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
May 21, 1969
Jerry N. Hess
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This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry
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word.
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of the Harry S. Truman Library.
Opened May, 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
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Oral History Interview with
Charles S. Murphy
Washington, DC
May 21, 1969
Jerry N. Hess
HESS: Mr. Murphy, you mentioned in one of your earlier interviews that
the President asked you to mingle with the crowd to test their reactions
to his "whistlestop" remarks during the campaign trips. Now
I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about that. Did you just listen,
or did you actually quiz the people in the crowd?
MURPHY: Mostly just listened. Occasionally, if the people seemed to be
receptive, we would carry on casual conversations with them.
HESS: And did you report what you heard to the President?
MURPHY: Yes. When there seemed to be anything that was worthwhile reporting,
we did.
HESS: Do you recall any of his reactions that we may have had, anytime
there was something that may have been particularly interesting?
MURPHY: Well, not specifically. I think, in general, his reaction was
one of pleasure and gratification that the crowds received him as well
as they did. This was somewhat surprising I think to many of us and certainly
very pleasing to all of us because the crowds did like President Truman.
This was obvious and the feeling seemed to grow as we went along. This
was in the trip in June 1948, I think, that I was talking about particularly,
but this same pattern continued during the campaign trip in the fall.
This pattern of reaction on the part of the crowd came as rather a complete
surprise, both to the crowd, I might say, as well as to us. And so I think
that this boosted President Truman’s spirits and courage and he thrived
on it then and ever after that and I suppose before as well.
HESS: Who besides yourself would do this--mingle with the crowd like
that?
MURPHY: Oh, as I recall, Clark Clifford and George Elsey among our White
House staff. Of course, there were Secret Service agents out in the crowd.
But Elsey and I had no particular assignment at these stops ordinarily.
Other people had assignments to greet official visitors and things of
that kind but we did not. Occasionally, we were not able to leave the
work that we were doing to get out in the crowd at all. But, it was generally
our assignment to get out in the crowd and find out as much as we could
about what they were thinking and saying, how they felt, and get the feel
of the whole thing.
HESS: On the subject of the Research Division of the Democratic National
Committee, you referred to that organization in one of your earlier interviews
but I would like to enlarge upon that just a little bit. Could you tell
me why that organization was set up?
MURPHY: It was set up mainly to provide research material, material for
speeches, in the 1948 campaign.
HESS: Do you recall who served on that?
MURPHY: The head of it was William L. Batt, Jr., David Lloyd--there were
about six, if I recall, of the people that were brought in at a professional
grade. David Lloyd and Kenneth Birkhead and Phil Dreyer and Frank Kelly
and John Barriere and Johannes Hoeber.
Now this was done, I think, largely at the urging of the members of the
White House staff, Clark Clifford and those of us who worked with Clifford
on the President’s speeches and material for the President’s speeches.
We recognized that in the campaign there would be a great demand for things
of that kind having to do with current issues and having to do with the
places where the President might go. And we urged the President to get
this kind of thing set up at the National Committee and he did. He arranged
to have this done, have this set up, I think, about July 1948 and so they
did send over memorandums having to do with issues. They sent over background
material relating to places where the President was going and they sent
over drafts of speeches. Their material was sent to the White House staff.
HESS: What was the relationship between the members of that organization
and the regular members of the White House staff? Do you recall? Was it
a good working relationship?
MURPHY: It was a quite good working relationship. They had people that
I had not known before I guess. The head of the group, Bill Batt, was
a very fine person, a capable fellow. And after the campaign began in
September, when the President began to travel in September- -I recall
he was on the road most of the time after that until the election, Clifford
and Elsey went with him on the train. Now, I did not except for the last
ten days swing. I stayed in Washington and operated the home base operation
to provide material of this kind for speeches to the group on the train
and so I worked with the Research Division quite closely. It turned out
to be my responsibility to get the material out to the train. This included,
usually, a draft of one major speech a day. And this was a very large
undertaking for a small group to do and so the Research Division and its
material were quite helpful. Their drafts they sent over had to be substantially
revised and I needed someone to work with me more closely than that, so
I asked Bill Batt to send over the best man he had to work with me full
time and he sent Dave Lloyd. And that’s the way Dave Lloyd first came
to the White House and he stayed there from then on until the end of President
Truman’s administration.
HESS: What was your estimation of Mr. Lloyd’s efficiency when he joined
you?
MURPHY: Well, well, when he first joined us, I guess, I didn’t have any,
but very quickly I came to have very high regard for his efficiency and
ability and that’s why he stayed at the White House. I was not willing
to let him go after he once got there.
HESS: Do you recall why some of the other members of the division were
hired? Did you know anything about these particular men?
MURPHY: No. No, so far as I remember, I didn’t know any of them before
that. I’ve known some of them since then. Ken Birkhead has, over the years
since then, been a very close friend of mine and John Barriere I’ve kept
up with fairly well. Frank Kelly, I saw something of him after that. The
other two I’ve lost track of. Phil Dreyer, the last I heard was out in
Portland, Oregon, I guess.
HESS: It may have already been covered in Mr. Morrissey’s transcripts,
but just what were some of the other duties that you had during the 1948
campaign, first while you were here in town before you joined the train,
and then after you joined the train, what did you do besides work on the
speeches? Anything particu1ar?
MURPHY: No. No, that’s all.
HESS: That was a pretty full-time job.
MURPHY: Well, that’s an understatement. I worked at it night and day,
every day.
The arrangements were not well organized in the beginning. Part of this
was due to a lack of understanding as to who was to be responsible for
what in this regard and perhaps some lack of appreciation about the magnitude
of the job.
Now the staff at the White House that regularly helped the President
with his speeches was not very large. It consisted of Clark Clifford,
George Elsey and me. Of course, we got help on the President’s behalf
from government departments and agencies that had to do with the subject
matter about which he might be speaking. From the State Department on
foreign policy matters and the Department of Agriculture on farm questions
and so on. But the normal pattern of the President’s speeches was such
in regular times, you would have a week or two notice ahead of time that
he was going to make a speech and he would only make a major speech once
a week or so perhaps. So, you would have considerable amount of time for
a small number of people to work on it. But it was another matter in the
campaign to turn out a major speech every day along with a good many smaller
speeches at the same time.
