Charles S. Murphy Oral History Interview, May 19, 1970

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 It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.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 May, 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[460]

HESS: Mr. Murphy, most of the questions we have this afternoon are sort of clean-up type questions. Let’s start off with the public opinion mail. Just to what extent did the public opinion mail that came into the White House influence staff decisions, and did you ever read any of this public opinion mail that came in?

MURPHY: I did not read very much of it. Truman’s staff included one of the President’s secretaries who was designated as the Correspondence Secretary. Most of the time we were there it was Bill Hassett and he was primarily responsible for the handling of the mail, helping the President answer some of it personally and supervising the handling of the rest of it. Occasionally, they would give letters of particular interest to me, but we did not regularly see

[461]

any of the mail actually. From time to time we would get a summary of the mail that was being received, the number of letters on particular subjects, and then the views they were expressing.

HESS: Do you think that it had much influence on the other White House staff members?

MURPHY: I don't think so. We had not at that time perfected this business of following the mail to the extent that I believe that it has been done since then.

HESS: Following the mail and the polls, and all the whatnots.

MURPHY: The polls were beginning to come along, and we were interested in them, and all of us read a number of newspapers, and I think generally speaking we knew what was going on in the world.

[462]

HESS: Mr. Truman always spoke disparagingly of the polls, particularly after they said he would be defeated in ‘48. What was your view of the polls?

MURPHY: Well, I suppose they were somewhat less clear cut than his, but tended in the same direction.

HESS: On special interest groups, just what was the reaction of the President and the White House staff towards special interest groups, and here I have in mind such things as CIO for labor, National Farmer’s Union for farmers, National Association of Manufacturers--if they had any influence at all during the Truman years, not specifically those groups, but what type of interest groups, B’nai B’rith, perhaps, for the Jewish groups?

MURPHY: I think generally we tended to regard them

[463]

as special interest groups if they were opposed to us, and if they supported us we tended to regard them as public interest groups. So sometimes we liked all of them; and sometimes we liked none of them, and we, I think, had a pretty good working relationship with a good many of them. I think President Truman and his staff too, recognized that these different groups had a particular point of view and a particular interest to support, and sometimes that would coincide with what the President regarded as the general public interest, and sometimes it would not. I think he, generally speaking, gave them credit for integrity and honesty for the point of view they represented, because it was his job to discount, if that’s the word, their point of view, just the right amount, to arrive at a good judgment as to what was the real, general, overall, public interest.

[464]

HESS: Would you think that the National Association of Manufacturers would have somewhat less influence in the Truman White House, than say the CIO?

MURPHY: Yes, I would think so. The working relationship with the labor unions was, generally speaking, good, not just the CIO, but the AF of L as well, and some unions at that time, as I recall, were not in either group. As I remember, the machinists were an independent union at that time. They were then headed by a very fine man, who I think really deserves to be thought of as a labor statesman, and I believe President Truman had the same view. (Albert J. Hayes) I knew he had high regard for William Green, who was then the president of the AF of L and also a very high regard personally for Philip Murray, and no question about this. While President Truman, I think,

[465]

would tend to look somewhat skeptically at the views and positions of these people, he also would find himself more often than not in agreement with them about issues of general public concern. They were quite active during that period, the labor unions were in matters of general public concern as distinguished from what you think of ordinarily as strictly union matters, wages and working conditions for union members. The railroad brotherhoods, I guess, were independent at that time, and President Truman had some fairly close association with some of the railroad brotherhoods dating back to the time when he was elected to the Senate from Missouri.

HESS: Which of the civil rights groups, interest groups seemed to have the most influence: NAACP?

MURPHY: I don’t have any clear recollection about

[466]

that, Jerry. I know at one time, incidentally, we had a man on the White House staff, Steve Spingarn, whom I suppose you know, whose father was for many years the president of the NAACP, and while I don't have any actual recollection, would be confident that the President had a high regard for the NAACP. I do remember one Negro leader, a woman, Mary McLeod Bethune, who came to the White House a number of times, and I think President Truman had a high opinion of her.

HESS: Did you ever speak to her when she came into the White House?

MURPHY: No, I don't think I ever did.

HESS: Did you ever hear the President speak about her, to say what his opinion was of her?

MURPHY: Yes, I think I did.

HESS: What did he say?

[467]

MURPHY: Well, I don’t remember his precise words, but I know that I came away with the impression that he had a high regard for her, and a good opinion of her.

HESS: Do you think he had about the highest regard for her as he did for any of the colored people of that age?

MURPHY: I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say anything different. I just don’t have that good a recollection about all of it, about his relationships with different black people, to give you a judgment like that offhand.

HESS: One thing that you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was Mr. Truman’s close working relationship with the railway brotherhoods, extending from 1940. Now, he and A.F. Whitney had a falling out during one of the strikes, I believe in 1946. Do you recall that?

[468]

MURPHY: Just vaguely. He had a falling out with a number of his good friends from time to time.

HESS: And Mr. Whitney at that time swore that in the next election he would use every last cent in the treasury of the railway brotherhood to defeat Mr. Truman. But he did not, he changed his mind. Do you recall that?

MURPHY: Not very clearly, but what you say sounds right as far as I can remember. He had a falling out at some point with John L. Lewis, as I recall, quite a spectacular one, and also with the Marines at one point.

HESS: Did Lewis ever come into the White House very often?

MURPHY: My recollection is that he did during some periods. There was quite--I don't remember just which period--but my recollection is, they had quite a falling out and for a time they did

[469]

not see anything of each other.

HESS: What difficulty did it cause President Truman about his remark about the Marines? What do you recall about that difficulty?

MURPHY: My recollection is not very clear, but such as it is, at some time he spoke of the Marines as a police force, and this caused considerable adverse reaction among the Marines, and not very long after that they were having a meeting here in Washington of some Marine organization, and he had been invited to come over and speak, and went over and did speak, and as I recall, this was the time when he said something to the effect that when he made a mistake it really was a beaut.

HESS: Was it discussed among the staff, one, that he should accept this invitation and go speak, and number two, what he should say once he got there?

[470]

MURPHY: I would be confident that it was. I have a fairly clear recollection that it was. This was the kind of staff discussion in which Harry Vaughan would play a prominent part, and if you're interested in getting somebody who remembers it, well, I dare say, Harry Vaughan will remember the whole thing very well.

HESS: Just one general question on Red China. Do you recall if there was ever any plans made during the Truman administration to recognize Red China?

