Oral History Interview with
Charles S. Murphy
Former staff member in the office of the legislative counsel
of the U.S. Senate, 1934-46; Administrative Assistant to the President
of the United States, 1947-50; and Special Counsel to the President, 1950-53.
Subsequent to the Truman Administration Murphy served as Under Secretary
of Agriculture, 1960-65; and chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board,
1965-68.
Washington, DC
June 24, 1969
Jerry N. Hess
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NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry
S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee
but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember
that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written
word.
Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview. .
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This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced
for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission
of the Harry S. Truman Library.
Opened May, 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
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and Restrictions | Interview Transcript
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Oral History Interview with
Charles S. Murphy
Washington, DC
June 24, 1969
Jerry N. Hess
[207]
HESS: All right, sir, at the conclusion of our last interview, we were
speaking of some of the things that might possibly have held down Mr.
Truman’s participation in the campaign of 1950, and we discussed Mr. Truman’s
trip to Wake Island. In the month preceding that event, Mr. Truman had
replaced Louis Johnson as Secretary of Defense. I don’t want to put words
in your mouth and say "This is one of the things that held
down his participation in the campaign," unless you would think so.
But anyway, what do you recall of the events surrounding the resignation
of Louis Johnson?
MURPHY: I don’t recall that it had anything to do, one way or the other,
with the President’s participation, or lack of participation in the campaign.
It may have had, but I have no recollection of it.
[208] My recollection is
that the President did request the resignation of Louis Johnson and that
he reached a decision quite suddenly. I think the problems had been building
up for some time, but he eventually decided that he had to ask for his
resignation. I think that decision was made rather quickly.
HESS: What were some of the problems that were building up?
MURPHY: I would suppose that I would say that Louis Johnson was erratic
and somewhat undependable and unreliable in his activities as Secretary
of Defense. He later on had some trouble with a brain tumor, I recall,
and whether this had anything to do with it as far back as that, I just
don’t know. But my recollection is that the particular thing that actually
triggered the President’s request for his
[209] resignation was something that
Louis Johnson said on a trip to New York City. I don’t remember what it
was, but I remember it in that context.
HESS: Do you recall if these events took place before or after the invasion
of Korea? There was quite a time in there, from the latter part of June
until September, from the invasion of South Korea to the time that he
resigned, but the events that caused him to resign, did they take place
after the invasion of Korea, or before the invasion of Korea?
MURPHY: Well, they may have been spread out, but the President did not
reach any decision about asking him to resign until very shortly before
the request was made, certainly not until after the invasion of Korea.
There had been some difficulties in connection with the Department of
[210]
Defense for which Louis Johnson was not responsible, in my judgment, and
this may have had something to do with his resignation. This had to do
with the budget for defense. Of course, the defense expenditures had been
quite high in World War II and then President Truman was quite successful
in getting them down after World War II, and at about the period of which
we now speak, 1949 and ‘50, Louis Johnson was Secretary of Defense, and
Jim Webb was the Director of the Bureau of the Budget. And Jim Webb got
into his head a very firm and fixed notion that all the country could
afford to spend on defense was in the order of thirteen or fourteen billion
dollars a year. He is a very able advocate, Mr. Webb is, and he persuaded
the President of the validity of that view, and so Louis Johnson was operating
under instructions to keep the Defense budget down in that range. I think
it’s been
[211]
generally felt that Louis Johnson was responsible for that.
It turned out to be not a very wise policy, and he is, so to speak, he
is blamed for it; he is the man who really used the meat ax on the Defense
Department in terms of appropriations and things you can do with appropriations.
It has always been my feeling that he was not nearly so much responsible
for that as Jim Webb, and with the President’s approval. I think they
told Louis Johnson that he had to keep the budget down.
Of course, when Korea was invaded, it became clear that the defense expenditures
had to be sharply increased and I take it by the same token it became
clear that it would have been wiser if they had never been cut back. We
would have been in better shape, and had a greater degree of preparedness.
I don’t really think that this was the reason that the President
asked Louis Johnson for his resignation.
[212]
I’m quite sure in my own mind that it’s not, but the reason was that
along about that time, Louis Johnson just got so he was not dependable
in the sense that the President couldn’t depend on what Johnson told him,
for one thing, and also he couldn’t depend on him to carry out his instructions
on the other hand. And so he asked for his resignation, I’m sure, with
the greatest reluctance, but felt that he had no choice about this. He
asked for MacArthur’s resignation with reluctance too, but it was not
the same kind of personal reluctance that he felt, because he had a very
warm and friendly personal feeling for Louis Johnson, and always did.
HESS: How did Mr. Johnson get along with other members of the Cabinet?
MURPHY: I don’t have any clear recollection of that, except the Secretary
of State. My impression is that generally speaking, he did not get along
[213]
well with other members of the Cabinet. I have a pretty definite recollection
that he got along very poorly with the Secretary of State, who was Dean
Acheson at that time.
HESS: What was the main area of their disagreement?
MURPHY: I suppose it was a policy disagreement. The thing that I remember
is hearing Johnson say, and hearing reports from other people that he
had said some very uncomplimentary things about the Secretary of State.
I heard about this--some of it firsthand, but I heard most of it secondhand--but
reliably enough that I’m sure it was true that he was, what would you
say, trying to undermine the Secretary of State. There was, I think, a
sharp disagreement between them about their policy methods and perhaps
a little personality clash along with it.
HESS: Did Mr. Johnson tend to try to get into other
[214] people’s area of
affairs, and concerns, step a little out of his own bounds, in other words?
MURPHY: I don’t have any definite recollection of that. My impression
is "yes," especially with the Secretary of State. My memory
is not definite about it.
HESS: He had served from March 23, 1949. Why had he been selected as
the Secretary of Defense?
MURPHY: I don’t know. He had been Secretary of War in some earlier period,
as I recall, before the Defense Department was established. He was a very
able man. He had an excellent reputation as a lawyer, and he was a personal
friend of President Truman’s. And certainly one of the things that
entered into the picture was the fact that he had served as treasurer,
I guess, at least as the principal fund raiser, for the Democratic Party
in the presidential campaign of 1948. He did a magnificent job, and President
[215]
Truman was very grateful for it, as he should have been, and I was very
grateful for it too.
