywhere around. We waited outside of the place where they had the

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gathering. Cates walked out on the stage and of course the Marines nearly tore the place down. They expected him to give a rally-around-the-flag sort of speech, you know, but instead of that Cates said, "Gentlemen, the President of the United States," and there was absolute dead silence.

HESS: Took them by surprise.

DENNISON: Completely! Here they were all ready for a hell of a speech and the President walked out. I thought the place was going to fall down. Hell, nobody threw anything at him. They admired his guts which they all could well recognize. And he got up--not got up, he was up, he never sat down--and really told the Marines what he thought about the Marine Corps and all fooling aside. He certainly didn't overdo it, but it really came through. It wasn’t very long. He didn't have any prepared speech. Nobody could write that one for him.

I thought the hotel was coming down before he spoke and I was sure it was after he spoke. And the chairman, I forget what rank he was, but anyway a Marine, took a medal off his own chest and pinned

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it on the President. We left as soon as the President could get out of the place. Everybody wanted to shake hands with him. If that wasn't a personal triumph I never saw one. What guts he had.

HESS: He knew how to handle it. He knew what had to be done.

All right, moving on, in the next month, September of 1950, Louis Johnson resigned and was replaced by General Marshall as Secretary of Defense. Why was that resignation deemed necessary? Why was that replacement made?

DENNISON: Well, President Truman is the only one who can answer that one, but I do know that there had been a number of incidents, some of which I was involved in, that made the President pretty unhappy, and it probably got to a point where it was just too much. But what the key item in this was, I don't know. I don't know why the timing, or what really brought it on.

I can give you one incident. The President was very jealous, and rightly so, of his appointive power, which also applied to the power to remove. Navy promotion was based on a selection system. A Board of

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Officers would convene. They operated under oath. It was a very tough job. Their job, for example, is to pick a limited number of flag officers out of a large number of captains. That was in this particular board that I'm about to tell about.

The law has it that this board's report doesn't go to the Secretary of the Navy, or the Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of anything. It goes to the President. If he doesn't like somebody's selection, he strikes the name and sends it back to the board for reconsideration in sending up another name. He never did that with a Navy Selection Board. I've seen him do it with the Army. He had a hell of a time one time about nominations for the Chief of the Corps of Engineers.

Well, we were down at Key West when this board convened, this particular one, and the report came to me. I don't think that either Johnson or Matthews thought this was going to happen, but it did because papers like that always came to me. When I took things like that in to the President he never asked me anything but one question, "Has any injustice been done?"

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The report came, and much to my horror Johnson and Matthews had struck Burke's name (Admiral Arleigh A. Burke), because they thought he was subversive and he was opposed to unification and God knows what all. They had reconvened the board and had selected another officer.

This upset me, of course, because it was unjust. So I got a lot of material together on Burke and went in early the next morning before anybody was up. The President was alone and I said, "Mr. President I have a report of the Navy Selection Board here and I want to do some special pleading so would you please permit me to step out of my job as Naval Aide a minute?" I was dead serious and he looked up at me and said, "Bob, take the stuffing out of your shirt and sit down and tell me what it's all about."

So I told him and I said, "I want you to understand, Mr. President, that Burke is a friend of mine, which you must take into account. I have no axe to grind here. He's senior to me and wouldn't be if this thing stood."

So he said, "Well, wasn't Burke Chief of Staff to Admiral Marc Mitscher?"

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I said, "Yes, sir."

And he said, "Well, you know, I spent a day aboard Mitscher's flag ship. I was very much impressed with Mitscher." He said, "If he thought Burke was good enough to be Chief of Staff I'm sure he was a damn good man, besides what you tell me. So," he said, "let me have the papers."

We came back to Washington and nothing happened. I thought he had forgotten about it and, like everything else, he hadn't, but there was a great big uproar about all this, about Burke being passed over and who had done it.

So the President added a little fuel to that particular fire. Johnson and Matthews came up to see the President and I was with the President. The President told me they were coming up and said, "I want you to get out of the room while they are here and go sit in the Cabinet Room and I'll call you in."

Well, when I came back in the room they had left and the President was all smiles and he said, "I want to tell you what happened." He said, "Burke's name has been replaced on the list for Rear Admiral and this other officer they selected was also retained.

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And the great part of it is that Matthews and Johnson think they thought it up all by themselves." But after this, he said, "You know," this is, as a matter of fact, the second time he told me something like this, "I don't wish to fire Johnson or Matthews now." They didn't have sense enough to realize that their action was not only in conflict with the law but it was assuming the presidential prerogatives of appointment. He didn't like that sort of thing a damn bit.

So I think again (to get back to your original question, I'm sorry to deviate here), that it probably was more in part an accumulation of ineptness and--well, like this veterans hospital business that I talked to you about. Another one was that when [Admiral Lewis E.] Denfeld was dismissed over this B-36 business, Matthews had asked me to help Denfeld with his statement. Denfeld and I were old friends and we had quite a few people writing this thing for him. The reason that Matthews wanted me to sit in on this was to be sure, if I could, that Denfeld didn't say anything in opposition to the President’s policy.

Well, unfortunately, Denfeld, when he made this statement, threw in something on his own, and that

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was a remark to the effect that he endorsed completely everything that Arthur Radford had said. So instead of everybody getting mad at Radford, they got mad at Denfeld. And I heard that he had been relieved some time in midafternoon. I don't know whether the President heard about it or not. I don't think he had any part in this.

I went in to see the President and said, "I've just learned what Johnson and Matthews have done," and I said, "You know, Mr. President, Denfeld is a friend of mine and would you mind if I went up to the observatory and talked with him and Mrs. Denfeld?"

He said, "Well, of course not. I want you to go. Of course he's an old friend of yours and he shouldn't be left alone at a time like this."

So I did go up and talk with him, and sure enough there wasn't anybody there except me. Admiral Denfeld wasn't resentful. I think he was really relieved because of the intolerable situation that he'd been in with both Johnson and Matthews.

The next day I got a call from Matthews wanting to know if I would be kind enough to come down and see him. I said, "Certainly."

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When I got in his office he was absolutely livid. He said, "Did you write Admiral Denfeld's speech?"

I said, "I certainly did not, but I was in on the drafting sessions because you asked me to be there. But I didn't see his speech."

He said, "Well, I understand you went up to Denfeld's quarters yesterday."

And I said, "Yes, I did."

He said, "That's the most disloyal act I ever heard of." And he went on and made a couple of other remarks.

Then I said, "Well; Mr. Secretary, I can tell you one person who doesn't think it's disloyal."

He said, "Who's that?"

I said, "The Commander in Chief," and his face fell a mile. Johnson had been in on this one too, and the President again said that this wasn't the time. He did plan to get Matthews out by sending him as Ambassador to Ireland, but he wasn't getting along with Matthews or Johnson. I mean they'd go off on a tangent like this and really do things that could have been done, if they had to be done, in other ways.

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HESS: Do you recall the incident that finally tipped the scales against Secretary Matthews? I believe he made a speech either in New York or Boston criticizing the way the war was being carried out in Korea. Is that correct?

DENNISON: I've forgotten. I remember there was something like that, but I'm afraid I've really forgotten what it was that pulled down the house.

HESS: It was shortly thereafter that he was Ambassador to Ireland.

DENNISON: Yes, that's right.

HESS: Now back to Mr. Johnson. Some historians have said that perhaps one of the reasons for his departure was a serious lack of rapport with Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State.

DENNISON: Johnson?

HESS: Johnson.

DENNISON: Well, the lack of rapport is certainly true, because they were completely different people. Johnson was a political animal and Acheson was anything but. But that needn't have been a handicap because you can hardly imagine more dissimilar backgrounds than Acheson and Truman.

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HESS: Why do you think that those two men got along so well? It's well-known that they did. Why in your opinion did they?

DENNISON: Well, when Dean Acheson wrote a book, or wrote a series of articles, he had been writing about his experiences--not this Present at the Creation book, before that--I asked him one time, "Dean, I know what you think of President Truman and what he thinks of you. Why in the world don't you write about it?"

He said, "Well, the reason is that I'm so emotionally involved, I admire him so deeply, that I just feel that as of now I simply cannot be objective."