MURPHY: I do not have any recollection on that that would be worthwhile one way or the other. I don't remember a great deal about Red China. The principal thing that I remember is that the President did send General Marshall to Red China on a mission.

HESS: That was early in the Administration.

[471]

MURPHY : That is right. I would guess that when General Marshall went that the whole range of possibilities would have been considered as to just what might be done, or might not be done. Well, at that time, I guess China was Nationalist China, and they were having a revolution there, and I suppose that was before the time when you began to think of it as Red China.

HESS: Do you recall any discussions of recognizing Red China after Chiang Kai-shek went over to Formosa and there were two separate Chinas: A Red China and a Nationalist China?

MURPHY: I do not recall any discussion of that.

HESS: Concerning Mr. Truman’s papers. Was there any thought given to the possibility that if his papers were opened too soon after the Administration that the Republicans would go

[472]

in and have a fishing expedition in the papers and try to find evidence of misconduct and try to find justification for the phrase "mess in Washington," if the papers were opened too soon after the Administration?

MURPHY: I don’t remember any particular consideration being given to this.

HESS: Have you ever heard of the statement that the President may have made at a meeting on January the 19th, 1953 (this was the evening before the inauguration ..of General Eisenhower), stating that what he would be remembered for would not be the Marshall plan or point 4, but would be for the reorganization of the White House office in such a manner that no future Presidents could make mistakes.

MURPHY: I have heard of this before. I don’t have any recollection that the President said this.

[473]

HESS: Were you present wherever he was the night before the inauguration; was he in Blair House, was he in the White House?

MURPHY: Well, he would have been back in the White House by then. I don’t remember being present. I think I have heard that this is something that he is reported to have said to General Eisenhower.

I do know that President Truman very high regard for his White House staff, perhaps far higher than we deserved, and he thought that he had the White House well organized and I am sure that he hoped that his successor would maintain the same kind of organization, but going so far as to say he’d be remembered for this rather than the Marshall plan or the Truman Doctrine, or things of that kind, I don’t have any recollection of it.

[474]

HESS: What were your duties connected with the transition from the Truman administration to the Eisenhower administration?

MURPHY: They were rather limited, I guess. After the election, President Truman was returning from Missouri to Washington. He had been in Missouri to vote. My recollection is that from the train he sent me a telegram saying to get ready for an orderly turnover of the Government to the Republicans.

I started thinking about it at that time, and after he returned to Washington, he sent me a memorandum, a copy of which I have somewhere, because I’ve seen it in recent years, telling some of the things that he wanted done in connection with the transition, and the last thing that he said he wanted me to do was to get a definition of "Trumanism."

HESS: What was your definition of Trumanism?

[475]

MURPHY: Well, the most I’ve ever done toward defining it, I. guess, was the talk I made out at the Truman Library three years ago, so I’ll refer you to that.

HESS: Two years ago.

MURPHY: Three.

HESS: Was it three?

MURPHY: I’ve checked it recently, so I’m pretty sure this is right. After this, I tended to get rather heavily involved in the staff work on the messages to Congress. The President decided that he would send to the Congress a State of the Union message, he had to send the Budget message, and he had to send an economic report. He also decided that he would make a speech to the American people in the nature of a farewell speech. I expect he made this on the night of January 19, although I don’t recall.

[476]

If he did--whenever he made it--I expect that I was pretty close at hand. You asked if I was there on that night.

The work on these messages to Congress, in particular, did involve questions of transition, in the first place, whether they should be sent.

It was a real question as to whether the President under the circumstances should deliver the State of the Union message. He decided that he would, and in connection with the budget, you have real questions as to how you handle the budgeting for this transition between administrations. Now, this was the first time that the questions had come up in this context, the first time since the twentieth amendment, twenty-first amendment, that there had been a transition from one administration to another as a result of an election.

HESS: The twenty-second, I think.

[477]

MURPHY: Well, the one that changed the inauguration date. This was the first time that there had been this kind of transition, the first time that it ever happened. In working on these questions, I think I was working on transition. In terms of working on the housekeeping aspects of it, I did not do a great deal.

The President did invite General Eisenhower to send in a representative to work with the White House staff, and more particularly, with the Bureau of the Budget, to make preparations for the transition. He also gave general instructions to Cabinet members and agency heads, that he wanted them to do all they could to facilitate an orderly transition. I think this, perhaps the first and maybe the main thing that President Truman did, was to set the tone or policy, and the policy unequivocally was that he wanted this to be an orderly turnover, and he wanted the Government to be

[478]

in as good shape as possible, and get the new administration off to as good a start as possible.

General Eisenhower did designate a man whose name I cannot remember at the moment. He came to the White House and stayed there for some weeks, and worked much more with John Steelman than he did with me.

HESS: Did that man work under Sherman Adams?

MURPHY: I don’ t think so. I don’ t know who he reported to at that time. He was a business executive who did not stay in the Administration. I apologize for not being able to remember his name. I just don’t.

President Truman, at one point, got some reports that this man was being rather unpleasant to some of the secretaries, the stenographers on the White House staff, and he called him and gave him a dressing down about

[479]

that, and I don't think he saw him again after that. John Steelman kept in touch with it quite closely. My recollection is that General Eisenhower also designated someone to work with the Bureau of the Budget in a liaison capacity during that period.

HESS: Did you work with those people in your work on the Budget message?

MURPHY: No, I'm sure I did not. David Bell might have. I think David Bell would have been working on the Budget message and working with me, but firsthand, I don't think I worked with those people.

HESS: Did you have any working relationship at this time with Sherman Adams?

MURPHY: No.

HESS: Was he in evidence?

[480]

MURPHY: No, not in Washington.

HESS: What time did he show up?

MURPHY: Inauguration day, I guess.

HESS: He did not come in before inauguration?

MURPHY: Not so far as I recall. My recollection is that they had an operation in the Commodore Hotel in New York where they were getting ready and putting the Administration together, and Sherman Adams was there, oh, I suppose as chief of staff of that operation. I don't recall that he came down here.

HESS: How long after the twentieth did you stay?

MURPHY: I left on the twentieth, at noon on the twentieth.

HESS: What did you do at that time? Did you, go back into private employment, private business?

[481]

MURPHY: Well, a little bit later, I started to practice law. You say, go back into private employment. At that time I had been working for the Government since I was 18 years old, and it was not exactly a matter of going back. I had worked at private employment before I was 18 years old. We started to work young in my part of the country. I don’t think I came to the office on the twentieth, actually.