Now, the President brought in, late in the summer of 1948, Dave Noyes
and Bill Hillman. He did this without consultation, if that’s the proper
word, with the members of the White House staff that worked in this field
regularly. I think--and I don’t quarrel with him about this--I think he
and perhaps some of his other advisers had some feeling that the demands
for help in this field during the campaign would be such that the regular
White House staff could not handle them, either by reason of lack of capability
or otherwise. But when he brought Dave Noyes and Bill Hillman in, he did
not tell any of us exactly what functions each of us was to perform and
this was very much in the nature of an Alphonse and Gaston act. That is,
not wanting to overstep whatever bounds there might be.
My recollection is that the regular White House staff handled the staff
work for speeches that the President made on his Labor Day trip. We went
for a day, and maybe a day and a night out to Detroit and he spoke at
a good many other places in Michigan and some in other states on the way
out and back. Then after that, when he started out on his first long campaign
trip, his first major speech, I think, was to be a farm speech at the
plowing contest and that would have been Dexter, Iowa.
HESS: Dexter, Iowa on September 18th.
MURPHY: That’s the speech. All right. Well, now, just because it was
part of our regular business, we on the White House staff got up and prepared
a speech for Dexter, Iowa and unbeknown to us, why Dave Noyes and Bill
Hillman had just come in with a speech for Dexter, Iowa. And so, here’s
the President with drafts of two speeches and no staff arrangements set
up to resolve what to do with them. And no solution was reached for a
long time.
He went, it must have been on the weekend before he started on that trip,
he went on the Williamsburg down the Potomac River and he took
some people from both crowds along with him.
HESS: Who went?
MURPHY: Well, I’m sure Clifford would have been there, and I suppose
Dave Noyes and Bill Hillman. I didn’t go. The reason I was to stay at
home and not go on the campaign trips was that my wife was expecting a
baby and the baby was born on the fourth of October. Now, I began to worry
about going off and leaving her so I went to the President in September,
I guess, and asked if I could stay at home and he said, "Yes."
I didn’t stay home as a part of a plan to run this office here, I stayed
at home because we were expecting a baby, and he said that I could stay
home. Well, also for this reason I didn’t go on this weekend trip down
the Potomac at the beginning, but I did arrange to go down there and join
them, I think, early Sunday morning when I went over here--and it was
the only time I ever flew in an amphibian airplane--and took off at the
naval air station and flew down to the lower part of the Potomac where
the Williamsburg was. This plane landed on the water and we bounced
over to the Williamsburg, and somebody took me on a little boat
and transferred me over there.
When I got there Sunday morning to see what had happened to that speech,
and nothing had. So there it was Sunday morning and nothing had happened
to that speech and no procedure had been set up for solving this question.
I went around poking at different people to see if we could get some arrangement
for doing this and I perhaps talked to the President. Told him he needn’t
be unduly sensitive about this, that we were all working for him and we
would do what he told us. I don’t remember actually whether I said that,
but this might well have been the kind of thing. But we did, during the
course of that day, work out an arrangement for completing that speech
and my recollection is that the major part of the speech that he used
eventually was that prepared by the Noyes group--whoever prepared it.
I think maybe "Bob" Carr had worked on that speech. At about
that time, Dave Noyes and Bill Hillman brought in with them a man named
Albert Z. Carr, "Bob" Carr, and he was the one of that group
that actually could write. But as a result of this impasse, if that’s
the proper word, when the President started out on his campaign trip,
my recollection is that he had the completed draft of only one major speech.
That is he had not more than two days worth of material when he left here
and that was the situation when he started out on that campaign trip in
1948. And so we then had to send him out a major draft each day.
The pattern that evolved was that we would send a draft of a speech from
here at night, it would be flown by courier plane that would land wherever
that train was before day in the morning and they would put it on the
train and Clifford would get it and start to work with the President on
it on the train until they had what the President wanted, and they usually
used it that night.
Elsey was on the train with them and Elsey’s responsibility was to get
up some notes, outlines, or texts for the whistlestops so that at the
whistlestops the President would have something that he could use if he
wanted some written material. And, generally, again the pattern was that
they would borrow material, a few facts from the draft of the major speech
for that day and talk on the same topic, and used it along with local
references, references to matters that were of local interest to the people
who might be there. And Elsey did a prodigious job on that, and I have
never, never understood how he could do all that.
HESS: Did you think that Clark Clifford may have felt that he was somehow
outranked by Dave Noyes and Bill Hillman before the meeting on the Wil1iamsburg?
MURPHY: Well, I think he didn’t know. I think he didn’t know whether
he was outranked or not. And the same kind of thing had happened, by the
way, in connection with the President’s acceptance speech at the national
convention, except that time it was Sam Rosenman instead of the others.
Sam Rosenman came down and we went and sat down in the Cabinet Room and
nobody said who was to do what. The President just couldn’t bear to hurt
the feelings of anybody, he never could. And Sam was there to be helpful.
Well, Sam was a very wise man and a very able counselor. This was something
that probably ought to be closed, for Sam Rosenman it turned out, could
not write a speech. Now, Clark Clifford speaks very well for himself,
but he never had a particular gift for writing speeches for the President,
the actual writing of the words. I didn’t either for that matter, but
I did more of it than Clifford and certainly far more than Rosenman. Again,
we ought to close this, I guess.
HESS: That will be quite all right. Any length of time that you desire.
MURPHY: While we’re on the subject, as the campaign wore on, Rosenman
was wanting to be helpful and the President was wanting to get help from
Rosenman. Rosenman, I think quite justifiably, deservedly had a good reputation
as a speech producer. And so he was assigned five big speeches for the
last week of the campaign. The assignment was made some weeks in advance
because after I got this operation started here in Washington, I began
seeing that assignments were made in advance and I got a pipeline started
with stuff coming in from a good many different places. And these five
speeches were assigned to Sam Rosenman. The next thing I knew, he was
beating the bushes down here. All my speechwriters that I had tagged in
Washington, Sam Rosenman was trying to get them to write these speeches
for him. As it turned out the same people I was already using, Sam Rosenman
was calling on to write these speeches. I think they did write them. They
went around through Rosenman and came back to me.
HESS: Do you recall which speeches those were?
MURPHY: No, I don’t. I’m not positive about the number but I’m fairly
sure, it may have been three, I think it was five. But this kind of thing
did happen in connection with the acceptance speech at the national convention.
But this kind of thing did happen in connection with the acceptance speech
at the national convention. We sat down in the Cabinet Room, I suppose
with the President. Rosenman, Clifford and I were there and I expect some
other members of his staff--Charlie Ross maybe, Matt Connelly--and just
talked in general about what he should do and how he should approach it.
