James I. Loeb Oral History Interview, June 27, 1970

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened September, 1971
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: All right, Mr. Loeb, we were discussing some of the duties that you had on the White House staff. What were some of the other assignments that came your way?

LOEB: You mean besides the assistance in the preparation of these reports from various departments?

HESS: Yes sir.

LOEB: As I think I mentioned, after we got the department started working on these reports, there was a lull, an inevitable lull in my activity because we had to give them at least a month in order to present even drafts of reports, and it was during this period that I began getting a few very odd political assignments. I can mention just a couple of them to indicate the kind of

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thing I was asked to do, and this came from the fact, and I say this without any particular arrogance, that I had been, because of my relationship with ADA, and the Union for Democratic Action before it, some ten years traveling around the country and I had political contacts in a good many states. For example, Mr. Murphy, Charlie Murphy, called me in one day and said they had a problem that had to do with Blair Moody, the Senator who had been named, appointed, by "Soapy" Williams, Governor [G. Mennen] Williams of Michigan, after Senator [Arthur H.] Vandenberg died. And a group of people, including I believe, the Michigan National Committeeman, I believe his name was [John Richard] Franco, had come in to say that Blair Moody had been divorced by his wife on the grounds of adultery, and that when this became known in Michigan it would mean that he would be defeated for

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re-election and that the entire Democratic ticket would go down in Michigan, including the Governor, because they had two year terms at that time. Charlie Murphy just wanted somebody to look into it.

Well, I looked into it by going to the court records and found that in effect the charge was accurate, Senator Moody had been divorced on the grounds of adultery. He eventually married the girl, and was married to her when he died. But it also appeared to me, since I knew a little bit about Michigan politics, that there was a real factionalism in Michigan. On the one hand there was Governor Williams, and Walter Reuther and the whole UAW crowd, and on the other hand there were the old line Democrats of whom the National Committeeman, Mr. Franco, was one. And it seemed to me that this was the kind of issue that could not possibly

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be used successfully against any candidate, and so while I reported that the charge was true, I also suggested that the responsibility of the White House was merely to inform Governor Williams that this charge was being made and had been brought to the White House and let him follow whatever strategy he wanted to follow on the basis of this knowledge, and as a matter of fact, that's what happened. We called, Charlie called in Bill Batt, William Batt, Jr., who was working in the Government at that time, and who was a friend of Governor Williams and we had lunch with him. After lunch we went up to the office and we simply told him and that was the end of that. That was one episode.

One very interesting episode, which increased my stature in the White House quite accidentally, and is kind of symptomatic of the kind of chore that I was given, one day Charlie called me in

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and said, "Do you know anything about New Hampshire politics?"

I said, "Not a thing!" I said, "I went to college in New Hampshire at Dartmouth, but I don't know anything about the politics of the state."

He said, "Do you know anybody that could tell you about it? Could you find out?"

I said, "Well, I can try." And I thought of one friend who had been the executive director of President Truman's Civil Rights Commission and who was a classmate of mine. Only just very recently he resigned as president of Oberlin College in Ohio, but he was still in the Political Science Department at Dartmouth at this time, that's Bob [Robert Kenneth] Carr.

So Charlie said, "Well, see if you could find out through him."

So I called Bob Carr and of course, when

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you telephone anybody from the White House, even if you're in a very menial position, as I certainly was, you have to be very careful because it sounds very overwhelming...

HESS: Very authoritative.

LOEB: Very authoritative, someone calling from the White House, it could be the janitor, it could be the President, but still it's the White House. So I explained to Bob Carr that this was very confidential, but I had been asked to find out something about the politics of New Hampshire.

The problem was this: There was a national committeeman by the name of Kelly, and Mr. Kelly was urging President Truman to allow his name to be used in the New Hampshire primary. The law in New Hampshire differs from every other law, in that anybody can be entered in the primary, and that person then has to write a

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letter to the Secretary of State of New Hampshire, saying, "Yes," or "No." And there was some doubt, Mr. [Frank E.] McKinney, the National Chairman, thought this was a good idea, but some doubt had been raised about it. I asked Bob Carr if he could find out whether the Democrats thought it was a good idea.

It so happened that the head of the Political Science Department at Dartmouth was a chairman of the Democratic Party and evidently in competition with the national committeeman, and Bob Carr asked him -- the chairman of the Political Science Department and chairman of the party -- and he asked a few other people, and in about forty-eight hours he (Carr), called me back and said, "Jim, everybody that I have consulted tells me that it would be disastrous if President Truman allowed his name to be used," that this was a factional fight and that Mr. Kelly wanted to

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use Mr. Truman's name in order to win the factional fight in New Hampshire, and that it was clear that the President should withdraw his name.

I reported this to Charlie Murphy. He said, "Fine, that's just what we wanted to know. Would you draft a letter for the President to the Secretary of State of New Hampshire?"

And I said, "Sure," and I drafted a letter and Charlie approved it and put it on the President's desk. It so happened that just before the President was going to sign it, Mr. Sullivan, the former -- who had been Secretary of the Navy.

HESS: John L.

LOEB: John L. Sullivan, who was later, and may still be if he is still alive, a trustee at Dartmouth.

HESS: He's still alive. He lives in Washington, but there's a...

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LOEB: Well, he was for quite a while, I know, a trustee at Dartmouth, and he was from New Hampshire, and he had gone in and convinced the President the other way. So they took my letter and used my letter, except the last paragraph, and where it said, "No," they turned it around and said, "Yes," in effect, so the President allowed his name to be used in this New Hampshire primary.

Well, everyone knows what happened. Estes Kefauver clobbered President Truman, and this is really what made Estes Kefauver, who was never, until that point, considered a serious contender for anything, outside of Tennessee.

And so my prestige went up because I was the person who advised the President not to do it, although it wasn't on the basis of any information that I had myself, just through Bob Carr. Interestingly...

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HESS: Do you know what advice Charles Murphy gave the President on that same matter?

LOEB: Charlie had at least submitted my letter, and he said, "Well, you're probably right," and I don't think he intervened personally. I think he just took what I had found out. But Mr. Sullivan convinced Truman the other way.

I thought about this episode. This was in 1952 and I thought about it in 1968 and Gene [Eugene J.] McCarthy was involved there. While Gene McCarthy's victory was considered a great victory, it wasn't anywhere near as much of a victory as Estes Kefauver had in 1952, since Harry Truman's name was on the ballot, as [Lyndon Baines] Johnson's was not, and Kefauver won a clear victory, as Gene McCarthy didn't. These things are all relative. But that's the kind of chore that I was being given, asked about various states and what the

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President should do, and this, that, and the other thing. And that led me into the major episode in my experience on the White House staff and the most exciting, and that had to do with Adlai Stevenson. I would like to say something about that.

I should preface it by saying that I once, some years ago, thought about writing a book, and I wrote a number of chapters. I don't think I'll ever finish the book. The whole Stevenson episode is down in that book that I have written. I now have lent that part of it to John Bartlow Martin who is writing a definitive biography of Adlai Stevenson.

I should say that before I left the ADA, we were naturally thinking, anybody political was thinking about the coming election. No one knew whether President Truman was going to run again. He was eligible to run. The

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thinking was he probably wouldn't, and the general feeling was that he probably would name the Chief Justice of the United States, Justice [Fred H.] Vinson. Many of us thought that Justice Vinson would make a fine President and make a very poor candidate. We felt that he wasn't as -- didn't have the charisma to be a candidate, so we were looking around. In those days what you did was you went down the list of Governors mostly, and some Senators. Parenthetically, and I won't take much time to go into this philosophically, more than philosophical, point, but it is interesting that now you very seldom consider Governors, and more recently all the presidential candidates have had senatorial backgrounds. This never was true before, because the Governors have clearly lost status, but we always looked around in those days, and frankly, there didn't seem to be anybody. And I thought about the Governor

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of Illinois. I had met him once or twice, I had heard him speak once, I think, very effectively.

HESS: When did you first meet him?

LOEB: Oh, I met him for the first time, at the meeting we held, a meeting for the Middle States shortly after the ADA was formed. I would say it would be around April of 1947. Adlai Stevenson came to that meeting. He never actually was a member of ADA, but he came to this meeting and stayed briefly. And I met him at that time, but I did not know him. But I was thinking about him, and frankly I couldn't think of anybody else that seemed likely. There was talk about Paul Douglas, but Paul Douglas wanted no part of it. He said you had to be able to make decisions and he had a tough enough time making decisions as a Senator,

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he didn't want any part of it. I think if Chester Bowles had been re-elected in 1950 he might have been a candidate, but he'd been defeated, and there seemed very few eligibles. I thought about Adlai Stevenson, and I remembered that my friend Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. had spent a weekend with him. So I called Arthur and I asked him what he was thinking. And he said, well, he was enormously impressed but that had been the first time he had met him, had spent the weekend with him, but that the person I really ought to call would be George Ball, who had been Stevenson's law partner in Chicago.

So I called George Ball and he was in Paris at the time, in connection with his practice. Much of his practice was in...I think he represented the French Patronat, which

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is like the French Chamber of Commerce in business and he was in Paris. By the time he came back, I was already working for Mr. Murphy on the White House staff, and obviously I couldn't go to see anybody. But I had planted the seed with Murphy, in some of these bull sessions, about Adlai Stevenson and talked to David Lloyd who had known him, and there began to be some talk about it. I'm not going to suggest for a minute that President Truman never thought about Stevenson until somehow I got the word around.

HESS: What seemed to be President Truman's attitude, or opinion of Governor Stevenson at that particular time?

LOEB: I have no idea, I had no contact with the President directly, but I must tell you what

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his attitude must have been by reflection with Charlie, because finally since I couldn't go see George Ball I did get Vi, Violet Gunther, who was then -- she was the executive secretary of ADA at that time and a very sharp person politically. And I suggested to Vi that she go see George Ball and just tell him that I had tried to see him before I went to work on the White House staff and that obviously I couldn't see him at the present time, but she might go and discuss what he thought about his former law partner as a possible candidate.

She went to see him and George got all excited. He had never thought of it before; it had never dawned on him. He thought it was a great idea and he wanted to see me. Well, I went to Charlie Murphy and I said, "Charlie, there's a fellow by the name of George Ball who's a lawyer in town, and he'd like to see me about a political

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matter and I don't think I should go see him unless you think I should."

And Charlie in his nice slow southern way said, "Well, what's he want to see you about?"

"Well, you know, he was Adlai Stevenson's law partner and you know we've talked a little bit about Stevenson."

Charlie said, "When does he want to see you?"

I think this must have been on a Wednesday or something like that. "Well," I said, "he suggested next Monday."

And Charlie said, "What are you doing between now and Monday?"

"Well," I said, "I'm not doing anything."

He said, "Well, you had better get over and see him as fast as you can see him."

And this was an indication to me that he had talked to Mr. Truman about it and Mr. Truman was more than interested at that point.

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So, I went to see George at his home, George Ball, and he was all excited and he was ready to start. And this was really the beginning of the thing.

There was another episode. At one time -- oh, it was -- back at this meeting I mentioned before when Bill Batt and Charlie and I talked about [Senator] Blair Moody, suddenly Charlie asked me, "Do you know who the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois is?"

And I said, "Charlie, I haven't the slightest idea."

He said, "Could you find out who he is and something about him?"

I said, "Yes I can, but why?"

"Well, we think we've got a job for Governor Stevenson down here that might lead someplace, and wondered who the Lieutenant Governor was."

And I said, "Charlie, what do you mean,

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that he should resign as Governor of Illinois.

And Charlie said, "Well, Howard McGrath resigned as Governor of Rhode Island."