HESS: Why was General Marshall chosen as his replacement?
MURPHY: Well, in the first place, President Truman had the very greatest
respect and admiration for General Marshall, just all the way around.
He thought General Marshall could do anything and do it well, except make
mistakes. I’m not sure he thought General Marshall could make a mistake.
And he needed a new Secretary of Defense, and he needed one in a hurry
and he needed one that he could rely on, and one that was not subject
to criticism. General Marshall was that kind of a man, and he asked him
to take the job. In many respects it was somewhat similar to the situation
he had had earlier when Jimmy Byrnes resigned as Secretary of
[216] State and
he asked General Marshall to take that job.
HESS: He was Secretary of Defense for just about one year, from September
of that year, until September of the next. How successful was he in running
the Defense Department, in your opinion?
MURPHY: I’m not sure that I would be qualified to have a good judgment
about that, but such as I have, I’d say that he was quite successful.
He was greatly respected, not only by President Truman, but by everyone
else, and he was a very able man and a very wise man. I would say
that he had also, he had a very able Deputy Secretary, who I’m sure, contributed
to the good running of the Department of Defense during General Marshall’s
term as Secretary of Defense. That, of course, was Bob Lovett, who
[217] succeeded
him as Secretary of Defense. Lovett is a very able man.
HESS: On the subject of the invasion of Korea. Korea was invaded on June
25th of 1950, that was on June 24th, Saturday, eastern standard time,
and on that day the President dedicated Friendship Airport over here in
Baltimore and then flew on to Kansas City. What do you recall of the events
of those times?
MURPHY: Not very much. I do remember working on the speech that he made
at Friendship Airport. I was not with him at Friendship Airport, and so
far as I know, the invasion of Korea came without warning to him, without
forewarning.
HESS: How long was it after he received the news that you saw him?
MURPHY: Oh, it must have been two or three days.
[218] I did not attend the
meeting that was held at Blair House when he first got back, and most
of what I ever knew about that meeting and the things that happened from
the time he got the word until some of the first key decisions were made,
were just things that I heard later on.
HESS: Was the decision to intervene in the Korean situation cleared with
the congressional leaders before the announcement was made?
MURPHY: I do not know whether it was or not.
HESS: Would that have been the thing to do?
MURPHY: Well, you put the question, "Was it cleared with them,"
my own feeling is that perhaps it would have been better not to clear
it with them, to inform them as politely as possible, but to tell
them and not ask them. I remember one occasion when the President decided it was
[219]
necessary to call a special session of Congress, it may have been
in the fall of 1950, it was in the fall of some year when I worked for
him, and I recommended to him that he call the congressional leaders in
before he made the public announcement to tell them what he planned to
do and why. And they did come in to meet with him in the Cabinet Room,
and in spite of the discussion they objected to having the special session
called. And as a result of that, he decided not to call the special session.
But the situation was the kind that made the session inevitable. It had
to be called. And after a few weeks this became clear and he had to call
it, but this was an indication of the risk that you run when you undertake
to clear things with congressional leaders. And the situation in Korea
at that time, I suppose, was one that did not lend itself very well to
a lengthy debate.
HESS: From the standpoint of the world situation
[220] as it exists today,
how would you evaluate the success or failure of our intervention in Korea?
MURPHY: I don’t think you can say that a thing of that kind is either
completely a success or completely a failure. It seems to me that probably
the world is much better, and it’s been much better for the past twenty
years, because that was done than otherwise. Actually we are in grave
danger now of losing some of the advantages that were gained at that time,
and losing some of the principles that were established at that time with
respect to maintenance of a peaceful and orderly world. But it has been
almost twenty years, and we’ve stayed alive for twenty years, and this
is something. I’m confident that if President Truman had the same decisions
to make again that he would decide to make the same decisions again the
same way, and I would
[221] certainly believe that that was right.
HESS: One of the events that may have held down Mr. Truman’s participation
in the campaign of ‘50, was the assassination attempt on his life on November
1 of that year. What do you recall of the events of that day?
MURPHY: I remember something about that. I don’t think that had anything
to do with his participation or lack of participation in the campaign.
The thing that I do remember is that early in the afternoon, I
was in the Cabinet Room with a number of other members of the White House
staff working on a speech for the President, and one of the messengers,
a man named Jackson, came in greatly agitated and shaken and said, "Somebody
just shot at the President." And so I asked if they hit him and he
said, "No." So said to my fellows, "Well, I guess we better
get back to work." Well, we did
[222] ask Jackson a little more about it.
I don’t think he had the complete story at that time, because it had just
happened across the street, but he told us what he knew about it. We did
go back to work on the speech. The President was making another speech
that same afternoon, as I recall it, I think in the amphitheater over
at Arlington. He went on and made his speech and when he got back from
over there he came and joined us in the Cabinet Room and sat down and
I think that was the first time he had had a chance really to think about
what had happened.
HESS: What did he say then?
MURPHY: I don’t remember precisely what he said, but he talked about
it normally as a person would. I think at that time there was some reaction
to this, a kind of nervous, emotional reaction. I think his principal
feeling at the time was one of sadness about the man who
[223] did get shot,
[Leslie] Coffelt I believe his name was.
HESS: That’s right.
MURPHY: President Truman was not then, or ever, when I was with him,
particularly nervous about his personal safety or what might happen to
him, in any physical way. The calmest, most matter-of-fact man about that
I ever saw.
HESS: After this time, did you ever hear him say anything about that
attempt, or assassination attempts in general?
MURPHY: I’m sure I did. He would mention this from time to time conversationally
just as anyone else would. There was no particular bugaboo about it as
far as he was concerned, but over the course of the years there were bound
to be times when something would bring it to mind and he would talk about it.