Then everybody got up and left except Rosenman and Clifford and me and
nobody had told us what to do and nobody had told us who outranked whom,
and everybody, at least Clifford and Rosenman seemed to be a little reticent,
either of them, to take the lead. I was obviously the junior man, so I
just--time was pretty short, this must have been the day before he went
to Philadelphia--and so I picked up a pencil and got a yellow pad and
I began to write. And nobody said very much and I kept on writing and
finally Clifford said, "What are you doing?"
And I says, "I’m writing an outline of a speech."
And he said, "Can I look at it?"
And I said, "Sure." So I handed him what I had written.
And he said, "Well, it’s pretty good," and handed it across
the table to Rosenman and Rosenman took it and nodded his head. So, this
is the way that first draft was written. I kept on writing and they kept
on reading.
The President’s acceptance speech did deal quite a lot with legislative
issues. This happened to be the field I was working on at that time. I
had gotten to be sort of a specialist on the legislative program, and
legislative issues on the President’s staff. So, I guess this came, not
the language, but the substance came quite easily for me. It was, of course,
revised considerably. I think Rosenman did do the peroration. I think
you will find a good final paragraph or two in there, and Rosenman did
that.
When the President spoke, his acceptance speech was made from an outline.
He did not have full text. It was, you may recall, a very effective speech
and we were, of course, greatly pleased and enthusiastic and regarded
it as a great success and I still do, because it was quite a historic
thing. We went back after that and counted the number of words that he
actually delivered that came from the outline and the number of which
were extemporaneous. I don’t remember what the actual count was but he
used most of the words in the outline.
HESS: As you will recall, he closed his speech that time by calling for
the special session of Congress.
MURPHY: That’s right.
HESS: Do you know where that idea came from?
MURPHY: I do not know where it originated. I have looked at this memorandum
of June 29, l948. [see appendix] I do not know who wrote it. I’m confident
that I didn’t because there are some words in there that I wouldn’t have
used just that way. It’s not my natural style.
HESS: Would you take a look at the memorandum and point out the words
that you say that you would not have used in that manner?
MURPHY: Well, I say that I wouldn’t have, I just don’t think I would
have. This says, "the rotten record of the 80th Congress," I
don’t think I would have used the word "rotten," I don’t believe
that I would have. "The Neanderthal men of the Republican Party,"
... "Martin, Halleck, Wolcott, Allen." I don’t think I would
have said that about those people. I disagreed with them quite heartily
but I knew them personally and they were pretty nice fellows. I just don’t
think I would have used that word about them.
HESS: How about some of the ideas that may be in the memo. Would you
go along with some of the ideas?
MURPHY: Yes, in general I’d go along, I think I’d go along with most
of the ideas. And I think it quite possible that I participated in the
preparation of it and maybe had a chance to make suggestions but I’m just
satisfied in my own mind that I was not the primary author of it in terms
of actually putting the words down on paper.
HESS: The book that I have here is Housing Reform During the Truman
Administration, by Richard O. Davies. And on page 84, I won’t read
it all but he said, "An unsigned memorandum, dated June 29, set forth
a plan to revive the party’s enthusiasm. Although the authorship is unknown,
the arguments were primarily Murphy’s."
MURPHY: Well, this is possible, as I say, but the words, I think, are
not mine, and I’m satisfied that I would not have given the President
a memorandum of this type without talking with Clifford about it. And
I think, too, the Jack [Oscar] Ewing group was meeting at this time and
this might have come from there. We might have gotten a draft of this
from someone who--Don [J. Donald] Kingsley or some of the others who met
up there.
HESS: Where did the original idea for calling Congress back come from?
MURPHY: I don’t know. This, as far as I’m concerned, might have very
possibly have originated with me. I’m certain that I was for it as far
back as I can remember and I do seem to remember that we had--well we
persuaded the President to do it, and we talked quite a lot about it before
he decided to do it, and I have a fairly distinct recollection that I
thought he ought to call them back in session sometime in the fall, maybe
September or October. And when he decided to do it, why, he was going
to call them back the next week after the convention as I recall. About
the...
HESS: "Turnip Day."
MURPHY: No. At first he was going to call them back quicker than that,
the next day or the day after tomorrow, something of that kind and we
persuaded him to postpone it about two weeks. The "Turnip Day"
he put that in--that was entirely original with him. When he said that
at the convention, I didn’t know what he was talking about.
HESS: You used the word "persuaded" him to call Congress back
awhile ago, did it take much persuasion to get him to call the Congress
back?
MURPHY: My best recollection is that he was somewhat reluctant to do
it.
HESS: Why?
MURPHY: I don’t know. I just don’t remember that clearly. My memory is
not real clear about that particular thing and if it turned out to be
totally wrong, why, I wouldn’t be surprised, but this is my recollection
that he was somewhat reluctant to call them back. But when he decided
to call them back he was going to do it right away.
HESS: Was this cleared with the Democratic Party leaders before the announcement
was made there in Philadelphia?
MURPHY: I’m satisfied it was not.
HESS: Why? Why are you so satisfied that it was not?
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know, I just am.
HESS: How important is his eventual victory in ‘48, do you believe this
was to call them back?
MURPHY: Well, I would think it probably was significant. No one will
ever know what led to his victory in 1948. It was mostly President Truman
himself and the kind of man he was and the fact that this got through
to enough of that total thing and that I wouldn’t say "created"
an image but I would say "revealing an image." So, I think it
was important, and the election being so close you could almost say that
if any one of these important things had been left out, why, it all might
have been different.
HESS: Awhile ago in talking about Dave Noyes, you mentioned that there
was some other advisers who suggested to the President that Mr. Noyes
be brought in. Do you know what other advisers those were?
MURPHY: I don’t know. I suppose, I’ve always assumed, I guess, that it
was Matt Connelly. Now Bill Hillman and Dave Noyes worked together then
and later. Now Bill Hillman, as you recall, was the author of a book which
had been published, I think, before that, called Mr. President.
HESS: After.
MURPHY: It was after, well, at any rate, I...
HESS: What do you recall about that book, while we’re on the subject?
MURPHY: My views have changed some over the years and the last year,
I guess it was, I decided that I thought enough of that book, I went around
looking everywhere I could to get a copy for each of my children.
HESS: You say your views have changed. Did you think much of it when
it first came out?
MURPHY: Not very much.
HESS: Why?
MURPHY: Well, I suppose--well, first there were some rather unflattering
comments by other members of the White House staff and people that I associated
with more regularly than I did with Noyes and Hillman and people whose
judgment I respected a great deal. I think they had the feeling that this
was not an altogether proper thing for a President to do when he was in
office and that--proper is not quite the right--not altogether in keeping
with the great dignity of the office--and that he had permitted Bill Hillman
to take advantage of him for commercial reasons. But...