I said, "Excuse me for being chauvinist because I came from Illinois, but Illinois isn't quite the same as Rhode Island. I mean it's almost impossible to resign as Governor."

It is clear that they were thinking of asking Adlai Stevenson to come down as Attorney General, thinking that that might lead someplace.

So, I found all about the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, largely through my very intimate friend Frank McCullouch who was then Senator Douglas' administrative assistant, and until recently -- or maybe he still is -- Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. A wonderful fellow who was from Evanston and knew all about it and I got a whole briefing. I can't remember the man's name, that's all in the files there. But this indicated to me also that the President was interested.

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And so we -- a number of us -- formed a kind of a little group, and I would say that the group consisted of Dave Lloyd, from time to time -- although he wasn't terribly active in it, but he was the one member of the staff who knew Stevenson better than I did certainly, than anybody else on the staff because he had been on Stevenson's staff when Stevenson was appointed directly after the war to go to Italy on a mission to make recommendations on the reconstruction of Italy after the war, and David Lloyd's advice was very helpful.

There was George Ball, who hired the girl who had worked for me in ADA by the name of Elizabeth Donahue, who worked on the whole Stevenson question for him, handled leaks to the press and so on and so forth. There was Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Joseph Rauh and Vi Gunther and Vi Gunther's brother-in-law who had

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married her twin sister in Oregon who was Monroe Sweetland, the Democratic National Committeeman of Oregon, and whom we used very carefully in sending around to the various Democratic meetings to make soundings in the course of the next few months.

We heard that Governor Stevenson was coming to Washington. There had been a mine disaster in Illinois and he was coming to see John L. Lewis and Oscar Chapman, the Secretary of the Interior. And we, through George Ball, and -- well, mainly through George Ball, we wanted to see him. Adlai was very cautious and a strange sort of a fellow as it developed. It came back through George Ball that Stevenson said, "I don't want to bother the President. I don't have anything to see him about."

And we kept going back to him and saying, "Well, look you have to see the President."

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The President got a little bit angry about this and said, "After all, I am a Democratic President and he is a Democratic Governor and if he comes to Washington he should come and see me. He has never come in to see me." Eventually Charlie [Murphy] said the President said if he doesn't come, he's going to embarrass him by having somebody ask a question at a press conference about why Governor Stevenson didn't come in.

Anyway, Governor Stevenson was in New York where he made a very good impression with a speech at the Urban League. He stayed with his sister-in-law in New York -- Ellen Borden Stevenson's sister -- by this time he was divorced. This is a factor that will come to have some importance later. Then he came down to Washington and he finally did go to meet the President

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at Blair House. Then he came and had lunch with Charlie Murphy and myself at George Ball's house and told us about it, and he said that the President had, in effect, offered him the nomination and he had said he didn't think he could do it because of personal reasons. He wanted to run again (for Governor). He was rather cautious about it. But from this point on, it was all over the papers.

I would like to go back just a minute to say that the first real leak was when the committeeman, the National Committeeman of Missouri, whose name slips me, suggested Stevenson. Stevenson looked like a very appropriate candidate because of his Midwestern background, and also he had won this fantastic victory in 1948 on the issue of corruption, and corruption was one of the issues of course being raised in the Truman administration. I

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suggested to Marquis Childs that he -- that there might have been some significance in this (the statement by the Missouri National Committeeman), and that he should check with John Carroll, later Senator Carroll.

HESS: From Colorado.

LOEB: From Colorado, who was on the White House staff. And in effect, Mark Childs got the story from, partly from me, but mostly from John Carroll, that this was a serious responsibility. This was the first story in the newspapers suggesting the serious possibility of Stevenson.

To indicate how fast the Stevenson thing went, I should tell you about a little episode. Just before I left ADA I was already thinking about Stevenson, as I said, and I had asked David Lilienthal to be a speaker at the Roosevelt

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Day affair in New York in January, and he had accepted. Just before I left he sent me a telegram, I think, or called, and said that he found that he was going to be in Europe at that time and couldn't make it. So by this time I had been thinking about Stevenson and so I called my friend in New York, Marvin Rosenberg, who is still Hubert Humphrey's closest friend and major fundraiser, and was very active then in ADA, and I said, "Marvin, I've got an idea. David Lilienthal can't make it. How about the Governor of Illinois?"

And he said, "Who is he?"

"Well," I said, "his name's Adlai Stevenson and he's a wonderful speaker, and it's a big state, and you never can tell, lightning might strike."

He said, "Look, nobody ever heard of Adlai Stevenson here; you couldn't get a corporal's guard." They wanted Justice [William O.] Douglas

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or Walter Reuther, or people that they knew.

I said, "Marvin, do me a favor. Will you check with your committee and call me back?"

He said, "O.K., I'll check." He did and called me back the next day and said, "Everybody says that nobody ever heard of Adlai Stevenson. I'm sorry, you've got to get us somebody else."

Then I went to the Washington chapter of ADA and I said, "Have you got yourself a speaker for Roosevelt Day?"

They said, "No."

I said, "How about the Governor of Illinois?"

"Who is he?" I explained who he was. They said, "Now, we want Dean Acheson."

I said, "This is a little silly. Everybody in Washington sees Dean Acheson walk to the State Department every day; there's nothing

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new about Dean Acheson. Nobody knows about the Governor of Illinois." I couldn't convince them.

Of course by the time January came around, he was big stuff, everybody wanted him. But this shows how fast it went. You see, Stevenson had made a point of attending to business in Illinois and not getting into national affairs.

So, from the time of the Blair House meeting, the thing was launched. We still did not know definitely whether Mr. Truman was going to run again or not. When I say that Stevenson had said the President had practically offered it to him, he said in case he didn't run himself. There was always that possibility.

A number of things then happened. Oh, we got out -- Charlie Murphy knew exactly what I was doing and he would report it to the President, and he would report the President's comments.

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For example, I had an office in the Old State Department Building, that monstrosity next to the White House, and Charlie Collingwood had the next office. He was at that point Averell Harriman's -- handling Averell Harriman's press. He was an old friend of Averell's from London, and Harriman's office, in what was then called Mutual Security, was down the hall, and Charlie Collingwood came in one day and said his wife, who was the actress, had been at some kind of a tea the day before and at that tea Mrs. Ellen Borden Stevenson had been present and by this time there had been talk about her former husband. She assured everyone that she would never permit her ex-husband to be the presidential candidate, that she would see to it. She was very vindictive evidently -- I never met her -- there was no possibility.

Charlie Collingwood said that this was going to be an issue. So then we had a problem

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on this, and Arthur Schlesinger found somebody, who knew Stevenson's sister-in-law. In other words, Ellen Borden Stevenson's sister with whom Stevenson had stayed in New York on the way down. And so we dispatched her -- her name was Barbara Kerr -- wife of Chester Kerr at that time, although I think they are divorced since then too. And we dispatched Barbara Kerr to see the ex-Mrs. Stevenson's sister. She and Ellen Borden Stevenson's mother were both on Adlai Stevenson's side in the divorce. She found Miss Borden extremely cooperative and, as I now recall, she promised to do anything she could to prevent her sister from any statement or action which would adversely affect Stevenson's political career, including the possibility of his nomination for the Presidency. The sister said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of Ellen. She can't do this; it is all her fault."

The interpretation of the divorce, by the way, was that Ellen Borden was high society,

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poetess and everything else in Chicago, and she married this country lawyer, Adlai Stevenson, and she didn't like politics, and when he became involved in politics and became Governor and then became more important than she was, then she wouldn't take it and this was part of the thing. I don't want to go into their marital problems. But this was one of the issues.

Then the issue about Alger Hiss came up. The fact that Stevenson had been asked his opinion about Alger Hiss. It was a ridiculous issue, but nonetheless an obvious issue. As Governor he had been asked a simple question, something to the effect, "Would you say that Alger Hiss' reputation was good or bad when he was at the United Nations founding meeting in San Francisco?"

Stevenson's answer was, "Good." That's

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all he said, but nonetheless the charge was being made in the later campaign that he was an intimate friend of Alger Hiss and so on and so forth. Well, of course, we had to write a memorandum on that and I wrote a memorandum with the help of a lot of other people, showing that Hiss had been chosen for the Carnegie, what was it, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace or whatever it was, by a committee consisting of John Foster Dulles, by Hoover's former Under Secretary of State, whoever he was, I can't remember, and someone else of equally conservative bent. So we had to write a memorandum on that.

And then there was the issue of divorce that came up and we got from Chicago a statement from Cardinal [H.E. Samuel] Stritch on Stevenson's divorce. We did this through Mr. Mitchell who was later the National Chairman.

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HESS: Stephen Mitchell.

LOEB: Steve Mitchell. All these issues came up and we took them one after another. We had our little conspiracy and we consulted. I usually wrote the draft of memoranda and we sent this through Charlie Murphy to Mr. Truman and so forth.

There were all sorts of cases of that sort. We even did some negative work which probably we shouldn't have done. There was the candidacy of Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. We were worried about that candidacy, first because Senator Kerr's campaign manager was -- oh, Charlie Murphy's predecessor...

HESS: Clark Clifford.

LOEB: Clark Clifford who was the chief backer of Senator Kerr. Also, we were aware that for two reasons President Truman was very indebted to

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Senator Kerr. First he was indebted to him because, one, when he fired [General Douglas] MacArthur, Kerr was one of the most outspoken Senators to praise President Truman for doing this, and he had more courage than a good many other Democratic Senators in defending the President for this action. And second, the President had, in effect, double-crossed Kerr on the oil depletion allowance business. The bill had been defeated; they worked out a kind of a compromise, I don't remember the exact details. And the President in effect had said, "I'll sign it if you go back and make this compromise and make this concession," and they went back, but by the time it had passed the Senate, there was a -- the lobby which favored the elimination of the depletion allowance had grown very vociferous and the President found that he couldn't sign it. In this sense

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there was a kind of a double-cross on Kerr and Kerr had the graciousness and good sense never to complain that he was double-crossed. There was a kind of a feeling that the President was -- had to be quite...

HESS: He owed him a favor.

LOEB: He owed him a favor. He had done him a dirty trick in a sense, and he owed him a favor. And we were very concerned about this. And so I remember doing a memorandum on Senator Kerr's voting record and the issues he had been for and against and so on and so forth, which was a negative thing.

Then -- I'm doing this all from memory, we still didn't know what the President's position was and we tried to find out, figure out a way by which we could find out. This was the kind of thing that I wouldn't like to come out for awhile.

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HESS: We can close it for as long as you want.

LOEB: Yes. We went to Ed Prichard.

HESS: Who's the "we?"

LOEB: What?

HESS: You just said, "We went," who went?

LOEB: Well, just the group.

HESS: The group.

LOEB: Our group. We didn't go. We went to Ed Prichard, Joe Rauh was a particular friend of Ed Prichard's. I don't think I told you on the record who Ed Prichard was -- yes, I think I did in connection with the early part. How he got in the civil rights fight at the 1948 convention. I mentioned that he had been a friend, and by this time he had been disbarred.

HESS: Oh yes.

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LOEB: Because of this incident against him in Kentucky, but he still was very close.

HESS: The vote stealing?

LOEB: Yes. He was very close to the Chief Justice. In fact he was doing some briefs for him and so forth, brilliant. I think, you know, if he hadn't been involved in this thing he would have gone -- he certainly would have made Cabinet sometime and maybe even beyond that.

So we did a memorandum on the whole Stevenson situation, and we got Ed Prichard to go to the Chief Justice of the United States privately and see if he couldn't find out what Vinson's position was. We found out from that that Vinson had no inclination to be a candidate himself and had so indicated to the President and that he thought Stevenson would be a fine candidate and he would so indicate to the President.

