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Establishing a Position: July 15-18, 1950 |
 President Truman decides on the scope of defense mobilization. White House aids begin drafting legislation, a message to Congress and a radio address to the nation. President Syngman Rhee transfers control of the South Korean military forces to the United Nations Command for the duration of the war. The American Kum River line collapses.
It was a piecemeal commitment [of American troops], because that was the only way we could commit them. We had to take them out of [the occupying force] in Japan. The units were understrength, and we had to send them in as we could get those units ready and get them over to Korea.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley
There were numerous meetings during this week among representatives of the White House, NSRB [National Security Resources Board], [Bureau of the] Budget, and CEA [Council of Economic Advisors] on necessary legislation. The NSRB 20-title Bill during these days was rejected and by Saturday, July 15, the President's approval was given to a sharply curtailed Emergency Powers Bill, the various provisions of which were to be outlined in the President's message [to Congress] on July 19. Leaders in the fight to whittle down the NSRB draft Bill to size and to ask for limited mobilization rather than all-out mobilization, were [Special Assistant to the President W.] Aver[e]ll Harriman and [Chairman of the CEA Leon] Keyserling. Both were profoundly concerned that the country and Congress were not ready for an all-out mobilization Bill, and that it would be mistake to ask for sweeping powers--even if the President declared that he wanted them only on a standby basis. The President gave his final verdict on this subject at a meeting with [NSRB Chair Stuart] Symington on Saturday morning, July 15 . . . .
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
I said, "First of all, we are told correctly, 'This isn't just an engagement; this is a long, cold war. If we're going to have a long, cold war, we've got to build our mobilization base. We've got to expand production enough to support a defense burden of great duration and size, even while we do not too heavily penalize the American consumer in the long run.'" . . . I said, "Aside from that, you are not going to be able to maintain the support of the American people for an enduring distant war in which they are not really involved, if you penalize them too severely. When they read the casualty lists, if they are being excessively penalized, not because this is essential to fight the war, but because we are not calling forth what I called, 'The great non-secret weapon of the economy: its ability to expand . . . .'" So, we had the battle, and my side under my leadership completely won that battle, and we undertook a great expansion program.
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Leon Keyserling
[National Security Resources Board Chairman Stuart] Symington . . . was one of those who thought we should go to total mobilization, and the decision was, of course, to go into very much a heavier [defense] program [than that prior to the Korean War] but still maintain it on the basis of a partial mobilization. . . .
Special Assistant to the President W. Averell Harriman
During this period from July 10 to July 15, [Secretary of State Dean] Acheson had continued his daily pressure for a public pronouncement by the President--despite the fact that no one knew, until the end of this period, what kind of legislation would be required, and how much money the President would have to request by way of supplementary appropriations for the military departments. . . . As to the appropriations, no one was able to extract from the Defense Department an estimate of what was needed. [General Douglas] MacArthur sent in several telegrams, each asking for more than the previous one. It was thought at first that the President should ask for the money needed to meet the Korean crisis alone; as the days past [sic], and as the world situation looked more ominous, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and hence [Secretary of Defense Louis] Johnson came to the conclusion that the President should ask for money to build up our military strength generally . . . . (in this connection, it should be noted that the early drafts of the President's Message contained a blank rather than a specific amount of money; this was not due to security but to ignorance on everyone's part as to how much would be requested). There was a . . . [planning] meeting in [Special Counsel to the President Charles] Murphy's office on Saturday morning, July 15 . . . . It was agreed at this session that [Administrative Assistant to the President Stephen] Spingarn and [National Security Resources Board General Counsel Charles] Kendall should immediately draft a[n emergency powers] bill to carry out the decisions the President had made . . . and that Murphy and company would begin drafting the Message to Congress with [Assistant Secretary of Defense Marx] Leva as liaison for [the Department of] Defense and [Marshall] Shulman as liaison for State. Murphy and [Administrative Assistant to the President George] Elsey wanted a long message--which would be too long for delivery [in a speech] to Congress, and we wanted a Fireside Chat [to the public]. H.S.T. [President Truman] was sold on this. . . . On Saturday afternoon, July 15, [Administrative Assistant to the President David] Bell, Shulman and I assembled in the Cabinet Room and discussed at length the contents of the Message. I stated dissatisfaction with the drafts [by Shulman, Leva and Bell] before us and drew up a new outline on how I thought the Message should be arranged. After much argument, that outline was accepted and we began to write what was known as "Draft-7/15/50". . . . and . . . completed at 4:15 A.M., on Sunday, July 16.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
President Truman's speeches, messages, and the like were written not by “writers,” but by lawyers and economists and public administration specialists who had picked up skills along the way as generalists in government. This did not bring the highest literary quality to Truman's public papers, but it certainly meant a sensitive awareness of their potential as vehicles for making or influencing policy.