HESS: That book came out in 1952.
MURPHY: ‘52. Well, at this point, I’m glad that it did, as I say. Now
I did right much looking around but I got a copy for each of my children.
HESS: Now one question on...
MURPHY: There’s one thing I mentioned earlier I would like to get back
to and that is about Bob Carr. Now when the group did start out on the
train in September 1948, Dave Noyes was not going to stay here, he was
going back to California. I don’t remember about Bill Hillman. I was left
at that time with just no help really in the things that I was supposed
to do and I expressed my dismay about that and Dave Noyes did arrange
for Bob Carr to stay and work with me. He was a very able man, a very
nice man. And he worked, he could write, and he knew something about some
of the issues that were then current. He wrote a major speech each day
for I think four or five days. It pretty well wore him out and burned
him out but he got us through the first week--I edited his speeches. I
didn’t edit them much but he didn’t quarrel about that. We didn’t have
any friction, we had a completely satisfactory working relationship, and
he did a fine job. But it burned him out and he left.
Well, by that time I had gotten some help from other places and some
more help on the way. It was along about that time that I got Dave Lloyd
over. Dave Bell, I guess, was--Dave Bell had been in the Budget then,
I know he wouldn’t have been available on the regular full-time basis
but I’m sure he would have helped some. I also began getting in drafts
from the departments and got some very good material from Agriculture.
Some of it was topical enough that I had to leave it in agricultural speeches
and other was general enough that I could rob some of the farm speeches
and put the material in other drafts. Later on, I continued to clamor
for help and Dave Noyes arranged for John Franklin Carter to come and
work with me. He was a columnist who was then writing a newspaper column
under the name of Jay Franklin. He was an old timer and had a great deal
of experience in this field. A man with a great gift for words. They just
flowed out with the greatest of ease and his literary style was fine.
A very ingenious fellow. I don’t, I don’t think his judgment was real
good about what to put in and what to leave out but we worked out a kind
of a system that he produced just great volumes of material, and I would
use what I thought was good and what I thought wasn’t good I would just
discard. Some of us have to sit down and struggle and struggle to get
words out but not John Carter. He just sat down and out it came.
Some of this material began to be reflected in the speeches that came
in the latter part of the campaign. We took him with us on this last ten-day
trip and he continued to make a very valuable contribution. I don’t know
if you’re familiar with these speeches but there’s one that--oh, I started
to say celebrated--in terms of the internal staff it was--but we kept
trying to provide the President for use in these speeches some humorous
material. We thought that some of the material that we provided was pretty
good but the press ignored it, and that bothered us, it really did. So,
among us we got up the idea one day that we would do a speech for the
President that didn’t have anything else in it except these things that
we thought might catch on with the public because they were humorous and
so we did. We said that if the press writes about this speech they’re
bound to tell about some of it. Finally, we did it for Madison Square
Garden in New York, if I remember correctly. I think that this was the
one about "the little man following me around." This theme of
the little man following me around came from John Franklin Carter.
By that time we were developing some techniques for the speech drafts
and one of the things that we would seek for was how to employ a framework,
a theme that would run through it that you could hang different things
on. And so he came in one day very, very happy. We’d been trying to think
of something and he says, "I think I’ve got something that will do,
‘The little man following me around.’" Well, we tried it awhile and
it looked like it was working out.
On that trip we went to Boston, and I think this speech was mimeographed
and released to the press as we were leaving Boston on the train coming
to New York. And after that on the train, Matt Connelly and Charlie Ross,
I guess, got the President to call a staff conference and they were distressed
because the newspapermen on the train were saying that this was not the
kind of a speech that the President ought to make and they got Charlie
and Matt worried about it. So, the President reviewed the situation and
decided he really didn’t have much choice except to stick with this speech
and he did, and I think that this turned out fine. This just turned out
to be, you know, very, very good.
Later on, this lack of judgment on the part of John Franklin Carter was
made evident in some other ways. The President had planned to keep him
on his staff to help with--oh, I don’t think that the plans ever shaped
up--but generally with the historical record of his administration. And...
HESS: In what way did Carter’s poor judgment manifest itself?
MURPHY: He wrote an article that was published in some periodical magazine.
HESS: Life magazine?
MURPHY: I think it was quite indiscreet. The President saw it and he
thought it was quite indiscreet and he called me and he says, "You
go fire him." So I did.
HESS: Do you recall what article that was. Just after the election he
wrote two. He wrote one on the campaign itself which came out shortly
after the campaign, and then he wrote another that came out the following
January dealing with the fact that Mr. Truman was going to change his
foreign policy.
MURPHY: Well, there was one, "What Truman Really Thinks of the Negro,"
wasn’t there?
HESS: By golly, there could have been but I don’t know about it.
MURPHY: My memory is not clear. My recollection is that the one in the
Life magazine caused right much of a stir, a flap.
HESS: Both of those were published in Life. One in November and
one in January.
MURPHY: Well, the...
HESS: I don’t remember any racial overtones in either one but there could
have been.
MURPHY: At some point--my--I haven’t checked this but I just think I
remember at some point he wrote a piece entitled something like, "What
Truman Really Thinks of the Negro," and I have some recollection
that the first one that came out, whatever it was, was pretty bad, but
it--you know we sort of smoothed that over and maybe we were going along
and then something else came up that was still worse and I think it was
when the second one came out that the President says, "Charlie, you
go and fire him right now."
HESS: But he was brought in by Dave Noyes? Is that right?
MURPHY: Yes, yes. And he was--now Dave didn’t press him, he didn’t push
him forward. He called him because I was pleading so desperately for somebody
and Dave knew people in that field and he says this is the man and maybe
we can get him. So, when you say he was brought in by Dave Noyes, why,
I don’t want to leave the impression that Dave Noyes pressed him on us.
Quite the contrary, we were looking for help desperately, and this was
someone that Dave Noyes knew and brought in and he was extremely useful.
My part of the operation, I think, might have broken down without him.
HESS: One other question I wanted to ask was about Sam Rosenman. Why
didn’t Mr. Rosenman go on the campaign, do you recall? As I recall he
had offered his support sometime in the spring and then as you mentioned
he came in to help with the President’s acceptance speech, but then he
sort of dropped out.
MURPHY: I’m inclined to respond by asking you a question. Why should
he go on the campaign? I don’t want to be facetious about this but there
were millions of people that didn’t go on that campaign.
HESS: Well, in other words, he had offered his help.
MURPHY: Well, I don’t know.
HESS: Okay.
MURPHY: Okay.