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Then there were all sorts of things that happened, little details would come up that Charlie would report to me. Stevenson was going to South Carolina where his sister Mrs. [Elizabeth] Ives had a place, and Charlie came to me and said, "The President thinks it would be a good idea if the Governor would stop and see Governor Byrnes." You know, he was making this kind of very political suggestion. And I passed this along to Stevenson -- by this time I worked through his staff in Springfield -- that the President had indicated that it might be a good idea that he stop and see Governor Byrnes, which he did.

And there were a number of things of this nature that all led us to believe, at this one point, that the President had really made up his mind that he was not going to run and that he would use his influence to see that Stevenson was the candidate. Joe Rauh said, "I think it

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has now become clear enough that you ought to telephone Stevenson and give him some of these indications." So I picked up the phone one evening, in the kitchen at 41^st and Ingomar, and I called the Governor and I said, "Governor, there are a few details of events which I could report to you, all of which tend in one direction," and I had a list of things, one, two, three, four, and I checked them off, including his advice that he go see Governor Byrnes and so on and so forth. And Stevenson said, "Jim, I just can't do it. I am not going to be a candidate. It's impossible."

We began arguing about it and then I said, "Well, Governor, this doesn't seem to me to be an appropriate way to discuss a thing like this, maybe I could come down and see you."

He said, "I would be delighted to see you any time."

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I said, "How about this weekend?"

He said, "Fine. Come down, I'll be glad to see you."

And so I went to see Charlie and I said -- I reported my conversation and I said, "Do you think it would be all right for me to go and see -- Springfield this weekend?"

He said it, in a nice little way, he said, "You come from Chicago, don't you?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "Your mother's still alive in Chicago?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "Why don't you go out and see your mother and then kind of get lost and find your way to Springfield?"

So, I went out with Joe Rauh and Elizabeth Donahue. George Ball could not break away for some reason and he asked that Elizabeth Donahue,

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who had been working with him on this report, come with me. We went down to Springfield and we spent altogether about six hours with him. I must say it was a terribly discouraging business. There were four hours and then there was a break of an hour or so when he had to meet some people because they were even then having racial disturbances in Cairo, Illinois. The first four hours it seemed to us that there was no problem. We went over the Nation, state by state, the reports that we got from Monroe Sweetland, who had gone to various Democratic meetings, and how various people felt. We talked to [Jacob M.] Arvey and so on and so forth. And he [Stevenson] was listening. He seemed perfectly ready to go.

Then there was this recess for about an hour and he came back and said, "I can't do it." And he outlined some of the reasons. In the first

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he said, "Family reasons." He said, "You know, I have three sons who are still young. If I were President of the United States, the idea of my three sons shuttling between me at the White House and their mother someplace else, and the limelight on them and the divorce. In another four years it may be a different situation, but they are still too young." I can't remember exactly how young they were, but I know that John Fell was very young at that time. This was one reason.

Another reason was he felt very strongly that the Democrats couldn't stay in power forever and that if Eisenhower were the candidate -- well, he wasn't for Eisenhower. Later he came to hate Eisenhower bitterly, after he had run against him twice. But at the time he said, "Oh, he is conservative and so forth, but it would be a good transition, we can't stay

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in power forever. And I think Eisenhower will be the candidate." Truman never did, by the way.

Another thing, and this I suspected then, and he almost said it, but he told me directly later on, much later on in 1959, he didn't want to be the handpicked candidate of Harry Truman. He had a great respect for President Truman, but he was a different type and of course, as you know, as it developed, they didn't see eye-to-eye at all. Even then he just did not want to be sort of chosen, picked up, and in effect what he said is, "I would certainly consider it in four years if the possibilities were there, but now I don't want to do it."

We came away feeling very discouraged, but nonetheless, we kept on and pressured and saw everybody we could find that knew Stevenson; Archibald Alexander of New Jersey and Reinhold

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Niebuhr who had a certain relationship with him. But we began to detect that Mr. Truman was a little chilly. I recall that Stevenson was on some kind of a television -- it wasn't "Meet the Press," but that kind of a program, and he had said, he had made one remark that was rather discouraging about the Fair Deal which, according to Richard Neustadt, who reported to me, Mr. Truman didn't like at all. And I also think it was very difficult for Mr. Truman to understand why a Democratic Governor should be so reluctant to be candidate for the Presidency. In any case we still thought we were home free. And then there came -- when was it -- March 29, 1952.

HESS: The Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

LOEB: The Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner and I was sitting at the table...

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HESS: Let's turn the tape over here just a minute.

All right, sir, recording again. We got down to the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

LOEB: Yes, I was sitting at a table with some of the members of the White House staff. I remember David Stowe, I think I was sitting next to him. I believe Roger Tubby was there and I -- he's my partner now. I knew him rather slightly, but I remember him from that night because afterwards he came, he and his wife, came to the house. And I was following the text of the speech with Dave Stowe and, of course, we came to the last paragraph and we thought the President had stumbled because he wasn't following his text, and that was his announcement, of course, that he was not going to run again, his definitive announcement.

HESS: Well, one question on that: Had you written

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a speech for the President to give at that occasion?

LOEB: No. I noticed this in your notes and I -- where is that now? I think there is a mistake about that.

HESS: Wait just a minute. All right, now we have found the memo that I had in mind, so you probably did write a draft.

LOEB: I evidently wrote something of a draft, I hadn't remembered it, and as your memo indicates, none of my language is in the President's speech or the outline.

HESS: I compared the draft, and I believe that I have here just the first page of the draft, but I did make a comparison, and I couldn't find any particular language in your draft that was as used, but were you expecting an announcement of

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some sort as you mentioned in your memo to Murphy?

LOEB: Well, after all this was March 29th, the President had to make some kind of announcement on some occasion and we were all thinking that maybe it would come on this occasion. He would say, "I announce that I am going to be a candidate for re-election," or that, "I announce that I am not going to be," one of the two, but we didn't know, but we certainly suspected that something might come.

HESS: Okay, I have a question on that: Now through these months you were dealing with Murphy, did you know, or have you ever heard, that the President told a number of his staff, a portion of his staff, at Key West the previous November, on November the 19th of 1951, that he did not intend to run, and warned them to keep it quiet

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at that time? Murphy was present.

LOEB: Yes, I think Charlie operated on the -- I think it was fairly apparent that Charlie operated on the theory that the President was inclined not to run, but...

HESS: He didn't tell you anything about it.

LOEB: Well, yes, he always acted as if he didn't think the President was going to run. He didn't say that the President had explicitly said so, and even if the President had explicitly said so, I think there was always the feeling that he could change his mind if an appropriate candidate wasn't available.

HESS: He did. It's in his Memoirs that in the spring when he was having difficulties getting Mr. Stevenson to say what -- getting Mr. Stevenson to run, the President as he said in his Memoirs, he sounded out his staff to see if they thought

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that he should run at that time and most of his staff at that time advised against it. This was in the spring.

LOEB: Roger Tubby always thought, as he may have told you, that a very strong influence against his running was Mrs. Truman and he said that Mrs. Truman once said she wouldn't have been so much against it if they could have stayed in Blair House, but they had to go back to the White House with all of the entertaining that that involved and she wanted no more of that.

In any event, this was quite an event, the announcement by the President, and everybody, press and everybody, rushed up to Adlai Stevenson as soon as the President had finished his speech. He had a meeting -- when I say we, it was organized by ADA, Francis Biddle was there, [Senator] Herbert Lehman, Jim Carey, Monroe Sweetland, maybe a dozen of us, I don't remember all that were present. We

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had lunch, it seems to me, at the Shoreham Hotel the next day, and we discussed the whole thing with Stevenson who was about to go on a "Meet the Press" program and what he told us was that he would do nothing until April -- was it April 8th or 14th, whatever the day of his primary. He had a primary, he was unopposed for Governor, but he didn't want to say anything until this primary day had passed.

There was no recording apparatus such as we have here to prove what Governor Stevenson said, but all of us came away with the impression that what he said was this: That, "After that day I shall indicate that I am a candidate for only one office, the Governorship of Illinois." But we all had the impression that he would say, that he would make it clear, that if he were called to higher office he would consider it his duty to his party and to his

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country to run. That was the impression he rendered. And with this in mind, we thought we had something. Other people thought differently and Adlai Stevenson is not the first political person that gave different impressions to different people. In any case, at this point, the group in Chicago of Stevenson friends had called me and asked me if I would come out to organize the Stevenson campaign.

I checked with Charlie Murphy and checked with McKinney. As I remember I said I was supposed to go to work for McKinney at the Democratic National Committee, and McKinney said, "It would be much more important for me to do that in Chicago."

I went out to Chicago and met with the group, Walter Johnson, Professor Walter Johnson, and others, and I said I would do it, provided that I were agreeable, that is that I were acceptable

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to Mr. Arvey, to the Stevenson staff, if not Stevenson himself, and to the group that was organizing the thing, the little Chicago group.

The Chicago group said, "Yes." And then I went to see Mr. Arvey, he said, "Yes," and then we got in touch with the Stevenson staff and they said, "Yes," they wanted me to do it.

So we had -- we organized a kind of push-button campaign. Arvey had three governors; Governor of Indiana, I can’t remember who they were, who were going to be co-chairmen of the "Draft Stevenson Movement." We had the names of all sorts of people that we were sure would be available to go on some kind of a committee. Walter Johnson and I wrote a telegram that would be sent out the minute Stevenson made a statement after this day of his primary.

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I went back to Washington, I went to see Averell Harriman to borrow Jim Lanigan, who was his assistant. And Averell Harriman said, "Well, if Stevenson is not a candidate, I think I'm going to need Jim Lanigan because I would like to be the favorite son from New York, and maybe I might be interested, and I personally don't think Stevenson is going to run."

There is one episode that I have omitted here which is terribly important and I can't remember the date of it and maybe I can find out. When was the time, do you remember, Jerry, when President Truman and most of his key staff went to Key West about this time?

HESS: I believe they went in March.

LOEB: This was before their March 29^th affair.

HESS: I believe so.

LOEB: Yes.

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HESS: They usually went in November and March.

LOEB: I believe you're right. This is a very important and key episode in the whole thing and in Mr. Truman's thinking.

Charlie Murphy called me from Key West. Obviously I was not one of the close advisers that went to Key West, I was just doing my little job in Washington, and Charlie called me and said that the President had asked him to have one more meeting with Governor Stevenson and could I possibly get him down to Washington. The President was flying up, was going to stop for a few minutes in Washington, but he really was going to speak to the -- to the convention of high school journalists at Columbia University, and Charlie was to get off the plane in Washington and he would like to meet with Governor Stevenson that night and could I find him. Well, I called Springfield and he was not there, and I finally

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located him. I have to pay tribute here to the White House telephone operators; they can find anybody, anyplace, at anytime and they found Stevenson in Governor [Paul A.] Dever's office in Boston. And I talked to him.

"Oh, Jim," he said, "my gosh, ah, yes, I guess I can. I am taking my son John Fell and we are leaving here and we are going down to see my sister Mrs. Ives in South Carolina, but I suppose that I could stop for an evening of conversation at George Ball's house." So he did.

How this got out I will never know, but I know that the plane stopped at Philadelphia and Scotty Reston of the New York Times got on the plane and knew he was stopping in Washington, but anyway, that evening was one of the most discouraging evenings that I ever spent. There was no one there except George and Ruth Ball and

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Stevenson and Charlie Murphy and myself. John Fell was with the Governor, but I think one of the Ball kids took him to the movies; and after supper we went into the living room. Ruth Ball excused herself with difficulty and later on her curiosity overcame her and she came back in.

And, well, I will telescope the discussion by saying that in effect Stevenson said, "No."

