Clark M. Clifford Oral History Interview, March 23, 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.

RESTRICTIONS
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 It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.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 April, 1977
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

HESS: Mr. Clifford, when did you first meet Mr. Truman?

CLIFFORD: Well, I grew up in St. Louis and went to college and law school at Washington University. I came to the bar there in 1928, and practiced in St. Louis. I had a friend there, some years later, named James K. Vardaman, and after I was married, my wife and I would see a good deal of the Vardamans.

[2]

On one occasion, in the late thirties, we went over to the Vardamans for cocktails, and Senator Harry Truman was there. He and Mr. Vardaman were old friends and we visited (not for long), with then Senator Truman. That's the only time I had seen him or talked to him before I came into the White House in the spring of 1945.

The circumstances surrounding that event briefly are as follows: In addition to being a friend of Mr. Vardaman's, I was his lawyer when he had a shoe company in St. Louis. I left to go into the Navy toward the end of 1943 and he, also, had gone into the Naval Reserve. When Vice President Truman ascended to the Presidency in about April of 1945, one of the first things he did was have Mr. Vardaman, who was serving as a captain in the Navy, come in from wherever his duty was, and become Naval

[3]

Aide.

And thereafter, when they began to plan the trip to Potsdam, Captain Vardaman had orders issued for me (I was either out on the West Coast or in the Pacific at the time), to come back to Washington to serve in the Naval Aide's office while he went to Potsdam with President Truman.

I was a lieutenant at that time in the Naval Reserve, and Captain Vardaman didn't want to turn his office over to the Regular Navy, and he wanted a friend to look after the office while he was away. So, I was, of course, delighted to do that for him. It was interesting and glamorous to be in the White House.

While they were away in Potsdam, which took some weeks, there wasn't too much to do in the Naval Aide's office. I had met Judge [Samuel I.] Rosenman, who was serving as Counsel to the President,

[4]

and I was not interested in remaining in the Navy. Thus, as the war was drawing to a close, I felt I had satisfied my obligation to the country by serving in the Navy. I must say, I had an enormous interest in what Judge Rosenman was doing. And so I volunteered to him that if he needed anybody to run errands or look up the law or do something of that kind, I'd be delighted to do it.

HESS: What sparked your particular interest in what he was doing?

CLIFFORD: I had always had an interest in government, although it had been somewhat academic. I had had a great interest in American history, and here was a man sitting in the White House working on presidential speeches and taking part in the determination of presidential policy. This was exciting and challenging to me, and when I suggested to him that perhaps he needed some help, he was

[5]

delighted to get some assistance. Thus, during the time they were in Potsdam, I really was working for Judge Rosenman.

And when the President came back, along with Captain Vardaman, a decision was made for me to stay in the White House, in the Naval Aide's office, where Vardaman said he could use me. I think Judge Rosenman said, "Yes, I'm beginning to use him, so keep him here." And I stayed in the Naval Aide's office, but I was spending a better part of my time working on matters for Judge Rosenman.

HESS: At the time that you were working as an Assistant Naval Aide, what were your duties?

CLIFFORD: Well, there were some duties attached to the Naval Aide's office. You served as liaison with the Navy, and then at White House receptions and all, you were a "potted palm." You simply

[6]

stood around, as there wasn't anything particularly serious going on at the time that would require much effort in the Naval Aide's office. I did, during that period, develop a very real friendship with Secretary [James V.] Forrestal, which was very valuable to me later on. But during that time I was doing quite a lot for Judge Rosenman. I gave maybe 20 percent of my time to Naval Aide duties and 70 or 80 percent of my time working for Judge Rosenman, there's where the interesting work was going on.

For example, I know that during the first summer I was there, I began work on a memorandum for Judge Rosenman on the question of compulsory military service. Some attention was being given to that. And I have some recollection either that summer or fall starting to work on a memorandum regarding the possible unification

[7]

of the services. I remember President Truman saying that we had won the war, but we had won the war despite the organization of our armed forces, not because of the organization.