The Dean Achesons had the President and Mrs. Truman and the members of his Cabinet, and two or three other couples, I guess the John Steelmans, and the Henry Fowlers, and my wife and I, for dinner, although it was a mid-day or afternoon meal. It was an elaborate luncheon, perhaps, at their home, in Georgetown, shortly after the inauguration ceremonies.

We went to that, and afterwards, we lived in Silver Spring, Maryland at the time and the Trumans were leaving late that afternoon, and did

[482]

leave later that afternoon by train to go home, and my wife and I drove our car to the railroad station in Silver Spring and got on the train and came to the Union Station in Washington, and then we got on the Truman’s train and rode with them from the Union Station in Washington to Silver Spring as they were leaving town.

HESS: What seemed to be his attitude at this time, happy, relieved to get away?

MURPHY: Basically, I would say yes. There was a lot of sentiment involved. I’m sure he was reluctant to be leaving a lot of his friends, but I think the overriding feeling was one of relief and happiness at being able to get away.

HESS: What was Mrs. Truman’s attitude?

MURPHY: I think hers probably was more strongly in that direction than his.

[483]

HESS: Had you attended the inauguration at noon?

MURPHY: No, I'm sure I did not go to that one.

HESS: Any particular reasons why you did not go?

MURPHY: Well, I guess there are two: In the first place, I don't think I was invited, and in the second place, I didn't want to.

HESS: Why didn't you want to?

MURPHY: Well, I wasn't particularly happy about it. I didn't see why I should go.

HESS: The wrong man won.

MURPHY: That's right.

HESS: Did you recall the names of any of the men that you worked with--the Eisenhower staff people. There were a couple of names you did not recall, is that right? The people who came down from the Commodore Hotel that Eisenhower

[484]

sent down?

MURPHY: I did not work with any of them.

HESS: One worked with John Steelman, is that right?

MURPHY: Yes, but this was not in connection with John Steelman's regular line of work.

This was in connection with the housekeeping arrangements on the White House staff, and what do you do about keeping secretaries or not keeping secretaries, what rooms are available for the use of the staff of the incoming President, and really it's just the housekeeping business for the presidential staff, if you think particularly of that. This was a special assignment, as I recall, that President Truman gave to John Steelman, was to be the liaison person on this kind of thing.

HESS: Nuts and bolts type of work.

[485]

MURPHY: Much of this, of course, would have been with and through Bill [William J.] Hopkins, who is still there, and has done the same thing for a number of other people since then.

HESS: But you really didn't have anyone from the Eisenhower staff working with the White House staff?

MURPHY: Not in my part of the White House staff, no.

HESS: What is your evaluation of the success of that transition?

MURPHY: Well, I think on the whole it was successful. There was some handicap because of the rather cool relationship between President Truman and General Eisenhower at that time.

The policy, I think, was set by President Truman at that time that has been followed since

[486]

then, and that is basically to try to do it in as orderly a fashion as you can and to try to help the new administration get off to a good start as best you can. Now, the techniques have been improved some since then. There has been a good deal said and written by scholars on the subject that would tend to suggest that the process was invented at some later period, but I don’t think it was really. There have been, I guess, three: Truman-Eisenhower; Eisenhower-Kennedy; and there was the Johnson-Nixon, and I think the basic pattern was set by President Truman, which I guess was the right pattern, although at that time, I was not particularly enthusiastic about it.

HESS: What was the basis for the cool relationship between President Truman and President Eisenhower?

MURPHY: Well, I think it grew out of the campaign, and General Eisenhower’s attacks on and desertion

[487]

of General Marshall, and President Truman's very strong reaction publicly to that.

HESS: Did you ever hear him make any comments in private on that matter?

MURPHY: I'm sure I did. I don't remember what they were, but they would be quite consistent with what he said in public.

HESS: In 1956 several men ran for President, and in his book, Mr. Citizen, Mr. Truman states that the reason behind his support from Mr. Averell Harriman in 1956 was not because he thought Mr. Harriman could win the nomination, but rather to "make it easier for Stevenson to disassociate himself with me politically." What is your view of that, and the events of 1956?

MURPHY: Well, I regarded it as pretty nearly a complete disaster, and I guess I still do.

I am somewhat skeptical of that explanation

[488]

of the reason, although I must say I’m completely baffled as to what the reason was.

I went to that convention, and in some fashion I was in touch with President Truman shortly before the convention. I thought it was distinctly understood that he was not to state any preference or support or opposition for any of the candidates. This may be something that I will want to seal, by the way.

On the train on the way to the convention, he issued a statement attacking Governor Stevenson, I thought in just an indefensible way. In the first place, I think somebody put him up to it.

HESS: Who? It’s going to be sealed.

MURPHY: My recollection is, I thought it was Dave [David] Noyes and Bill [William] Hillman.

And there was fertile ground there, because Stevenson in 1952 did not support President Truman

[489]

as he should have. He should have just for reasons of loyalty, honesty, integrity, and just plain politics.

I still think to this day that if Stevenson had run on the Truman record, he would have been elected President of the United States, but he didn’t do it. He went out and tried to disassociate himself with Truman, and he spoke out there on the West Coast about the "mess in Washington," which I think was wrong. Well, I’m sure that that had rankled in President Truman’s mind, and in Mrs. Truman’s mind, and mine, from then until 1956. So, when someone came along, if they did, and started talking about disassociating himself from Stevenson, why, I expect they found pretty fertile ground. That’s what happened.

Then he got to Chicago, and for several days this jockeying was going on back and forth, I got some inkling of what was going on,

[490]

and I was disturbed and distressed about it, and I tried to see him to talk to him about this, but I think it was apparent that he was not eager to talk to me about it, and in addition to that, the people about whom I was suspicious, I thought made a particular effort to see that I didn’t get an opportunity to speak to him alone, and I didn’t, until after the nomination. And if you’ll recall then, Stevenson was nominated, and then it was left up to President Truman after that to speak to the convention. At this point, why, he was interested in getting some help with his speech, and these people that had been sticking so close to him before that, were no where to be seen, and at this point I had no trouble getting to talk to him. So much help as he got on that speech from the staff, he got from me and the people who would have been working with me. I don’t remember who was

[491]

there at the time, but possibly it was David Lloyd or others. And if you ever have an opportunity to look at that speech, the first few opening paragraphs, in fact, I think I wrote most of it when you get right down to it. I must say, I stayed awake all night long wondering how in the world to open that speech.

