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Establishing a Position: July 19-21, 1950 |
 President Truman sends the Message to Congress and addresses the nation on the situation in Korea. Disaster at Taejon.
I have been considering the steps which are now necessary to make the National Security Council [NSC] of maximum value in advising me as to the major policies required in the interest of our national security as a result of the present international situation. It is my desire that all such policies should be recommended to me through the Council in order that I may readily have the benefit of the collective views of the officials of the Government primarily concerned with the national security. This result can be achieved only if there are frequent Council meetings at which the responsible officials may freely discuss specific recommendations on which there has previously been coordinated staff work. Attendance at recent meetings of the Council has been so large that I feel it has discouraged free discussion. I therefore direct that the Council meet regularly every Thursday with the Secretary of State presiding in my absence and additional attendance confined to the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. [W. Averell] Harriman [Special Assistant to the President], Mr. [Sydney] Souers [to the President], the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Executive Secretary of the Council. Participation by other officials will be only with my specific approval. To be effective, these meetings should be preceded by carefully coordinated staff work by the best qualified individuals who can be made available for this task. . . .
President Harry S. Truman
Copies of the Third Draft [of that evening's planned radio address by the President] were sent to Defense ([Assistant Secretary of Defense Marx] Leva), State ([Marshall] Shulman, Budget ([Director Fred] Lawton), Council of Economic Advisors ([Chairman Leon] Keyserling), National Security Council ([Executive Secretary James] Lay), and [Special Assistant to the President W.] Aver[e]ll Harriman, for comments, with the request that all comments be in hand by 1 p.m. . . . About 12 noon, Shulman and Leva arrived with numerous suggestions and comments from their respective Departments. All were minor word changes. Because time did not permit us to work with them, we asked them to give us their suggestions briefly and we shooed them away. What few comments there were by others were phoned to us. [Special Counsel to the President Charles] Murphy, [Administrative Assistant to the President David] Bell and I finished the Fourth Draft about 3:45 and at 4:00 we met with the President in the Cabinet Room to go over it.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
The President rarely was in a speech conference until we were very, very close to the end. This didn't mean that he wasn't aware of what was going on, but the President's time is limited and incredibly valuable. You can't waste his time with four or five or more people sitting around the table going through early drafts of speeches. He doesn't have the time, he can't be imposed upon to that extent. . . . The President would not sit at the Cabinet table with those that worked on the speech until . . . just about the very final draft. Then it was his practice to read it aloud so that he would get the feel and the flavor of it and so that we could, in hearing him read it, detect perhaps awkward phraseology or overlong sentences or even words that just didn't sound right coming out of Harry Truman's mouth. Sometimes he would stop and say, "We have to do something about that." Sometimes some of us around the table would simply check in the margin and do something about it after the President had left the room, or if we felt it needed discussion, interrupt him right at that point and propose that the paragraph be recast, the sentences shortened, the words changed, or what have you. But when the President was in attendance at what we would call a speech conference, it was the content of the message, the length of the message, the ideas in the message were already [usually] so far along and he had had his chances through seeing drafts of one or two stages earlier to get his own substantive comments in. These speech conferences tended to be dress rehearsals for the final delivery rather than substantive conferences on the subject matter. . . . The President himself always had the final word in editing.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
Those present in the Cabinet Room included [Special Assistant W. Averell] Harriman, [Press Secretary to the President Charles] Ross, [The Assistant to the President John] Steelman, [Special Counsel Charles] Murphy, [Administrative Assistant David] Bell and [Administrative Assistant to the President George] Elsey. Murphy thought it would be well to have [State's speechwriter Marshall] Shulman and [Assistant Defense Secretary Marx] Leva on hand, and they were called about 4:40. We completed the review of the Message with the President shortly after 5 o'clock. This was the one and only draft that the President saw and he did not even read it through prior to our freezing session. He simply read it page by page, pausing at the end of each page for staff suggestions, comments and corrections. His comment at the end was "That's a darn good speech." That was a matter of courtesy only, because he really had no way of knowing whether it was good or not due to the manner in which he read it. Several additions were made at this Cabinet Room session. . . . The most interesting and dramatic insert occured just as we were finally freezing the speech with the President. Captain Dudley brought a message from General [Douglas] MacArthur to the Cabinet Room. I had not given up the idea of getting something from MacArthur into the speech and at 9 o'clock Wednesday morning I had sent a summary of the President's Message to Congress to General MacArthur over the White House Signal Center facilities, after obtaining the President's approval. The message arrived from MacArthur about 5 o'clock, scarcely eight hours after I sent the outgoing message to him, which was an example of speedy communication. The President was impressed by this, and he agreed that quoting MacArthur would be valuable. After some discussion, we selected the final paragraph of MacArthur's report and the President decided to insert that in his speech. This was done. Had MacArthur's message arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, it would not have appeared in the speech.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