HESS: That’s fine.
In the fall and during the campaign, the proposal was made to send Chief
Justice Vinson to Moscow. Where did that idea come up?
MURPHY: My recollection is that it originated with David Noyes and some
of that group. Maybe Bob Carr, I think maybe Bob Carr, Albert Z. Carr.
And it’s also my recollection that those that were on the regular White
House staff thought that it was a good idea and helped to promote it and
that the President finally asked Vinson if he would go and Vinson finally
said he would go and at this point, the President communicated with General
Marshall, who was in Paris, I think, and General Marshall’s reaction was
very strong and very negative, and the President called it off. That’s
the way I remember.
HESS: Dealing with the events in 1948, Cabell Phillips, in the book The
Truman Presidency on pages 196-97, states in effect, that Mr. Truman
in the autumn of 1947 had offered to step aside for General Eisenhower
if the General would accept the Democratic nomination, while he, Mr. Truman,
would take the number two position on the ticket as Vice President. Do
you think that is correct?
MURPHY: I don’t know. I’ve read things of that kind from time to time,
I’ve never had anything that would give me any insight on it that’s not
public.
HESS: Ever hear anything around the White House during those days along
this line?
MURPHY: No.
HESS: Anything else come to mind dealing with the events of ‘48 that
we may have overlooked? I imagine that some of these things that we have
discussed may even be repetitious of what you discussed with Mr. Morrissey,
but if they are, we will take them out, or we’ll decide if perhaps we
were hitting it from two different angles and in that case we’ll leave
them in.
MURPHY: All right. There may be some repetition. You know you can talk
about the 1948 campaign for a long time without telling the whole story,
and some of us regard it as a very important event, or series of events.
HESS: I don’t know if Charlie asked you, but where were you on election
night?
MURPHY: I was at home. I lived in Maryland, and voted in Maryland, out
here in Montgomery County. At that time Maryland did not have an absentee
voter’s law. I had been on that train, that last trip and the President
wound up on Saturday night before election with a big speech in Kiel Auditorium
in St. Louis. It had been my plan to leave the train. Clifford, I think,
did leave the train there or possibly left the day before. It had been
my plan to leave the train then and come back home so that I could be
here to vote on Tuesday.
Before we got to St. Louis, someone gave me a copy of a speech that had
been prepared for the President to use on the radio on election eve, Monday
night, before the election.
I thought it was terrible and I was just dismayed and upset about it.
I went to Charlie Ross, who was on the train, and a very wise person,
and told him about my concern and he shared it. Maybe not so strongly,
but he shared it. And I said, "Charlie, if you’ll help me talk to
the ‘Boss’ and try to persuade him not to use this speech, I’ll stay on
the train instead of going home from St. Louis." And he said he would.
So, I stayed on the train and went to Kansas City.
Charlie called the President about this on the phone. I wanted him to
talk to the President. I was pretty junior on the staff at that time and
I wanted him to talk to the President about this, and he called him. We
were at the Muehlebach Hotel and he called the President at his home in
Independence on the telephone, but he put me on the telephone to talk
to the President about it and so I had to tell him, and did, that I didn’t
think that he ought to make that speech and he says, "Why?"
And I says, "Well, this speech has you up there on the radio presenting
yourself as an indispensable man and I just don’t think that’s in keeping
with your character and I don’t think it comes natural and I don’t think
it would go over well and I don’t think you ought to do it."
Well, I had hit a responsive chord, that’s what the speech did and he
didn’t feel that way, ever. He said, "Well, I’ll come in and we’ll
talk about it." And so he came down to the Muehlebach Hotel and we
started out there--well, we talked about it and he decided not to use
that one and so we started out to prepare something for him to use and
he went off, this was one of the few times that I know of when he did
this, he went off and took his pen and started writing in longhand. And
Charlie Ross went off and he started writing and I went off somewhere
and I started writing and we all wrote for awhile and we got together
and put it together the way the President said put it together, and that
was the speech he used that same night. I think this must have been Monday
when we were doing this work in the Muehlebach Hotel, it may have been
Sunday.
The only specific thing I remember about that talk, you know it’s customary
on occasions like that, or it was in those days when things were a little
more gentle and polite, to urge folks to go out and say I don’t care which
way you vote, but go out and vote. I said, "Now, let’s don’t say
that, you know it’s not true. You want them to go out and vote for you
so don’t say you don’t care which way they vote."
Well, this draft was completed at any rate so that I could leave by Monday
afternoon and I then started out to fly home so I’d be at home to vote.
I got grounded in Chicago. The airplane, in the first place, had lost
an engine out of Kansas City about an hour and turned around and went
back to Kansas City and we got in another plane and started over and got
to Chicago late, and the weather was so bad we never could get out of
Chicago. I spent the night there and came home the next day. Got home
in the afternoon and went and voted and then I went to dinner with my
family at home and went to sleep at the dinner table and so they put me
in bed and I spent the night at home asleep and I did not know how the
election came out until the next morning.
HESS: Were you surprised?
MURPHY: Well, more or less. I remember that on the trip from Chicago
to Washington on election day I sat on the plane with a man who was a
stranger and we talked about the election. I remember what I said to him
there about the outcome. I said I didn’t know how it was going to come
out. That I really thought it was just as close as a question could be
and I had thought, oh, a couple of weeks before that President Truman’s
chances were not very good. But then in the last ten days, I had been
on that train with the President and I had seen the way people were responding
to him and since I had seen that why I just thought he might make it.
That’s what I said then and I guess that’s the way I felt.
HESS: Do you recall who wrote the President’s speech for Kiel Auditorium
in St. Louis?
MURPHY: Well, yes. I remember about that. We had a prepared draft of
a speech which we--I think I may have covered this with Charles Morrissey.
I think I read it somewhere, but at any rate, I don’t remember where this
first draft came from but it was not very good and when the President
saw it why he couldn’t see anything worth saving and so he said, "Well,
don’t worry about it." But we went off and prepared a completely
new draft on it and the second one was a pretty good speech as I remember.
I don’t remember what it was about but it was a pretty good speech and
I think he did approve that draft and, as I recall, it was then mimeographed
and released to the press as his prepared text. But then after that, he
was on the train, and I saw him a time or two. He was sitting there with
his notebook on his lap and he was making notes and he sat there and made,
I’m pretty sure, an outline in longhand of a speech. And I was sitting
behind him when he made the speech in Kiel Auditorium and he didn’t look
at a note. He just didn’t. The speech he delivered was, we would say,
was a stem-winder, and that crowd went crazy and they were just about
climbing the wall.