HESS: Even though he did not think too favorably of Mr. Stevenson at this time, do you think that he really thought that Averell Harriman was the candidate to support in ‘56? Why did he support Averell Harriman in ‘56?

MURPHY: Well, I would suppose that if he was going to oppose Stevenson and support someone else, the next best looking someone else was Averell Harriman. I know he had a very high regard and much admiration for Averell Harriman. I don’t know that he thought Averell Harriman

[492]

was a particularly strong, potential candidate, but he had been elected Governor of New York, which surprised a good many people, and he was Governor of New York and traditionally that’s a good base from which to run.

Incidentally, you didn’t ask me this, but Averell Harriman was a candidate for the nomination in 1952. I don’t remember ever having told this story, but President Truman went out to the convention in 1952, and I went with him. He flew out on his plane, and he left here after the convention was in process, and the roll call vote, as I remember, the first roll call vote on the nomination, was taken while we were on the way to Chicago. Then the convention took a recess, late in the afternoon. We got to Chicago and went to the Blackstone Hotel, and just after we arrived there the President called me in to his bedroom and said, "I want to talk to you." He said,

[493]

"I want you to do something for me ."

I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "I want you to find Averell Harriman and tell him to withdraw."

Now, I had never been in Chicago before except as a part of the President’s party. I had no idea where the convention was being held, no idea where Averell Harriman was. And he says, "You go find Averell Harriman and tell him to withdraw."

So I said, "All right, sir." So I started out to look for Averell Harriman. I did a reasonably good job of finding him, I might say, with a lot of luck.

I did find out where the convention was being held, and I got someone to take me out there, and I got into the convention hall and shortly after I got in, I saw someone I knew who happened to be working with Averell Harriman, and he took me to Averell’s place there in the

[494]

convention hall.

This, perhaps, had taken an hour after I got these instructions from President Truman and by the time I got there, Harriman had already issued a statement withdrawing. He and Mrs. Harriman were sitting by the television waiting for the statement to be read on the news broadcast, so I sat with the Harrimans while the withdrawal statement was being read, and that’s how I happened to be there.

HESS: Why did President Truman want him to withdraw?

MURPHY: I don’t know. I can surmise, but I just don’t have any clear recollection. My recollection is what he told me to do. "You go find Averell and tell him to withdraw."

HESS: So you found him.

MURPHY: Yes.

[495]

HESS: While the Democrats were out of power, the Democratic Advisory Council was set up.

MURPHY: That is right.

HESS: I would like to ask just a few questions about that. What was your association with the Council, and why was that Council set up?

MURPHY: I was retained by the Democratic National Committee at that time as special counsel, I guess.

The Committee had a meeting which I did not attend. It must have been--oh, it was quite late in the calendar year, probably in December. They adopted at the meeting a resolution, which in rather general terms, provided for setting up this kind of operation, whether they actually gave it a name, I don't know.

HESS: Was this '52?

[496]

MURPHY: No, it was after Paul Butler got to be chairman of the national committee. I don’t know. Steve Mitchell was head of the national committee for two years, and left in 1954, I guess, so it would have been some time after 1954. I just don’t remember the dates. This resolution in the national committee, I think, was sparked largely by Philip Perlman, who had been the Solicitor General in the Truman administration, and who, for many years, had been quite active in Democratic politics in Maryland, he was quite frequently the alternate or representative who attended for the Democratic National Committeeman from Maryland.

Well, he and Paul Butler, and I expect Colonel [Jacob M.] Arvey from Chicago would have been interested in this, they got the resolution passed, so then the question came to "What do you do next." Well, at this point, Paul Butler asked me in my capacity as Special Counsel to

[497]

try to write up a frame of operation, which I did. Now, the reason I remember the time of year, was because this is the way I spent most of the Christmas vacation, was writing the constitution, as it were, for the Advisory Council. As I recall, the draft that I prepared by and large was the plan of organization that was adopted and used during the life of the Council.

And one of the key prerequisites--this must have been after the draft was written, and before the Council was actually put in operation--was to get a plan that could be agreed on by President Truman and Adlai Stevenson. This got to the point where it involved personalities to some degree.

Finally, it became apparent that Stevenson would be more likely to agree to something if Tom Finletter were involved in the operation of it, and President Truman would be more likely to

[498]

agree to something if I were involved in it.

And here was Paul Butler who was chairman of the national committee and here was Phil Perlman who was kind of the moving spirit in this. Well, this gave us an even number of persons. We decided that we would have something which I think was called the administrative committee. It was kind of an executive committee that sort of looked after the operation of the thing. We decided that we needed another man so we would have an odd number of members. So at this point, I think I suggested, at any rate, someone suggested Henry Fowler. So Henry Fowler was asked to become a member of the administrative committee and did. So this administrative committee pretty much ran the business of the Advisory Council from then on, these five people selected persons who were invited to become members of the Council, and as I recall the operation, they had some working

[499]

committees made up of experts in various fields who were not members of the Council itself. It was, I think, by and large, a successful operation, in fact, I think, a surprisingly successful operation. People have tried to copy it since then, but they haven’t had the combination of circumstances, I think, which made it possible for them to do it in the same way, and then I don’t believe that they’ve done it as successfully.

HESS: There were several members of the Senate and the House who were invited to become members. Some did, but there were more turndowns, more rejections from the House and the Senate than there were acceptances. Why didn’t the Senators and the Congressmen want to join?

MURPHY: Well, I think largely because Speaker Rayburn didn’t think he should join.

[500]

HESS: What did he have against it?

MURPHY: Well, I think there’s a tendency on the part of congressional leaders to think that they are the leaders of the Democratic Party when they don’t have a Democratic President in the White House. They have much basis for this. I don’t quarrel with them about this.

Lyndon Johnson was invited to join at the same time that Speaker Rayburn was, and my recollection is that he responded tentatively, but somewhat favorably at the outset, and after he conferred with Mr. Rayburn he decided not to do it.

I suppose it was fairly clear then that one of the main purposes of the Advisory Council was, if I might oversimplify it a little bit, to keep the Democratic Party liberal. By and large, the liberal elements in the Party were not as heavily represented among the Democrats in Congress as the

[501]

conservative elements; and by and large, it was true then, at any rate, and I think it’s true now, that if the Democrats propose to elect a President, that they have to do it mainly in the northern and western part of the country, where what we call the liberal votes are important. So this was one of the purposes of the Council and would not, for that reason, be greeted with unrestrained enthusiasm by all the Democratic leaders in Congress. And if you’ll check the Democratic members of Congress who accepted invitations and became members of the Council, I expect you’ll find pretty uniformly that they were liberal Democrats.