And then of course--you've read Present at the Creation--he finally did. But the reason they got along so well was that each one had a deep admiration for the other. They each recognized honesty, integrity and ability, and the President thought that Acheson was great. Well, he was great, and Acheson admired the incisiveness and the decisionmaking ability of the President. Not only were they in a close official relationship, but their families were the closest of friends, and background be damned. I mean that's a completely secondary consideration and had nothing

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to do with their relationship. But on the surface, it certainly would appear strange that two apparently dissimilar types, but each one able to recognize the real qualities of the other, could be so close. I think it was wonderful.

HESS: Secretary Marshall was asked to replace Secretary Johnson. Do you know why Secretary Marshall was chosen?

DENNISON: Well, because he was available and he had the kind of firmness and sense that was needed to get the pieces back together again. When he was Secretary of State, the President had an extremely high regard for his ability as Secretary, which I didn't completely share, mainly because I didn't really know him well enough, and certainly not as well as I knew Acheson, but he was a strong man and not stubborn and the type that could really move into a collapsing situation and get it back together again.

HESS: Did he get it back together? Did he do a pretty good job?

DENNISON: I think he did, yes.

HESS: He was there for one year, September of '50 until September of '51.

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DENNISON: Yes, a very short time.

HESS: All right, in the...

DENNISON: Didn't Lovett succeed him?

HESS: That's right. That's quite right. Lovett was his assistant. He was Deputy Secretary during the time that General Marshall was there and then when he left Mr. Lovett took over.

Secretary Johnson's resignation was requested before September the 15th, but it was delayed until September the 19th. September the 15th was the Inchon landing, which has generally been regarded as a stroke of genius by General MacArthur, and things started going our way. Things had not been going our way, and then they changed. Do you think that if the Inchon landing had come before the decision was made to replace Secretary Johnson that might have changed it, might have delayed the decision, or made it unnecessary to request his resignation?

DENNISON: Oh, I don't think so, no.

HESS: There were just too many things.

DENNISON: Yes, too many.

HESS: Okay.

DENNISON: Let me comment a little bit about Lovett, because

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this throws an interesting sidelight on President Truman.

Lovett had been reported to have said (and knowing Lovett I doubt if he ever did), but, at any rate, it came to the President's ear that he had said the President was simply an unsuccessful haberdasher. It didn't make a damn bit of difference to the President. Lovett was a Republican. He was doing a great job. And this was so characteristic of President Truman. He didn't care what anybody said about him politically. He expected it, and he couldn't have cared less what Lovett said as long as Lovett was doing a great job as Secretary of Defense, which he was.

HESS: And in the following month, October the 15th, 1950, is a red letter day in the Truman administration. It was the conference at Wake Island between President Truman and General MacArthur. According to the logs you did not make that trip, is that correct?

DENNISON: No, because I was in the hospital, otherwise I would have.

HESS: When did you go into the hospital?

DENNISON: Oh, I've forgotten, it's been so long ago, but

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not too long before, I guess.

HESS: Here is a copy of a letter you wrote to the President two or three days after the assassination attempt on November the lst, and from your correspondence I took it that you had been in the hospital for some time, but how long I did not know.

DENNISON: Well, I mean, it couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks or so. But this was from Key West. The President wanted me to go down there to recuperate.

HESS: And I noticed in your letter you refer to the fact that you had been in Bethesda for a period of time, correct?

DENNISON: It couldn't have been very long. It was an illness that I completely recovered from. It was a kidney infection.

HESS: Do you know why the President decided to fly half way around the world, more or less, to confer with General MacArthur rather than having him come somewhat closer?

DENNISON: Yes, I can tell you that, because the President told me about it. The President's reasoning was that here was a field commander who shouldn't be too far away from his post, and it never occurred to the

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President to get him to come all the way back to Washington. So his idea was to meet in this God forsaken Wake Island, which is not too far away from Korea, but it wasn't kowtowing to MacArthur a damn bit. It was just a practical matter. I never felt that MacArthur took it that way. I might not be just in what I thought at the time and still do.

HESS: Did President Truman ever tell you about that meeting, about what MacArthur may have said, or how things went?

DENNISON: Yes, he did, and this was one of the things that really disturbed him, the statement of MacArthur's that the Chinese Communists would never come into the conflict and that the 8th Army would be out of there before Chirstmas, or something, some such impossible date.

The President got a much rosier picture of the situation from MacArthur than was the actual case, as it turned out to be, and he didn't like that.

There are some conflicting accounts of who said what. Acheson didn't want any part of this meeting and said so, but he also goes on to say quite a bit about what happened. Jessup's secretary's account may

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or may not be too accurate, and...

HESS: Miss Vernice Anderson.

DENNISON: Yes. And the President's own record of it, certainly what he told me (and I have no reason to believe that he didn't hear things the way he wrote them), but those two things about having the 8th Army out and having the Communists stay out of the picture, completely misrepresented the situation.

HESS: Did President Truman say anything to you about MacArthur's attitude, or how he may have treated President Truman? Did you ever hear anything on that subject?

DENNISON: No. He did think that MacArthur was overly pompous. Of course, when MacArthur started publicly quarreling with some of our foreign policies that was just too much. But of course MacArthur was relieved. He wasn't discharged or fired. It's maybe a fine distinction, but worth remembering. The President didn't have him court-martialed or take his uniform away from him or anything.

HESS: He just relieved him of his duties.

DENNISON: Yes, but--and this is another decision that he made painstakingly. He consulted Marshall and

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Bradley and a lot of people, and he didn't take it lightly at all. I mean they went back and reviewed the record, and I think it was Marshall who told him that he was surprised, having reviewed all this stuff, that the President hadn't relieved MacArthur long before.

HESS: According to the "Substance of Statements Made at Wake Island Conference," this is the one that Miss Vernice Anderson worked on, General MacArthur did make the statement that the Chinese Communists would probably not come into the fighting, and then either in late October or early November, there's some question there, the Chinese Communists did start to come in. What was President Truman's attitude at the time? Were you back from Key West?

DENNISON: What was the date?

HESS: It's either late October or early November. There are conflicting reports as to when the first Communist Chinese soldiers were picked up by patrols.

DENNISON: Oh, in late October I was obviously in Key West because that's where I wrote this letter on the 2^nd of November.

HESS: And then in November--do you recall anything about

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President Truman's attitude when you returned, about the invasion of the Chinese Communists when things had definitely taken a turn for the worse?

DENNISON: Well, one view that was held by the President and a good many people, was that we shouldn't move into Manchuria, nor should we destroy the power supplies on the Yalu river. It would have been beyond our means to try to hold any part of Manchuria. And then I don't think that the magnitude of this Communist effort was generally recognized.

HESS: All right, then winter came and we were pushed out of the area of Seoul.

DENNISON: Yes, things were pretty grim there for a while.

HESS: Things were pretty grim, and then things along toward March started going our way a little bit, the troops started moving back up the peninsula, and then in April, I believe on April the 11th of 1951, it became necessary for the President to dismiss General MacArthur. Can you tell me the background of that? This, of course, is an extremely important topic. What was the background that we have not covered? We've discussed part of it.

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DENNISON: Well, the principal item on this background was this letter that he wrote, as I recall, to some veterans organization, wasn't it?

HESS: It was the VFW.

DENNISON: And this just wouldn't do. I think this was the immediate cause and, of course, other things grew out of this VFW letter as well.

HESS: I think the VFW letter was fairly early. If I'm not mistaken that was in August.

DENNISON: Yes, but there was something that happened.

HESS: And then there was the letter to Congressman Joe Martin, just a little later.

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: And that was much closer to the time of his dismissal.

DENNISON: But the President had it under consideration for a reasonable length of time, because I do know the pains he went to to consult these men who knew MacArthur. The President didn't want to let any personal pique enter into this at all. That's not the way he was. I never knew whether he liked or disliked MacArthur. He probably didn't like him because there are different kinds of military people. But

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it must have taken him, well my guess would be, I really don't recall, maybe a matter of one or two weeks to finally come to a decision. And of course Bradley and Marshall knew MacArthur, knew his background, his whole history. I served with MacArthur briefly too, and I sure can't claim to know him.

I asked General Bradley one time about MacArthur because he had a lot of great qualities. And Bradley, among other things, told me that MacArthur just missed being a great general. He had a flaw in his character, perhaps personal aggrandizement. That's the way Bradley looked at it anyhow. But for that, and other reasons, he really didn't have it. He was certainly a fatalist, but he did have a great deal of ability. There is no question about it. He made some terrible mistakes. His idea of how to take Japan would have been good in the 19th century, maybe, or even a little later, but working our way step by step up through the islands and up through Mindanao and up into Luzon, hell, we would have been fighting that war for years.