To the office before 9 a.m., and found the message [to Congress] completed and ready for distribution to the press. [Press Secretary Charles] Ross called in the newsmen about 9 a.m., and we gave out copies and Ross gave a briefing on the high spots. There was a big crowd of newspaper and radio correspondents present. . . . Late in the afternoon work was completed on the [President's] speech [to the nation] . . . and I gave it out to the press about 7 p.m. . . . Back to the office about 9 p.m. . . . and about 10 p.m. we went to the projection room, from which the President was to deliver his radio talk. There was a considerable crowd there and others came, among them several members of the cabinet--Secretaries [Dean] Acheson [of the Department of State], [John] Snyder [of Treasury], [Charles] Sawyer of Commerce, [Maurice] Tobin of Labor, [Oscar] Chapman of Interior, Postmaster General [Jesse] Donaldson, Attorney General [J. Howard] McGrath. [Special Assistant W.] Averell Harriman and Stuart Symington, chairman of the National Security Resources Board and others with some of the wives, also were there. The President came in about 10:15. Charlie Ross and I talked with him while waiting for the time of the broadcast, 10:30. All of the four major networks carried the speech and it was carried by television with all of the television networks handling it. It was handled by one of them and only two cameras were used. The still photographers also were permitted to take pictures. The President was in good condition and did an excellent job on the whole. After he finished he was congratulated and shook hands with the cabinet members and others. Then we went to the conference room in the East Wing where the newsreel photographers made shots and excerpts from the address.
Assistant Press Secretary Eben Ayers
Thank you so much Mr. President for your thoughtfulness in sending me an advance synopsis of your message (WH 498) to Congress. It was a great state paper. . . . I am proud and honored to serve under your leadership at so vital a moment. That God will preserve and protect you in your monumental task is the fervent prayer of every member of this command.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
The policies which we wrote into the Message [to Congress of July 19, 1950] insofar as Korea, Formosa, and other parts of the Far East were concerned stemmed directly from the White House press releases of June 26 - July 8. Whenever possible, we used the exact phraseology which appeared in these releases. The rest of our foreign policy came from the draft [of about July 1] prepared by [speechwriter] Marshall Shulman and from State Department replies to our questions. Insofar as the policies expressed in the Message on domestic matters, [Special Counsel Charles] Murphy, [Administrative Assistant David] Bell and I wrote them down on the basis of our understanding of the meeting held on Saturday, July 15. We tried to keep a balance between the all out view [in favor of massive economic mobilization] of Stuart Symington [Chairman of the National Security Resources Board] and the much narrower approach of [Council of Economic Advisors Chair] Leon Keyserling . Since [Adminstrative Assistant to the President] Steve Spingarn was preparing the draft [emergency powers] legislation, and was in close touch with all agencies, we took our policy guidance from Steve after we had written the first draft.
Administrative Assistant to the President George Elsey
I got this from [Administrative Assistant] Steve Spingarn, for whom I was working. . . . It was the question of direct controls; whether in the message [to Congress] that went up in July . . . after the start of the Korean War; whether price and wage control should be included. The decision was not to include. It was always understood that that had two aspects . . . . One aspect was that the Speaker [of the House, Sam Rayburn,] said controls would be very controversial . . . . And the second was Mr. Truman was anxious not to indicate in any way that this was like World War II. This was a police action; this wasn’t the start of World War III. . . .
Special Assistant in the White House Richard Neustadt
I am very glad that you have proposed measures that correspond to the magnitude of the danger. On the basis of talks which I had yesterday with some of the leading Republicans, I feel confident that, subject to scrutiny of detail, your proposal will have Republican support.
Special Consultant to the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
The first thing this morning two of the staff members came in to see me to voice their concern at the fact that [in the President's Message to Congress and speech to the nation of July 19, 1950] we were not making clear our determination to stop at the 38th Parallel in Korea. They were afraid that our reticence on this point might lead to misunderstandings on the Soviet side and cause the Kremlin to commit Soviet forces unnecessarily, in ways which might interfere with an eventual settlement. I spoke of this at the [daily morning meeting [held by Secretary of State Dean Acheson on July 21] . . . and said that I thought the question deserved careful attention. I said that we must remember that what we were doing in Korea was, although for good political reason, nevertheless, an unsound thing, and that the further we advance up the peninsula the more unsound it would become from the military standpoint. If we were actually to advance beyond the neck of the peninsula, we would be getting into an area where mass could be sued against us and where we would be distinctly at a disadvantage. This, I thought, increased the importance of a clear concept of our being able to terminate our action at the proper point, and it was desirable that we should make sure we did not frighten the Russians into action which would interfere with this.
George Kennan
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