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 It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.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

[38]

MORRISSEY: Mr. Murphy, as a graduate of the Duke Law School in 1934, why did you come to Washington?

MURPHY: I came to Washington looking for a job. When I graduated from law school, I was married and had a baby and a regular job as a postal clerk in Durham, North Carolina, no income except what I got from that job, so it was necessary for me to find another paying job before I left that one. One of my friends, who is now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Washington, persuaded me that I should come to Washington, D.C. to look for a job and I did in the fall of 1934.

I was very fortunate in finding the job that I did. I was recommended by Justin Miller, who had been the Dean of the Duke Law

[39]

School when I was in school there, for a position in the office of the Senate Legislative Counsel, and I was employed in that office. That is usually spoken of as the Bill Drafting Service. The function of that office is to help Senators and Senate committees with drafts of legislation, with committee reports, and with various legal questions relating to legislation.

MORRISSEY: When did you first meet Mr. Truman?

MURPHY: Early in 1935. He was elected to the Senate in the fall of 1934, and took office in January of 1935.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall anything about this first meeting?

MURPHY: No I don’t. I think I remember the first time I went to his office, not to see him but

[40]

the man who was then his secretary, as Senators’ chief assistants were called in those days. This was before Senators had administrative assistants. His name is Vic...

MORRISSEY: Messall.

MURPHY: Messall--Vic Messall. I remember talking with Vic Messall. I remember that he asked me some question relating not particularly to legislation, but about the Senate in general, and I told him that I didn’t know either because I was new there just as he was.

I did not work a great deal for Senator Truman in the first years he was in the Senate. In the Legislative Counsel’s office, we worked for any Senators or Senate committees when we were requested to do so. He did not call on our office for very much assistance during the first years that he was in the Senate.

[41]

When he did begin to call on the office, he usually called for me, as I remember. I do remember working with him in 1938 on the Civil Aeronautics Act. He was the chairman of a subcommittee, I guess, that handled that legislation in the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. There were two competing Senate bills on the subject, one in the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and the other in the Committee on Commerce. The one that was finally passed by the Senate, as I recall, was the one from the Committee on Commerce. Senator Truman was chairman of the subcommittee that handled the bill in the other committee and did a great deal of work on that bill, which was reported from the committee and not passed by the Senate, as I remember. When the bill went to conference with the House, Senator Bennett Clark of

[42]

Missouri was a member of the Commerce Committee, and was initially slated to be one of the conferees, but resigned so that Senator Truman could be appointed, and he was one of the conferees on that bill as I remember it.

The only other piece of legislation I remember particularly, or drafting that I did for him, was the resolution that created the investigating committee that came to be known as the Truman Committee. I ran into Senator Truman in the lobby just off the Senate floor back of the Vice President’s desk one day, and he said, "Murphy, I just made a speech in there on the Senate floor. I want you to get the Record tomorrow and read it, then draft a resolution for me of the kind I said I was going to introduce." And that was the resolution that created the Truman Investigating Committee.

[43]

MORRISSEY: Do you recall Mr. Truman ever remarking to you on the reasons that prompted him to make that speech or to introduce that resolution?

MURPHY: No I don’t.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall anything about the appropriation for the Truman Committee?

MURPHY: No I don’t. I have no independent recollection of it.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall having any dealings with Mr. Truman when he was interested in railroad reorganization and railroad finance?

MURPHY: Not very much. I knew his friend, Max Lowenthal (I think both before and after Mr. Truman went to the White House), and Lowenthal was interested in this field and worked some with Mr. Truman. I don’t remember that I had

[44]

anything except a casual knowledge and acquaintance with what was going on.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall anything about the so-called "B₂H₂" resolution, the Ball, Burton, Hatch, and Hill resolution during World War II?

MURPHY: I remember the name. My recollection is not at all clear as to what it was.

MORRISSEY: The reason I ask, we have read that the origin of this was in the Truman Committee itself and I was wondering if you knew anything that could add to the credibility of this?

MURPHY: No, what was this about?

MORRISSEY: International cooperation after World War II.

MURPHY: I don’t have any recollection of it.

[45]

MORRISSEY: Do you have any recollections of any dealings with Mr. Truman when he was Vice President?