I think his "I will return" was mainly responsible for our going into the Philippines on the way back. I think that was militarily completely stupid. It

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took time and men, but in any event that, rightly or wrongly, would be my idea of one of the reasons why he wasn't great. "I will return" was his keynote of this whole damn policy to get back to beat Japan. But the President did make up his mind, which again was certainly a thoroughly researched decision. MacArthur came back, landed in San Francisco, had a big welcoming ceremony and obviously had some political aspirations. The President told me that MacArthur had made a great mistake. He should have come back to report to the Commander in Chief. And he said, "If he wanted to get into politics I would have been able to perhaps give him a bit of advice." But instead here he was having this triumphal processional home. The President said, "He's going to be at a ceremony here in the monument grounds and I want you to go and represent me." He said, "You know MacArthur and his family and I'd appreciate it if you would go." He would appreciate it! My God, if he'd said jump off the roof I'd have jumped.

So I did go to his ceremony and of course was welcomed by the General and his wife, but the President never could understand why in the world he didn't act

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like a soldier and come back to report to the Commander in Chief before he did any of this stuff, which simply was further evidence, if any was needed, that the President was right in the first place.

HESS: Do you recall anything in particular about who the President may have conferred with before the dismissal decision was made?

DENNISON: Well, the two I remember were Marshall and Bradley. I'm sure there must have been others.

HESS: Did he request your views?

DENNISON: No, because my contact with MacArthur was superficial. I certainly never knew him in his younger days. I didn’t know what his contemporaries thought of him. My view wouldn't have been worth the time it would take the President to hear it compared with Marshall's, for example. But he knew pretty well what I thought. He knew about what happened in the Philippines and the way I saw it in the Southwest Pacific. But this return of MacArthur was completely different from the return of Eisenhower. Would you like to hear about that?

HESS: Yes.

DENNISON: Well, the President, of course, persuaded General

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Eisenhower to become Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and got him away from Columbia. I won't go into all that went on while people were trying to find out whether General Eisenhower was Republican or Democrat, or whether he was going to run or what not. It all became pretty clear that he was.

But at any rate when Eisenhower came back from Europe he landed in uniform and the President again, knowing that I had known Eisenhower, asked me to go to the airport to meet him. The Republicans had organized a welcoming committee with a band and all the rest of it. I was alone in the President's car. After the ceremony, which wasn't very long, we were to drive back to the White House. The President in the meantime had invited General Eisenhower's family and some close friends to his office where he was going to confer the Distinguished Service Medal on General Eisenhower.

Well, about noon, we found ourselves around the Lincoln Memorial on the way back, and there were a lot of people who recognized the General and waved at him and he waved back, obviously enjoying it. In a little bit of a lull he turned to me and said,

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"You know, Bob, you and I were brought up in a profession where we learned that the best way to keep out of trouble is to keep your mouth shut." He said, "Now I find myself in trouble for trying to do just that." The President liked General Eisenhower and respected him and admired him until they had their unfortunate falling out later. But this was the kind of performance he would expect from MacArthur. Eisenhower didn’t land in civilian clothes and go and make a speech at a monument ground or something. He came to the White House.

HESS: Do you recall why General Eisenhower had been appointed as Supreme Commander, Allied Commander, in Europe?

DENNISON: Yes, because he was certainly the logical man to do it. They needed an able man, a strong man, and who did we have in the military who could possibly touch Eisenhower? In the early days of the Alliance we needed strength. We needed prestige. I believe he was asked for by NATO.

HESS: Some historians have said that appointment was an effort by Mr. Truman to build up Eisenhower politically, hoping that he would run on a Democratic ticket later

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on. Do you think there was anything to that?

DENNISON: No, there's nothing to it. That's the last thing the President was thinking of.

HESS: Did President Truman ever say, anything about having offered to assist General Eisenhower if indeed he did want to run on-the Democratic ticket?

DENNISON: Yes, but only in passing and very casually, just as he would with MacArthur, with help and advice. I don't remember the Democratic ticket part of it. I don't think the President knew until late in the game just what Eisenhower's politics were and I don't think General Eisenhower himself did.

HESS: In Cabell Phillips' book, The Truman Presidency, which has been out for several years, he states that there was a time before the 1948 campaign when President Truman offered to even take second place on the Democratic ticket that year if General Eisenhower would take the first place. Have you ever heard anything on that?

DENNISON: I certainly never did, and that doesn't sound right, because President Truman, when he ran was, among other things, I'm sure, trying to vindicate himself, his record, and that's why he ran in the

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first place. I'm as sure as I can be that this was the main consideration.

HESS: What caused the falling out between President Truman and General Eisenhower?

DENNISON: Why, I thought we covered that, but if we haven't I guess you and I just talked about it.

The President put a very high premium on loyalty and when Eisenhower appeared on the same platform as [Senator Joseph R.] McCarthy and [Senator William E.] Jenner and changed his speech to remove the complimentary references to General Marshall, these were two things that hit the President right between the eyes. One was that he would do such a thing, to appear on the platform with these people. You have to remember the political context of time. Jenner, I believe, had said that Marshall was a living lie. And the other one is that Eisenhower would not say what he had intended to say about Marshall, whom the President thought was one of the greatest people that ever lived, and certainly Marshall had made Eisenhower. If it hadn't been for Marshall his career would have been completely different. So this was just more than the President could take and that's why he just wrote

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him off.

The President told me something that happened when they were driving from the White House down to the Capitol for the inauguration. Eisenhower never came in the White House. I remember the President met him outside and went down to the Capitol. On the way down, with President Truman, General Eisenhower turned to him and said, "I wonder what s.o.b. ordered my son back, just to embarrass me." I think John at that time was in Germany or someplace.

The President said, "I did." Of course it was with the idea that here was the greatest day in Eisenhower's life and certainly his family ought to be there. That ended that conversation.

HESS: After General MacArthur was dismissed did President Truman in the next few weeks or months give any indication or express any viewpoints on how good a general he thought MacArthur had been?

DENNISON: No. No, that was a closed issue. I mean he made up his mind. It wasn't like the President to reminisce about things like that.

HESS: All right, one other MacArthur item. On April the 21st of 1951, Anthony Leviero, writing in the

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New York Times, had an article concerning the conference held at Wake Island in October which included some minutes of the conference that had been kept under a top secret classification until that time. Do you know where Mr. Leviero got his information?

DENNISON: I haven't the faintest idea.

HESS: All right.

DENNISON: I didn't realize there was any such document in existence. Are you using the word "minutes" correctly? Was there a set of minutes?

HESS: Well, what it was, what it boiled down to, was Miss Anderson's minutes that she had taken outside the room. They weren't really minutes, but shorthand notes.

DENNISON: Well, of course, nobody authorized her to do it, and they weren't accepted as being official and she wasn't supposed to do it anyhow. The accuracy of those notes I think has been questioned by others.

HESS: Well, Anthony Leviero wrote that article later in the same month that General MacArthur was dismissed, and won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the article, just because he was given access to material that

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had been under top secret classification.

What do you recall of the assassination attempt? You were in the hospital at the time, of course.

DENNISON: I was at Key West.

HESS: After this time did you ever hear President Truman speak of that incident?

DENNISON: Yes. He was saddened by the policeman's death.

HESS: Leslie Coffelt.

DENNISON: Yes. It was so unnecessary and the act of mad men as the President saw it, and this was his principal reaction. I mean he couldn't have cared less about being attacked. He told me many times that assassinating a President was a simple job, provided the assassin was willing to trade his own life. He said, "There's no way that the President can be protected from that kind of attack," so this was part of being in public life.

HESS: One bit of security that was tightened up concerns the cars that had been delivered a year before. The Lincoln Cosmopolitan, the one that was assigned for the President's use, was taken back and armor-plated at that time. Do you recall if there were other measures taken to increase the security and surveillance

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protection of the President after the assassination attempt?

DENNISON: No. I think [James J.] Rowley would be the authority on that. Of course there was a tightening up perhaps in numbers of guards and the Secret Service was tremendously thorough.

I remember when my wife and I got back from Key West after this assassination attempt. We had left our two young children in our Westchester apartment and when we returned we found that the Secret Service had instructed everybody at the desk not to admit that I lived there, and they had taken our nameplate down and actually stationed a guard.

But no, speaking of the Secret Service, I am going to back up a little bit to another experience of George Marshall and President Truman.