And not only did he say, "No," but since he was obviously trying to argue himself out of a job, a rather important job, he in effect said, "Why do you want me? I don't believe in your program anyway." And he went down the list of all of the New Deal, Fair Deal programs and he said, "You know, I'm not so excited about that. Yes, I believe in civil rights, but basically I have southern traditions and I believe you should compromise your position."

He went down the whole list, labor

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legislation, housing, everything. And as a matter of fact I may say, Arthur Schlesinger once later on made a very interesting comment about Adlai Stevenson that he was a conservative by instinct and a liberal by intelligence. And he was a conservative by instinct.

It's very interesting that the intellectuals just fell head over heels in love with Stevenson, largely because he was an intellectual, but he really was, of all the Democratic candidates in recent years, probably more conservative than any. At the end of the evening, as it was about to break up, Adlai turned to Charlie and he said, "Now Charlie, let's just assume that I'm out of the picture, what are you going to do then?"

"Well," Charlie said, "if you make that assumption, I would say that there is one man in town that would make a great President. I

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doubt if he could be nominated or elected, but he is the man that I would like to see as the candidate, and that is Averell Harriman."

That was a very discouraging evening. I remember going in the next day and talking to Charlie and saying, "Well, I guess that is that. I mean he sounded so discouraged, discouraging, and so conservative."

And Charlie said, "Oh, don't worry about it. He's just trying to talk himself out of a job."

But nonetheless I think this had influence on President Truman who by this time was pretty discouraged and pretty convinced that maybe Adlai wasn't his man.

HESS: Is this the meeting that was mentioned by George Ball in his article "Flaming Arrows to the Sky: A Memoir of Adlai Stevenson?"

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LOEB: That's it.

HESS: He says that it was in the middle of March.

LOEB: Yes, that's about right.

HESS: That's right. "Adlai came to Washington towards the middle of March to try to explain his position more fully to the White House." And "They joined Murphy, another of the President's assistants, James Loeb, and myself for dinner at my house."

LOEB: That's right. Then when Adlai left Washington, he left to visit with his sister. From there he wrote a handwritten letter to Charlie Murphy. I don't know if you -- if this is in the files at all, but you should try to get ahold of it, I think it is a very important document in this thing.

It was obviously meant only for Charlie

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Murphy and therefore for the President. I don't think it -- I don't know of anybody else who saw it besides myself. It was a handwritten letter and it was a very moving document. And after all, Adlai Stevenson, whatever else one says, could write moving documents. And it explained very personally why he did not want to be President. I mean why he did not want to be a candidate for the Presidency in 1952. But he said, he repeated his personal problems about his wife, kids, and if anybody believes that Stevenson was not genuinely drafted, I think this letter would indicate that he was. That he really, genuinely, did not want to be the candidate.

People often have said, "Well, why didn't he issue a [General William T.] Sherman statement?" That's a little bit unfair. Sherman was a general who had never been involved in politics. As I recall he was quite an old man at

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the time. Stevenson's position was very different. He was 52 years old -- he was born in 1900 -- he came from a political family, he was the Governor of a state, he couldn't really say, "I will not serve if nominated," and so forth and so on, as Sherman had said. It would have been almost -- he would have been considered unpatriotic, and that's why he didn't.

Then this day came, I can't remember when it was, I think it was April 14^th, primary day, and on that occasion a chap whose name slips me, but who was the co-chairman of the little group in Chicago, Walter Johnson was one, and this other fellow, a lawyer, who happened to find himself in Washington -- this is the tourist season in Washington and he couldn't find a bed. And so he called me and he stayed with us and the next day I took him in and introduced him to Charlie Murphy and some of the White House crowd and we were up in David Bell's office with this chap

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whose name slips me. There was David Bell and Dick Neustadt, and while we were talking a fellow by the name of Roger Tubby, whom I didn't know too intimately, came in with a piece of the AP copy, which I still have in my files, which was the statement that Adlai Stevenson issued following the primary election in which he was nominated because he had no competition at all. In effect since I had majored in English at Dartmouth, I thought I understood the language, and I thought that that statement of Adlai Stevenson's just ended, finally and conclusively, all of the efforts that we put in on the Stevenson candidacy. So did my friend from Chicago who, as a matter of fact, later on took off for Europe and wasn't even around when Stevenson was nominated, in spite of all of his efforts.

Dick Neustadt picked up the phone and called Jim Lanigan in Harriman's office and he said,

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"Looks like Stevenson's out. Your boy can go ahead."

As far as I was concerned it looked as if that was the end of the Stevenson candidacy and then Averell Harriman called me, he said -- well to be accurate I think it was not Averell Harriman, it was Frank [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, Jr., who called on behalf of Harriman, who said, "Well, you see Averell says he was right. Your boy is not going to run. He is completely out of it."

And I said, "He certainly is."

"How about going to New York and opening an office for us?"

And that's how I went to New York and opened an office in this little hotel on 54^th Street which Congressman James Scheuer's family owned and he gave us some office space. And that was -- the irony of the fact was that in spite of all

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of the efforts that I had made in the Stevenson candidacy, when it finally came down to it, I was working for Averell Harriman against Stevenson at the convention.

HESS: Tell me about that episode. What do you recall about the Harriman campaign?

LOEB: Well, I recall, naturally, an awful lot about it. As it turned out it looked silly. I think it's fair to say, and Paul Fitzpatrick, who was the chairman of the Democratic Party in New York and one of our key advisers, who did speak to President Truman -- I did not -- I think it's fair to say the key factor was that President Truman really never thought that Eisenhower had a chance of being nominated. His view, according to Fitzpatrick, was that the pros were on the side of Senator Taft and the pros always win in this business. After all, President Truman

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was a pro himself.

Of course, Eisenhower had a few pros too, like Tom [Thomas L.] Dewey, who was not -- and Herbert Brownell, these were not rank amateurs, but Truman -- my information does not come directly from the mouth of Harry Truman, but I think it's pretty clear that Truman at this point was really angry with Stevenson. He was -- didn't think he'd run in the first place, but even if he did, he couldn't understand this sort of sensitivity that Stevenson had. "How could a man who was Governor of a big state and with the tradition that he had, how with the President of the United States coming to him and saying, 'I can make you the Democratic candidate,' how could he refuse?" He couldn't understand this. And he was absolutely convinced that, as I say, that Taft would be the nominee and, in that eventuality, he pushed Averell Harriman into

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the race. I don't think there is any question about that.

Later on when I started to write a book and I was going through some of this material and read Mr. Truman's autobiography, his Memoirs -- there is a section in there about Averell coming to him and asking for his support, and Mr. Truman said, "I'm sorry, I'm committed to Adlai Stevenson," that bothered me and I eventually went to Averell Harriman and he said, "No, that's unfortunately not true at all. I could prove that." He said, "You can go and see George Harrison who was the head of the Democratic labor committee." He said, "I can prove to you that President Truman asked me to run." As a matter of fact, Frank Roosevelt, before he accepted, Frank Roosevelt, Jr., the chairmanship of the Harriman committee, Herbert Lehman was the honorary chairman, Frank Roosevelt was the chairman. He went to

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see Truman and he came away feeling absolutely Truman was committed to Harriman.

HESS: About what time was this? Was this in April?

LOEB: Yes.

HESS: About the time of Mr. Stevenson's announcement.

LOEB: Well, I would say about a week later. About a week or so later. But then, as we all know, after Eisenhower was nominated, I remember going out to the Democratic convention with the Harriman staff. We had, I think we had a chartered plane.

HESS: You set up a campaign headquarters in the convention hall?

LOEB: Well, we had -- as a matter of fact we had sent a man in advance and we bought the two rooms

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off the convention floor which had been the headquarters of one of the Republican candidates, I forget which one, maybe it was -- I don't think it was Eisenhower, maybe it was. Anyway we bought their equipment, room, space, and everything else. But the staff, the major part of the staff, went out about four or five days in advance, I can't remember exactly. Then I remember coming into the Conrad Hilton Hotel and running into India Edwards who was the vice-chairman (of the Democratic National Committee), and a great friend of Truman's and a great friend of mine. And I said, "How does it look, India?"

She said, "It's all over."

I said, "What do you mean?"

She said, "Alben Barkley's the nominee."

That was the first I had heard about that.

And sure enough she was right, in a sense. The President had clearly decided. He had been

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influenced, I think, by some of the old pros, by McKinney, by his friend Les...

HESS: Leslie Biffle.

LOEB: Leslie Biffle, by some of the other people that -- with an Eisenhower nomination in the first place, Harriman would have no chance. In the second place, you had to get someone who could keep the party together during the period and Barkley would be the nominee, and Oscar Chapman came out to put it together. I think everybody knows what happened. Basically what happened was that Oscar Chapman couldn't succeed in putting it together, not even with Truman's influence.

HESS: What were the main stumbling blocks? Labor?

LOEB: Well, labor was a -- was the big stumbling block, and the feeling by, I would say, the

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younger element, that had a great respect for Mr. Barkley, but that this would really be a holding operation and they wanted no part of it. There were still some Harriman people. There were also Stevenson people.

Then the Harriman campaign -- you know, I argue with some of these young people now who get so excited about issues, and you have to understand that when you go into a convention as a partisan or as a worker for one candidate, the only thing you're thinking about is getting that candidate nominated, and the various principles involved are secondary. We were in a situation, the Harriman camp, the only way he could be nominated was to be the liberal candidate.

I will say, of course, that Harriman entered the race after all the primaries but one. The only primary he got into was the District of Columbia primary, which was a kind of New Yorker magazine's version of a primary, but he had

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decided -- we had convinced him that he couldn't duck that one. I mean he had to get into it, and when he got into it he had to go all-out on civil rights because even then there was an enormous, relatively enormous, black vote in the District.

Joe Rauh was the director of the campaign and I'll never forget that night at Harriman's home. He had had a bunch of newspaper people in to give them background briefings on Mutual Security and then Harriman and I and Joe Rauh, I think, went to some of the polling places and then we came back and I don't think more than -- I don't remember what the exact results were, but I don't think more than seven thousand people voted. The District of Columbia was not used to voting, and they counted the ballots by hand. It took hours and hours and hours and my wife and other wives were down at -- where the

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ballots were being counted and it must have been after midnight before we knew how these seven thousand or so people had voted.

When they came in and said that Averell Harriman had won, you know you would have thought he had won the Presidency of the United States.

Here was this man, a distinguished diplomat, you know, an enormously wealthy man, who had never faced the electorate. This was the first time he faced the electorate and by gosh he won! He actually defeated Estes Kefauver! Those were the great days. Just like -- he got that bug, you know, of winning.

Anyway when he got out to Chicago, our issue, and the man that gave us the issue was Benjamin V. Cohen, a good friend, and it was based on -- the issue, of course was miscalled the loyalty issue, the loyalty oath issue; it wasn't a loyalty oath. But it was based on the 1948 race when,

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as everyone knows, Truman and Barkley were not even on the ballot in several of the Southern states. We were very careful not to make this a loyalty oath. In fact, I remember Herbert Lehman saying, "I won't vote for any loyalty oath. I don't want to be in a position where if Senator [Patrick A.] McCarran is the nominee for the Presidency I am pledged to support him, and there are some people from down South I know I couldn't support. My country comes before my party." So we were very careful not to make this a loyalty oath. What it was, was simply that the delegates of the convention pledged themselves to do whatever was in their power to see to it that the candidates of the convention were on the ballot in their state. They did not pledge themselves to support the candidate nor were they asked to pledge themselves to support the candidate. It was with

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this issue that we went to the convention floor.