HESS: Any other memories of ’48?
MURPHY: Oh, I’m sure I have a lot of them but none that occurs to me,
none that occurs to me right now.
HESS: What about 1950, the President took a trip in May of 1950.
MURPHY: He went out and dedicated Grand Coulee Dam again.
HESS: Again, that’s right. Why was it necessary to go out and dedicate
a dam again?
MURPHY: I don’t know. In my part of the shop we did not have very much
to do with making decisions about when the President was going where and
the trips he was to make. I don’t have any recollection of why he decided
to make that trip.
HESS: Did you go with him on that trip?
MURPHY: Yes sir. Yes sir.
HESS: What do you recall about it? Anything in particular?
MURPHY: Well, so far as my part of the staff operation is concerned that
probably was the smoothest one that we ever had. I not only went, but
took along Dave Lloyd and Dave Bell and, I guess, Ken Hechler.
It was not a very long trip, maybe ten days and the President may have
made six or eight consequential speeches. And we had some advanced notice
of it and we had all had some experience by that time so we did a lot
of work before we left. Then we took our material along with us and we
went to work on the train in order to keep up with things as they went
along. We had, I think, we had a draft ready on time and ahead of time
for the President in every town. We had an opportunity to do a little
research about all the places he was going to stop.
There was some girl reporter on the train, wrote for the Washington
Times Herald as I recall, wrote a column that amused and pleased us
a great deal I might say. She spoke about the effectiveness of the staff
work and said that if that train stopped at a little town out there somewhere
for five minutes, and if they had crooked cue sticks in the pool hall,
that we would know about it and the President would say something about
it.
One of the highlights of that trip, as I recall, he spoke in North Dakota
on the way back, I’m not sure what town, I think Bismarck. But he spoke
in the open square outdoors in the late afternoon and it was pretty cool
and he spoke about the International Wheat Agreement. And he had that
crowd cheering for the International Wheat Agreement. I thought that was
sort of a high-water mark when you get a crowd outdoors to cheer for the
International Wheat Agreement, that’s doing very well.
HESS: Why was that speech given in that place?
MURPHY: Oh, I would suppose it’s because wheat is relatively of great
importance in North Dakota.
HESS: Did you think that the people that would turn out for a speech
like that should understand the economics of an international agreement?
MURPHY: Yes. I’m sure he did. Especially if they are put in clear and
simple sentences as he liked to have things put. And I haven’t looked
at that speech for a long time but I would hazard to guess that most anybody
out in North Dakota would understand it if they read it.
HESS: Do you recall if Oscar Chapman went along as an advance man for
that trip?
MURPHY: I don’t. If he served as an advance man--and it’s quite likely
he did--he wouldn’t go along, he would go ahead. Now it is quite likely
that he did go ahead as an advance man. He did a lot of that and he did
it very well.
HESS: What are the duties of an advance man?
MURPHY: Well, I’m not real sure because I have never been an advance
man. But he makes the arrangements, where the speech is to be made, and
what local people are to be responsible for the President and his party,
and so on. I said I never had that job. But after the President left the
White House, I did travel with him right much in the campaigns of 1954
and 1956 and even more in 1958 and I did make the arrangements for those
trips. Now, we didn’t have as much staff and I did my advance work by
telephone. I didn’t go ahead of him but I made the engagements and the
arrangements for people to meet us and look after us when we got there.
I made his reservations and travel arrangements and helped him with whatever
material he had for speeches and so on. Most of the time there were just
the two of us, Bill Hillman traveled with us a good deal.
HESS: Both years, ‘56 and ‘58?
MURPHY: ‘56 I guess. Dave Lloyd traveled with us right much in ‘58 and
we had a good time.
HESS: Anyone else?
MURPHY: No, that was pretty much it, Dave Lloyd and Bill Hillman and
I. Then in 1960 I did not travel any. I think Dave Lloyd did, I think
Dave Lloyd traveled in 1960. But we had a lot of fun in ‘58, the President,
Dave Lloyd and I. At one point in 19…
HESS: Where did you go?
MURPHY: We went all over the country. We went to the east coast, to the
west coast.
HESS: Did you write all the speeches or did you help out on them?
MURPHY: Well, Dave Lloyd was involved and he did some and I did some.
If you’ve ever read the "pink glasses speech" or the "rose
colored glasses" speech, if you haven’t you should. This is the speech
that the President used quite a lot in that campaign. He liked it so much
he used it over and over again. Dave Lloyd wrote that "rose colored
glasses" business and it was about Eisenhower’s administration looking
at the world through "rose colored glasses" and so the President
got himself a pair of tinted glasses that he would--this was, you know--this
was a warm up, and he would do this with motions and he delivered it once,
I think the first time was at a big meeting in a restaurant outside of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and after that he used that "rose colored
glasses" speech a good many times.
We started out the first trip in 1958 with just the President and me.
We went in a National Guard airplane provided by the Governor of Iowa,
I think, and we started off in that direction up through Iowa and North
Dakota. I had made the arrangements for the President’s campaigning during
that fall and had done this as a representative of the Democratic National
Committee. I was retained by the national committee at that time as a
special counsel and an adviser to the advisory council, and President
Truman always looked to the Democratic National Committee for telling
him what was his part to do in the campaign. He would do what the national
committee told him to do. And so, the national committee wanted him to
speak in 1958 as much as he would and so I got the assignment of making
the arrangements and worked out quite a comprehensive schedule that lasted,
I think, about six weeks. The general pattern was that we would try to
come back to Kansas City for two or three days each week and travel out
of there by plane. We went up to North Dakota. I remember being out in
the State of Washington, spoke out in Seattle. He went out to Fort Lewis--went
to Fort Lewis where his cousin Louis Truman was then the commanding general
and Louis Truman’s mother-in-law was with them there. We got there late
in the afternoon and General Truman had a little reception for him and
the General’s mother-in-law was there. She was about the same age as President
Truman and they both played the piano, so they played a duet, the President
and General Truman’s mother-in-law. It’s a beautiful place and they had
a military formation retreat, I guess it was, for President Truman at
the end of the day. Then we went on down into California.
I had made the arrangements for these 1958 trips from here. I went out
to Independence two or three days before we were supposed to start out
on the first trip. When I got out there, President Truman’s health did
not seem to be as good as it had been. Gene Bailey, who was working for
him at that time, was quite worried and afraid for him to start out on
this rather strenuous campaign trip. I think Mrs. Truman was pretty worried.
And I got frightened and so I sweated for a day or two about whether his
health was such that I just had to call the whole thing off, but we didn’t.