MURPHY: No, he was not Vice President very long, so I have no recollection of any dealings with him. I saw him from time to time and would visit occasionally--just conversationally.

MORRISSEY: Why did you go to the White House staff in January, 1947?

MURPHY: That came about in this fashion. Shortly after President Truman became President, there was a public rumor that Leslie Biffle, then the Secretary of the Senate, was going to the White House to be with President Truman. I saw Les and asked him if this was true and he said, "No, but you’re going." This must have been still in the spring of 1945. That seemed

[46]

to me to be an interesting idea, but I heard nothing more about it for a long time. Then Matt Connelly got in touch with me and talked about the possibility of my coming to the White House as the Administrative Assistant to the President, and I said that I would be very much interested in that.

One man, who I’m quite sure was instrumental in calling to the attention of the President the fact that I might come down there, was Lewis T. Barringer from Memphis, Tennessee, who is now vice president of Cannon Mills and is a cotton merchant--was then, still is a very good friend of mine. I still see him frequently in connection with my work over here. I had known him when I was in the Legislative Counsel’s office because of his interest in cotton legislation. I’ve drafted a lot of cotton legislation, particularly for

[47]

Senator [John Hollis] Bankhead from Alabama, and Senator [Kenneth Douglas] McKellar from Tennessee. I am sure that Lew Barringer, who had campaigned with Mr. Truman in 1944, when he was running for Vice President, spoke to him and to Matt Connelly about the possibility of my coming down there.

At any rate, when I said that I would be willing to come, as I recall, the White House then checked with Senator [Alben] Barkley, who was the majority leader of the Senate, and he objected to my leaving the Senate and that is the reason why for a long time after I first heard of this, I heard nothing more about it. Well, I did hear eventually that that was why I was not actually invited or asked to come to work at the White House. I was by then a little bit restless with the job I had in the Legislative Counsel’s office

[48]

anyway--a wonderful job, but I’d been there twelve years or so at that time and was interested in making a change of some kind. So I decided that I would make a change and passed the word along, and this eventually got back to Senator Barkley and he said that if I was going to leave the Senate anyway, I might as well go to work at the White House; so he withdrew his objection. Then I was invited to go, and went.

Years later, or within a year or so before Senator Barkley died after he had been Vice President, then re-elected to the Senate, Phil [Philip B.] Perlman, former Solicitor General and I went to see Senator Barkley about another matter. We had a wonderful visit with him for an hour or so in the office of the Secretary of the Senate, and as we were leaving, Senator Barkley said, "Charlie."

[49]

And I said, "Yes sir?"

And he said, "Do you remember when you went to the White House to work?"

And I said, "Yes sir."

"And do you remember that you came and asked me what I thought you should do about it?"

And I said, "Yes sir."

"And that I said you should go ahead and go down there--do you remember all that?"

And I said, "yes sir."

And he said, "Have you ever been sorry you followed my advice?"

I said, "No sir."

I thought that was kind of amusing in light of my recollection of Senator Barkley’s interest in the matter.

MORRISSEY: Do you have any recollections of the relationship between Mr. Truman and Mr. Barkley when Mr. Truman was President and Mr. Barkley was

[50]

Vice President?

MURPHY: My recollection is that they were very close, very friendly indeed.

MORRISSEY: Do you have any recollection of any relationship back when they both were in the Senate?

MURPHY: I don’t. I would expect that their relationships were very friendly, but not expeciallly intimate. Senator Barkley, I think, would not have been one of the group that Senator Truman was most intimate with. President Truman was instrumental in the selection of Senator Barkley for the nomination in 1948--nomination for the Vice President. My memory of the ins and outs of that are not clear at the moment, but he certainly did approve before Senator Barkley was nominated--President Truman approved

[51]

his nomination.

MORRISSEY: As a tangent to this discussion, let me ask this, I’ve heard that one reason why you’re here at Agriculture now is because you were concerned with the writing of agricultural legislation back when you were in the Legislative Counsel’s office in the Senate. Is there any truth in that?

MURPHY: Some. I was concerned with writing agricultural legislation but not more than other legislation. There’s some tendency to specialize now because they have a larger staff. I had some tendency to specialize on agricultural legislation, and eventually, did most of the work on agricultural legislation that was done in that office. But I also worked on price control, some on taxes, a good many other matters, Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.