[224] HESS: I have a couple of questions about one of the men who served on
the White House staff, Mr. Stephen J. Spingarn. What do you recall of
the role played by Mr. Spingarn in the drafting of the President’s ten
point civil rights message of February 2, 1948, and the related Executive orders?
MURPHY: Well, my best recollection would be that he did not work on that
civil rights message. I have not checked that anywhere. The civil right
message was based on a report of a special commission that had been appointed
by the President. The name of the report was To Secure These Rights,
and the report was turned over to the White House staff including me,
and it was studied and analyzed and we talked to the President about it.
And eventually he did decide to send a message to Congress adopting, recommending,
supporting most of the recommendations
[225] of the Commission, not all of them
but most of them. I worked on that message quite a lot. Steve Spingarn
worked at the White House later and worked on civil rights matters a good
deal, but the best of my recollection is that he had not started working
with us on civil rights matters as early as that. I may be wrong.
HESS: I have a couple of questions on that report:
What was the President’s attitude when he received that report? Did he
approve most of the measures, part of the measures, was he enthusiastic
about the report, or what was his attitude?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t think you should speak of his attitude when he
first received it. His attitude when he first received it was, I suppose
and should have been, "I’ll study it." And he did study it and
he had his staff study [226] it.
As a result of that, he sent this message to Congress. As I say, that
message supported almost all, but not all of the recommendations
of that Commission. To that extent I take it that he thought their recommendations
were right. I think this was a case where the President was particularly
motivated by his sense of doing what was right, whether he was enthusiastic
about this, I’m not sure, but I think he felt that the report of the Commission
made the case for these recommendations. Some of them were recommendations
that I’m sure he had views on before and agreed with before. I’m quite
sure that other matters, that various other decisions were strongly influenced
by what this Commission had found and what it had concluded.
HESS: On the subject of civil rights, there are some historians who say
that Mr. Truman’s pronouncements on civil rights were taken from
[227] the standpoint
of political expediency. What would you say about that?
MURPHY: I would say that is just as wrong as it can be.
HESS: What, in your opinion, are Mr. Truman’s views on civil rights and
the rights of the Negro, the rights of the minority?
MURPHY: Well, in my opinion, his views are what he said his views were.
I think that he meant every word he said. I think he did his best at that
time to say when he meant, and whatever help I could give him, why, I’m
sure I gave him at that time. I think it was a sort of misleading and
non-productive work of supererogation for me to go back now and try to
recast what he said at that time. I think he said it then the best he
could and I helped him the best I could to say it. I think he was
[228] motivated
by a profound sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, and not by politics.
HESS: What in Mr. Truman’s nature or his makeup do you think would lead
him to have these views, a man from a small, almost southern town in Missouri,
to have strong civil rights views? If that’s clear.
MURPHY: I don’t know what in his makeup led him to have these views.
I do know that when he was President, and all the rest of the time as
far as I know, but I know from firsthand experience during the time when
he was President, he did what he thought was right, not just about this,
but about everything. It seemed to me that he was just incapable of doing
anything else. Why he thought these were the right views as to civil rights
matters, I don’t suppose I could say. All I can say is that I’m sure this
is what he thought was right. His views on this subject, as you may know,
[229]
did not agree with those of other members of his family, including his
mother, as I recall. He would laugh and joke about that occasionally,
and I don’t really think he discussed this with them a great deal. I think
he did this knowing, in the full knowledge, that it was not, what would
you say, altogether consistent with a part of his background.
HESS: The Fair Employment Practices Commission was never established,
as I understand it, in the Truman administration. Is that correct, they
couldn’t get that underway?
MURPHY: That is my best recollection, as well as I remember. I haven’t
been into this in a long time. That Commission was first established by
President Roosevelt by Executive order.
HESS: During the war.
MURPHY: The Congress for a good many years undertook
[230] to disband it, and
finally got into that position. I think it was an amendment authorized
by Senator Russell on some appropriation bill, so the FEPC was disbanded.
After that, President Truman did try to get legislation passed that would
authorize it, but never was successful in getting the legislation passed.
That was one of the points in his civil rights program, as I recall.
HESS: What were some of the difficulties in getting that passed, do you
recall?
MURPHY: Not particularly, no. I’m sure that they were the kind that everyone’s
generally aware of who has followed the subject. I don’t have any special
recollection of that. After the 1948 election, it must have been in 1949,
maybe 1950, President Truman did have us on his staff prepare an omnibus
civil rights bill, and Steve
[231] Spingarn did work on that. By that time he
was at the White House, on the White House staff, and I think did most
of the drafting on that bill and some of the legislative liaison work,
which as I recall was not very successful. As a matter of fact, my recollection
is that he never found anyone who would introduce the bill.
HESS: Why was Mr. Spingarn transferred from the Treasury Department to
the White House staff?
MURPHY: I asked to have it done. I had known him for some time and had
worked with him and had a good deal of respect for his ability and energy.
I was on the White House staff, and I was assigned to some project, I
can’t remember what it was, but it involved working with a group of representatives
from the different agencies and departments in the Government. And Spingarn
was sent there to represent the Treasury. He was at that time an
[232] Assistant
General Counsel in the Treasury Department. This may have been the Government
Internal Security Program, Employee Loyalty Program.
HESS: The President’s Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty, perhaps.
MURPHY: For some reason, I remember, I think I do, attending a meeting
over in what was then the RFC Building, I guess. At any rate, Spingarn
was there and he told me a number of things. First of all, he took a very
active part in the meeting, and he told me a number of things that he
thought would be good for the President to do and the President’s White
House staff to do, and he seemed to me to have good ideas and he was bubbling
over and bursting with energy, and I thought it would be helpful to get
him on the White House staff. So I asked him if he would be interested
in coming and he said
[233]
he would and so I then undertook to get him transferred
and I believe that was done, and he came in.
HESS: How effective was he as a White House staff member?
MURPHY: Oh, I think he was very good. He is a prodigious worker, and
he is a very able fellow. He’s kind of an overpowering young man. But
he did a lot of work, and a lot of good work. He did help some in the
1948 campaign. The President made a speech in Oklahoma City, and I expect
it was on the subject of Government employee loyalty programs. Spingarn
was the principal draftsman of that speech, and it was too long.