Often, I might say, I thought the Army and Navy were fighting each other just as hard as they were fighting the enemy.

HESS: Who assigned those tasks to you? President Truman or Judge Rosenman?

CLIFFORD: Well, as time went on I began to know President Truman a little better, and I might get an occasional assignment from him. At first, however, my assignments came from Judge Rosenman.

And then toward the fall of the year, the President appointed Vardaman to a vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board. (Vardaman had been a banker before he became a shoe man.) I

[8]

handled the problems of his confirmation. They had quite a little confrontation up there in the Senate, but he was confirmed, finally, and went over to the Federal Reserve Board.

And then President Truman made me Naval Aide. But in order to be Naval Aide, I had to have attained the rank of captain. So, in that short period of time I had gone from lieutenant to captain, a period that ordinarily would take twenty or twenty-five years in the Navy. When people asked me how I had made such astounding progress, I said, "Well, it reminds me of the young man, who at age 30, was made head of his company and somebody asked him how it happened. He said, 'Well, it's one, because I'm intelligent, two, because I'm industrious, and three because I married the owner's daughter.'" And that's the way I explained it. They got the point, you see.

[9]

But then after I became Naval Aide, I continued to work with Judge Rosenman. And then on January 1, 1946, Judge Rosenman left to return to the practice of law and it was a great loss and it created a very real vacuum. And I might say, privately, I did what I could to fill that vacuum, because I had gotten terribly intrigued with that particular job. There's where the real moving and shaking was going on in the White House.

HESS: One question on that: At the time that Judge Rosenman left, President Truman announced that he was not going to fill that spot.

CLIFFORD: He did.

HESS: And then later, a few months later, you took over the spot. What events transpired to change the President's mind to show him that he had to have someone in this position?

[10]

CLIFFORD: I can't ever be sure about all the reasoning that went on in the President's mind, but I can cast some light on it. It was due I think maybe to the following: One, as I suggested, Sam Rosenman's leaving created a very real vacuum. There was work that was not being done that had to be done. Somebody had to work on the speeches; somebody had to serve as liaison with certain Cabinet members; some-body had to be in close touch with the Justice Department all the time. And gradually, in the two or three months that passed after his leaving, I began to work into this: (a) because nobody else was doing it; (b) because I wanted to do it; and (c) because by that time I had developed a relationship with President Truman where we understood each other and were getting along well.

Along toward the spring, maybe it was March

[11]

or April, came the railroad strike, which was maybe the first real crunch that President Truman had to face up to, or certainly one of the early ones. President Truman wanted a speech written for it and he handed me some notes that he had and we discussed it. Then he said to me, "Now, I want you to take my ideas here that I have put down in longhand and I want you to write a speech. And I have decided to go up to a Joint Session and address them on the question of this railroad strike, because it has become a national calamity."

I went to work and wrote early drafts of that speech, and that's really all that you do as a speechwriter. You don't write the President's speeches. You just take his ideas, you try to put them in written form, and then you resubmit them. You and he then work on the speech together. That's the way we did it.

[12]

The speech was a very tough speech. I think in the President's mind it helped break the strike. You will recall that very dramatic time that he was delivering the speech, the strike was broken. And he thought the speech really came off quite successfully. And I think that was one of the factors that led him to decide, in May, that he needed a Special Counsel, i.e., to fill the void that Rosenman's departure had left. Since he and I had worked together well, and I had done quite a lot of writing for him, I was appointed Special Counsel. So, at the end of May, I got out of the Navy and became a civilian and became a Special Counsel to the President on June 1, 1946.

Then I had been busy before, but then I really got busy on all of the activities that the Special Counsel performs: speechwriting, messages to Congress, and veto messages. There

[13]

was a lot of writing connected with the job. At the same time, the operation was still so new you could move into areas of your greatest interest. And I believe my greatest interest, even at that early stage, was in the field of national security and foreign policy.