[52]

MORRISSEY: Another question which is also off on a tangent: In the 1948 campaign, there was something of an issue about lack of containers to hold grain that the farmers were harvesting in the Middle West--grain bins. Do you recall what caused this to be an issue and how important an issue it was?

MURPHY: It is generally considered to have been a very important issue and I believe that it was. In order for farmers to get price support for grain it must be stored. That means there must be a place in which it can be stored. There was a shortage of storage space in the Middle West at that time, and the farmers blamed the Congress for it. I don’t have an actual recollection of why, although I would guess it must be that the Congress refused to make an appropriation which had been recommended for that purpose, and the President then was able to

[53]

point this out and use it as a means for encouraging opposition to Republicans. The Department of Agriculture, since that, has acquired a substantial amount of this kind of storage space--we call this bin-sites. We now have enough to store something between nine hundred million and a billion bushels of grain. I inspected one in Missouri a couple of weeks ago.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall how this issue came to the attention of the President?

MURPHY: No, I don’t.

MORRISSEY: Let me go back a bit and ask if you have any recollections about the relationship between Mr. Truman when he was in the Senate, and other Senators, such as Senator Burton Wheeler or James Byrnes or Bennett Clark?

[54]

MURPHY: Well, the relations would have been different, I guess, with each of those. His relationship with Burton Wheeler was quite close; I have the impression that it was related largely to their work together and that Wheeler was sort of the elder statesman who guided Senator Truman along, and they got along very well together in their work, I think.

His relationships with Senator Clark, my impression would be that they were not particularly close, that they were correct and not very intimate; there were no hard feelings between them, no bad blood at all--they were just not particularly friendly.

Jimmy Byrnes, I think the relationship was somewhat closer. Byrnes was a senior Senator, an administration leader in the Senate and a man who had great ability and skill in

[55]

putting together the necessary votes to get a majority for legislation. I think he dealt with Senator Truman as an administration spokesman a great deal, and Senator Truman had a very high regard for him as was indicated later when he made him Secretary of State.

MORRISSEY: Did you have any dealings with Hugh Fulton, the counsel for the Truman Committee?

MURPHY: No, I don’t think I knew Hugh Fulton until some years later. In the Senate there was a group of Senators that were quite close friends, including Senator Truman, who came to the Senate at the same time in 1935. This would have included Sherman Minton from Indiana; Lew [Lewis B.] Schwellenbach from Washington. He and Mon [Monrad C.] Wallgren were good friends later but I don’t think Wallgren came at that time.

[56]

MORRISSEY: I think he was in the House and then in 1940 went from the House to the Senate.

MURPHY: Senator Truman was a good friend of Senator Bachman of Tennessee who was rather quiet and not heard from a great deal. None of the other names in that particular group occur to me at the moment.

MORRISSEY: When you first went to the White House in 1947, what were your duties?

MURPHY: They were not very well defined. I went in for a visit with the President and he told me, in effect, to go around and talk to people on the staff and I would find something to do.

They gave me the office that had been occupied by Richmond Keech, who had been an administrative assistant to the President and had just been appointed a judge of the

[57]

United States District Court here in the District of Columbia. I naturally tended toward becoming interested in legislative matters as that had been my background. From time to time, I’d get particular assignments.

There is a story that Lew Barringer and Matt Connelly tease me about from time to time (which may be true although I don’t remember it), that after I had been there for several months, I complained because I was not getting anything to do and thought about leaving, but before the year was out, I had as much as I could do and always did after that.

One of the early assignments I got was a little handwritten note from President Truman, which I still have, I think, that read something like this:

"Murphy, take over Rich Keech’s files. Want you to look after the Philippines.

HST."

[58]

So from then on, I was more or less designated to look after the Philippines so far as White House staff work was concerned.

One of the early assignments I got was to work on the drafting of the bill for the Unification of the Armed Forces--set to work with Admiral Forrest Sherman from the Navy, who later died while he was Chief of Naval Operations, as I recall; and General Lauris Norstad who has recently retired as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and for about three weeks, I guess, we worked fulltime on that legislation, the theory being that they furnished the knowledge and ability so far as content was concerned, and I as legislative draftsman was supposed to work with the form of the legislation.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall any of the particular problems that took your time during those three weeks?