The President, Harry Vaughan and I went down to the Capitol, one Sunday I guess it was. The President wanted to pay his respects. General Pershing's body was lying in the rotunda. We went in and stood there with bowed heads for a few minutes then came out and got in the car to go back down Constitution Avenue to the White House.

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Well, we weren't escorted. The White House limousine had a Secret Service driver. The President was in the right rear seat. Vaughan and I were next to him and a Secret Service man in the right front seat. All of a sudden there was a blast of screaming sirens. A car, plus a flying wedge of motorcycles went by, and the man in the back seat of the car was half standing and yelling at the driver. Of course, what,he was yelling was, "For goodness sakes stop," but they didn't stop. The police, a wing man, waved the President's car into the curb.

Well, they don't stop with the President in the car. They never do. This guy put his motorcycle up on the standard (whatever holds the motorcycle up), and blocked the car. He pulled out his ticket book and walked back to raise hell with the driver and give him a ticket.

Well, all of us were just waiting for what was going to happen. The policeman looked over the shoulder of the driver and saw the President of the United States in the back seat. I never before saw anybody literally turn white. He turned around

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and got on his motorcycle and got the hell out of there. When we got to the White House and rolled into the south grounds who should be standing there but General George Marshall. He said, "Mr. President, my deepest apology.This was a horrible thing to do and I'm..."

HESS: He was the man with the motorcycle escort.

DENNISON: Yes, not the President. And the President...

HESS: The President was going to get a ticket.

DENNISON: The President laughed and said, "Well, George, this will teach you a lesson, something I've been trying to get across to you, never have a motorcycle escort if you can help it."

HESS: All right, now since we have mentioned the so-called revolt of the Admirals (I'll use the expression, you didn't use it, but I'll use it), when Admiral Denfeld was replaced by Forrest Sherman, that was what was known as the revolt of the Admirals, true? Do you recall that expression?

DENNISON: Yes. I also recall General Bradley's testimony before Congress when he called admirals "Fancy Dans."

HESS: One of the things that was upsetting the admirals at that time, of course, was the B-36 matter, the

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fear that the Air Force was going to take over part of the Navy's role. During all this time it seemed that the Navy was worried about the continuation of their role in the national defense. One of the things that they were particularly concerned with was that the air wing might be transferred to the Air Force. Did this concern you? Did you think the Navy's role in the defense of our nation might be diminished by unification?

DENNISON: Well, it wasn't quite the way I looked at it. I think the basic difficulty with the Navy was the lack of understanding of what unification was all about. It hadn't been defined. It was another one of those words that was a great favorite of Johnson's. You were either for unification or you weren't. But what the hell was it? Was it a merger? Did it mean the loss of service identity? This was what the Navy was fearful of, a loss of identity. We didn't want to merge with any service, obviously, because they have different roles and different missions. We have different instruments and a different uniform, and for a good reason.

So it wasn't that the Navy was opposed to the concept of a Department of Defense because it was

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apparent to everybody that the armed forces had gotten so big that something had to be done if only for management, let alone for command. But this revolt of the admirals was another emotional expression. It was really an honest difference of opinion and a questioning of what this was all about, and had Johnson not been so terribly extreme, it might have been different.

I remember down in Miami (this was before he became Secretary, I think), at some convention, American Legion I guess it was, the Navy had a fly-over of some of their planes. It just infuriated Johnson. Maybe he was Secretary because I remember he just swore and raised his voice and claimed the Goddamn Navy was trying to propagandize the convention and it was just incredible. Well, with a wild man like that, who knew what was going to happen?

And of course the President's idea of the structure turned out to be not what finally came out of the National Security Act. I thought his concept was a little naive where he was just going to have a sort of a management board of the service secretaries and the Secretary of Defense, with none

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of this echelon of faceless people between the Secretary and the service secretaries.

But this revolt of the admirals, it wasn't a revolt and it wasn't just the admirals. The whole Navy was questioning what the future held, what were the policies, why? So it was a disturbing time.

I personally felt that this had to come. The way I saw it--not the way some people saw it--you'd just have a complete conglomerate mass of people in the armed services, and certainly we couldn't have merged our air arm with the Air Force because they don't operate in the same kind of an environment, in the same type of airplanes, and the same type of training. An Air Force pilot, God knows, has got enough to do without learning how to land on a carrier, for example.

I think healthy rivalry is a good thing. You can't just sit back and be complacent and have nobody to compete with.

But for all these reasons, and many others that are pretty obvious, it was a difficult time and it would have been a lot different without Johnson and

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with a better definition of just where we were going and why.

Now we did have some emotional reactions. For example, the Navy in general was opposed to moving out of the Navy Building on Constitution Avenue and moving into the Pentagon. Well, this was ridiculous and it took a bit of doing to get people to go along with it. Of course we had to be in the Pentagon.This is a small point, but rather significant. We should have taken the attitude that I felt was the only practical one and that is, "If you can't lick them, join them." This is the approach that we should have tried. We should have gone in there and tried to control the course of events earlier than we did.

Well, as it turned out, many of our fears were groundless. This wasn't what the President had in mind at all, and it didn't turn out that way. Sure, we had gone through some tough fights. For example, not only the absorption of our air arm, but even later about who was going to control the Polaris submarine. This came up under Tom Gates and there was a pretty strong case put up by the Air Force and

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the Strategic Air Command that this was an atomic weapons delivery capability and obviously it ought to be combined with the bombing delivery capability that the Air Force had in the Strategic Air Command.

Well, this was knocked down and the first Polaris submarines were assigned to me as Commander in Chief, Atlantic, a unified command. I did command them directly, not through intervening echelons of command.

So this was a right decision and it was a right decision to leave the Navy air arm alone. But a lot of this emotional business could have been--in the first place it should never have started--but it could have been dispelled with a little more intelligence and understanding on the part of Johnson.

HESS: Do you think the emotionalism was fed by Secretary Sullivan at the time of his resignation when they would not build the super carrier, the U.S.S. United States?

DENNISON: Well, we were unified then. Johnson was the Secretary of Defense and made the decision to cancel that contract. It made no sense to the Navy that this could have been done so offhandedly and without consultation and without adequate explanation.

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HESS: Because at the time that Mr. Sullivan resigned there was this exchange in a press conference; President Truman's press conference April the 28th, 1949:

"Mr. President, there seems to be a considerable apprehension in the Navy over one, losing all the Navy air to the Air Force and, two, transfer of all Marine Corps air activity to the Air Force."

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think there was any foundation to either one of those.

QUESTION: That wasn't a columnist's prognostication, that was Secretary Sullivan's letter.

THE PRESIDENT: I didn't read Secretary Sullivan's letter to the Secretary of Defense. I only read the letter he wrote to me, and I replied to that.

That was something that we mentioned last week. Secretary Sullivan wrote two letters, one that he sent to the President and then the two-page letter that he sent to the Secretary of Defense, and they were quite different in tone.

DENNISON: Well, didn't we go into all of that?

HESS: Why I brought this up today was that last time when we spoke I did not have copies of the letters. I just thought you might like to see copies of those letters and I have them with me today.

DENNISON: I certainly would.

HESS: And you said that you sat in on the session that

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convinced Secretary Sullivan that he should tone down the letter that went to the President, correct?

DENNISON: No, what happened at that meeting was to dissuade Sullivan from sending the letter that he did send to the Secretary of Defense to the President because--Charlie Ross had the major share in convincing him that had he done this it would represent a real split between Sullivan and the President. They were friends and certainly both strong Democrats and it was completely unnecessary.

And remember, too, this unification resulted in removal of the service secretaries from the Cabinet, and really the unification was completely the wrong term because what it did was to create still another branch of the armed forces. It didn't unify anything except the top administrative structure.

HESS: It created a Department of Defense.

DENNISON: Yes, but it also created the Air Force. This is a long story about how that came about. Stupidity on the part of the Army in the handling of its Army Air Corps was the main reason.

HESS: What had they done wrong in the handling of that situation?

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DENNISON: Well, the same thing the Navy almost did wrong and that is they didn't recognize the top people, the growing importance of aviation and the tremendous revolution this meant in all kinds of warfare. The officers in the Army Air Corps were in the unfortunate position of probably not being in line for the very top commands, because they were specialists in this one field, you see. So they were sort of being--they weren't kicked around exactly, but they didn't feel they had the recognition they deserved.