I don’t know if I have ever been into the speechwriting operation with
you in 1948. I was running an office here in Washington and our bunch
would send out a draft of a major
[234] speech every day, and we never got a
head start. We would send out a speech at night. It would go by courier
plane to the President’s train, and get there before day the next morning,
and that was the speech that he was to use that night, and he and Clifford
would work on it as they had opportunity during the day. Then it would
be typed and he would use it. We were about on that timetable when this
speech was sent out for Oklahoma City, and it was too long and it needed
to be cut. I never could get Spingarn to quiet down long enough for me
to look at it and read it and pick out the parts that had to be cut, so
I had to send it out too long. Then I took it home and I picked out the
parts that had to be cut and called someone who was with the President
on the train, after they got the speech. He had a copy of the speech at
the other end of the phone, and I had a copy at this end, and
[235] I told him what to cut out.
HESS: That was the speech on the accusation about Communists in Government,
isn’t that correct?
MURPHY: That sounds right.
HESS: Why was he placed on the Federal Trade Commission, speaking of
Mr. Spingarn?
MURPHY: Well, the President decided that he wanted to move him from the
White House staff.
HESS: Why?
MURPHY: I think it was just this sort of overpowering personality problem.
Steve just couldn’t keep quiet. It was nothing deeper than that.
HESS: On the subject of congressional and legislative matters, you’ve
discussed some of these previously with Mr. Morrissey, but there are a
[236]
few matters on congressional liaison that I’d like to bring up. How did
the President conduct his relationship with the "Big Four" congressional
leaders?
MURPHY: Well, he invited them down to meet with him regularly each week,
and they met almost always with no one else present, just the President
and the congressional leaders; and what they talked about I don’t know,
because I was not there. I think they reviewed the legislative program
and the legislative situation in general, and they told the President
what they saw fit about the situation in the Congress, and he talked with
them about his program, and so far as I know, no one ever made any records
of those meetings. I think I attended one or two on particular subjects.
HESS: What was discussed in those?
[237]
MURPHY: My memory is not clear. Someone was in the other day talking
to me about the Aid to Education Bill, and I think I may have attended
one meeting where that was the principal subject of conversation. As well
as I could reconstruct this kind of thing for memory, I would have waited
out in the reception room through a good part of the meeting, and then
I would have been invited in for that particular item. But the President,
I think, quite purposefully decided that he wanted to conduct these meetings
by himself, and did not want staff there.
HESS: Did you participate in the drafting of bills you sent to Congress
and analyzing of legislation to be sent to the President for his signature?
MURPHY: I did. During the three years that I was Administrative Assistant
to the President, I suppose this was the major part of my work.
[238]
Then after I became Special Counsel, I continued to be responsible for
the staff work in this field, and I did some of it myself, and then supervised
the other members of the staff.
HESS: How is that done?
MURPHY: How is what done?
HESS: The analyzing of legislative policies, and who worked on these
matters, and when did the President participate in the discussions .
MURPHY: Well, it’s done in different ways. I suppose that a sensible
starting point is with the beginning of the President’s legislative program
and recommendations for a year. This begins the year before in the departments
and agencies, and a part of their regular function is to recommend to
the President legislation which they feel he should recommend to Congress.
[239]
They submit this to the Bureau of the Budget along with the legislative
recommendations which they, the departments and agencies, feel they should
transmit directly to the Congress. The general dividing line is
based on the importance of the legislation. If it’s a major policy matter,
why, the general rule is to ask the President to adopt it as part of his
program and recommend it to the Congress. If it’s a routine housekeeping
matter, why then the agencies and departments send the recommendations
directly to the Congress. Departmental recommendations are cleared and
coordinated through the Legislative Reference Division in the Bureau of
the Budget.
When the President makes recommendations to the Congress, he sometimes,
but not always, accompanies these recommendations with drafts of legislation
that would carry them out.
[240] Twenty-five or thirty years ago, this was rather
a sensitive point in the relationships between the Congress and the President,
because to send up actual drafts of legislation was sometimes thought
to be an undue effort to interfere with the prerogatives of the Congress,
to dictate to the Congress. That thought has pretty well disappeared from
the scene these days, I guess, and if the President doesn’t prepare, and
if the Administration doesn’t prepare drafts of legislation the general
feeling is that it is not living up to its Constitutional responsibilities.
But it was not always like that. But if the President were going to recommend
legislation, if it were a matter which fell within the field of activity
of one of the agencies or departments, they had the primary responsibility
for preparing the drafts. And the draft legislation will be submitted
to the Bureau of the Budget for
[241] clearance, and to make sure it conformed
to and was in accord with the President’s program in it’s specifics, as
well as generally. If the matter related to a particularly important policy
question, or a novel policy question, why then this was likely to be checked
with me and in turn I was likely to check it with the President.
The President relied on me, I think, a great deal for the technical language
and the bills, that is for the language of the bills themselves, to see
that his policies were properly reflected in the legislative language.
This was the kind of work in which he had first gotten to know me. I was
in the Legislative Counsel’s office at the Senate for twelve years, and
this was the work I did, drafting legislation and trying to make sure
that the provisions in the legislation reflected the policies of the Senators
and Senate Committees, what they said they wanted
[242] included.
HESS: Did anyone on your staff assist you with that, or did you do most
of that yourself, the actual drafting?
MURPHY: Well, I think I would distinguish some between the first three
years when I was Administrative Assistant, and the last three years when
I was Special Counsel. In both periods, the bulk of the work was done
by the Bureau of the Budget, so when you got to the White House, even
at the staff level, you were sort of dealing with--not just the tip of
the iceberg--but at least a relatively few major policy questions and
not very much in terms of language. Such work as was done on the White
House staff in terms of language during the first three years when I was
Administrative Assistant, I did most of it myself. During the latter period,
I had some help: Steve Spingarn helped
[243] me in this connection, and after
Steve Spingarn went to the Federal Trade Commission, Donald Hansen came
over and did some of this kind of work. He also came from the Treasury
Department. One of the first assignments that I got from the President
when I went to the White House right away in the spring of 1947 was to
work on draft legislation that set up the Department of Defense, the unification.