And we started on this trip, I remember this first plane we were on, it
was, I don’t think it was a DC-3 but it was about comparable to a DC-3.
It was a cold day and the President got in and sat down in a seat fairly
close inside the door. He had on his topcoat and as we flew along for
awhile he turned up his collar like he was shivering. I was in another
part of the plane and I went back to see what was the matter. Why, I found
out there was a crack in the door and a lot of cold wind coming through.
So I got him to move up in the front of the plane, and we got along all
right after that. Well, as we got out on the road and he began to see
people and the blood started circulating, why, he got chipper and spry
and he improved steadily. At the end of the six weeks he was about ten
years younger and I was about ten years older than when we started out.
Part of my undertaking, plan of operations, was to make him take a nap
every afternoon. And this was sometimes rather difficult. So I got him
in the hotel up there in North Dakota and he sent his suit out to the
cleaners after lunch and when his suit got back I got it and I wouldn’t
let him have it. I kept it in my room. I finally took his suit around
to him. He was wandering around, he was all dressed except for his suit,
in his shirttail.
HESS: That’s one way to keep him in his room.
MURPHY: Yes sir, it is. Well, I actually saw more of him on those trips
in many ways than I did when I was working for him in the White House
and it was a wonderful experience. He is just grand company all the time.
HESS: Where did you go on the 1958 trip?
MURPHY: Well, this was ‘58.
HESS: That was ‘58?
MURPHY: This was ‘58 that I was--I’m sure that was ‘58 and, of course,
that was not a presidential election year and he was campaigning particularly
for Democratic candidates for the Senate and whenever it would fit in,
for the House. And a good many Democrats were elected to the Senate that
year. It was a good year for the Democrats and most of them that were
elected, the new men, were those for whom he had campaigned. And I think
most of them gave him a considerable amount of credit and were quite grateful
to him.
HESS: Who were a few of those?
MURPHY: Well, Phil [Philip A.] Hart was one. Vance Hartke was one. I
remember being out there for Vance Hartke in Indiana. I should remember
some of the others, I’m afraid I don’t. But there must have been six or
eight of them at least. And so the President was very much interested
in the outcome of this election and when they were sworn in as members
of the Senate, he came to the swearing-in ceremony. But wouldn’t, as I
remember, would not go up on the floor and sat up in the gallery when
these Senators were sworn in at the beginning of 1959.
HESS: In the 1950 campaign, President Truman took a very small part.
Now that was an off-year election, of course. Do you know why the decision
was made, or was there a decision made, to hold down his participation
in 1950? The only speech that he actually made was one also in the Kiel
Auditorium where he always sort of felt at home. He always liked it down
there in St. Louis. But that was the only major speech.
MURPHY: I do not have any recollection of any decision about that on
policy. About anything that I would say now would just be speculative.
I do know, of course, that that was the fall when the Korean war was a
very great concern, a very great problem and at the time of the election
things in Korea were not going well. The President had been out there
to see General MacArthur, maybe in September?
HESS: October 15th.
MURPHY: October 15th. At that time General MacArthur told him that the
war was over and that we had won and that by Christmas he would be able
to send a division of the troops from Korea to Europe, and they decided
which division to send and General .
HESS: Is this something that President Truman told you that the General
said or were you present at the time that the General said that?
MURPHY: I was present, yes sir.
HESS: Tell me about that. I knew that you went to Wake Island on that
trip. Tell me about that trip.
MURPHY: Well, the idea that this--I don’t know whether this should be
closed or not. The idea for that trip originated with George Elsey.
HESS: Is that right?
MURPHY: I’m pretty sure about this. And George Elsey was still on the
White House staff. He was an administrative assistant to the President
at that time, I guess. Clifford had left. And so, he talked to some of
the rest of us on the staff about it, we in turn talked to President Truman
about it. I don’t think he ever was enthusiastic about it. But we persuaded
him to go. And I don’t think he ever did really care to go, to tell you
the truth. But he went, and George Elsey went out as the advance man to
Hawaii. George had been a lieutenant in the Navy in World War II and when
he went out to Hawaii he was dealing with naval people from Admiral [Arthur
W.] Radford on down and he would tell them what they had to do. I think
he got quite a kick out of it. They did it up right.
Well, the idea was that President Truman would go out and confer with
General MacArthur about the progress of the war and that he would meet
him between here and Korea so that General MacArthur would not have to
be away from the troops in the field for long. I suppose I would have
to say candidly, that among us on the White House staff, at any rate,
was the feeling that this would be good public relations, and that, I
think, is probably why the President had some distaste for it. He just
had a distaste for public relations stunts. He really did.
HESS: Do you think so?
MURPHY: Yes. Unless it was absolutely and completely a by-product of
doing what he ought to do anyway.
HESS: Was it discussed asking the General to come all the way back to
Washington? Was that discussed? Or to the United States, let’s say, to
the Continental United States?
MURPHY: Well, it was not discussed seriously by those of us who were
promoting this because that wasn’t what we all wanted. Well, the arrangements
were made. We left here in two planes. The President went on his plane.
They left a day earlier than the other and he spent the night at home
in Missouri. Then the second plane left here and we joined forces. I was
on the second plane. We joined forces at an airfield in California, Edwards
Air Force Base I guess, I don’t remember which one, and flew from there
to Hawaii and from Hawaii to Wake Island and then had the conference and
back to Hawaii and back to California and on the way back he spoke in
California.
Admiral Radford was the host to the President and his party in Pearl
Harbor. Shortly before that, he had been on duty here in Washington and
something happened (I actually don’t remember what it was), that President
Truman did not think was just right and it--I don’t remember whether it
was connected with the "Admiral’s revolt" or what, but it was
not terribly serious but on the other hand the President didn’t think
it was good, so he arranged to have Admiral Radford transferred to Hawaii
where he was commander in chief of the Pacific. But he was our host out
there and a very gracious host. The President stayed in his quarters.
When we got that far, someone came to me and said Admiral Radford had
not been invited to go the rest of the way to Wake Island and he was a
little bit hurt about it and would like to go. I went to the President
and asked him if Admiral Radford could go and he said, "Yes, it’ll
be all right if he’ll go on the other plane." So Admiral Radford
went on the other plane. I was on the other plane, General Bradley was
on the other plane, Dean Rusk was on the other plane, it was a very respectable
crowd you understand. Averell Harriman was there. Averell knew General
MacArthur.