The air arm of the Army was getting so big that this was a solution, "Let's create a separate department." And, unfortunately, as time has gone on this department has gotten highly specialized. It's a question to what extent the missile, or Polaris, our underwater launch systems, are making the strategic bomber atomic delivery capability obsolete. The Air Force recognizes this and they are concerned about it. But what the solution is is another matter. They can't take over the responsibility just for missiles and then forget things with wings on them. There will always be a need for troop lift, for example, and for tactical aircraft in a good many missions. But

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the role of the strategic bomber, I think, is rapidly diminishing. Remember that when there wasn't an Air Force Hap Arnold was one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combined Chiefs.

HESS: All right, moving on to another topic, let's spend just a few moments discussing some of the other members of the White House staff and how the White House staff operated. And on some of the more important people if you could give me an illustration of how you may have worked with that person, and a specific subject on which you may have worked with them, which would help to illustrate your role and his. Now, Mr. Truman's Military Aide, of course, was General Harry Vaughan. Did you often have occasion to work with General Vaughan?

DENNISON: No, not really, because we were doing different things and there weren't very many situations that would throw us together. Vaughan had talents that I didn't have and then I think it was the other way around too. For example, I knew nothing about veterans organizations really or the problems, and he, being a civilian, had probably a better view of this field than I could ever have. Vaughan,

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incidentally, I think was one of the most misunderstood people.

HESS: What do you think was the basis of that misunderstanding?

DENNISON: Well, his attitude. He was disliked intensely by some professional Army people, mainly because he disliked them, which may have been some kind of a complex with him. He smoked cigars. Somebody in describing his appearance said that he looked like an unmade bed.

But Vaughan would give anybody his shirt, and literally. I mean he's one of the most generous men I've ever run into. He looked as if he had a perpetual hangover. I've been with him day after day in close contact like at Key West. He'd have about one drink a week and he didn't even want that. He taught Sunday school. He was active in that sort of work. His wife did the same thing. Even now she's got a special typewriter for typing manuscripts and things into braille. This is not unusual for the Vaughans. That's just the way they are. A lot of things that Vaughan did, like this deepfreeze thing, were done with the best of intentions. He's not

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accepting a bribe in his view, or anything of that sort, and so he just did some things that were a little stupid in a public relations sense.

But to get back to what you asked me, no, I never really had any direct working relationship with him.

I think I told you about this press conference he held when I first reported for duty.

HESS: And as you have mentioned, General Vaughan did have trouble with Regular Army officers because he was a Reservist. This I have heard before, and you were a Regular...

DENNISON: Oh, I think it was the other way around.

HESS: Oh, he was a Reservist, wasn't he?

DENNISON: Yes, I know, but I mean I don't think he got in trouble with the Army because he was. I think he put himself in trouble because he had this attitude.

HESS: Oh. Well, let's put it this way. There was some lack of rapport, some feeling of alienation between Vaughan, a Reservist, and the majority of the men in the Pentagon, who I suppose were Regulars.

DENNISON: Oh sure.

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HESS: Did you feel that you had better rapport with the Navy people since you were Regular Navy and not a Reservist?

DENNISON: No, I think the reason I did was because I was myself. I mean they knew me. That's one advantage. You serve with the same people year after year and you've got to get to know those people. Even when General Eisenhower was Chief of Staff he would call me up rather than General Vaughan to ask me to do something, nothing really important, but he had known me and he knew there would be no problem and that I would be glad to do anything I could without any fuss.

HESS: Well, one reason I mentioned this matter is that Commander Vardaman, the first Naval Aide, was a Reservist, and I have heard that there was somewhat of a lack of rapport between the Regular Navy officers and Commander Vardaman...

DENNISON: Complete.

HESS: ...because he was...

DENNISON: No.

HESS: Not because, but perhaps one element of the lack of rapport.

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DENNISON: Well, I think that's probably right, but I think it was more Vardaman than whether he was Reserve or what the hell he was. And of course Vardaman left after, really unnecessarily raising hell with a lot of people in the Navy. In other words, he was arrogant and threw his weight around. Rear Admiral Foskett relieved Vardaman. But it isn't the Reserve versus Regular thing at all. Regular officers do have a tremendous advantage of having known each other through the years.

HESS: All right. Did you ever work with General Landry?

DENNISON: Oh yes, but again not on very many important things. We got along extremely well and I got along just fine with Vaughan. We're friends.

HESS: Commander William Rigdon worked for you, correct, as your Assistant Naval Aide?

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: Just what is your general evaluation of the assistance that he gave to you?

DENNISON: Well, if I say invaluable, it's an understatement. He's completely self-effacing, extremely efficient. He worked so thoroughly and so quietly and he was completely devoted to the President. He's

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just a fine man. He could do almost anything, got along well with people, and he operated so unobtrusively that the press liked him and the Secret Service liked him. He's a most unusual officer, I thought.

HESS: The President's Special Counsel when you first came on board was Clark Clifford and then he was replaced by Charles Murphy. How would you characterize those two gentlemen that held that important position, first Clark Clifford and then Charles Murphy?

DENNISON: Well, in the first place they were completely dissimilar personalities. They both were politically astute, Clifford perhaps a bit more than Murphy. They were capable counsels; they were both held in high esteem by the President, and just like all of us on his staff, they deeply admired the President and understood him, or did the best they could to. Each of them really did more than you'd think they could. But remember, the President had such a small staff, and everybody was doubling in brass. Both Clifford and Murphy were very much involved in the presidential speech writing and political matters, of which, of course, I know nothing.

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But it's pretty hard to say how you worked with the staff, because each morning we'd have our staff meeting at 9 or 9:30 and go through the same routine and we all each sat in the same place around his desk.

HESS: Who usually attended?

DENNISON: Well, Admiral Leahy was the first one, of course, and he had a particular chair to sit in. And Bill Hassett, and first Charlie Ross, and later on Joe Short, and Murphy and Clifford, Dave Stowe, Matt Connelly, Harry Vaughan, Landry and myself. I mean we were the regulars. And this was a time when we would tell the President what we were doing and why. If we had anything particularly pressing we'd ask if he would take a look at it and sign it if he approved it. Then he would tell us what he had in mind in general and that was it.

Well, this meant that each of us knew what the other fellow was doing and if I had a tough problem, which I have had, for example on this maritime affair business, I had, as we all did, access to the tremendous potential of the Bureau of the Budget and its staff. I mean some of these problems I had

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in the maritime business were complicated legal problems. Each of the two men have helped me in drafting letters and they gave me suggestions and ideas. It was just completely across the board. We ran into each other in so many different things.

For example, here was Dave Stowe planning away for security of Government officials in time of emergency, which had to fit in with the plans for the President. But I can't remember any occasion in any dealings that we had where there was a strong difference of opinion.

It was a very rewarding experience to work with these fellows, but there were so many contacts almost every day there would be something.

Oh, Steelman was another one who was there, of course, John Steelman. He ran pretty much his own operation, not that he wasn't extremely helpful, but he had a fairly large staff compared to what the rest of us had. Now I didn't have anybody except Rigdon and a couple of wonderful yeomen. That's all I needed, and then I could call on the resources of the Government and did so very often.

So that's the way it worked with President Truman, but it wasn't--I think what I'm trying to

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say is our job was not rigidly bounded by any ground rules. We did whatever the President wanted us to and he would pick out things that he felt we had some competence in or some reason for knowing something about it or being in a position to do something else, such as naturally a sailor should know something about maritime affairs, and so this was pretty much the way it went.

Of course, as I told you before, with me and with Landry as well, we never got involved in any domestic political matters. The President didn't want us to. We were professionals. We weren't supposed to do that and he was so right. I didn't want to do it either.

HESS: Just one more man here and we'll skip on to another subject. The political matters were sometimes handled by Matthew Connelly, is that correct?

DENNISON: Well, it all depends on what political matters. I think that personal matters sometimes were, and maybe mostly were. I don't mean to say that Connelly wasn't of tremendous help to the President. He really saved him a lot of headaches. He wasn't the type to do much work on speeches, for example. He

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didn't have the kind of ability that it takes to do that. Not to say he didn't have other abilities. He understood the President, he admired him, he worked with him back in the days of the Truman Committee. Matt was a great help to everybody. I know in the early days he gave me a lot of good advice which was extremely valuable.