HESS: Hubert Humphrey for one.

MURPHY: Jack Kennedy, as I recall.

HESS: I’ve got a question on that. Mr. Kennedy did not join until 1960, and in the book on this, Politics Without Power: The National

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Party Committees, by Cornelius P. Cotter and Bernard C. Hennessy, Atherton Press, 1964, they say that Mr. Kennedy joined in 1960 only with the approaching presidential contest and that the Kennedy strategists felt a need for a liberal image. What would you say about that?

MURPHY: I have nothing to add or subtract.

HESS: Do you think that Kennedy would have reacted in such a way--for political expediency?

MURPHY: I don’t know that I would use the word expedient. It seems to me it was perfectly--if that’s what he did--a perfectly permissible...

HESS: He joined sort of late, though?

MURPHY: I don’t see anything wrong with that. Better late than never.

HESS: Just as long as he joined. All right. If some of the other more conservative congressional

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members had joined, would that have put a crimp in the style of the Democratic Advisory Council? Could they have issued liberal, substantive statements , if they had the conservative Senators and Congressmen on?

MURPHY: Well, that’s something we’ll never know. That’s a little bit like what would have happened if Russia had accepted an invitation to come in to the Marshall plan.

HESS: We just don’t know.

MURPHY: We just don’t know.

HESS: Do you think that a widely representative group could be created: liberals, conservatives, northerners, southerners, congressional leaders, and party leaders?

MURPHY: I suppose the answer to that would be yes, although asking me what I thought that long

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ago is kind of a…yes.

HESS: Sort of long after the date, isn’t it? Anything else come to mind on the Democratic Advisory Council?

MURPHY: Well, yes. There was, as long as President Truman stayed on it, this was something that he and Speaker Rayburn did not agree about, and I think fairly regularly if the subject came up, Mr. Rayburn would tell him he thought he ought to get off of it, and fairly regularly President Truman would decide not to get off of it. And I am satisfied that he stayed on the Council because he thought the Democratic Party ought to be kept liberal, and this was his contribution to doing that. He was, in terms of personalities, far more compatible with Speaker Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson than he was with most of the members of the Democratic Advisory Council. In fact

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he never looked very comfortable at the meetings. I think he thought this was his duty and he did it.

HESS: Tell me about the meetings. Did you attend the meetings, too?

MURPHY: Yes.

HESS: Were they held over there at the La Salle Building on the 11th floor? The corner room on the 11th floor?

MURPHY: Yes.

HESS: Do you recall any particular meeting, any thing stand out about any of the meetings?

MURPHY: I don’t know that I do particularly. Have you seen this room, by the way?

HESS: Yes, that’s where Charles Tyroler’s office is.

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MURPHY: Charles Tyroler. We got Charles Tyroler as the executive director...

HESS: That’s where Philleo Nash had an office for a while.

MURPHY: And Charles Tyroler was discovered and suggested to us by Tom Finletter, who had known him over in the Pentagon.

They had this great big L-shaped table over there, and the general pattern of the meetings, as I recall, was that those of us who were on the staff and the administrative committee, would try ahead of time to get something in the nature of a working draft of the things that we thought the Council might wish to say. Then we would have meetings and the Council would meet, and you would have some discussions, and after the discussions, then you would have a drafting staff group, who would go off and undertake to revise their

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working draft to make it conform with what the Council had indicated it wished to say. By and large, the members of the Council were quite tolerant as to language. We did not have a great deal of trouble with them about specific words, and he had more trouble, I guess, with Governor Stevenson than anyone else. Of course, he was quite an artist and a craftsman, and I suppose the quality of our work was not up to his usual standards.

HESS: Did he try to rewrite everything?

MURPHY: No, that would be going too far, but he tried to rewrite a good many things. He was sometimes not as prompt in giving his reaction as some of the other members were.

The Council also had some committees. They had one, as I recall, that generally speaking was concerned with matters of foreign policy, chaired by Dean Acheson, and one concerned with

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matters of domestic policy, chaired by Ken [J. Kenneth] Galbraith. They were both very able persons.

These committees were made up, generally speaking, of people whom you generally would regard as experts, some college professors, people of that kind, including one whom I remember particularly who was very helpful, Paul Nitze, who helped quite a lot with the drafting. Ken Galbraith did right much of the drafting from time to time. Dean Acheson, I’m sure, did some drafting.

Dean has always been a hard worker. A lot of people when it comes time to write, they disappear, but Acheson never disappeared when it was time to work.

HESS: What were the duties of Charles Tyroler?

MURPHY: The normal duties of an executive director of an operation of this kind. To provide for

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space and facilities and staff and stationery, to make the physical arrangements for the meeting, to get the mail flowing in and out and to see that somebody did the work that needed to be done. He did an extremely good job at it, by the way.

HESS: We have several other questions. How is your calendar? Are you pressed for other things for today?

MURPHY: No, we can go ahead for a while.

HESS: Fine. After the period of the Truman administration, Mr. Matthew J. Connelly experienced some difficulties. What do you recall about that?

MURPHY: Well, one, I think it’s one of the worst cases of political persecution that I ever heard of. It appears to me that the Eisenhower administration, at least the Attorney General,

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came into office with the purpose of doing everything he possibly could do to discover and make some kind of case of wrongdoing against the Truman administration. Sometimes I wondered if they actually believed all the stories that were circulating about the dishonesty in the Truman administration. I couldn’t during the election think that anyone behaved the way they did later, unless they themselves were prostituting the political process very badly, which is what I’m inclined to think they were doing, as a matter of fact.

They convened a grand jury in St. Louis. I have never known what they were looking for mainly. in this, I think they discovered something that they hadn’t been aware of, and that was the business about Matt Connelly and [Theron] Lamar Caudle and some businessman in St. Louis who had some problem. They then managed to get an indictment against Lamar

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Caudle and Matt Connelly for, as I recall, "depriving the United States of their best services." I think that’s what they indicted them for.

I think that Matt was indiscreet and Lamar was stupid. I don’t think that either one of them was venal; I don’t think that either of them should have been indicted. I knew something about the Caudle business because I had been into it earlier and at that time, I thought it was appropriate for the President to ask for his resignation, which he did, by the way, and it was a little slow coming in and so the President announced his resignation before he got it. Do you have this story?