We got to Wake Island before day. I think we got there, no, I’m not sure
whether MacArthur got there first or not. I know he left first, I know
MacArthur left first. But at any rate, they met at the airport where they
landed before daylight and then they went off for a private conference,
I think, before the general conference. Then quite a few motor vehicles
that were on Wake Island took this party around to the building where
the meeting was held. Some of the senior members of the President’s group
participated in the discussion. This would have included Averell Harriman,
I expect, and may be General Bradley. General MacArthur did most of the
talking. It was still very early in the morning. I think it was still
before daylight, I’m not sure, but it was still quite early. The President
had something of an agenda, I don’t remember just now what it was on it
exactly, and General MacArthur talked about the course of the war. That
was the first time I had ever seen him. He spoke very persuasively, very
plainly, very understandably. He just laid it out cold. And when he explained
why and how we had won the war and why it was impossible for the
other side to do anything about it, why, I understood precisely what he
was saying, and I was convinced completely. And the question came up about
the possible intervention by the Chinese and he said they could not intervene
effectively. Not that they would not, but that they could
not, as a military matter. That while they had large numbers of ground
troops, they had no air support of their own and the ground troops could
not operate effectively without air support, while the Russians, even
if they came into it, they had air strength, that they couldn’t work closely
enough, well enough, with the Chinese ground troops to be effective and
if those poor Chinese tried to invade Korea, the part of Korea that we
were undertaking to defend, it just made him sick to think of the way
that they would be slaughtered and piled up.
In addition to that, I believe it was on this occasion, that he talked
about his intelligence sources, and his intelligence operation which was
bringing in reports somewhat different from the intelligence reports that
the departments were receiving here in Washington and he said that he
believed his and not those of the departments. But they did agree, I say
agree, he said one of the divisions then in Korea would be sent to Europe
by Christmas. I think, we’re getting into something now that should be
closed, I don’t know. The State Department people on this trip, the group
included Philip Jessup, by the way, as well as Dean Rusk. Dean was then
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, I think it was.
And to their credit, and that of General Bradley, I wish to say they were
workers. Whenever there was any work to be done, Dean Rusk and Phil Jessup
and General Bradley were ready to go to work. It didn’t make any difference
what it was, they didn’t stand on their pride or dignity and hold back.
We worked some on the way out on the speech that the President might make
on the way back when we got to California, and then we finished that on
the way back and he did make a speech in California reporting on the trip.
HESS: At the Opera House in San Francisco?
MURPHY: I think so. The State Department group had with them a secretary
for stenographic purposes and when we went to the general conference with
General MacArthur, they took her along and put her in an adjoining room.
This was a tropical climate and prevailing winds, trade winds--I don’t
know if they were trade winds, but prevailing winds, were blowing from
this larger room in which this conference was being held toward the room
in which this girl was waiting to be available if we needed any stenographic
services. The door was open, louvered type door, so she could hear everything
that was said in the general conference and she sat there and made shorthand
notes about what was said and so we had pretty nearly a complete stenographic
record of what was said in that conference.
HESS: Do you think General MacArthur knew that she was there?
MURPHY: No. He did not. None of us knew that she was there. None of us
knew that she was taking notes. But on the way home General Bradley took
charge of an operation of preparing a report on the conference, which
I suppose was a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Well, at this point
we found out that his girl had taken these shorthand notes and so we,
I suppose General Bradley made the decision to type them up. We knew exactly
what went on and we might as well use them. And those shorthand notes
were the basis for, I suppose, the most of that report. Now this report
was classified "Top Secret" but there began to come out some
reports later on when things were not going so well about how that conference
went that were quite inaccurate and at a wide variance with the facts.
Well, also a little later than that, the text of this report that was
then prepared was leaked to the New York Times.
HESS: Anthony Leviero.
MURPHY: Yes. And was published in full in the New York Times.
MURPHY: And so then there got to be sort of a question of memory, of
accuracy--memory more than accuracy. At this point, I think it was, it
came out that this actually was a transcript of what General MacArthur
had said and then, bless me, instead of saying General MacArthur is a
liar, we all caught hell because we had treated the General badly, taking
down what he said. Well, we did come back.
One other little thing about that trip, I was here after the President
left. I was here for a day and some word came to me that some young Army
officer had just come back from a tour as General MacArthur’s personal
aide and said that if President Truman would like to do something that
would please General MacArthur personally, the thing to do was to take
him some Bluin’s candy for Mrs. MacArthur. Mrs. MacArthur was out there
in the Far East and she was very fond of this candy that’s made in San
Francisco. I didn’t know whether the President wanted to do this or not
but I thought I’d do the best I could in making preparations, so I sent
someone downtown in Washington to try to get a five pound box of Blum’s
candy. They couldn’t find a five-pound box but they came back with five
one pound boxes wrapped into a very neat package. So I took them on the
plane and I got to Hawaii, I guess, and before I got to Hawaii I was telling
this to Averell Harriman. Well, Averell says, "This is a good idea
but we really ought to have a five pound box." So, when we got into
Honolulu he sent somebody downtown and he bought a five-pound box of Blum’s
candy. And then I told President Truman about this and so I said, "So
you want to give this to General MacArthur?"
"Hmmm, well, I guess so."
So, before we departed, I went and got this five-pound box of candy and
stuck it in the President’s hand and he gave it to General MacArthur.
HESS: What was President Truman’s attitude in November of 1950 when the
Chinese Communists did cross the Yalu River? In October the General had
told him what the Chinese would not enter and the following month in November
the Chinese did. Just what was President Truman’s attitude?
MURPHY: In the first place, I was not intimately acquainted with all
that went on at the time and in the second place, why, it’s been so long
ago I might not remember precisely as much as I knew at that time and
I could not separate out these different periods. But in my mind this
whole thing is tied up with General MacArthur’s not following his orders
and my recollection, I guess, is that he was ordered to stop at a line
south of the Yalu and he did not stop. He crossed the line and after he
crossed the line, the Chinese crossed the Yalu and so there would be some
basis for thinking that he provoked this Chinese attack. Now, it’s been
a long time ago and so I wouldn’t rely on my recollection very much but
this is certainly in my mind that he just plain did not follow orders
and I am right much clearer in my recollection that the reason the President
removed him from his command eventually was that the President was convinced,
and also General Marshall and General Bradley were convinced, that MacArthur
had disobeyed orders, just plain disobeyed military orders. They just
didn’t think that was the way to run an army, even General MacArthur.
This is all associated with the Chinese crossing the Yalu. But you’ll
have to go to some other source than me to get this one really straightened
out.
HESS: We’ve got a little tape left but it’s 4:30. Do you want to knock
off for the day?
MURPHY: We’d better.
HESS: All right, that’s fine.
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