The President was very, very conscious about showing any partiality, or any favoritism, to any one of us and he really leaned over backwards on this. It wasn't laughable, but it almost was sometimes, because of these extremes he'd go to. We were getting along just great. There weren't any jealousies as far as I could detect with anybody. I mean no one said, "I'm the guy the President really looks to." That's a lot of nonsense. I mean nobody could be that presumptuous.

Then, of course, I don't think any of us were stupid enough to think anything like that in the first place. But if he did something for one of us you could be damned sure that something like that would be done for everybody else, which is great.

HESS: What do you recall of the legal difficulties

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that Mr. Connelly ran into after the administration?

DENNISON: Well...

HESS: And what is your opinion of that situation?

DENNISON: I can't help but think to this day that this was really a Republican Party hatchet job and I think Matt was a little naive, just as Harry was. I'm sure Matt didn't have an evil bone in his body. The attack against him seemed to me to be so vicious, and there are so many strange things about that--didn't one of the judges commit suicide? I don't know where the pressure came from, but I'm sure there was pressure there.

I just felt very, very sorry for him. He had a young son and he talked to me about him a good many times. Well, it was just one of the hazards, I guess, in political life, but it was very cruel. I really don't know the merits of it at all. I just--my instinct tells me that he was really persecuted.

HESS: Did any of the staff members sit in on the Cabinet meetings in the role of a secretary to the Cabinet during the time that you were there?

DENNISON: No. This raises an interesting point. There

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wasn't anybody except Connelly. He did occasionally make some notes, but the President told me a number of times, "You know the Cabinet's use is only such as the President wishes to make of it." Essentially it's a political device and hasn't any position in our Government structure such as the British Cabinet. I've been in Cabinet meetings and I've been in the meetings of the Security Council with him.

The Cabinet meetings were pretty dull, I thought. Nothing was ever decided. I mean the things they were discussing mostly were politics, and sometimes they'd get into inter-departmental discussions. But Forrestal really was sold on the idea of having a Cabinet secretariat and organizing and having an agenda and having papers and all that kind of stuff.

Well, he couldn't even get close to first base with the President on that kind of a thing. The President didn't want that. He didn't need a Cabinet in that sense. He had a Security Council. I've seen him run those meetings. That was beautiful because nothing came up that he didn't want discussed. He didn't do it by pounding on the table. He just controlled everything that went on. He knew that

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this was nothing but, and could be nothing but, an advisory body. It was the same way with the Cabinet. The Cabinet can't make any decisions and the Security Council can't, but I think the President felt that the Cabinet wanted to see him, wanted to talk to him, and it makes you feel pretty important, I suppose, to sit around a table with your name and title on the back of the chair.

HESS: Good for the ego if nothing else.

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: Did you think that the Cabinet members were his principal advisers? If the subject was, say finance, was the Secretary of the Treasury the principal adviser or were there other people, maybe even out of the Government, that Mr. Truman might have relied on more than the people he had in his Cabinet?

DENNISON: Well, it's pretty hard to say because it depended on what the problem was, but I think in general he didn't look on anybody as his principal adviser, in or out of the Cabinet, but in finance, for example, there might be some angles that the Attorney General would think about or the Secretary of Commerce beside the Secretary of the Treasury. And when subjects like that came up there were the people who might be

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able to contribute some ideas.

But to go back to what I told you about President Truman's decision making. When he called in his advisers they were men whose opinions he respected, but he had in the back of his mind all the time that they saw the problem from the standpoint of their particular responsibility.

But his concept of a political Cabinet, one really not having a place in the executive structure, I think is the key to his handling of the Cabinet.

HESS: Were you concerned with the issues of integration of the services? One of the reasons I ask is that one of the file folders in your files at the Library is entitled, "Segregation and Naval Bases."

DENNISON: Oh, I know what it was. I was concerned in it only because the President was concerned. The Navy really was in the forefront of the armed services in recognizing the racial facts of life and encouraging Negroes to become members of the armed forces. This was not new. We had Negroes in the Navy for a long, long time, and some of the older ones that I knew were fine men. I mean they were respected by their shipmates and they were damn good sailors.

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I think that maybe we went overboard, and I'm sure that the other services did too, in finally overdoing it.

For example, as,far back as when I had the Missouri, [Admiral Chester W.] Nimitz, who was Chief of Naval Operations, sent me a letter and said he planned to order a Negro leiutenant to my ship (I think at that time maybe he was the only Negro lieutenant we had), and what did I think about it.

So I wrote back a letter, after thinking it over a long time, and said first I want to thank you for consulting me. I'm grateful to you. I will accept, of course, anybody who is ordered to my ship and I'll treat him just as I treat any other officer, but there. are a couple of points I'd like to raise with you. One is that the Missouri is really a show piece and in some areas unfortunately there is racial prejudice.

And secondly, if you put this lieutenant in the Missouri you've lost all of your maneuvering room. You've put him in the biggest ship we have and the one that every officer wants to serve in. Why, if you're going to assign this man someplace,

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don't you start in a smaller ship, say a destroyer or a cruiser?

Well, whether what I had to say meant anything to him or not, he didn't order the man. But the problem is you can't permit racial discrimination among fighting men. They're too close together. You can't have this going on. The Filipinos in the Navy are well-liked and they're great people. They are very clannish, of course. They have their own ideas about what to eat and all that kind of stuff. But this segregation in naval bases, desegregation is what it was, with the constant effort to eliminate it before it even started. Then the other aspect was to move ahead to increased integration.

The President wasn't a fanatic about any of these things at all. He didn't hammer on the table and say that something had to be done about it. That wasn't his way.

HESS: In your opinion what was Mr. Truman's basic belief and basic opinion on civil rights; a man from Independence, Missouri, which is really a southern town?

DENNISON: I hate the words liberal and conservative. I

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don't know what those words mean, but remember what I mentioned before. The President really, honestly felt that he was President of all the people. It didn't make any difference whether they were black or white or what they were, and he didn't have any anti-black feeling that I could even sense, let alone detect. Of course he knew all about the Civil War and all the reasons for it and everything about it. I remember one time we were talking about Mark Twain. I think I mentioned Twain as being such a great writer, or something, and the President took out after Mark Twain. Because he'd bought his way out of serving in the Army he was no damn good.

The President was so sympathetic. One day we were talking about Justice Holmes and I said I thought he was a great justice and certainly his minority opinions were becoming majority opinions. The President didn't want any part of Oliver Wendell Holmes. I said, "Well, I never had the privilege of hearing him."

He said, "Well, I did. I've been in the court and Holmes was absolutely ruthless with young attorneys and bullied them." He said, "Any man who would do a thing like that, humiliate these people, is basically

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no good." So that may give you a clue about his civil rights view. He had no biases whatever that I could discover.

HESS: Just one further point. At the time that you wrote the letter saying that it might be best that the Negro officer not serve in the Missouri, wasn't that racial discrimination?

DENNISON: I'll give you the reasons why I thought not. It was so pointed to order a black lieutenant that nobody ever heard of and put him in the Missouri. If it had been within the normal course of events that he was due for this kind of duty it might have been a different matter. But, no, it wasn't because I didn't want a Negro. I was sure that if I had one he would have been treated just as I told Admiral Nimitz. I wouldn't have been strained either. But it had to come out that here we were just putting on a show. We didn't really mean it. We just had this lieutenant and we wanted to make everybody believe we were really integrated when we really weren't.

HESS: The man had not earned the right.

DENNISON: No, and everybody would know it, including himself, so it wasn't fair to him and it wasn't fair

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to my ship.

HESS: Did Mr. Truman, to your knowledge, ever have any intention of running for re-election in 1952 after he won in 1948?

DENNISON: No, and I'm sure you know that story. I may have told you myself. He wrote this memorandum to himself not long after he had been re-elected that he was not going to run again, and he meant it.

HESS: Is that the memorandum that he read at Key West?

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: You were present at the time that he read the memorandum, correct?

DENNISON: I certainly was. I was sitting next to him and when he got through with it I had a hard time believing it. I asked if I could see it and he handed it to me and I read it.

HESS: Do you recall if that was on November the 19^th of 1951 as William Rigdon has in his book White House Sailor, or was it in March of 1951 as Mr. Truman says in his Memoirs? What month was it?

DENNISON: I would think it was November. What was the date of the dinner at which he made his...

HESS: That was in the next year, 1952, and that was on

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March 29^th at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner at the National Guard Armory.

DENNISON: Well, you're talking about November '51.

HESS: That's right, November '51.