HESS: No.

MURPHY: Well, this happened: The Ways and Means Committee, or a Subcommittee of Ways and Means,

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was conducting an investigation and they ran into some of this business about Lamar Caudle and they agreed that the counsel of that committee should call me and tell me about .it and invite me to come up and read the transcript. Well, this call came, just as I was getting on a plane to go to Key West with President Truman, so I could not go. And I asked David Stowe to go read it, if my memory serves me right. Dave went and read it and called me up and told me at some length what he had found, and it seemed to me that these things that Lamar Caudle had done were really not very bad, but they were stupid; he should have had better sense, and it was the kind of thing that in my judgment didn’t deserve peremptory firing, but he ought to leave, he should be given a chance to resign. I reported this at some length to the President and told him that that was my recommendation, and

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he said, "All right, call Howard McGrath and tell him we want Lamar to resign."

So I tried to call McGrath on the phone and I couldn’t get him, and I got the number two man in the Department, at that time I think he was called The Assistant to the Attorney General, Peyton Ford. It’s the job that would be Deputy Attorney General now. And I told him that the President wanted Lamar’s resignation and wanted it right away, and told him why. Well, this came as a surprise, and I suppose something of a shock. Well, he at that point managed to find the Attorney General, and the Attorney General didn’t agree with this decision apparently, so about a day later we got a call back to Key West wanting to argue about this, and the President said, "No, tell him I want his resignation." It didn’t come that day, and I think the next day he had a press conference in Key West and

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he announced Lamar Caudle’s resignation over there, before it was received. It had been written and was in the mail by that time.

Now, another incidental story. My present senior partner in this law firm, Graham Morison had been an Assistant Attorney General in the Truman administration, and had resigned some months before the end of the administration in the summer of 1952, as I recall. In 1953, it must have been, when this grand jury was sitting in St. Louis, we were subpoenaed to come out there and testify at the same time, and we went together.

It happened that on the day we were there, President Truman was in St. Louis to address an annual convention of the Communication Workers of America and they had a big hotel suite for him. He left at the end of the day to go home and left this suite for overnight. These Communication Workers said, "We’ve got this

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suite for President Truman, why don’t you and your partner stay in it tonight?" And we did. Great big suite, two bedrooms, he had one bedroom and I had the other. When we started to leave the hotel room the next morning, Graham and I went by the cashier just to make sure that everything was in order and they looked at it, "Complimentary, that is fine, go ahead. No wait, here’s one telephone call, ten cents."

So I reached in my pocket to get a dime to give them for the phone call and Graham Morison said, "Wait a minute Charlie, let’s find out who made that call."

I said, "No, let’s give them the dime and go ahead."

This is about all that occurs to me to say. The rest of what happened, I think, is pretty well on the public record about the trial and Connelly and Caudle.

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HESS: Do you think Herbert Brownell, the Attorney General, could have conducted such a campaign without the knowledge of the President?

MURPHY: No. And incidentally, I think something else that Brownell did, which is at least as bad and maybe worse, was his accusation against President Truman about Harry Dexter White.

HESS: Were you in on the decision as to whether or not President Truman should appear?

MURPHY: When you say appear, you mean appear and testify?

HESS: Yes.

MURPHY: Yes, I was in a fashion.

HESS: Tell me about it.

MURPHY: As well as I can remember. He was in New York City and I went up there. He was

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working with Sam Rosenman and I think the legal research had been done and he, with the legal advice of Sam Rosenman, had decided not to appear in response to this subpoena, I guess, from the House Un-American Activities Committee and the chairman of the committee at that time was a Congressman from Illinois whose name started with a "V." [Harry H. Velde] At any rate, the question arose naturally as to how was the response to be made. So I ended up with a letter from President Truman saying that he would not appear and testify and the letter was given to me to bring back to Washington, and to decide whether or not to deliver it after I got here. I took that letter and I went to see a then Congressman from Pennsylvania, "Tad" [Francis E. ] Walter. His nickname was Tad. I had always thought of him as quite a conservative Congressman, and much to my surprise when I got to his office

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here was a great big picture of President Truman on the wall. I found out he was a great admirer of President Truman. Well, he was a senior Democratic member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. So at this point I sought and got his advice on the subject, and my recollection is that on the basis of his advice I decided not to deliver the letter. I don’t think it was ever delivered, but I had it in my pocket, a letter from President Truman saying that he would not respond to the subpoena.

I think that Walter took me around to see this other Congressman who was chairman of the committee, as I recall, and we had a talk about it, and he decided that he would withdraw his subpoena, or not press it. I expect you can check the record and find about this, but I’m clear in my recollection that I had this letter in my pocket. I’m not

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altogether clear about what happened up there, but my recollection, such as it is, is that I went to see Tad Walter, he took me to see this man, and he decided that he would withdraw the subpoena, and he was somewhat amused and not too unpleasant about it, as a matter of fact (the man who was chairman of the committee).

HESS: It might have been a good way for him to get out of it.

MURPHY: The other aspect of this was President Truman’s speech. You remember he did make a speech on the subject. I helped some in the preparation of that speech.

HESS: Do you recall if Sam Rosenman helped write it too?

MURPHY: I don’t. Marx Leva helped and Henry Fowler helped. I remember working on it in

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their law office. They were together in a law firm at that time. That's where the staff work on this was done mainly. Marx had worked with us on the White House staff right much in preparation of speeches and messages having to do with National Defense matters. He was a very able fellow.

HESS: Do you recall what speeches he may have helped on, what times he may have come in to help?

MURPHY: In a general way, yes. We had during the period that I was Special Counsel, from 1950 to 1953, particularly, well, I guess after the Korean war started, which would have been in the summer of 1950. We had designated liaison people from the Department of Defense and the Department of State who worked with my staff group regularly, and during the first part of this period, the man from the Department of

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Defense was Marx Leva, who was then an Assistant Secretary, as I recall. Then he left the Government and the man who was designated for this was Frank Nash; and from the Department of State, part of the time, we had Paul Nitze and then later, I guess, we had Marshall Shulman.

So the speeches, particularly during the fall of 1950, the speeches and messages to Congress having to do with the Defense posture and the Korean war and the military establishment, Marx Leva would have worked with us on those speeches.

You may recall that earlier than that there was the budget ceiling on the Defense expenditures, about fourteen billion dollars, and I’ve always thought that Jim [James E. ] Webb was primarily responsible for this, although Louis Johnson got most of the blame.