And so, I began to develop a very close relationship with Forrestal who was at Navy, with Judge [Robert Porter] Patterson, who was then Secretary of War, as it was called then. I think maybe Dean Acheson was at State at the time in the Under Secretaryship, or Assistant Secretaryship of State. And I know later on I developed a very close relationship with Bob [Robert A.] Lovett, who was [George C.] Marshall's Under Secretary of State. And gradually there began to develop contact between me and State and War and Navy, and we began working informally with the President's knowledge and consent.

[14]

That role was something of the forerunner of a National Security Assistant that was later institutionalized under President [John F.] Kennedy in the person of McGeorge Bundy, and then later under President [Lyndon B.] Johnson in the person of Walt Rostow, and under President [Richard M.] Nixon in the person of Henry Kissinger, although, it was not nearly so big a job. But I think it was possibly the genesis. Somebody is needed on the White House staff who serves as liaison with those departments. It was the area of my main interest, and I think grew up gradually and naturally. So, I was giving quite a lot of time to those subjects at that time.

And possibly, to some extent, that accounts for the assignment which President Truman gave to me in the spring of '46, to prepare that interesting memorandum which you and I discussed

[15]

earlier, that had the title, "The Relationship Between the United States and the Soviet Union."

HESS: This is the memo that appears as Appendix A for Arthur Krock's memoirs, "American Relations with the Soviet Union."

CLIFFORD: That's it. That's it. That's the memorandum that was prepared for the President in the summer of 1946, and submitted to him, my recollection is, on September 24, 1946, together with the letter of transmission which describes my compliance with a directive from President Truman earlier that year to prepare such a memorandum.

HESS: How do you go about preparing a memorandum like this? Just how does something as vital and as important as this get written?

CLIFFORD: In that particular instance, I had been

[16]

instructed by President Truman to start in and get the thinking of his senior advisers in government: the Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Navy and the Joint Chiefs, the Attorney Generals, CIA and so forth. So, during that summer and on into the fall, I made it my business to have lengthy meetings with each of these men. I have lists of questions which I had prepared for them. I would ask for memoranda on certain subjects as source material. And when you are acting on behalf of the President, there aren't any closed doors; they all open. And I had a memo or letter of some kind from the President that I could use in talking with them and quoting from it so they would understand that it was his idea and not mine. As a result, I received complete cooperation from them, and a great volume of material came in. And then I went to work to distill it, and

[17]

prepare the essence of it. A President doesn't have time to read the mountains of material that are sent. What you do is distill it and put it in as readable a form as possible. Now, I do submit that in the process, I became very interested in it, I became engrossed in it, and the memorandum that was submitted, in addition to carrying the views of these people, certainly carried my own, because you can't remain completely objective about the subject.

HESS: And above the fray.

CLIFFORD: You end up down in it. As I recall it, I think the chapter that I worked the most on, and had the greatest interest in, was the last chapter which contained the conclusions and recommendations to the President. The duties went on substantially as they had been under Judge Rosenman, with the additional factor of my

[18]

interest in foreign policy and the national security.

HESS: One question on that: Where did you develop that interest in foreign policy, foreign affairs?

CLIFFORD: Well, I had had it to some extent before I ever went to the White House, but it was very limited. But mind you, I had been in the White House for a year, over a year. I came in in about May or so of 1945, or June at the latest, and then it was a year before I took over as Special Counsel. So, it was during that year that a latent interest in this field really came into full bloom. By the time I assumed the position on June 1, 1946, I already had begun to develop the contacts with State and with the War and Navy. And I was in the Navy, and I had been part of the war and all of those experiences together accounted for it.

[19]

HESS: Which department, and which Secretaries were the most helpful when you were working on this? What I am really fishing for was just how helpful was Secretary Forrestal?