[59]

MURPHY: I remember one little incident, that we finally got to the point in the bill where we had to say something about appropriations and it seemed to me that this indicated being in touch with the Bureau of the Budget. My knowledge of the legislative clearance function of the Bureau of the Budget, at that time, was very limited or non-existent, but I did understand they had something to do with money and appropriations. So I called in a staff man from the Bureau of the Budget on a confidential basis to talk with him about this. The following day, I happened to be in Clark Clifford’s office when he received a call from Jim Webb, who was then the Director of the Bureau of the Budget and this man in the Budget that I had talked to, had in turn talked to Webb, and Webb was then complaining to Clifford because the Bureau of the Budget was not involved in this drafting process. Because this had been

[60]

a direct assignment from the President, because of the confidential nature of my conversation with the Bureau of the Budget, I was disturbed about this and went to see Webb whom I had not met before that, and complained rather strongly. He apologized and we were fast friends from then on.

I remember being greatly impressed by both Admiral Sherman and General Norstad--two extremely able people. I don’t have any other recollections at the moment about this.

MORRISSEY: Do you have any recollections of Mr. Truman’s views on the necessity for his legislation and the problems of writing such legislation?

MURPHY: I think his views as to the necessity were rather clear, that we should have such legislation. He had had these views before he came to the White House, as I recall.

[61]

MORRISSEY: Let me ask you to enlarge a bit on the relationship between James Webb and the White House staff as you saw it, also the relationship between Mr. Webb and Mr. Truman? I assume it was a very good relationship?

MURPHY: It was a very good relationship. As I remember it, Mr. Truman put him in as Director of the Bureau of the Budget (I believe Harold Smith was still there when Mr. Truman became President). Jim Webb was a lawyer, and at that time a young lawyer, and in the Treasury Department, as I remember it. President Truman appointed him Director of the Budget. He is a very vigorous, able man and, I think, was during the time that I remember best, a very able, vigorous advocate of economy--cutting down the defense budget I remember, particularly. He did work well with the White House staff, by and large. There was some institutional by-play. This,

[62]

I think, was more pronounced in relation to Dr. Steelman and his office than it was in relation to the other White House staff offices.

Dr. Steelman was, when I went there, The Assistant to the President. This was a successor to the office of Director of War Mobilization, would it have been?--the office that Jimmy Byrnes had had, and later Fred Vinson, and then John Snyder and then John Steelman; and after the war was over, the Bureau of the Budget particularly felt that this Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (I guess it was called), should be discontinued and they worked out an arrangement for the appointment of an assistant who would be called The Assistant to the President, and be the senior White House staff man. The Bureau of the Budget felt that the office did some of the things that might

[63]

better be done in the Bureau of the Budget, I think, although this was not an acute problem there in my time.

Jim Webb was very helpful to me after we became acquainted and before I had been there many months, began to insist that I needed an assistant, and finally said that if I would take an assistant that he would give me anybody in the Bureau of the Budget that I might want. By that time I had come to know David Bell who was in the Bureau of the Budget and had just been appointed by Webb as his own personal assistant. So I said, "I will take David Bell." Webb was as good as his word and I got David Bell. David then continued to work very closely with the Bureau of the Budget, even after he was on the White House staff he helped with the Budget messages.

We developed, while I was there, some, I think, quite good institutional practices

[64]

working with the Bureau of the Budget particularly, and through the same legislative clearance machinery that I was not aware of when I went there to work.

We established the practice of asking that all of the departments and agencies send in recommendations for the President’s messages (the three big messages: the Budget message, the State of the Union message, and the Economic Report), and asked that they try to get them in about September of each year to the Bureau of the Budget where they were screened. The Bureau had primary responsibility for the recommendations for the Budget message. The recommendations for the Economic Report were sent over to the Council of Economic Advisers and the recommendations for the State of the Union message were sent to the White House staff. One of Dave Bell’s particular assignments, while he was there, was to make sure that these

[65]

messages were not inconsistent with each other. He worked on the Budget message particularly from the point of view and for one or two years had primary responsibility for actually drafting the Budget message.

MORRISSEY: Could you elaborate on some of these institutional procedures that you just referred to?