I must say that there were several fights other than this. There was a fight on the Texas delegation, as you recall, when Maury Maverick led a delegation. Maury Maverick, I must say, was a great man in this way. He had two letters from Harry Truman, one very brief one, and one longer one, in which the President encouraged him to defeat the "Shivercrats," as he called them, and to bring an independent delegation which would maintain a loyalty to the candidates of the convention, whoever they might be. I think Dick Neustadt showed me the letters; I'm not sure, anyway, I saw the letters. And I went to Maury Maverick and I said, "My God, Maury, you could win this battle if you would make public these letters." And even though his political life was at stake he said, "These are personal letters from the President of the

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United States to me and without his personal approval I will not use these letters."

I think Dick Neustadt called Charlie and tried to get the approval and couldn't get it, and I always remember this sort of personal integrity that Maury Maverick had, that even though his political life was at stake he refused to make public the letters which would have saved him.

Anyway, one point I recall, a very dramatic point. Franklin Roosevelt, Jr. was the chairman and really the campaign manager (of the Harriman campaign), but his principal brain was Lou Harris, the pollster. Lou Harris, he must have been counting votes and noses from the time he came out of his mother's womb because he was always figuring out a way to take a poll of this or that and he had...

HESS: Sort of a second-nature to him.

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LOEB: It was second-nature. Blair Clark, who was in 1968 was a sort of campaign manager for Gene [Senator Eugene] McCarthy, was our publicity director. He was an old close friend of young Frank Roosevelt's and a classmate of Jack [John F.] Kennedy's. He came into my little office and he introduced David Schoenbrun who was then with CBS, had been with CBS in Paris. He now teaches at Columbia. He started telling me about Eisenhower and about what a wonderful fellow he was, but he couldn't possibly be President of the United States. He said, "He never works a full day. He really never reads any books except..."

HESS: Westerns.

LOEB: "Westerns. And he just doesn't know enough," you know. So I assured him there was nothing to worry about. At this point somebody came in

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and said Frank Roosevelt was about to announce that we (we, that is, the Harriman forces), we were withdrawing from this fight on the so-called loyalty business.

I got very excited and said, "For God's sake, why?"

"Because Lou Harris has figured out we haven't got the votes."

I went out screaming to find Frank Roosevelt and I said, "Look, how the devil can Lou Harris take a poll on a thing like that? Every convention has its own dynamic. Nobody can say how this is going to come out." I finally convinced Frank not to withdraw and he didn’t.

To indicate how a convention works in terms of dynamics, the first man who got up and spoke against the resolution was Senator [Herman E.] Talmadge of Georgia, and I remember thinking that that was the luckiest thing that could have

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happened. Once Senator Talmadge spoke against it, the northerners almost had to vote for it; the lines were drawn, because it had civil rights overtones, of course, and as a matter of fact, it was eventually passed.

Governor Williams, who later was my boss, of whom I am very fond, got up and spoke in favor of it and totally misunderstood it. He made it sound like a loyalty oath which it wasn't. Blair Moody, I think, was chairman of the Rules Committee and he explained it well, but Williams missed it completely. Well, eventually it passed and it had something of an impact. But we ended up, after all the effort, with about, I guess, a hundred and thirty votes.

It was perfectly apparent from the very beginning that Barkley wasn't going to make it. Stevenson's welcoming speech to the convention

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was so eloquent that he -- if he didn't want to run, he shouldn't have made that speech, it was a very eloquent speech and everybody realized he was a fantastic candidate. I think he was, particularly in 1952.

I once kidded him after the 1956 election. I went out to see him. (I had nothing to do with '56.) I said, "Adlai, I think you are the greatest non-President in our history." But running against Eisenhower, I don't think anybody could look good, nobody could beat Eisenhower. So that was the end of that.

HESS: What do you recall about the campaign of 1952?

LOEB: I was, let me see, I believe I came back home from the convention. Averell Harriman, with his administrative assistant, who was Jim Lanigan, went down to see Stevenson. As a matter of fact, one of the -- at the convention Arthur Schlesinger and I went to Bill Blair's

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house at, oh good Lord, 2 o'clock in the morning. Stevenson was staying with him and we arranged a breakfast for Stevenson and Harriman at which it was agreed that Harriman would withdraw. Harriman, accompanied by Jim Lanigan, went down to Springfield and Lanigan stayed there.

They needed somebody like Jim Lanigan, who is a sparky Irishman and a good campaigner and so then I -- Averell asked me if I would be his personal assistant. It had nothing to do with government. I was just handling his affairs and travel and so on and so forth. He went out to help candidates for the Senate particularly.

He was very anxious to be Secretary of State, obviously. I would say one thing of Averell Harriman whom I love: He has the most defensive attitude about his money, an absolutely jaundiced view about it. His good friend Ted

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[Theodore, Jr.] Tannenwald, who was his assistant, and I were in effect in charge of his money, and we once decided, "Well, why don't we get together (Tannenwald's now a Federal judge, you know), and figure out how much he should give altogether and then we can figure out where he should give it." It came to something like, oh, I don't know, fifty thousand dollars. Harriman wouldn't -- oh, this seemed to him absolutely crazy. He wasn't going to give that kind of money away. He'd give two hundred and fifty dollars, five hundred dollars to some of these senatorial candidates, thinking, you know, that they would be indebted to him for life, and it was like you or me giving a quarter. He was very defensive.

Later on I think one of the things he resented about Nelson Rockefeller was that the Rockefellers had given so much money away. He was a wonderfully gracious person, but he was so defensive

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about his money. As a matter of fact, very few of the senatorial candidates he went out to help came through, for some reason. [Senator Joseph C.] O'Mahoney went down, I remember, and whoever it was in Utah, quite a few of them, and so I just stayed with him until, oh, around December.

Then I went back during the lame duck period to have a visit, for lunch, with Dick Neustadt in what was called, if you remember, the White House mess, because it was a little restaurant that was run by the President's naval attaché and the staff of the Williamsburg. I happened to sit next to Roger Tubby and Roger said, "What's Averell going to do?"

I said, kiddingly, "Oh, I suppose look for a job."

Roger said, "Well, he ought to get interested in small newspapers, it's a great field."

I said, "Well, that's the last thing Averell

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Harriman is going to do if I know him."

So I began thinking about it and I thought, "Well, you know, how do you get in this business? That might be interesting." I had decided I had better get a job -- I mean I had better get into a business rather than just holding a job. By this time I was close to forty-five. I went back to see Roger Tubby in the White House and, to make a long story short, we decided to try it together. That's how we happened to get here.

HESS: One question: Did you think that Stevenson could win in '52? Could have defeated Eisenhower in '52?

LOEB: No, I think he ran a magnificent -- I don't think the Lord God Almighty could have defeated Eisenhower in 1952. I think he was...

HESS: He did the best he could.

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LOEB: Oh, yes, I think so. Eisenhower turned out to be quite an effective campaigner. He had the father image. There were -- I mean after twenty years it -- it kind of was time for a change in a certain sense and, after all, this isn't a one party country. Much as I originally wanted Stevenson to run, I have to say that while I had nothing to do with the 1956 thing, I went to talk to Arthur Schlesinger and I thought that Stevenson should not run in 1956. I thought this was like seeing the second show of a movie that you've already seen, same team, but Stevenson was a very strange person. I don't want to go into all the details, but Arthur Schlesinger said that he (Stevenson) considered running in 1956 part of his obligation for having accepted in 1952. I never quite understood that, but he figured if the party called upon him he should run again. I thought he should have waited,

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but he didn't.

HESS: Did you think he ran as effective a campaign in '56 as he did in '52?

LOEB: No, I did not. As a matter of fact, I thought he ran a miserable campaign and I think I know why and again that's another...

HESS: Why did he?

LOEB: Another strange aspect of Adlai Stevenson's way of thinking. I had nothing to do with the campaign, I was minding the store. Roger Tubby was his press secretary for the most part of it, but I don't think they got along too well. And later on, well, Roger stayed on the staff, what's his name who writes the column, became press secretary? I can't remember any names this morning.

HESS: Clayton Fritchey?

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LOEB: Clayton Fritchey. Clayton Fritchey, whose wife, by the way, died in Saranac Lake with tuberculosis many years ago, long before I came up here, and Clayton was a good friend. He became the press secretary, but afterwards, that following Christmas, I went to Chicago to see my family and I called Adlai and I went out with my brother to see him at Libertyville and he -- I said to him, Governor, you..."

HESS: We're getting down pretty close, we had better switch and put another reel on.

LOEB: Well, my brother Ted and I went out to Stevenson's house and Stevenson was getting us a drink, and I said, "Governor you don't look as bad as Arthur Schlesinger, whom I saw last week, who looked as if the world had come to an end."

"Oh, no, I feel fine." But then he said,

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"I didn't run my own campaign."

I said, "How is that?"

And then he developed what his whole philosophy was. He said, "In 1952 when I was drafted, my party called on me and drafted me, and therefore, I had the right, I figured, to run my own campaign exactly as I wanted to run it. But in 1956, I offered myself as a candidate to the Democratic Party." He added, "If I had ever known that I would have had the opposition that I eventually had from Senator Kefauver, I never would have done it, because by the time the nomination came, I was absolutely exhausted, spiritually, intellectually, financially, physically, every way." But he then said, "This time, since I had offered myself and sought the nomination instead of being drafted, I felt that I owed it to my party to run the kind of a campaign that they wanted me to run." And he had great

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confidence in Jim Finnegan, whom he had made his campaign manager, who had been the chairman of the party in Pennsylvania, I believe. And he said, "I accepted Jim Finnegan's strategy completely. I thought he knew more about politics than I did, although I had my own feelings about it. One thing," he said, "they told me I shouldn't touch foreign policy. I should forget about the independent vote. There were more Democrats in the country than there were Republicans and I should wrap myself around the Democratic flag and let it go at that. And I did pretty much what they said."

Then he said that he was convinced nonetheless -- this is one of the ironies of American history -- that up to a certain point, "While I never really thought I could win I am absolutely convinced that I was doing far better than I was doing in '52." And that particular point was

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the lowest level of American foreign policy: The crisis in Hungary and Egypt.

The crisis in Hungary when after all the talk about massive retaliation and so on and so forth, here was a revolution against the Communist government in Hungary and we were helpless, and in Cairo our allies, the British, the French and the Israelis, didn't even have confidence enough in us to consult us. We found ourselves then linked up with the Russians in opposing what the British and Israelis had done.

All Eisenhower had to do was to get on the television and say we were not getting involved. From that point on, it was a disaster. The irony is, he said, that this was really the lowest point in American foreign policy. I kidded him and said that after all he had run against the man, Eisenhower, who was, in

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my opinion, the most popular President in all of American history, not the most passionately liked, but the least hated, and the "I like Ike" thing was the main thing. Everybody liked Ike.

The element of hate was not in the campaign. This was one of the handicaps that Stevenson had and the Democrats had against Eisenhower. But by this time, Stevenson had achieved a real hatred for Eisenhower. He thought he was a publicity fraud, the whole Eisenhower administration.

HESS: Back on 1952, did you ever hear Governor Stevenson make any comments about how he felt about Mr. Truman's role in the campaign? Mr. Truman went out on a campaign in 1952, a regular old "Give 'em hell, Harry" type of campaign. Do you think Governor Stevenson would have preferred that Mr. Truman have a more low-key campaign?

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LOEB: Yes, and the story I was going to tell you about Roger Tubby has to do with 1960, but it's exactly the same issue. Maybe I could insert it here.

At one point when Senator Kennedy was campaigning in 1960 -- I was right here running the paper -- and Mr. Truman was really giving them hell, and Senator Kennedy was somewhat bothered by this. So he called Roger Tubby who was in charge of public relations at the Democratic National Committee, and he said, "Roger, can't you call your old boss and see if you can't tone him down a bit?"