DENNISON: Well, it had to be because I remember I thought then, "Well, why did he tell us now," and of course it never leaked. But if you believe Truman's accuracy, it would have had to have been only a matter of days before he said it.

HESS: No, he said a year, see…

DENNISON: Well, I'm in the wrong year then.

HESS: In his book he said it was March of '51, and the announcement was March of '52.

DENNISON: Oh.

HESS: You feel quite sure that it was not an entire year before the public announcement was made?

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: All right, I believe that he made it quite clear, at least he said so in his book, that he asked that there be no leaks, is that correct?

DENNISON: No. He didn’t have to ask any such thing. He well knew that none of us were going to say anything. We had sense enough to realize the

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significance of the decision. No, he didn't say, "Now I'm going to tell you something and don't tell a soul." That would have been insulting. He wouldn't do it and it would have been completely unnecessary.

HESS: Okay, do you remember the attitude of the other people who were there at the time?

DENNISON: Yes, I think we all shared the same feeling of gratitude that the President would take us into his confidence to that extent. I think that I probably was less surprised than most of them because political considerations were entirely outside of my concern and I couldn't have cared less about the impact on the Democratic Party. It was President Truman I was thinking about. If he was serious enough about it to write himself this memorandum, I knew damn well that anybody would be stupid if they just said, "Well, you don't mean this, Mr. Truman. Won't you reconsider it?" He meant it.

HESS: Who do you think the President would have preferred to see as Democratic standard-bearer that year?

DENNISON: I have no idea because...

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HESS: Of course that was the year that Adlai Stevenson ran, but he was a bit reluctant at times. According to Cabell Phillips in his book, The Truman Presidency, Mr. Truman reconsidered his decision in March of '52 about one week before the announcement and asked some of the members of his White House staff and they said it might be best not to run again. Do you recall anything in particular about the convention and campaign of '52?

DENNISON: No.

HESS: Did you keep pretty well out of that one too?

DENNISON: Oh, yes, completely.

HESS: Were you surprised that General Eisenhower won?

DENNISON: No, not really. He was a popular figure and respected and liked and he was appealing. Stevenson was a measurably smarter man, or more intelligent, but he didn't come across very well.

President Truman told me one time about the political conventions. He was talking about '48. He said, "Any President is going to absolutely control a convention," And then he went on to explain what he meant. What he was saying was that any President really had the thing in the palm of his

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hand and that what he wanted done was what was going to be done. They may have been over optimistic.

HESS: What do you recall about the transition from the Truman administration to the Eisenhower administration?

DENNISON: It was miserable. Here again the President recognized the need for continuity. He remembered how awful his position was when President Roosevelt died having never been briefed on anything. He hadn't been kept informed about anything and he didn't want that to happen again.

He invited President Eisenhower to come down to stay with him in the White House, or to be there. Eisenhower declined, and instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to get some of his people to sit down beside us where we were working day by day, which was what President Truman was offering, he waited until the last ditch and then sent down a group of people who didn't know anything about anything to go around and ask each one of us what we were doing. That was all he did. So in spite of President Truman's generous offer, President Eisenhower, for his own good reason I'm sure, didn't accept, and the result was

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that the very thing that President Truman tried to avoid occurred. You got a new administration which was completely in the dark.

It was just too bad, and of course President Eisenhower's idea of a staff was the Army concept, completely different from the President's concept, where you have a Chief of Staff and the Commander in Chief doesn't see anybody else except every other Thursday.

HESS: Was Sherman Adams much in evidence during the days of transition?

DENNISON: Well, the days--there were damn few days. I forget the man who headed up this group. I'm trying to recall whether it was Adams. It may have been. It probably was. Well, a genius couldn't have sized up that operation overnight. The end result was that some of the things which were being done weren't continued. I mentioned about maritime affairs. They still don't have a maritime coordinator and maritime affairs are in really sad shape.

HESS: What comes to mind when you look back on your functions on maritime affairs? Just what were some of the main things that you worked on?

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DENNISON: Well, I had a five foot shelf of books on that. It mainly had to do originally with covering what we said were excessive payments under the Maritime Act which permitted construction subsidies up to a certain percentage and then beyond that, depending on the defense feature. And the action taken on the contract was absolutely illegal. The shipping companies were fighting us tooth and nail, and we had differences of opinion within our own Government. But I got into all kinds of things--labor problems--and that's a pretty murky field in the maritime business too. I was young and innocent in those days. I couldn't understand some of the things that were going on. I talked to some of the top labor leaders and said, "You fellows must realize that you're pricing yourselves out of the market and you're destroying the American Merchant Marine. The Government isn't going to keep on paying all these subsidies. It can't. Why do you do it?"

They said, "Well, we don't think that the American Merchant Marine is here to stay. In any event, and to be brutal about it, we're just out for a fast buck."

Well, I can't understand it now any more than

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I could then. Why destroy something just to make money quickly instead of building up a vital industry so it would continue to offer employment. This is an extreme example and all labor people aren't like that.

Consider the shameful longshoremen's union. You have a situation where the contract expiration dates are different on the West Coast, the Gulf and the East Coast. Whoever negotiates first has to be topped by the other guy. In other words, the East Coast guy gets something, then the Gulf people have got to get something better and the West Coast better, and around and around.

Well, my idea was that there ought to be a common contract expiration date. Tear up the contracts and start all over again all at once. I never got this idea off the ground because it would take an awful lot of persuasion to ever get that idea across. These labor leaders have all got to be elected.

HESS: Was Paul Hall in charge of the Maritime Union back then?

DENNISON: I’m not sure. He’s been around a long time.

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I really can't remember.

HESS: We have several other subjects that you wanted to take up--President Truman giving some flags to your children--Mr. Truman's formula on raising children. Do you want to take those up at a different time?

DENNISON: No, I'd be glad to do it now. Have you got any tape left there?

HESS: Yes, we sure do.

DENNISON: Well, first, about those flags. I wanted to get that on the record because again it's so typical of the President.

We were down in Key West one time. It was a fairly quiet afternoon and the President was on the porch reading and I said, "I want to go to town to buy a present for my children."

He asked, "What are you going to get?"

I said, "Well, I want to get them each a flag."

And he said, "I think that's a great idea, but don't worry about it. I'll take care of that."

So I didn't do anything about it. We got back to Washington and he sent for me one day. I thought he had forgotten about it. But I've always been

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wrong when I thought he had forgotten anything. He handed me a box, wrapped up, and a letter, a letter to my daughter Lee written by hand and this was--well, she was born in '45 and this was '50 or '51 I think. Anyway, the letters are on file somewhere. So I took the thing home and gave it to my daughter. She opened it and here were two silk flags with fringe around them that I recognized immediately because ever since I had been in the White House they were on each corner of the President's desk. These are the flags that he gave to my children. My son was only three or three and a half years old at the time.

Lee, my daughter, wrote a letter to the President and thanked him in a typical kid's letter and said, "I hope you're having a good time in the White House," and that sort of thing, and thanked him for the lovely flags and put "x's" and circles under the signature.

The President replied in his own handwriting too. He was pleased that she liked the flags and he said it was the most beautiful symbol in the world, particularly when you see it in a foreign country, and your good father will explain all this to you one

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day, and it’s been a long time since I've had a letter from a nice little girl, and he went on to make a few other remarks and then signed his own name and put x's and circles under his signature.

He said, "Tell your brother when he's old enough to write me he owes me a letter."

The other one is about raising daughters. I was quite serious about this daughter business. I only had one. I asked the President one day (sometimes I wonder why he put up with some of my questions, but he always did), "What is your formula for raising daughters?"

He said, "Well, Bob, that's very simple. All you've got to do is to find out what they want to do and then advise them to do it." How true that was.

HESS: And you had a story about offshore oil and the President's idea about trying to obtain money for political purposes.

DENNISON: Well, this was a painful experience. It was in the afternoon and I was alone with the President and Harry came bursting in, all enthusiastic, and he said, "Boss, I've got a great thing I want to tell you. If you'll make a statement about ownership of offshore oil rights," I forget what the issue

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was, but this was a very live one at the time,"we can get "x" number of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Democratic committee out of Louisiana and some other southern states."

This was one of the very, very few times that I've ever seen the President upset. I know he must have been upset a good many times, but he never showed it. But this time he said, "Harry, don't you ever say anything like that to me again." He said, "I'm the President of all the people and I don't give a damn whether I'm re-elected or whether any Democrat is ever elected, if we have to do it by doing something that is wrong."