In the fall of 1949, President Truman had

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established a special ad hoc committee from the Department of State and the Department of Defense to review our Defense posture in the light of the Communist threat. They produced a paper and I knew nothing about it at the time, but President Truman, gave me a copy of this paper, it must have been in the very early spring of 1950, and it was--well, I was working real hard in those days and I didn’t have time to read that paper at the office that day, but I took it home with me and I read it at home that night. Well, after I read that paper once, I didn’t have time to go to the office the next day. I stayed at home all day and read that paper over and over again, and it seemed to me to establish an altogether convincing case that we had to spend more on defense, that we had to strengthen our defense posture very markedly.

I didn’t purport then, or since, to be an

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expert in this field, but this seemed to me to be very plain, and the question then was, "What do you do next?" I went back to the President and recommended to him that this paper be referred to the National Security Council and put in the National Security Council staff machinery. That was done. It became NSC 68. I also recommended to him that for this purpose that he ask Leon Keyserling, who was then the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, to sit with and serve as a member of what was called the senior staff of NSC because the reason that had been given for the cutback in defense expenditures was that if we spent more than that on defense it would destroy the economy. So I thought that if we were going to talk about and make decisions on the basis of what would destroy the economy we ought to have the President’s Economic Adviser in there, and so Leon Keyserling attended these

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meetings. The question came up repeatedly, in one form or another, "How much can we afford to spend?" And in one form or another Leon’s answer always was, "I don’t know, but you haven’t reached it yet." He always said, "You can afford to spend more on defense if you need to."

This, in the late spring of 1950, we, in this operation--this is the only time I suppose that I ever went regularly to the meetings of the NSC staff, but we were trying to find out through this machinery, using all the President’s advisers and the departments, what was the best thing to do about our defense posture. We came, I think, to a firm judgment that our course ought to be sharply changed from what it had been. And so the next question in 1950, in June, when the North Koreans invaded South Korea, and from then on we explained it in terms of the Korean problem,

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which I think was permissible. It got kind of muddied, but we had in mind, I think, a clear belief that the general necessities, so far as defense was concerned, required a large increase in our defense strength as well as the Korean fighting. So I expect you’ll find in presidential documents all during that period, sort of an effort to explain this in a two-fold fashion, maybe with particular emphasis on the Korean part of it.

Now, one of the things that grew out of this was a recommendation to Congress and a message to Congress from the President asking for funds to increase our military strength and military establishment. This was an extremely important message. We had by that time developed a practice of working on messages that when departments had a real critical interest in the matter we were working on, we would give them an opportunity to have someone

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at most of the drafting sessions, and this one got to be the largest group I ever had, and it got to the point that every time I wanted to open up my paper I had to have fourteen people sitting around the table. So we finally got most of it done, except for one thing, and we needed a number to put in, a number of dollars that the President was asking Congress to appropriate, and I could not get an answer from the Department of Defense. General Marshall was then Secretary, and I couldn’t wait any longer, so I heard people talking about different numbers and I took the biggest number that I had heard anybody mention and I wrote it in. Then we started circulating the draft for clearance.

HESS: Trying to give yourself a little leeway.

MURPHY: When General Marshall got this draft with the number in there, he was somewhat put out about it, but at any rate, I got my number...

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HESS: Did he lower that number?

MURPHY: I don't have a clear recollection, but I don't much think so. I think the number stood, but you asked--what made me think of this--you asked what would Marx Leva have helped us on, he would have helped on this.

HESS: As you mentioned, Louis Johnson got most of the blame for the cutback, but you said that James Webb had a hand in that, too, is that right?

MURPHY: Yes, he was the Director of the Budget.

HESS: Do you think he was the leader of the group that was trying to cut back military spending at that time?

MURPHY: I do.

HESS: What makes you think so?

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MURPHY: I was there, I heard him.

HESS: What was Louis' Johnson's attitude?

MURPHY: My impression and recollection is that he was carrying out orders in this regard as best he could. This is what the President told him he had to do, and he tried to do it. Louis Johnson had many faults, but in this matter I think this is what he was doing. I think he was doing his best to carry out the President's orders, and to explain them and justify them.

HESS: But most of the advice at that time for holding down military spending was coming from Jim Webb? Some of the advice.

MURPHY: Well, I suppose it was coming from a lot of places, but my clear recollection there is that he was the leader, and an effective man. Jim's a very effective person. And he was the

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Director of the Budget, and when the Director of the Budget tells the President, "This is all the money you can afford to spend," this is pretty powerful stuff.

HESS: What was his main argument?

MURPHY: "If you spend more than this it will ruin the economy. This is all the economy can stand," which I didn’t believe then--well, frankly I didn’t pay a great deal of--you know, I wasn’t very heavily involved in this, as a matter of fact, until we got this paper that got to be NSC-68, and then I began to wonder. I had been hearing that 14 billion dollars is all you can spend. If you spend more than this it will wreck the economy, and I thought the people that were saying this knew more about the economy than I did, and it didn’t occur to me to question it seriously until I got this paper. Then I began studying the subject,

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and after that I began to be very doubtful that this was all the money you could spend.

HESS: Did you say that NSC-68 was written by that ad hoc committee in the fall of ‘49?

MURPHY: Yes, I think that’s what I said, and generally speaking this is true. My recollection is that this is the same paper. It may be that NSC-68 is a paper that came out of the NSC after all the processing was done. But if this paper was not NSC-68 it was the basic document for it from which the NSC exercise took off. This document was then referred to the National Security Council and started then as NSC-68 exercise.

HESS: As one who has worked for several Presidents and has had ample opportunity to observe the Presidency as an institution, do you think that there are any changes that might be made

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in the institution of the Presidency?

MURPHY: Well, I would not make any basic or fundamental changes. It has great difficulties, but I don't know of anything else that wouldn't be likely to work less or work more poorly.

HESS: Are there any things that demand too much of a President's time that might be cut off? Too much ceremony? Send the Vice President out to make a speech, in other words?

MURPHY: Well, I don't think you can give a clear cut answer to that. I would say the answer is about 40 percent yes and 60 percent no. Some of them should be cut off, but you can't just cut them off with one fell swoop because what makes them meaningful in many cases is that it's the President, and if it's not the President, it's not the President. You just can't get around that. That's one of the facts of life. It's

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an enormous job, it's almost impossible for anybody to handle. I don't know of any way that you can make it manageable. You can put layer on layer of White House staff, and what you do, if you're not careful, is to make the President's job more difficult instead of less difficult, because the principal purpose of the White House staff ought to be to sort out the layers and sooner or later you've got to get it down to that one man.