Roger said something to the effect that, "Well, Mrs. Truman hasn't been able to tone him down, I don't know why you think I would be able to."

And Kennedy said, "Well, at least call him and see if you can't do something."

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So Roger -- this is a third-hand version of the story -- but Roger called Independence and spoke to the President and talked about the tone of the campaign and how Kennedy was running it, and dignity, and a few words like that, and it didn't take long for President Truman to get the point.

Whereupon he said to Roger, "I'll tell you, Roger, you know some of these young fellows, they remind me of the fellow who once went into a cat house and stayed on the first floor and had a drink but never got upstairs. And it's about time somebody was telling the American people what's going on upstairs."

Roger, feeling mission unaccomplished, didn't say much and that was the end of that story.

I was not really deeply involved (in 1952), except as an assistant through the whole campaign to Governor Harriman -- he wasn't Governor then –

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Then I remember that we were in a motel -- we were out someplace in Wyoming trying to help out Senator O'Mahoney, and the motel was better than the hotel, and I got the Rocky Mountain News, a tabloid paper, and on the cover in huge type was: "IF I WIN I SHALL GO TO KOREA -- IKE." I threw the paper on the bed in the motel room and I said, "Averell, I think we've had it."

HESS: Did you work with Averell Harriman in his campaign for Governor?

LOEB: No, as a matter of fact, briefly, after Roger and I came up here in 1953, and met a few local Democrats -- there aren't very many in these parts

HESS: How many do you suppose there are, a half a dozen?

LOEB: Well, it isn't as bad as that. In Franklin

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it's about a consistent 60/40. They never win much, but you know, there are a few. They are not all liberal Democrats, I'll tell you that. And, you know, I sort of asked them, "Who do you think is going to be the candidate for Governor?"

They practically mentioned everybody except me and you, but none of them mentioned Averell Harriman.

And then I'd say, "How about Averell Harriman?"

"Well, you know, a fine man, a great diplomat, but he's not well enough known. He's been in the diplomatic field. He couldn't make it."

As a matter of fact it was so obvious that he couldn't and Arthur Schlesinger had the same sort of reaction from people that he talked to that we had some correspondence and we decided that, since we were both good friends of Averell,

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one of us should have nerve enough to tell him that this would be a terrible end to a long and distinguished career, to be clobbered running for the governorship.

How wrong can you be? Neither one of us had the nerve to tell him, so nobody told him, so the darn fool ran and was elected Governor. But at that time [Carmine] DeSapio was the boss and Franklin Roosevelt -- finally, young Franklin Roosevelt, the people around here, the Democrats around here -- were convinced that Frank Roosevelt was going to be the candidate, and everyone else was so convinced. So they came to me and said, "Get your friend Franklin Roosevelt up here. We'd like to see him."

So he came up and when he came up, Jim Lanigan was with him. The first thing he (FDR, Jr.) did was to come in our newspaper office and say, "I need a press secretary." One of the New York

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Times fellows was going to do it and didn't do it, and he said, "One of you fellows has to do it."

And I said, "That's not my cup of tea. I'm not a press secretary." I knew Frank quite well, Roger didn't, but he agreed. Roger then became Frank Roosevelt's press secretary during the whole campaign. I remember that Jim Lanigan called "The Brain" -- who was Lou Harris -- and Lou Harris was Roosevelt's contact with DeSapio and DeSapio would say, "Oh, Frank's doing fine; he's getting the biggest crowds that anybody ever got upstate, great, don't worry about me," and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden one day, DeSapio and Alex Rose announced that they were supporting Harriman and that was the end of Frank Roosevelt.

HESS: Let's go back just for a few minutes to your service on the White House staff. Did you have occasion to work with some of the other members

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who were on the White House staff at this time? Now, some of these men we have mentioned this morning in passing. Some of them we have hit upon quite hard, but Charles Murphy...

LOEB: Charlie Murphy was my boss. Everything I did, I did with him. I never did anything without him, and we got to be very close, and he is a fine guy. I used to have bull sessions with him in the late afternoons, almost every day, on political affairs. In fact, he was so friendly, I have to say that later on, he became a member of the board of ADA for a year, I think just sort of out of personal friendship, and then he came to me one day and he said, "You know, I really don't belong on this board." And he really didn't. Not to say that the ADA was right and he was wrong, but he wasn't quite that down-the-line, all-out liberal. He was more cautious and a fine guy. I'm full of respect

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for him, and of course, then later, he was sort of, I gather, Johnson's hatchet man in the 1968 convention on the Vietnam issue, but a wonderful fellow. The fact that I don't agree with him in everything has no influence on my relationship with him. I haven't seen him for some time.

HESS: Did you have any dealings with Matthew Connelly?

LOEB: No. No, I naturally would see everybody once in a while.

HESS: How about William Hassett, did you see him?

LOEB: Yes, I remember Bill Hassett, but I really did not know him well.

HESS: How about Joe Short?

LOEB: Not very much. And Roger Tubby, again not very much.

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HESS: At, that time.

LOEB: No.

HESS: Irving Perlmeter?

LOEB: I remember these people but I had no real relationship with them. George Elsey I got to know very well.

HESS: More when he was working with Harriman?

LOEB: Well, I got to know him better later. He was fired by the President on the insistence of Joe Short. You know that.

HESS: How did that come about?

LOEB: He leaked a story to somebody on the New York Times. I think he actually did it on somebody's suggestion. It was the story of the President's visit with MacArthur on Wake Island, and the fellow, an Italian name...

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HESS: Anthony Leviero.

LOEB: Anthony Leviero won a Pulitzer prize on the basis of this story, but Joe Short, I think, was pretty angry.

HESS: Is that right?

LOEB: I think that's right. He had to go and Harriman took him (Elsey), on as his administrative assistant. Dave Bell I got to know very well. John Steelman not too well. Ken Hechler was in the next office. I got to know him quite well. He was a wonderful fellow.

HESS: Now he's a Congressman.

LOEB: Yes, he's a Congressman, and I walked in on him one day just after he'd been a Congressman and he was sitting in that big congressional chair and he sat back and he grinned and he said, "By God, I made it!" You know how he made it?

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He is a political scientist and he figured out that this particular district was the most likely one in the country. So he went there and he filed for Congress the day he was eligible.

HESS: He moved into West Virginia, didn't he?

LOEB: Yes, he did. There was an old man who was 80 years old, a Republican, who had been in Congress for years -- what was his name [William Elmer Neal]? A doctor, delivered half the babies in the district, but he was too old. I think there were something like seven candidates on the Democratic ticket and Ken got enough for...

HESS: His political science education paid off.

LOEB: It paid off.

HESS: How about Richard Neustadt?

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LOEB: Well, Dick Neustadt I had known slightly, and I got to know intimately. He was, of course, on Charlie's staff. Some of us thought he should have been made administrative assistant before the end, but he was a very bright guy as it turned out.

HESS: Just who were the men who were on Mr. Murphy's staff, the staff itself as opposed to the administrative assistants, at the time you were there?

LOEB: Well, when Charlie had a meeting of his own group, more or less, Dave Bell, Dave Lloyd, I think, while he was there, George Elsey, Dick Neustadt. And then I would say, John Carroll on some issues. That was about it?

HESS: What do you recall about John Carroll? Now he was there to help out with congressional liaison, is that right?

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LOEB: Yes, he had been a Congressman, a very good one, and then he ran for the Senate in 1950. No, didn't he run then for Governor? According to this he ran for Governor. I thought he had run for the Senate, but I know he ran for statewide office. I got along with him fine, I know that. He was a very good friend. He wanted us to buy a paper in Colorado.

HESS: Did you ever see the two other men who were legislative assistants, Joseph Feeney and Charles Maylon?

LOEB: No, I never knew them at all. Oh, Joe Feeney, yes, I got to know him later on in the Harriman campaign.

HESS: What was his connection with that?

LOEB: Oh, he was trying to help out a little bit. I can't remember. I just vaguely remember.

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Maylon -- I don't even remember the name.

HESS: Did you get involved in congressional liaison matters any at all?

LOEB: No, not at all.

HESS: Did you have any dealings with some of the military aides; General Harry Vaughan? Did you see Harry Vaughan around?

LOEB: Oh, yes. I never had much relationship with him. Afterwards, while I was in Washington, they used to have a luncheon on Thursday, and they called it the "Out But Happy Club," which Charlie organized with some of the others, and Vaughan was there.

There was one person that I mentioned -- a little story about him: Admiral Souers. Admiral Souers, I think, was from Atlanta, and his major financial interest was the Southern

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Linen Supply Company, for which my wife's uncle in Atlanta, Herbert Haas, was the general counsel. He and Admiral Souers were intimate friends. My wife's uncle was a very, very conservative man; oh, he could froth at the mouth at the name of either Roosevelt or Truman, and he was always constantly going to Senator George and saying, "Do something about the minimum wage act," very, very reactionary. But very nice to me and the whole family in a way. And he always used to ask me, did I know his good friend Sidney Souers. Well, I had not traveled in those kinds of circles, but when I got on the White House staff, I noticed that Admiral Souers had an office down the hall, so I went in to see him one day and introduced myself as being married to Herbert Haas' niece.

"Oh, Herbert, oh, my goodness." He was very cute. And he said, "You know, Herbert's always bugging me about this influence peddling

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and deep freezes and fur coats and so on and so forth, and then he'll call up and he'll say, 'Sidney, I want you to do me a favor."' Never making any relationship, you know, between his financial relationship and the Southern -- whatever it was -- Linen Supply Company. He really ran kind of a sweat shop, I guess. It was a real laundry, is what it was. But I remember that's the only time that I met Sidney Souers. He was very cute about it.

HESS: Do you remember anything about Robert Dennison or Robert Landry?

LOEB: I simply remember Admiral Dennison as a very fine man. I had lunch with him several times. I thought he was a particularly intelligent person. He was so different from Harry Vaughan. I remember him as being quite intellectually inclined.

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HESS: Now, earlier today we have mentioned speechwriting a little bit, and the draft that you submitted that the President really did not use for the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, but did you help on any of the other speeches?

LOEB: I may say, I am sure I wasn't the only person who submitted drafts that weren't used.

HESS: Just how were speeches written?

LOEB: Well, they used to ask a number of people to submit drafts, John Hersey wrote one on mutual security and they threw the whole thing away. It was a beautiful speech, but it just wasn't a Harry Truman type speech, and it had to be completely rewritten.

The only speech that I wrote, was a speech on immigration, I recall, that was, after many changes, I think, was basically used. And then I participated in the State of the Union message.

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HESS: In '52. Just what do you recall about your participation?

LOEB: Not very much frankly. Maybe going over some parts of it, and then all one night, sitting in the Cabinet Room with people from various departments going over it. That's all. And once in a while I think of that speech, sitting in on a conference with the President. He didn't make too many changes.

Charlie Murphy was very careful. He used the kind of language which was Truman language, and sometimes when intellectuals wrote stuff it just wasn't Truman style.

Am I correct in thinking that the President had an eye problem? He couldn't use a teleprompter.

HESS: He always had.

LOEB: If I'm not mistaken.

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HESS: He had always worn glasses, but as I understand it, the trouble with the teleprompter was not necessarily his eyes, but he didn't like the pacing. He felt he was paced by the teleprompter, and if it was typed in front of him, he set his own pace. That's what I've heard.

Now, also in your files at the Library, I have found where you wrote, not drafts, but brief outlines, of types of speeches.