Special Assistant in the White House Richard Neustadt
There is nothing very orderly about how we . . . prepared our presidential speeches. Sometimes I would have the assignment to draft a speech from the first word. Other times I would find myself editing material that had come over from the State Department or one of the other departments. Sometimes I would be involved at a second or third draft stage of a speech that had been developed by another member of the White House staff. . . . After the Korean war broke out and matters of foreign policy became even more critical and sensitive, and we had to be especially concerned with the implications of sentences and even words, at times we, if we didn't have a representative from State on hand, we certainly made sure that State had a crack at every draft of a statement having foreign policy implications. Toward the close of the Truman administration, we became so well-acquainted with Marshall D. Shulman, a young assistant to [Secretary of State] Dean Acheson, that we tended to regard Marshall almost as a member of the White House staff, although, of course, he was not, and Marshall attended a number of speech conference sessions in the latter part of the Truman administration.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
In any event, I was asked to produce a bill, and there was also a message [to Congress] of course. Now, a different team worked on the message . . . but I was in charge of drafting the bill that would accompany the message. I remember that this was done over a very short period of time, very short, as I recollect about five days and over a weekend too, and the five days included Saturday and Sunday. It is just a blur to me now, but we were working night and day for five days, and so many agencies were involved, there were different titles on this thing to promote defense production. . . . We had little sub-task forces stashed around the whole building so that the people involved could talk on different problems. There would be one here, one down the hall, one on the next floor, they were all over the building . . . and I was sitting there and I was feeling very important, I’ll tell you that, because Cabinet officers were calling on me--I mean [Secretary of Agriculture] Charlie Brannan came over to see me, and I think [Secretary of Labor Maurice] Tobin came over to see me, because everybody had a major interest in that bill obviously, it was the most important bill before Government at that time, and tremendous decisions had to be made on what was going into that bill, and what was not going into it, and how it was going to end up. And, of course, the very big decisions were all checked to the President, but there are an awful lot of intermediate and minor decision that you can’t bother the President with, somebody has to decide them at that point, and it had to be done so damn fast.
Administrative Assistant to the President Stephen Spingarn
[The speechwriters] reassembled in the Cabinet Room at 11 A.M. on Sunday the 16th and turned out what we called the "Fourth Draft" [of the Message to Congress] fairly hastily so that we could get a copy into [Secretary of State Dean] Acheson's hands that afternoon. . . . [Assistant Defense Secretary] Marx Leva had joined us Sunday morning and this "Fourth Draft" was produced by [Administrative Assistant David] Bell, Leva, [Marshall] Shulman, and [Administrative Assistant George] Elsey. These were circulated to Acheson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Leva, and to [Special Assistant W.] Aver[e]ll Harriman. [Special Counsel Charles] Murphy arrived from Chesapeake Bay about 3 P.M., and took a copy across the street to the President (this was the 1st copy the P[resident] saw) . . . and sent copies to Secretary of Commerce [Charles] Sawyer, and Secretary of the Treasury [John] Snyder. Sunday evening, July 16, after having received detailed comments of [the Department of] State via Shulman, we reassembled in the Cabinet Room to begin work on the "Fifth Draft." We finished the "Fifth Draft" at 1:30 A.M. . . . Copies of the "Fifth Draft" were circulated to the same group as before, to all Members of the Cabinet, and to the President.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
To the office and at 11 o'clock to the staff conference. It was settled then that the President would send his message to Congress on the Korean situation at noon Wednesday and that he will speak over the radio that night. Later the time of the broadcast was set for 10:30 p.m., with the four major networks carrying the address.