There was a drafting team at work on that legislation made up of an admiral,
a general, and me. For about two or three weeks we worked on that full-time.
HESS: Who were they, do you recall their names?
MURPHY: It will take me a minute. The General was an Air Force general
who at that time was quite young, and he was later Eisenhower’s successor
as commander in chief of SHAEF in Europe.
HESS: Norstad?
[244]
MURPHY: [General Lauris] Norstad. And the Admiral was a man who later
was Chief of Naval Operations and died while he was Chief of Naval Operations,
and died in Spain. He died when he was in Spain and he was Chief of Naval
Operations at the time. [Admiral Forrest P. Sherman]
HESS: How closely did President Truman watch these matters when they
were in this form, when they were in the bill drafting stage, and checking
what was coming in from the departments?
MURPHY: He left that pretty much up to me to bring matters to him when
they should be brought to him.
HESS: When should they be brought to him?
MURPHY: I’m not sure that anybody can have a cut and dried answer to
that, but I can tell you about a rule of thumb that I developed when I
[245]
was working in the Legislative Counsel’s office. They had very few operating
rules up there, but one of the rules was that as draftsmen we did not
get into policy questions, we just dealt with technical matters. And for
years I had a great deal of trouble distinguishing one from the other,
and finally I discovered that if it’s controversial, it’s a policy matter,
and if it’s not controversial, it’s technical. This worked just about
a hundred percent of the time. There were a good many cases up there when
the Senate Committees would have only general ideas as to what they wanted,
and there were new matters, interest groups hadn’t had a chance to choose
up sides, they hadn’t become controversial, and the committees just turned
them over to the draftsmen to go out and do the best you can with them.
I’ve written bills in that situation establishing
[246] programs with very little
controversy and come back to extend them a couple of years later when
people have found out how it affected different groups, and then just
any--the little things were much more controversial the second time around.
But I don’t suppose I can give you any precise answer. But the recommendations
were eventually sent to Congress with or without draft legislation, and
Congress acted and sometimes would pass measures and sometimes would not.
And when they did, they would come down for the President’s consideration
and determination whether to approve or disapprove or just withhold his
approval.
There was a regular pattern that was followed. The enrolled bill, the
official bill signed by the Speaker and the President of the Senate, would
come to Bill Hopkins, and he would lock that up in the safe. And copies,
facsimile copies, would go to the Bureau
[247] of the Budget when it came, and
they were able quite promptly to send back a memorandum giving the views
of the department as to whether or not the legislation should be approved
by the President, and what he should say if he approved it or disapproved.
The Bureau of the Budget then, in the Legislative Reference Division,
would undertake to synthesize these views and prepare a memorandum which
summarized the views of the various departments and this usually was accompanied
by a recommendation of the Bureau of the Budget itself, taking into account
what the departments had recommended. This would come over to Bill Hopkins
and if it was relatively minor and entirely non-controversial, why, they
would usually go directly from Hopkins to the President. He would take
them in to the President, and the President would look at the reports
and sign
[248]
or not sign the bills. If it were a major bill or if vetoes were
recommended or if the departments disagreed, if there was some disagreement
disclosed in the file, then the file would come to me. I would study it,
and then I would go in to the President and talk to him about it and he
would tell me what he wanted to do. Usually this was accomplished very
quickly in one visit. Like the department he was pretty well aware of
what was going on before it got to him, and it usually did not require
a great deal of discussion for him to decide what to do. Sometimes it
did and sometimes it would take more than one visit.
HESS: How much weight would the President usually give to the recommendation
of the Legislative Reference Service of the Bureau of the Budget itself.
What I have in mind here is out at the Library, we have, of course, the
Enrolled Bill File, and I
[249] haven’t gone through all of it, but I have gone
through portions of it, and many times I have found where all of the departments
that the Bureau of the Budget would ask for recommendations would say
one thing, the Bureau of the Budget would go counter to that and the President
would do what the Bureau of the Budget said and not what all of the other
departments and agencies had recommended.
MURPHY: Well, that would not be the majority of the cases. I’m sure you
would find that in the majority of the cases everyone agreed. I suppose
where there was a difference of opinion, the President would be more likely
to agree with the Bureau of the Budget than he would with his departments.
Now, one of the reasons for this certainly is that the Bureau of the Budget
is the President’s agency, and the President’s arm, and they should be
reflecting his views from the
[250] beginning, and more often than not
they would be. They are blamed for a lot of things that really don’t originate
in the Bureau of the Budget. So this wouldn’t come just without any background
and part of the background they would have would be the President’s views
expressed in the fall before when the legislative program was being formulated,
expressed in many conferences with the Bureau of the Budget people, from
time to time, all through the year.
Occasionally I’m sure the Bureau of the Budget would recommend that the
President do something that they knew he didn’t agree with at the time
that they made the recommendations. And in that case, I’m quite sure that
he didn’t agree with them after they made the recommendation. And I expect
sometimes I recommended to him something different than the Bureau of
the Budget and sometimes he would accept my recommendations
[251] in such a
case and sometimes he wouldn’t. By and large, he made up his own mind
about these things pretty well.
HESS: How closely did you work with the men who were in charge of the
Legislative Reference Service? I believe Roger Jones was there during
the time that you were Special Counsel, is that correct?
MURPHY: A part of the time. I worked with them very closely indeed. I
expect that they had the feeling at that time that they worked for and
with me as much as they worked for and with the Director of the Bureau
of the Budget. And they found this kind of relationship, I think, very
helpful as far as their business was concerned. They were very glad to
have this kind of access to the White House staff, and, I suppose, from
their point of view, to help keep the White House staff from making so
many mistakes as we would have made without
[252] this kind of guidance from
the Bureau of the Budget. They were and are an excellent staff. The Bureau
of the Budget is very, very good.