MURPHY: This was one, the use of the clearance machinery for getting material organized for the messages. One of the functions that I had while I was on the White House staff, was advising the President with respect to Civil Aeronautics matters. There are some Civil Aeronautics decisions that must be approved by the President personally having to do with international air transportation. The recommendations from the Civil Aeronautics Board, as to those decisions, would come to the

[66]

White House, be referred to the Bureau of the Budget, which in turn would get the comments from other interested departments (particularly the Department of State and the Department of Defense and the Department of Commerce), and summarize these and prepare a summary memorandum and recommendations, which then would come to me first and then to the President. This was an example of the kind of staff work that the Bureau of the Budget could do and did extremely well and they came to be, in a sense, an extension of the White House staff.

The same kind of system was followed in legislative clearance, developing and determining administration positions on legislation. The Budget would get the views of interested departments before recommendations were made for legislation and at the other end of the line, after the bills had been passed in Congress,

[67]

and come to the President for signature or veto. The Bureau of the Budget would get recommendations, as it still does, from the interested departments and summarize the recommendations and make a recommendation of their own.

MORRISSEY: Why were you given the assignment of looking after Civil Aeronautics matters?

MURPHY: I don’t remember particularly. I did have some familiarity with the subject because of the work I had done on the legislation in that field. It may have been because the President remembered that I worked with him on the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.

MORRISSEY: Do you recall any particular problems in your concern with Philippine matters?

MURPHY: No I don’t. They did not turn out to be a very large part of my work actually. I would,

[68]

from time to time, receive visits from the U.S. officials who were then in the Philippines--remember this was before the Philippines received their independence. We had a Philippine Commission--a man named Waring was the chairman of it and John O’Donnell, as I recall, was a member (the same John O’Donnell who recently has received some attention in connection with his representation of Philippine clients). I don’t remember any particular problems in connection with the Philippines.

MORRISSEY: These institutional procedures you referred to a moment ago, could you give an approximate date when these procedures began to take form and be instituted?

MURPHY: No, I think they developed gradually in the process of evolution. I could not point to any sharp turn.

[69]

MORRISSEY: Would you receive your assignments directly from the President?

MURPHY: A great many of them. Others would just develop in the normal course of business.

MORRISSEY: Did you attend the President’s staff meeting?

MURPHY: Yes.

MORRISSEY: Could you tell me something about how this meeting was conducted?

MURPHY: I could. When I first went there as an administrative assistant to the President, it was not customary at that time, for administrative assistants to attend the staff meetings. They did so only occasionally and then only when they were asked to come because they had some special business to take up. After I had been there a number of months, I was invited

[70]

frequently enough so that Matt Connelly who looked after such matters said that I might as well come to all the meetings because I was there most of the time anyway. This was, I think, substantially, an opening wedge and before long other administrative assistants began to come more and more; and finally, I think, all administrative assistants to the President came regularly to the staff meetings.

The staff meetings were held fairly early in the morning, about 9:30 as I remember, and lasted usually only a half an hour, and the President went around the staff rather quickly to see if they had anything to mention quickly. It was understood that this was not a time and place to bring up matters that required lengthy discussion.

Each member of the staff had a particular seat that he usually sat in. I don’t remember

[71]

now where they all were, but I recall Charlie Ross always sat at the end of the desk on the President’s left; John Steelman always pulled up a chair directly across the desk facing the President; Bill Hassett sat in one of the chairs by the wall around to the President’s left; Clifford, as I recall, always sat next to Hassett; I sat on the sofa on the President’s right. I don’t remember all the others at the moment. The President kept on his desk a folder with tabs on it--names of various staff members and he would, during the day, put papers in this folder to be handed to staff members at the meetings, so he regularly went through that to see what was in it and passed it out. There was usually some brief discussion of his appointments for the day and instructions for the rest of us for the day.

MORRISSEY: When the President handed out an assignment

[72]

to somebody in this meeting, would he mention when he would like to have a report back or would he allow the particular administrative assistant to finish the report regardless of how much time it took?

MURPHY: I don’t remember that he ordinarily said anything about when he wanted the report back.

MORRISSEY: Could you tell me something about your impressions of Charlie Ross?

MURPHY: Well, Charlie Ross was a wise and wonderful man, very scholarly, quite gentle--perhaps almost too good for the kind of a job he was in, but on the whole, I think, did an extremely effective job for the President. One reason this was possible, I think, was because he was so universally admired and respected.