LOEB: I believe, Jerry, that these were given to me in one form or another, and I obviously submitted them to Mr. Murphy but I didn't write them. In fact, in the bottom of this first one, there is the indication that Jim Lanigan wrote it, "J.S. Lanigan."

HESS: And you were passing them on, is that correct?

LOEB: I was evidently passing them on. I do not

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believe that I wrote these myself. I don't want to disown them, but I don't think I did.

HESS: And also in your files I found several things concerning a presidential preference primary. Was this something that you paid particular attention to?

LOEB: Oh, yes, that was a particular interest of mine. The President, at some point, had indicated that he favored a national primary. And I wrote a memorandum for Murphy. Yes, this is it.

I always thought that I never really knew President Truman on a personal basis. However, I think this is the one issue that I really convinced him on, because I remember afterwards, even after his term of office, he was on some kind of TV program in which he came out against a presidential primary.

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The presidential primary, to my way of thinking, is the kind of thing that looks wonderful on paper and seems very Democratic, like proportional representation, and a good many people tend to favor it, but the more you look into it, the more difficult it becomes. One of the difficulties, as with a lot of these changes -- I've been arguing this since 1968, some of the new reforms that have been suggested. One of the problems is the size of the United States of America, and I remember testifying before the McGovern Committee, and the same thing would apply here. If you were thinking about Denmark with a homogeneous population, and a relatively small country, you could adopt certain plans which would not be applicable in a country as vast as the United States. And so I wrote this memorandum; I felt very strongly about this, and still do. I'm very much against a presidential

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primary.

HESS: And also it seems to me that it makes a rich man's game, to be able to go to all the states and to have a campaign in each state.

LOEB: Absolutely fabulous cost -- only the Kennedys, the Harrimans, and the Rockefellers could run for public office.

I may say in this connection that I don't know if people realize it, but when you're working for a wealthy man, it's almost impossible for him to raise money. We found that out in the Harriman campaign after Averell Harriman gave five thousand dollars, his wife gave five thousand dollars, his brother gave five thousand dollars, Roland, and said, "I'm for Averell through the primary, but I'm a Republican." And we still had only about forty or fifty thousand dollars. But how do you go to

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somebody and say, "Look, will you give ten dollars for Averell Harriman or Nelson Rockefeller?" It's a little silly. We had actually a meeting on it at Averell's house for breakfast. Herbert Lehman was there. The only thing that saved us was that the law firm -- Jim Rowe, got Harriman's law firm, I think it was Sullivan and Cromwell, one of the big law firms, to rule that the amount of money that a candidate expends in his own behalf before a convention is not considered a contribution to a presidential campaign. Therefore, the five thousand dollar rule did not apply. From that point on, I guess, Averell spent more money.

HESS: Have we covered all your duties that you had with Averell Harriman in 1952?

LOEB: Yes, I opened the office and I hired most of the staff. Then somebody else came in as

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national director. I was executive director or something like that. Dick, he was later chairman of the party in New York, from Utica, in the fishing tackle business (Richard Balch). Very successful, very nice guy, but Frank Roosevelt -- you know, Frank was the major campaign manager. We had quite a crew of people going around the country for whom I was responsible. We had James Burns, the historian, James MacGregor Burns; we had Bill [William E.] Leuchtenburg, the distinguished historian now at Columbia University; Jim Scheuer (now Congressman), took a piece of the country, I remember Arizona and sort of that area around there. Who else did we have? We had about a half a dozen real bright young guys that went around the country on his behalf. But it didn't end up in very much.

HESS: At the time that you were in the White House McCarthyism was quite a problem. Did that affect

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your job in any way?

LOEB: Yes. It affected me in this way. There was a rule at that time that if anybody's FBI report included anything that could be considered derogatory, the law required that that report be sent to a loyalty review board which was headed by Hiram Bingham, the father of Jonathan Bingham. At one time -- excuse me, but did I go over this story about William Loeb? I told you the story, but I haven't gone over it on the tape.

At one time, William Loeb who was then, and now, the publisher of the Manchester, New Hampshire Union Leader, who bought it from the widow of Colonel Knox. (Colonel Knox's widow wouldn't sell the Chicago Daily News to a group headed by Adlai Stevenson, nor would she sell the Manchester paper to Tom Braden, now a columnist.) He sent a very disrespectful telegram

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to President Truman. I don't recall the text, but I remember that it started, "Dear Harry." This Mr. Loeb is no relationship of mine, and is on the far right, and he suggested that "Dear Harry listen to America's greatest Senator next Saturday night, who would expose another one of his cronies as a commie stooge." And somehow, it got around that maybe I was the person who was about to be attacked. Charlie Murphy then asked me to come to his office and said, "Maybe you ought to be prepared for it." And he actually let me read my own FBI report, which was a horrifying experience.

HESS: What did you find in there?

LOEB: Oh, I found a lot of things. I have to add that, despite what's in the report, I have since been cleared for the highest classifications, since an Ambassador is privy to all sorts of

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information, including the CIA and everything else. But there it was. Two-thirds of the report had to do with the subsequent career of a chap who taught at Northwestern, and with whom I had roomed. Do you want me to recall some of the things that are in the report?

HESS: We can close this if you would like to.

LOEB: Well, we'll see afterwards.

HESS: It's interesting to see what's in an FBI report from someone who has seen his own.

LOEB: For example, there's the whole history of Cortland Eyer, who was my roommate for a period of less than a year, who was doing his dissertation on Dido and Aeneas in the Middle Ages, and about to go in the Catholic Church, and was obviously an unsettled person, and another colleague at Northwestern, a second

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generation British Labor Party man (Norman Benneton) convinced him to go left, and he went all the way left. He really went all the way left. And about two-thirds of my FBI report is on Cortland Eyer and on his subsequent Communist activities. He taught at some of these Communist schools like the Sam Adams School, the Thomas Jefferson School, and so forth. He went to Moscow and I remember getting a note from him that sounded like Alfred de Musset in Red Square. He went all the way. I haven't seen him in I don't know how long. But you can just imagine what would happen if McCarthy got ahold of this: "I have here in my hand..." This was one thing.

But there were many little things like: We lived, before we moved to Washington, right near the La Guardia Airport, in a Bulova Watch Company housing project where there were apartments

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up and down. Above us, in this little apartment was a handsome couple; the husband was a pianist in Ben Bernie's Orchestra. Older people will remember Ben Bernie, one of the big bands of the Guy Lombardo era. I never was in his apartment and my wife, I think, and his wife exchanged formulas for babies, but we noticed one morning that in our mailbox (we got the New York Times and he got the New York Herald Tribune), by accident I guess, we noticed that inside the Herald Tribune was the Daily Worker, and presumably he fixed it up with his newsboy to deliver the Daily Worker.

I never had a political conversation with him or the slightest relationship with him. He was a nice fellow. But in my FBI reports there is much about this fellow whose name I've long since forgotten, and presumably I was there because above me there lived this fellow who was a

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Communist.

There was the fact about a chap who occupied the basement apartment of the building we found when we moved to Washington in Tacoma Park (Maryland). It says in my FBI report that I probably was a Communist because I entertained Negroes. As a matter of fact, the only Negro that I can recall visiting us, and I was proud to entertain him, was George Weaver, later the Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs, who had been our friend for a long time. This chap (in the basement apartment), who was a lens grinder in some optical company, testified that I probably was a Communist because I received Wallace literature which he found in the garbage. I obviously was on somebody's sucker list and received a few letters, although I was distinctly against Wallace in 1948 and testified at the convention against him.

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But there was all this business. It turned out to be Leon Keyserling. It wasn't me at all. Then Charlie Murphy suggested that maybe it would come up, and therefore maybe it would be a good idea if I sat down and wrote about my own life, my political life. It was a memorandum, a copy of which I found here, which is precisely that, a five or six page story of my life, and my various anti-Communist activities.

I would have to say that I have since suspected, although Charlie never said this, that one of the reasons they wanted me at the Democratic National Committee was because they were a little bit afraid that some of the stuff that was in my FBI report might come out, and if I was at the Democratic National Committee, obviously I was no longer under the jurisdiction of the Government, I would be less vulnerable.

It was, of course, then suspected that

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McCarthy had somebody in the Loyalty Review Board who was passing these documents to him, which I think later turned out to be correct.

One ironic aspect of this, which I must add: In around June or July, 1950, at a meeting of the ADA executive Committee over supper we were talking about Senator McCarthy. Originally some of us hadn't taken him too seriously, but by this time, he was quite a serious problem. And somebody suggested, "Why don't we get one of our Senators who are friendly to introduce a motion of censure against Senator McCarthy." Everybody bounced on this poor fellow who had made this suggestion and said, "Well, this is the most fantastic thing, the Senate is the most exclusive club in the world, nobody is going to do a thing like that." Everybody finally agreed and Jack Bingham was sitting there. He was then the chairman of the New York State ADA, and

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he hadn't said anything. All of a sudden he said, "Well, they did it to my father." And it was as if he had said, "They called my father an s.o.b.""

As a matter of fact, four years later, the precedent with a motion of censure introduced by Senator Flanders, was the censure of Hiram Bingham, Senator Hiram Bingham from Connecticut, Republican Senator, who was at that time the head of the Loyalty Review Board. It was just a funny twist of fate, and it was definitely the precedent, although the issue was entirely different.

The issue, as I recall, was that Senator Bingham was the chairman of some kind of a committee on the tariff, a subcommittee. And he hired as his staff director somebody connected with the Connecticut Manufacturers Association, who was an expert on the tariff

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and was financially involved, and therefore was privy to some information that he could use, I suppose. One of the "wild Jackasses," as they used to call them, Senator [William] Borah, Senator [George] Norris, Senator Hiram Johnson, moved a vote of censure, and he was censured and then was defeated.

HESS: Did you feel that the atmosphere of McCarthyism made a sort of defensive -- was there sort of a defensive attitude on the part of the White House staff? Were they being extra cautious at this time?

LOEB: Well, they were being pretty cautious, although I would have to say for good old spunky Harry Truman, he said it as he thought -- his famous "red herring" phrase, I remember. The first person, by the way, I don't know if you remember who the first person was that McCarthy

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attacked on the White House staff. It was David Lloyd.

And that was the strangest thing. David Lloyd had either an aunt or two aunts, I forget. The older they got the more radical they got. By this time they were deep in their seventies or even their eighties, and one of them, I think, was one of the incorporators of the Daily Worker. Of course, David hadn't seen her for years and years and had no relationship with her at all, but that was enough for Joe McCarthy.

HESS: What would be your definition of a liberal, and what would be your definition of a conservative? Just what is the difference between liberalism and conservatism?

LOEB: Oh, now we're getting philosophic. That's a hard one. I think both terms are relative, and you would have to redefine both liberalism

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and conservatism in every age. I think it's more an attitude than it is a specific program. It's a receptivity to change more than it is a specific program or whether it's socialized medicine or labor relations or whatever it is, race relations, and I think it's that the liberal is more inclined to accept and fight for change and the conservative is more inclined to resist change. Although that doesn't mean that the liberal is in favor of change for change's sake, nor does it mean that the conservative need resist all change.

One issue, for example, we've just been talking about McCarthyism. I remember being right on one issue. Having been wrong on so many during my career, I can boast of the few times I was right, but I remember when we in ADA were concerned about McCarthyism, I thought we were right to be concerned and to fight, but I

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also kept saying, "We will never win this battle against Joseph McCarthy and what he stands for until the conservatives of America join us, because the defense of the Bill of Rights and the defense of civil liberties is not a liberal or radical program at all. It's basically a conservative program. It's defending something that exists, the right of each individual human being. Incidentally, it turned out that way. It wasn't until the conservatives came into the battle that we beat McCarthy. I thought about that and I wrote an editorial about that several months ago when Senator [Ralph E.] Flanders died. He will be known as the conservative Vermont Senator who first started the motion of censure. And Joseph Welch was a Boston conservative who stood up with his dignity in defense of civil liberties. Senator [Arthur V.] Watkins was a real conservative,

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who was a chairman of the committee that recommended censure, so that these terms are relative. I wouldn't want to define it.