HESS: What type of a man was Roger Jones? Just how effective was he in
this job?
MURPHY: Well, Roger was very good, a very fine person, and I think he
was effective in the job. He was immediately preceded by a man named Rosen,
as I recall. I knew Roger. I recommended him for the job before he got
it, when he got it and the time before that too when there was a vacancy.
I think the head of that division when I first went there, was a man named
[Frederick J.] Bailey of Maine--much older than I. I never got to know
him very well, but the young people who worked with him had a great deal
of respect for him. I think Elmer Staats was the head of that thing
[253] at
one time. I think I worked with Elmer quite a lot when he was head of
it. There would have been two people before Roger Jones.
HESS: Once an agenda was set up, what steps did the White House take
to get the bills enacted into law?
MURPHY: Well, the legislative liaison operation was not nearly so highly
developed at that time as it has come to be since then, and compared with
what went on in the Kennedy administration and more in the Johnson administration,
I would have to say we did very little. I did begin to keep a record of
what happened to bills up there, and how they were voted on. I think that
President Truman came into office with a pretty definite feeling that
he was not going to try to persuade the Congress or twist any arms up
there to get them to pass legislation.
HESS: Why?
[254]
MURPHY: Because he regarded it as a function of the President to recommend
legislation, and a function of the Congress to decide whether or not to
pass it. I can’t put my finger on anything that will establish this definitely,
but I think this is the case. I think in part it may have been a backlash
from the Roosevelt days when there was a great deal of critical feeling
in Congress about the President bringing pressures to bear, and trying
to bring pressures to bear in trying to get legislation passed.
HESS: Do you think part of this attitude might have been because he had
been there and saw it from the other side?
MURPHY: Yes, very definitely. And so I think that when he first came
to the White House, this is one of the things he said he was not going
to do. He shifted away from that attitude
[255] some as time went on, but never
got to the point where he really felt it was his obligation to make Congress
pass legislation as well as to recommend it.
He did, I’m sure, some effective liaison work with the congressional
leaders at the "Big Four" meetings. He would respond regularly
when I went to him and would ask him for help or made recommendations
that he get in touch with some member of Congress and ask for their support
on a bill. This, as I say, was on a much smaller scale than has been done
since then, but on that scale it was very effective. I’d go in to see
him at his desk and I would tell him what the situation was and ask that
he call a Senator or Congressman on the phone and he almost always would
do it, and he almost always would do it right away. And a President is
almost always able to get people on the telephone right away. So this
whole thing
[256] could be done in a very few minutes.
Basically, he and his
White House staff operated on the theory that to the extent that the administration
was to present its views to Congress this could best be done by the departments
and agencies who had the expert knowledge. And on the theory that what
we ought to do is to explain to Congress and if you explain to them, then
Congress will do what it ought to do. Also, if there are, oh, persuasive
steps to be taken, that the departments and agencies are basically best
able to do that. There’s much validity in that. I think it has been shown
since then that if this is accompanied by a large scale and concentrated
effort from the White House, that you can do a good deal more than you
can without that effort. Some of us on the staff would make calls occasionally
to members of the Congress,
[257] asking that they support legislation and occasionally
we’d visit someone.
HESS: Was there anyone on the White House staff who was in charge of
looking after such matters?
MURPHY: Not really. I suppose most of the time I came as near being in
charge of that as anyone else. We just did not have any legislation liaison
operation as such. It was just incidental to the preparation of the recommendations
and the kind of work that I did. Now, the President did, in the last part
of his term, I don’t remember just how late, appointed two legislative
liaisons...
HESS: 1949.
MURPHY: ...one for the House, and one for the Senate. I would have thought
it was a little bit later than that. It was Joe Feeney on the Senate side.
Joe was a retired naval captain,
[258] I guess. And General Charles Maylon on
the House side. They worked mainly with and through and reported to Matt
Connelly. My relationship with them was very pleasant and very friendly,
but we did not work together a great deal. Their legislative liaison operation
was not very effective.
HESS: Was he really in charge of them; if they reported to him, was he
in charge of the legislative liaison agents?
MURPHY: He was in charge of those two, yes. And I think Maylon’s operation
was more the receiving of views from members of Congress, more likely
to be complaints and requests than anything else, and trying to get something
done about it. Joe Feeney had quite close relationships with a few people
in the Senate, and so far as those few people were concerned, this was
quite helpful. He was very close to Senator
[259] Olin Johnston of South Carolina,
and when we needed help from Olin Johnston, Joe came in and talked to
him very effectively. But apart from that and one or two other people,
I’m not sure that this was a great help.
HESS: Did you as Special Counsel have occasion to call on those gentlemen
for assistance, did you use them also?
MURPHY: When I thought they could help.
HESS: Did you use them very often?
MURPHY: No.
HESS: Did you find them effective when you did use them?
MURPHY: In this limited field I just described.
HESS: But not outside of that?
MURPHY: That’s right. I think their effectiveness
[260] was limited. They did
not have anything like the resources at their disposal that the legislative
liaison staff has had in more recent times, and the techniques had not
developed. I must tell you that just as a technician I have a great deal
of admiration for the way this thing has been developed since then.
HESS: Since this time, who would you say was the best technician between
the White House and the Hill on legislative liaison?
MURPHY: Well, I would say Larry O’Brien and his staff. I don’t believe
I can separate him from his staff in this connection. Henry Hall Wilson,
Jr., who has worked with Larry over there was extremely able. He did a
real good job on organizing this kind of thing. But if you have to name
one person, I suppose then I would name Larry O’Brien.
[261]
HESS: You mentioned a little while ago that along toward the end of the
Administration or as the Administration went along, Mr. Truman’s ideas,
attitudes, shifted somewhat towards having a little more formalized approach
to the Hill. Is that correct?
MURPHY: I wouldn’t say formalized, but a little more initiative, a little
more effort.
HESS: Who do you think brought about this change in attitude on the President’s
part?