CLIFFORD: It would be difficult for me to say, it's too long ago. It's now 25 years ago, do you see, since I did that and I cannot remember the details of it. I know my relationship with Mr. Forrestal developed and was probably the closest relationship I had in government. But I doubt it came quite that early. I do remember that (and we will want to talk about it at some length) we'll want to get into one very interesting point, and you can make a note so that you can be sure to bring it up.

I spent a great deal of time in '46 and '47 on the assignment from President Truman to begin the study of the unification of the services. And I spent quite a lot of time working on the

[20]

legislation itself. The reason that whole story is so fascinating is that as Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Forrestal opposed violently the whole concept of unification, and so succeeded in watering down the legislation, that when we got the bill in 1947, it really was not a very good bill.

HESS: It had to be changed two years later.

CLIFFORD: Right. President Truman with his rare prescience and perspicacity, appointed Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense.

HESS: Why?

CLIFFORD: I believe he felt he had a lot of ability. He had good experience. People had forgotten Secretary Forrestal started in the White House as an assistant to President Franklin Roosevelt, and he had bypassed the office of Assistant

[21]

Secretary of the Navy and became Secretary. He was intelligent, he was industrious, he was knowledgeable and head of the Navy which was the major service to oppose unification. And I believe the President thought the way to get this job done is to put Forrestal in, because if anybody else takes that job, Forrestal is going to sit back and carve him to ribbons. And it was part of that curious erudition that President Truman had, because it worked exactly that way.

And he hadn't been in that job more than a few months, until I remember him phoning (some things stand out in your mind). He said he wanted to talk with me and he came over and said, "This job cannot be done under the present law. I've changed a lot of my views, and if this job is to be done, we've got to have a stronger law."

[22]

And I said, "I'd like for you to set up an appointment and I'd like you to come along with me, and I want to go and talk about this with President Truman."

And within two or three days thereafter, as I recall it, an appointment was made and he and I went in together and in effect he did something that's very rarely happened. He said, "Mr. President, I've come in (and these are my words), "Mr. President, I've come in to tell you I was wrong, and now I want to work with you. I believe the concept of unification is sound. I believe it can be perfected without interfering with the assignments and roles of the various military services. I can understand how, if the Secretary of Defense is given the power, he can do it."

The first act was so watered down that all we created was the defense establishment. All

[23]

the Secretary was really, was a coordinator. Now, it took two years to get the act of '49, which actually created a Department of Defense and gave the Secretary of Defense responsibility, authority, and control over the services, and that was a great accomplishment and from then on, why, the Department of Defense began to be effective as a unit.

But that whole story is most interesting and is illustrative of the attitude that President Truman would take from time to time in just getting right to the heart of a problem; knowing that the unification of the services couldn't succeed with continuing naval opposition, he appoints the major opponent to the idea and says, "Okay, now I expect you to do the job."

At our next session we can take those items that you are interested in . . .

HESS: We have raised several points today that we

[24]

need to delve further into.

CLIFFORD: Yes. Well, there were experiences in '45, we got on into other items of '46. I know one of the first matters I was in was the coal strike.

HESS: John L. Lewis, and the coal strike . . .

CLIFFORD: That's right.

HESS: Which came along just about the time of the railroad strike.

CLIFFORD: Yes, that's right. That's right. Those were pretty harassing times for the President.

HESS: And then what you recall about the twenty-one point message of September the 6th . . .

CLIFFORD: That's right.

HESS: . . . '45.

[25]

CLIFFORD: That's right. Okay, and then I remember working on the State of the Union message that came along in January of 1946, although that was in the main the result of Judge Rosenman's effort.

HESS: That's right.

CLIFFORD: Then I remember in the fall of '46 starting in to get ready as early as September, for the next State of the Union message which, to a great extent, had become my responsibility. And then that leads on into the early part of '47 where we have the Truman Doctrine message.

HESS: That's right and the Marshall plan.

CLIFFORD: That's right. We can pick all of that up next time; that will lead us on through those interesting situations, including the campaign of 1948 which, I must say, is in a

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class all by itself.

HESS: Isn't it though!

Well, thank you very much, sir.