I recall going to Europe, having gotten some money from Michael Straight and the foundation that he controlled -- a few hundred dollars -- and going to Europe in 1949 on a specific project to discover the feelings of the so-called democratic left in Europe, which meant mostly Socialists and Christian Democrats. I remember at a certain point trying to get from all the Socialists, the Social Democratic leaders that I could find, their definition of what socialism was. And, of course, it varied quite widely. And no place did I really get what might be called the Marxist definition of socialism, which is the system of society of state control of means of production for use and not for profit, and all that sort of thing. Mostly I got a rather vague sort of definition

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which sounded not too different from the New Deal, and I remember, I think, the most intelligent definition I got was from the Minister of Economics, Erik Brofoss, I think his name was, in Norway, who said, "We don't mean nationalization. On the contrary. What we mean is that those decisions which affect the life of an entire people, including economic decisions, must be made democratically." They may call it socialism, we may call it liberalism, but they are all relative terms.

HESS: How would you rate the Presidents of recent years from Mr. Roosevelt to the present, in terms of their effectiveness, their administrative ability, their intellectual ability, and as men? Let's take President Roosevelt.

LOEB: Well, I think I have been consistent in one way. I've often kidded my friends in ADA.

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We have criticized every one of them, every one of them, and I suppose this is part of the nature of the liberal beast, never to be quite satisfied. Of course, when you get in on the inside, you're not so critical, but when you are outside you are always critical.

We were very critical of FDR. I never knew President Roosevelt. I got to know Mrs. Roosevelt very well. After she had been burned by some of the young people that she didn't think were Communists and were, then she used me quite frequently as a kind of an authority on this subject, and she would have me down to her apartment to talk to young people about social problems, and the nature of the Communist problem.

But Roosevelt was undoubtedly a -- of all the Presidents you mentioned, I think he was certainly the greatest one. He certainly had his weaknesses. He was as much of a politician

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as the others.

I happened to be present at the convention at which he was first nominated, just as a young Chicagoan I got myself a ticket, and I remember that he was not the hero of the liberals at that convention. He was just kind of a plodding, moderately liberal Governor of New York, and the hero was Al Smith. The crowd booed for twenty minutes when Mr. [William Gibbs] McAdoo asked for time after recess to announce that they had worked out this deal between the Hearst forces supporting Garner and the Roosevelt forces. But he turned out to be a man of his times, and I certainly think he was a great President.

Mr. Truman, of course, was the great surprise of all of them. As I've indicated before, his nomination as Vice President was a shock. We thought that this was the end of the world. This machine politician, anti-intellectual

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from Missouri it seemed to me was absolutely impossible, and especially since Henry Wallace who had been the hero of the liberals was dumped. I think Truman will certainly always rank, if not in the top category of Presidents with Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson and Roosevelt, will certainly be in the second category. I think, as I think you've said, that his claim to fame is mostly in the field of foreign policy and I would question the decision on the atomic bomb, but otherwise, his decisions in foreign policy were magnificent.

I would say one thing about most Presidents, and it's a strange comment, perhaps, that the voting public is really as much interested in motion and direction as in actual accomplishment. I think this is a very strange thing.

In the case of Lyndon Johnson, for example, liberals have been criticized and attacked as

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snobs, with the suggestion that they opposed Lyndon Johnson because of his lack of style, his Texas accent, and so on, but I don't really think this is justified. President Truman was a non-intellectual, too, in that sense, and yet, while there were some questions at the beginning which were understandable, we didn't have the same feeling about Truman as later developed in opposition to Lyndon Johnson. But in the field of domestic policy, for example, Truman was all-out on every issue and strategically, in terms of actual accomplishment that may have been a mistake. But anyway, it gave people the feeling that he was on their side and there was motion.

It's certainly true, if you're going to compare Kennedy and Johnson. I could give you a dramatic example of it. I represented President Kennedy in black Africa for three months and

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Lyndon Johnson for twenty-three months, and I raised this at a meeting of Ambassadors in Lagos at one point toward the end. It was rather ironic that certainly Lyndon Johnson achieved more in the field of civil rights than any President in modern times, certainly more than Jack Kennedy did. In fact, in the field of civil rights his accomplishments were monumental, and yet we were never able to translate this fact to black Africa. Even when I left, I remember when the foreign minister thanked me for what I had done, not that I had done so much, but he said, "Think of what you could have done if Jack Kennedy had lived." And somehow they related to Jack Kennedy; and they didn't relate to Lyndon Johnson.

That may be a kind of chance thing, but there was a reality to it, because in all honesty, while he had achieved all of this in

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the field of civil rights, Lyndon Johnson had no interest in Africa. For example, Kennedy, while campaigning for the Presidency, met Sekou Toure; president of Guinea, in Disneyland, and they became fast friends. Sekou Toure had this relationship with Kennedy and always wrote him, wrote him frequently, and I'm sure the White House said, "Oh, my God, another letter from Sekou Toure:" Sekou considered that he was Kennedy's personal representative in Africa and I am sure that there were a dozen other African chiefs of state who felt likewise, which is the purpose of statesmanship.

I have to say that during the 23 months that I represented Lyndon Johnson, not once did Johnson sign a letter in answer to a letter from Sekou Toure: And there were occasions like the Congo crisis in which Sekou didn't agree with us, but was very decent about it, and wrote very thoughtful letters to the President of the United States. My friend Averell Harriman would answer, and I love Averell Harriman, but he wasn't

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the President of the United States; and when a chief of state writes to a chief of state he expects an answer from a chief of state, not from Averell Harriman. So I really think that in all honesty this was more than style. Lyndon Johnson had no real interest in Africa. Kennedy did, and it was understood.

HESS: Do you think Johnson had a real interest in civil rights?

LOEB: Yes, I do. He developed it. I'd have to say that he did. Oh, I could go on at great lengths -- that is long beyond the Truman thing.

It's interesting in the light of what President Nixon has done, which is really to strengthen the White House, bringing [George Pratt] Schultz in. Arthur Schlesinger once made a comment during the Kennedy administration that now there was a fourth branch of the Government: The White House was

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itself a branch of the Government as distinct from the executive branch, because the various departments have become so enormous that they were a power in themselves and the White House was a separate power, the McGeorge Bundy thing, the Budget Bureau and so on and so forth.

Well, in the Johnson era it was a little bit different. Johnson was really the first legislative President in modern times. He wasn't the first Senator, obviously, but in all honesty Jack Kennedy had been a good Senator, but not a power in the Senate.

HESS: He hadn't been the Majority Leader or anything like that.

LOEB: Harry Truman was a good Senator, but not a power in the Senate; Warren Harding wasn't even a good Senator, but Johnson was the fact and symbol of the Congress of the United States, and

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ran a legislative White House. Therefore, his achievements in domestic policy and legislation were great. I think also therefore he fell flat in foreign policy. I don't think you can run foreign policy that way.

And I may say, I disagree with my friend -- I argued when he came here recently to make a speech -- Ken Galbraith. I think he is generalizing from the particular. It happens that the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate is more dovish than hawkish, and therefore Ken thinks we ought to return the power over foreign policy to the politicians who are elected. This is democratic, but I think this is wrong and very dangerous. I think this is the situation now for those of us who believe that the Vietnam war was a mistake, but I asked Ken Galbraith how he would feel if the power were in the hands of the Military Affairs Committee with Senator

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[John Cornelius] Stennis.

He said, "Well, that's a little different." But I think that foreign policy is and should be in the hands of the Presidency. Of course, we've gone through these situations where what seems right at one time -- we all remember old Bob [Robert] La Follette who thought that the Supreme Court should be abolished, because it was a reactionary obstacle between the people of the United States and the people as represented by the Congress. Later it became the bulwark of civil liberties and civil rights.

So, that I would say that Kennedy -- well, he wasn't President long enough, so you cannot have the right kind of judgment that you should have of a President. He was probably the most fantastic symbol for the United States. He was a great asset in that way, and in Africa and South America it's almost unbelievable how he

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was loved. Why? One thinks of Jack Kennedy as a young President and one doesn't think of Lyndon Johnson as a young President, but there wasn't all that much difference in their ages. I mean, Kennedy was born in this century; he was the first President born in this century, and Johnson was the second President born in the century. Johnson was, I think, one week younger than I am. I was born in 1908. So there wasn't that vast difference. It was the impression of youth and a sense of motion that Kennedy gave. Now whether he would have fallen on his face if he had been President for four or eight years, no one can tell. He did have a tendency of doing some great things and then being frightened that he'd gone too far. He did that in my case, for example, and I won't go into all that.

Johnson, I think, was a tragic President because he did accomplish so much in the field

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of civil rights, and in domestic legislation, and he was a disastrous President in terms of foreign policy. He never understood, as Kennedy understood, as the British critic [Sir Denis Brogan] put it, the "illusion of American omnipotence." It's important to understand American power, and also it's important to understand its limitations and Lyndon Johnson never understood that.

HESS: What about Eisenhower and Nixon?

LOEB: Well, I would have to say that Eisenhower was probably the best Republican President we could expect. I happen to be still a staunch Democrat, although I'm critical of Democrats from time to time. He was, if you had to have a Republican President, I suppose was -- he prevented the worst. Dulles was a disaster but Eisenhower kept rein on him. He had a certain

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sense of dignity. He was a nothing man in domestic policies, and he had a tendency just to have great confidence in enormous wealth.

I would have to say that Nixon is a far worse President than I ever thought he would be, and I never thought he would be a good one. I think Nixon is a disaster.

I cannot distinguish between Nixon and Agnew. I do not believe that it is possible for a Vice President to do what Agnew is doing without the President's consent, and what is being done, in my opinion, by the President -- I realize that every President has to be a politician, and God knows, when you have one that isn't, you're in trouble. But politics goes just so far and then it shouldn't go any farther. I think President Nixon is endangering the very life of this Nation by seeking confrontation, in my opinion, because in the short run he could

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win if he has that confrontation. In the long run, the Nation and American democracy will lose. But in the short run, I have no doubt that he can get himself re-elected President if he has a real confrontation and if it's a question of whether you wave the flag just the way he likes it to be waved. Americans are that way; we're all patriotic, but I think, for example, what has happened on Veterans' Day, what happened on Memorial Day, and what is probably going to happen on July 4^th, is a desecration of all those who died for this country; this is not a partisan, should not be a partisan holiday, none of these should be partisan holidays, but they have been made into partisan holidays, and I think this is desecration.

Sure, you can convince me that Richard Nixon isn't as bad as George Wallace, and you could probably convince me that George

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Wallace isn't as bad as Strom Thurmond for all I know, and neither one of them is as bad as Adolf Hitler, but I would say that Richard Nixon is the worst President up to now, through my life, although I don't remember Warren G. Harding -- not only in this business of confrontation, but what's happening to the economy, it seems to me, is absolutely disastrous.

I think this is a real danger. I know what has happened to this little community, and you can get all the economists in the world, but if you have the kind of tinderboxes we have in our large cities and you add to that tinderbox the kind of unemployment that we're having among young people and among blacks, you can't take the figure of 5 percent unemployment (that's the overall figure), it's twice as high for blacks and probably much higher for young people, then we're in real danger. I just think

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that Nixon does what he thinks is the political thing to do without having the courage to do…

HESS: Shall we shut it off for a while?

LOEB: Yes.

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