MURPHY: Oh, I could not point to any particular thing. I suppose it was
just the passage of time and a growing interest in getting legislation
passed, and a growing distance from Congress and growing feeling that
he would like to get the Congress to do what it ought to do instead of
keeping hands off.
HESS: What is your opinion of the success of Mr.
[262] Truman’s legislative program?
MURPHY: Well, in the foreign policy field I think it was phenomenally
successful, and in the domestic field, only moderately.
HESS: Why was it that way, why was that true?
MURPHY: Well, one reason was because Senator [Arthur H.] Vandenberg was
chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1947 to 1948.
HESS: That helped out a great deal on the success of the foreign matters.
MURPHY: That’s right.
HESS: Why was Mr. Truman’s success rather limited in the domestic field?
MURPHY: I think that was basically a reflection of the attitude in the
Congress and that in turn
[263] was a reflection of the attitude of the country
about these matters of policy. And I think that was a holdover from the
Roosevelt administration. If you will check, you will find that Roosevelt
got a good deal of legislation passed in 1938. He never got much passed
after that. That is, we talk in these terms. Actually the Congress every
year passes a tremendous bulk of legislation of a great deal of importance.
It is more or less usual, I won’t say routine, but usual. People are conditioned
to it and they don’t talk about it. The little bit that we talk about
mostly, the relatively little bit that we talk about, are the new
things, the different. And perhaps we exaggerate, considerably, the importance
of these things. But in those terms, I think you’ll find that Roosevelt
got very little legislation passed after 1938. He couldn’t get anything
passed in 1939 of much consequence, or 1940, or 1941. After that,
[264] of course,
we had the war. President Truman inherited some of this, I suppose. And
certainly for the early years of his administration, the major job was
reconversion. And the Congress did do well on reconversion, and President
Truman did well. I think that was a remarkably successful experience for
the country and for the Government. Although there’s not much pioneering
in terms of social legislation during that period, I think we have to
give them both pretty high marks for the degree to which they achieved
successful reconversion. It’s true that Congress did terminate controls
earlier than the President thought they should have had, we had a severe
inflationary jump after that. Then came the 80th Congress, this was the
"Good-For-Nothing, Do-Nothing 80th Congress."
HESS: Yes, the "Do-Nothing 80th Congress."
[265]
MURPHY: And Senator Vandenberg, this is the time when he was chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and the time that President Truman
was called on to make these extremely important recommendations in the
field of foreign policy having to do with aid to Greece and Turkey and
the Marshall plan, and so on. And very fortunately, Senator Vandenberg
agreed. And he did a great deal to make possible the passage of that legislation.
We didn’t have a similar situation so far as domestic legislation was
concerned. Senator Taft was the real leader. I don’t remember whether
he was the titular leader of the Republicans in the Senate or not, but
in domestic matters, he was their real leader. And he and President Truman
did not agree about all these things, and as a matter of fact,
if my memory serves me right, the Senate itself and the Congress as a
whole, was less liberal even than Senator Taft. I
[266] know that President
Truman talked a great deal in the 1948 campaign about the housing legislation.
He used to say it was the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill, until the Republican
Congress came along, and it got to be the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. But
as I recall, Congress wouldn’t pass it even after it got to be the Taft
bill. I guess I would say basically this was a reflection of the sentiment
of the country at that time. There was some legislation that passed
that was notable.
HESS: What comes to mind?
MURPHY: Well, the only thing I can think of is the Employment Act of
1946, the Full Employment Act, so-called. There was, in 1949, some fairly
significant social legislation. I’m afraid I can’t recall just what it
was without going back to review that time.
HESS: Just as a matter of supposition, do you think
[267] that you personally
could have, perhaps, been more successful if you had had some people like
Larry O’Brien working for you at this time?
MURPHY: No. In the first place, I couldn’t conceive of such an operation.
I wouldn’t have understood it. I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.
In the second place, I doubt if the Congress would have taken it at that
time. There was another administration that intervened between Truman
and Kennedy, and this was Eisenhower. He had a legislative liaison operation
which was right much larger, more high-powered than the Truman operation,
and members of his staff would go up to the Hill and take positions, make
statements, in a way that I was surprised that the Congress would accept.
But I thought then and I guess I would
[268] still think that the Republicans
tend to have more party discipline about such matters and they tend to
be more receptive to the views of the Administration than the Democrats.
Even so, I was surprised that the Republicans were as acquiescent as they
were, in this kind of an operation, which they were, and I think this
conditioned people some for the Kennedy operation. But I was surprised
again when the Kennedy operation was put together and was successful.
And I think there was another step up in the effectiveness of the operation
of President Johnson. President Johnson himself was a tremendously effective
person, individually, and he worked a lot.
HESS: Did he conduct a lot of the liaison himself, pick up the telephone
and call somebody on the Hill himself?
MURPHY: Yes, he did, he did. And he was tremendously
[269] effective, just
overwhelming. He was just overwhelming.
HESS: Did Mr. Truman do very much of this back during his time, talking
to someone besides the "Big Four?"
MURPHY: He did a moderate amount. He did not do very much. It is my belief
that most of what he did he did at my request specifically, case by case.
HESS: What part did Leslie Biffle have to play in White House congressional
liaison?
MURPHY: Not a great deal, so far as I know. He and President Truman were
rather good, personal friends, but I don’t think he had a great deal to
do with the White House-congressional liaison after President Truman came
to the White House. He was quite close to Senator [Alben W.] Barkley and
I would be sure that he talked with
[270] Senator Barkley about things, and
Senator Barkley told him some of the things which were said at the White
House and in turn he made suggestions to Senator Barkley about what he
should take up at the White House. But so far as being directly and personally
involved, I think not very much.
HESS: How would the President decide to veto or approve measures that
were passed by Congress? We had discussed this a little bit.
MURPHY: Yes, this was part of the same process. The Legislative Reference
Division of the Bureau of the Budget would get the views of the different
agencies and departments. They would put them together in a memorandum
to the President, and then send it to the White House. If they recommended
a veto it would come to me so that when the President got it he would
have, in addition to everything else, he would have
[271] my recommendation
which might be in writing, but more often than not, was taken in orally.