HESS: Do you think the larger White House staffs, as there are now, and as there have been in the last few years, are not as good a way of running the White House as it was during the Truman administration?

MURPHY: That's what I think. I think the White House staff, as an organization in the Truman administration, was about right. I would have it somewhat bigger, and when you get right

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down to what I mean by somewhat, I would say about twice as many of professional-level people as President Truman had. I would have them organized generally along the same lines that he had them organized. Incidentally, I wrote a memorandum on this in the fall of 1968.I think some Presidents have had the White House staff over-organized, and some have had it under-organized, and I think President Truman had it just about right.

HESS: Who had it under-organized?

MURPHY: I think Roosevelt did, I think Kennedy did. I guess I would say the Johnson staff was under-organized; there was more than enough of it. In terms of an orderly operation, I think the Eisenhower staff was over-organized.

HESS: Do you think that was a reflection of the General’s military training?

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MURPHY: I would guess so. And I’m inclined to think that from what I read in the paper, that the present White House staff is somewhat over-organized. Although on the whole I think they have a pretty good approach to this. It’s a terrible problem. I have the greatest sympathy for anybody that has to try to deal with it.

HESS: I expect anybody who has been over there has sympathy for them.

MURPHY: Yes, and one way, I guess, that they still meet it. One way we met it in the Truman days, those of us in the little key group worked seven days a week and about twelve hours a day. I don’t recommend that to people as a way of life over a long period of time.

HESS: What in your opinion were Mr. Truman’s major contributions during his career?

MURPHY: Oh, I don’t know. Other people have done

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this much more extensively, and undoubtedly better than I. I guess I just wouldn’t answer that question at least without considerable reflection, and I haven’t been thinking in those terms particularly. I do think his accomplishments in the foreign policy field are greater than in the domestic field.

HESS: Why did he have more success in the foreign field than he did in the domestic one?

MURPHY: Well, I suggested in this talk that I made out at the Truman Library three years ago, that I thought this perhaps was because he was his own chief staff man in the foreign policy field. I looked around the White House to see who I would think of as his chief staff man in the foreign policy field and I decided he was it.

HESS: Where would you place Mr. Truman on the

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scale from a liberal to a conservative, to use two terms that a lot of people don’t like to use.

MURPHY: Oh, I would place him on the scale somewhat to the left of the center, a moderate liberal, and a convinced liberal, I might say. I don’t like to use the word dedicated because so many people have used that about other liberals, I don’t think he was a professional or a professing liberal particularly. I think he is much more congenial on the average with people who are conservatives; but in terms of his public policies, I think he thought, and in the spectrum as it existed then, that the policies of the liberals were right, by and large. He didn’t go all the way with them on all questions.

He had his years of experience in the Senate, you see. He was up there for ten

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years, and dealt, as Senators do, with this whole range of issues. He’s a smart man; he’s got an awful lot of sense, and he understands what’s going on, and when he went to the White House he understood these issues, particularly the domestic side. He hadn’t had a great deal of exposure to foreign policy issues, and he was a liberal in the Senate and had the same views when he came down here. I think the spectrum has shifted some since then, at least it appears to me that way. I would expect his views now would be about what they were when he was in the White House. I expect this would place him a little nearer the center now, the center of what we have now than what we had then.

HESS: We have already discussed a few of the Presidents of the past few years, but how would you rate the Presidents of the recent years,

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Mr. Roosevelt to the present, in terms of their effectiveness, their administrative ability, their intellectual ability and as men?

MURPHY: Oh, well, I don't know. As a man, I'd rate President Truman tops. Roosevelt, I did not know personally, although I was here in Washington during most of his Presidency and in a job where it was my business to keep up with what was going on in the Government and what he was doing. I suppose in terms of intellectual ability I would rate him very high, maybe tops. What were your other questions: Administrative ability--I'd rate President Truman tops in administrative ability.

HESS: How would you rate President Kennedy on administrative ability and intellectual ability?

MURPHY: I'd rate him pretty high in intellectual

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ability, and not particularly high in administrative ability.

HESS: How would you rate General Eisenhower on administrative ability, intellectual ability...

MURPHY: Medium.

HESS: How about our present man?

MURPHY: Well, kind of low medium, I guess.

I saw General Eisenhower--well, I met him a number of times, but the only time I ever had an opportunity to listen to him at any length was in the spring of 1968. President Johnson went to Hawaii and took me out there with him, and on the way back stopped at Edwards Air Force Base and President Eisenhower came up and had breakfast with him. During the breakfast discussion President Johnson had six or eight members of his staff who were with him sit in and listen. Some of the members

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of the staff, I think, participated in the discussion to some extent, although I did not.

I was, I would say, greatly surprised at General Eisenhower, the ability with which he spoke, the cogency of what he said, and the way he had his sentences organized. It was not the impression that I had had in my mind all these years at all. And I thought that what he said made real good sense and I thought he had it well arranged, and he handled it with some finesse, I would say, which I think was required under the circumstances. Talking to an incumbent President and giving him advice, I think you have to be kind of careful to say enough and not say too much. I just thought he did a remarkable job. So, I would rate him higher now than I would have if you had asked me that question in 1967.

HESS: What’s your estimation of Mr. Truman’s place

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in history, one or two hundred years from now, if the world lasts, how will Mr. Truman be regarded?

MURPHY: I think his place in history is well established, and I think it’s a rather high place in history. I think that among other things, much constructive work has been done to accomplish this since the end of his term. I think he’s done quite a lot of it, and I think his place in history looks much higher now than it did in the fall of 1952, and even in 1953.

HESS: Can you give me an example of what you see that he has done that will raise his estimation in history?

MURPHY: Oh, I think his Memoirs have helped; I think his speeches have helped; I think his general attitude has helped; and among other

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things, I think he just flat refused to go off and sulk in the corner and accept a verdict that was an adverse verdict which might very well have been rendered if the final verdict had been rendered at the time he left the White House, the fall of 1952. People were saying some awfully bad things about him in ‘51 and ‘52.

HESS: Do you have anything else to add on Mr. Truman and the Truman administration?

MURPHY: I don’t think of anything right now, but I expect if you kept asking me questions I could keep talking forever.

HESS: We may be back.

MURPHY: All right.