MORRISSEY: Did the responsibilities of the Press

[73]

Secretary, in the case of Mr. Ross or Mr. Joseph Short who succeeded him, tend to wear down that person, would you say, more than the responsibilities thrust on other White House aides who weren’t exposed to the press in public in the same way that the Press Secretary was?

MURPHY: I think probably they did, yes.

MORRISSEY: When you came into the White House, it was at a time when the Marshall plan was in its first stages of development? Do you recall anything about this development?

MURPHY: I have some recollections about it. In--it must have been in the fall of 1947--I did some work in the State Department on what was called Interim Aid. My recollection about all this is not clear--I seem to remember a special session of Congress in this connection somehow, at least a special meeting of congressional

[74]

leaders. This would have been during the first year of the 80th Congress which was a Republican Congress. That’s the Congress that began in January ‘47. There were some provisions for what was called Interim Aid before the Marshall plan itself was enacted. This was emergency aid during that winter of 1947 and 1948. Along about that time, there was a meeting in Europe where the Marshall plan was developed.

As I remember the history of the Marshall plan (and I haven’t looked at any of this in years and years), there was a speech made (actually it was made earlier than General Marshall’s speech), by Dean Acheson in Mississippi, I think it was. But then the one that first received a lot of public attention was General Marshall’s speech at Harvard, and I think in response to that the Europeans formulated a proposal which was

[75]

presented formally over here and considered and eventually legislation was enacted.

Well, one of the recollections I have, is when the official copies of the European proposal or communication came over here, they actually were tied up with red ribbon or red tape. In my governmental experience, so far as I know, this is the only time I actually saw the red tape and this was on the documents that came from Europe that were the basis for the Marshall plan.

The program for aid to Greece and Turkey came along about this time. I did not have very much to do with that. I knew the work was going on, but I did not actually work on it, certainly not to any considerable extent.

MORRISSEY: Do you have any recollection of the relationship between General Marshall and President Truman?

[76]

MURPHY: Yes, I do. He thought General Marshall was, I suppose, the greatest man he ever knew; I suppose this would be his view of General Marshall, and he had developed this admiration for General Marshall when he was in the Senate (General Marshall was the Chief of Staff, and among other things, went down from time to time to brief the Senators on the course of the war) I never heard one of these briefing sessions but they must have been extremely impressive. General Marshall was always somewhat reserved, so he was not an intimate-crony type of friend, I think--never was.

There’s a story President Truman tells about his efforts to go on active duty during the war and General Marshall told him to go back to the Senate and stay there where he could do some good--or words to that effect. You must have that story recorded somewhere.

[77]

This admiration he had for General Marshall was constantly manifesting itself in one way or another, and of course, General Marshall responded very well whenever he was called on and needed. For example, when President Truman needed a Secretary of State and needed one in a hurry, he called General Marshall; and later when he needed a Secretary of Defense and needed one in a hurry, he called General Marshall. And both times the General came and filled a very difficult spot--which was difficult, not only because of the intrinsic nature of the job, but because of the circumstances under which it had to be filled in each case.

There is one little story about General Marshall if you want some of the minutiae that is one of my favorites.

While he was Secretary of Defense, we were working on some speech of the President

[78]

or message to Congress (probably a message to Congress), in the field of defense, and a matter of very great importance. General Marshall sent a draft of this over to the White House as a beginning. This was while Clifford was still at the White House. Well, this draft, as was customary, went through a good many changes, a good many new drafts, finally arrived at the stage where we were sitting down around the Cabinet table with a group which included the President and General Marshall and Clifford. And the discussion proceeded on the basis of this draft that had been revised a good many times in the White House. General Marshall finally reached in his pocket and pulled out a paper, which he referred to from time to time, and read from, from time to time. Finally Clifford said to him, "General, what is that paper that you’re reading from over there?"

[79]

General Marshall says, "This is a draft of the message that I sent over here to you last week."

And I think he was rather hurt that not enough attention had been paid to his draft to recognize it when it was read there.

That’s all that occurs to me at the moment.

MORRISSEY: I notice that the minute hand has moved beyond three. Should we stop or would you rather go on?

MURPHY: I think I’ve got somebody waiting for me.

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