This disposed of by far the largest number of bills. Occasionally there
would be a major bill and a major question as to whether to sign or veto.
And this might involve discussions by the President with a number of people,
congressional leaders, department and agency heads, outside people who
were interested in the subject, and a considerable amount of newspaper reading.
President Truman read the newspapers and he read what was there. He saw
what he read. You know, a lot of people will read and they don’t see what’s
there, they see what they want to see. He saw what it said.
HESS: How much attention did President Truman give to reviewing the private
bills that came in, where someone might be hit by an
[272] army truck or something
like that, or they just had a private claim against the Government?
MURPHY: Usually not very much, because in most of those cases they came
to him with unanimous recommendations from all interested agencies and
departments, and they are all staffed out, and he would glance at it and
if he didn’t see anything unusual or surprising about it, he would sign
it. He had seen a great many of these bills, and you get so you can pretty
quickly form, at least a first impression. If it’s his impression that
this is all right, and everybody else says it’s all right, he signs it.
There are often stories, I remember one of the first major assignments
that I had after I went to work down there, must have been fairly early
in the spring of 1947. The Congress passed the
[273] bill called the Portal-to-Portal
bill. This was my first experience with this operation. Clifford was Special
Counsel, and Clifford got sick and was in the hospital. The recommendations
came over from the Bureau of the Budget and I was beginning to get into
the legislative program a little bit at that time, and this looked to
me like a difficult decision, which way should it go. George Elsey was
Clifford’s assistant. I had looked at this for a while, and I said, "George,
I see all these recommendations coming from the departments and agencies
and from the Budget, who finally recommends to the President what he does
about this?"
And George thought about that for a while, and he said, "In this
case, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll be the man." Because Clifford was
out in the hospital. Well, this just hadn’t occurred to me as a reasonable
possibility and I was sort of taken aback. I thought this
[274] was a pretty
heavy responsibility. I said, "Well, let’s go see Clifford."
So, we went to see Clifford in the hospital and he had a fever and it
was apparent he just really wasn’t in any condition to deal with it. So
I took George on home with me and we sat there all evening and talked
about this, pro and con, and came back and I recommended to the President
that he sign the bill, but that he sign it with a statement which would
interpret it in a particular fashion, saying that if he hadn’t understood--and
this was a controversial point- and that if he hadn’t understood it to
mean this and so on, that he would not have signed it. That was an attempt
to make legislative history that would be a guide to the courts, in case
this might have come to the courts later on. Well, he did sign it, he
made this kind of a statement, sent it as a message to Congress, as a
[275]
matter of fact. Well, people who had the opposite point of view on that
particular matter in the bill, and the Congress, didn’t like this. They
came back later and made speeches on the floor and were undertaking to
make some counter legislative history. That, so far as I know, was the
first and maybe the last--maybe it should be the last time that anything
of that kind had been done. At the time, it was a matter of some interest
among technicians in that particular field.
HESS: How binding legally would that be, with the President putting that
wording in his message?
MURPHY: Well, nobody knew at that time. I think it’s quite likely that
this very case has been considered by courts since then. And a student
who is sufficiently interested in the answer to your question can go and
look it up and see what the courts said. I don’t know.
[276] I don’t know.
One of the other experiences that I remember was in connection with the
Taft-Hartley bill. The President was fairly well disposed to veto that
when it first came to the White House from Congress, and as time went
on and he considered it more, why, he became more and more of that view.
That left it up to the staff, with expert help and advice, to write a
veto message which dealt with all this in a technical sense and undertook
to explain what was wrong with it. And this was an extremely difficult
thing to do in the case of Taft-Hartley. It reminded me of, what is it,
the Merchant of Venice where the man is trying to carve off a pound
of flesh without spilling a drop of blood. Well, they had done a very
good job in the Taft-Hartley bill of getting their pound of flesh out
of the labor movement. We did set up an operation that worked on that.
[277]
I was over in the Executive Office Building at that time and had a great
big office over there and a great big office adjoining that was vacant,
so we set up an operation in there to have people work very diligently
for a good number of days and a good many evenings trying to take care
of the technical aspects of a veto message that the President could use
if he wanted to.
The President at this point took a trip to Canada, and he went on the
train, if I remember correctly, and when he was returning from Canada,
he had about one or two days before the time had expired in which he could
act on that bill, and as he was getting on the train or getting off the
train, somebody asked him what he was going to do about the Taft-Hartley
bill, was he going to sign it or veto it. He said he didn’t know, he hadn’t
looked at it yet. We had been working on this for ten
[278] days straight, it
turned out to be about two weeks by the time you take out Sundays and
all. So we had been working on this night and day and he had decided that
he was going to veto it, but he said he didn’t know yet, he hadn’t looked
at it yet.
HESS: What was your personal view of that? Did you think the Taft-Hartley
Act should be passed or vetoed?
MURPHY: I thought it should be vetoed.
HESS: Do you recall some of the people that Mr. Truman may have received
advice from, some Cabinet members perhaps, other close advisers who held
other views on that?
MURPHY: No, no, I’m sure he did receive advice from others. I don’t remember
who. I’m sure Clifford had some views on it. And the Secretary of Labor,
of course, would have had
[279] some views and I’m sure--I say sure--I don’t
have any recollection, but I’d be sure that the Secretary of Labor recommended
the veto. But I have no actual recollections of who took what position
on that.
HESS: One question on that. Even though Mr. Truman did veto the Taft-Hartley
Act, he put it into play, he called for the injunction several times during
his administration.
MURPHY: That’s right. But that’s a different question. The law of the
land is the law of the land, whether he was in favor of it at the time
it became law or not.
HESS: Would a President in a case like this when he had stated that he
did not like a certain measure and then it came up to a time when he could
use it or could use something else, do you think it’s the natural thing
[280]
to try to use something else rather than something you say you don’t like?
MURPHY: Oh, I don’t know. That would be kind of speculative, I guess.
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