Now Vaughan was absolutely crushed. He thought he had great news. So he didn't say a word, just turned around and went out. I was embarrassed and kept my mouth shut.

After a moment the President turned to me and said, "Bob, that really hurt me, but I just had to do it."

And I said, "Well, I understand, Mr. President."

Boy, that's one issue that when he started--if anybody said anything to indicate that he was going to use his office as a political tool, they had

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better duck.

HESS: You also wanted to mention Mr. Churchill's visit to the United States in January of 1952.

DENNISON: Early in 1952 members of the new British government headed by Winston Churchill came to Washington for a series of talks. Churchill was accompanied by Lord Cherwell, Lord Ismay, Anthony Eden, and Sir Oliver Franks. On the day of their arrival, Saturday, January 5, the President invited the British party to meet him aboard the Williamsburg for a cruise down the Potomac. In addition to the President, Secretaries Acheson, Snyder, Lovett, Ambassador Gifford, and Averell Harriman were also invited. The President wanted complete privacy so there were no reporters present and no photographers. We were to make an overnight cruise on the Potomac. I was aboard in my usual role, accompanied by Chief Petty Officer Paul Begley who was a member of my staff. Chief Begley always accompanied the President to take pictures for the record.

On this particular occasion the President and his party met with the British in the afterlounge

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of the Williamsburg. The forward bulkhead of the lounge contained a fireplace which seemed an ideal background for a photograph of the President and the Prime Minister. At least so I thought. I asked both of them if they would mind posing for their picture. They readily agreed. Just as Begley was about to snap this historic picture I noticed that over the mantel hung a painting of the engagement between the U.S.S. Constitution and the H.M.S. Java on December 29, 1812, off the coast of Brazil. In this engagement the Java was destroyed after Captain Lambert had surrendered to Captain Bainbridge. I stopped Begley and went up to apologize to the Prime Minister and the President, explaining, as of course the President well knew, that this was not deliberate but perhaps they would prefer a more neutral background. The Prime Minister put on his glasses, examined the painting, and then, putting his glasses down on the end of his nose, turned to me and said, "Young man, that was many years ago. Go ahead and take your picture." The President, of course, was amused.

Three enlargements of this photograph were each autographed by the President and the Prime

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Minister. One was presented to the Prime Minister, one to the President and I have the third. I assume that the President's copy is on file in the Truman Library.

HESS: I understand that you helped with the arrangements for Mr. Truman's stay when he came to Washington to attend President Kennedy's funeral, correct?

DENNISON: Well, the President called me and asked me if I would help him and get back in as his Aide, and I said I would be honored, of course.

So I met him at Blair House where he was staying, or was to stay, and there weren't very many arrangements to make because the White House had taken care of all of that. Of course the President had a car available and anything else he needed. He didn't need very much. He wasn't going anywhere. But he did have privacy. He was guarded, of course, and there weren't very many of us around. He wasn't besieged with a lot of people. He looked well. Mrs. Truman didn't come but Margaret came down.

But speaking of President Eisenhower's message. Somebody answered the telephone and got a garbled message that was supposed to have come from President

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Eisenhower to the effect that he wanted to know if he could pick up President Truman to go to the funeral ceremony.

Well, I forget ,who answered it, some butler or Secret Service man or somebody, and I found that kind.of hard to believe. I called the Statler and got through to General Eisenhower. He said, "Thank God, I've got you on the phone. I don't seem to be able to get through to anybody."

And I said, "What can I do for you?"

He said, "All I want to know is whether Mamie and I could stop by to pick up President Truman and Margaret to go to the cathedral. I don't intend to go to the graveside and I don't suppose President Truman does either."

So I said, "Well, General, I'll call you back."

He said, "Well, that's no problem. I'll hold the phone."

So I said, "Well, the President is right here." I asked the President and he said, "Certainly."

At the appointed time around came President Eisenhower and his wife and he did pick up President Truman and Margaret. He did go to the cathedral, and

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after the ceremony there they came back to Blair House. The President asked General and Mrs. Eisenhower if they wanted to come in and have a drink or a cup of coffee or something. They accepted and they all came in the living room of Blair House and sat down.

There were again only a couple of us there. I don't know where the magic came from, maybe President Truman inviting him to come in or maybe because of Eisenhower's thoughtfulness in calling up in the first place, but at any rate they sat down by themselves on a couch and started talking and reminiscing.

They were going along just great and a Secret Service man came in and said, "There's an Army officer at the door who would like to make a statement."

I went out to see what this was all about. Well, some officer, it was a colonel, I think, seemed to be embarrassed and didn't know what to do. I said, "What's your problem?"

He said, "Well, Mrs. Kennedy sent me over here to make a statement to President Truman, and she understands President Eisenhower is here."

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I said, "Well, forget that statement. What is it?."

"Well, she's upset and embarrassed because she forgot to invite these two gentlemen to come over to the White House." Remember all these foreign dignitaries were there after the ceremony.

I said, "Well, come on in, but don't make any statement. Just tell them what you told me and take it easy and relax, or if you want I'll tell them."

He said, "No, I'll do it." So he told them exactly what happened.

And General Eisenhower spoke up first and said, "Well, please tell Mrs. Kennedy that I understand completely. My wife and I understand it, and it was very kind of her to think of us, but we must get back to Gettysburg, so please present our apology."

And Truman spoke up and said, "Well, I feel very much the same way. I appreciate her thoughtfulness and I understand why we weren't thought of in the first place. She has so much on her mind. But I, too, am tired and I've got to rest and I'm sure she'll

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understand."

Well, that guy turned around with relief and left.

HESS: He really thought he was on a diplomatic mission.

DENNISON: Yes, he thought they'd get incensed, mad, and take it out on him. Instead they just kept on having another drink and talking. I thought it would never end, but it was really heartwarming because they completely buried the hatchet and you'd think there had never been any differences between them and they were right back where they came in when Eisenhower came back from Europe. And in the end, when they really had to go, President Truman, as he would, much to the horror of the Secret Service, went out to the curb and started talking again while the car waited to take the Eisenhowers away. It was really wonderful.

So that was the end of this feud and unnecessary hard feelings. And about time, too.

HESS: Did Mr. Truman, to your knowledge, ever think seriously of running for the Senate from Missouri in 1952 or there after, after he left the Presidency?

DENNISON: No, not that I'm aware of. But I can understand

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why people might have,thought so and he might have jestingly said so. He missed Congress, he loved Congress, and I think the former Presidents or former Senators have the privilege of the floor, don't they? They can apparently come in on any session they want to, but I think he had had it as far as running. I can't imagine anybody running for the Presidency and winning, going back and running for the Senate or anything.

HESS: Was it John Quincy Adams who went back to the House?

DENNISON: Yes.

HESS: I believe it was.

DENNISON: That was a different era.

HESS: Yes. In your opinion,what will be Mr. Truman's place in history one or two hundred years from now?

DENNISON: Well, if we have any history by then, I think that it is going to become clearer and clearer that he was one of the principal molders, of the course of events after World War II, and made us really a world power, and gave us direction, and provided the ideas and the means to pull the whole

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world back together. I think this is going to be looked on as a very significant period in our history.

And I can't help but be irritated when somebody tells me, some of my friends, "You know President Truman is going down in history as one of our great Presidents."

And I say, "Where the hell have you been? I could have told you that in January of 1948." You just had to feel, when you were with him, certainly after you got to know him, that he was truly a great man.

HESS: What do you see as the major accomplishments of the Truman administration?

DENNISON: Well, there are so many it's most difficult to generalize, but it seems to me that the major accomplishment was the rehabilitation of the world after the debacle of World War II, and it took a lot of foresight, a lot of imagination, and a lot of understanding. There were any number of things that, had they not been done, or had they miscarried, would have left us in deep trouble. The aid to Greece and Turkey, the Truman Doctrine, has really been the foundation

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of our foreign policy ever since, and had it not been for the Marshall plan it would have been a completely different world.

HESS: What's your favorite memory of Mr. Truman?

DENNISON: Well, I've got so many happy ones that it would be pretty hard to think about any one. I think my favorite memory of him is not any one incident, or any one time, but getting to know him, and at least thinking I understood him, and having his trust and confidence. And I was extremely fortunate to have that experience.

HESS: Do you have anything else to add on Mr. Truman or your service in the White House during the Truman administration?

DENNISON: No, I think not. I think we pretty well covered the waterfront.

HESS: Well, thank you very much.