Assistant Press Secretary Eben Ayers
On Monday afternoon, July 17, 1950, after we had re-read the fifth draft of the Message to Congress, [Special Counsel] Charles Murphy and I retired to the Cabinet Room to begin drafting the President's radio address. We left . . . [Administrative Assistant David] Bell in charge of [composing the sixth draft] of the Message [containing the changes suggested by the many people to whom it had been circulated], and Mr. Murphy and I began from scratch. During the late afternoon, and again in the early evening, we wrote out in longhand a first draft of the speech. We relied upon the fifth draft of the message as our "source material," although we had to refer to it very little because the entire subject was so familiar. Mr. Murphy and I did not discuss the speech at all; we simply sat down and started to write. We had no discussion on the nature of the speech, or the style, or its relationship to the Message. We worked on the unspoken assumptions that (a) the speech should not be more than twenty minutes in length; (b) the style should be very much simpler than the message to Congress; (c) not only should the language be simpler, but there should also be some homely touches, such as an appeal against hoarding. Murphy and I wrote different portions of the speech in longhand, occasionally asking each other what he was doing and tossing our longhand scratches back and forth across the Cabinet table to keep each other informed. Our sections of the speech seemed to dovetail rather well although this was by accident rather than by prearranged design. The first draft was completed about 11 P.M., after numerous interruptions, and we sent it to the Staff Room.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
On Tuesday, July 18, [Special Counsel] Charlie [Murphy] and I met again in the Cabinet Room and turned out the second draft [of the President's radio message to the nation]. Before starting it we had read the sixth draft of the Message [to Congress] . . . to see if there were any policy shifts that we should take into account in writing the speech. A major additon of the second draft was the insertion of the "Collins Report." This resulted from a conversation I had with [Assistant Defense Secretary] Marx Leva on Sunday. I told Marx I thought it would be a good idea if we could obtain a short message from [General Douglas] MacArthur on the war situation for use in the President's speech. This should be primarily a public relations gesture, and it would help to add variety and interest to the speech. Marx agreed, but he said that it would be very difficult to get the right kind of message from MacArthur. I then suggested we have [U.S. Army Chief of Staff] General [J. Lawton] Collins report to the President on his inspection trip to Japan and Korea. If a draft of General Collin's report were sent to us first, we could work it over, edit it if it seemed necessary, and then General Collins could send it over officially. Leva agreed that this was worthwhile . . . . On Tuesday morning I edited Collins' report and Charlie and I inserted a portion of it in the second draft [of the President's radio address].
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
The speechwriters [Administrative Assistant David Bell, with the assistance of Assistant Defense Secretary Marx Leva and Marshall Shulman of the Department of State] were busy on the [seventh draft of the] message [to Congress] through the day and the President said he would meet with the staff at 7:30 to complete work on it. . . . About 6:30 went with [Press Secretary] Charlie Ross to the National Press Club for dinner and then hurried back at 7:30. The President, we found, had put the time of the message session over until 8 o'clock. At that time he came to the Cabinet room. The others there were [Special Counsel] Charlie Murphy, David Bell, [Administrative Assistant] Stephen Spingarn, [Special Assistant W.] Averell Harriman, [The Special Assistant to the President] John Steelman and myself. Fred Lawton, budget director and an assistant were there at the beginning to discuss the amount to be recommended for armed forces needs--the amount was set at about ten billion dollars [almost doubling the existing defense budget]--and then they left. . . . We went through the message, the President reading it page by page, and then any suggestion by those present were considered and discussed and, if generally approved and OKd by the President, were followed. Most of these were matter of phraseology, grammar, etc., although there were some points which were gone into at length and some changes in text were made as a result. It was after 11 p.m. when we finished. Averell Harriman went into Ross's office for a drink and I joined them. We stayed until nearly 12:30 . . . . Some of the staff, working on the radio address, . . . continued afterward well into the night and Spingarn also worked until late, drafting the proposed legislation which will be introduced to implement the President's message.
Assistant Press Secretary Eben Ayers
Tuesday afternoon at about 5 o'clock, I gave copies of the newly-typed second draft [of the President's radio address for the following day] to [Assistant Defense Secretary] Marx Leva and [State Department representative] Marshall Shulman. Immediately after dinner the three of us assembled in the Fish Room [of the White House] and began to turn out the third draft. This was a laborious process because they had many ideas on the subject, most of which required talking out at length and many of which I was forced to reject. Shulman, especially, expressed surprise in finding that the speech was going to parallel so closely the Message to Congress. I explained that this was our purpose but I was forced to admit that we had not talked the matter over with the President and that this was [Special Counsel Charles] Murphy's and my interpretation of what was needed, and not what we had been told to do. At about 10:30 P.M., Murphy and [Administrative Assistant David] Bell joined us after having frozen the Message to Congress with the President. Their arrival only served to slow down the work on the Third Draft and we did not finish it until 3:15 A.M., Wednesday morning.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
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