Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971

by David McCullough

  Bess joins me in warm personal regards to Alice and yourself and we hope an opportunity will present itself so we can have a visit again at sometime or other.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  Truman has read a review of Acheson’s memoir Morning and Noon, dealing with his life prior to the Truman administration. The review, by Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin, is positive throughout and concludes that in his memoir Acheson “comes through clearly as a proud, tender and sensitive man of great intellect, whose contributions to our society are very real indeed.”

  November 16, 1965

  Dear Dean:

  I have been reading a tear sheet from the Washington Post, called “Acheson’s Contributions Reflected in Autobiography.” It is a wonderful piece and one with which I completely and thoroughly agree.

  I hope everything is going well with you and that it will continue to go that way.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  The book mentioned is Acheson’s memoir Morning and Noon.

  December 1, 1965

  Dear Mr. President:

  The book about which you have been reading should have gone to you long since, and I thought it had from the publisher. That was an unfounded belief, and a copy is now on its way to you.

  Alice and I are well and looking forward to our winter vacation in Antigua, beginning January 7th. We send our most affectionate greetings to you and The Boss.

  Sincerely,

  Dean

  Truman’s signature and his handwritten postscript on this letter are less bold and sure than they would have been in prior days.

  December 10, 1965

  Dear Dean:

  I am happy to have your book Morning and Noon.

  I started to read it and found that there are some things about you that I had not known. But, of course, you know there is nothing I could ever learn about you that would make me admire you any less.

  Hope we can get together one of these days.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry Truman

  A most interesting book, I can hardly put it down!

  Frank F. Jestrab of North Carolina asked Acheson where he should send a donation of fifty dollars, intended for a “Truman Memorial Center of some sort” that was being set up at a university in Israel. Acheson sent the letter to Truman. The former President, who did not like things to be named for him and usually denied requests to use his name in this way, allowed his name to be given to a Truman Center on the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem provided that the center be devoted to the study of peace. The center was founded in 1966 and is today named the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace.

  June 8, 1966

  Dear Dean:

  Thank you very much for the letter from Mr. Jestrab and your reply to him. I do not know what disposition to make of the check. I assume that it was intended for the Harry S Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace, which will be built in an area within the complex of the Hebrew University in the City of Jerusalem.

  As you may have read, the project was made possible by contributions made by forty citizens here and abroad, of $100,000 each, so that there is in excess of four million dollars presently committed.

  I made it clear from the outset that this institution will be international in scope and operation and will have no connection with the government or nation of Israel, or any other government.

  I would assume, therefore, that if Mr. Jestrab still wishes to make this tender, it should be made to the Harry S Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace.

  Hope all goes well with you and that we can have a visit soon.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry Truman

  “Scoop” Jackson is Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, who chaired the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations of the Government Operations Committee. Acheson provides a statement in support of NATO which he hopes Truman will send to Jackson. Truman sent a shorter and somewhat revised version of Acheson’s draft to Jackson, though not for almost a month. Acheson had testified before the subcommittee on April 27. NATO was threatened at this time by France’s withdrawal of its troops from NATO’s integrated military command and its order that all non-French NATO troops leave France. Truman’s fourth grandson, Thomas Washington Daniel, was born on May 28.

  June 28, 1966

  Dear Mr. President:

  Soon I shall write you a gossipy letter about my three months’ service in the State Department in the Johnson Administration. It has been quite an experience. Everything is different from when you-know-who was in the White House and in the State Department. The best description of its operation is in the words of the negro spiritual: “The big wheel runs by faith and the little wheel runs by the grace of God.” But more of that in another letter.

  Today I am bothering you at the request of “Scoop” Jackson. His committee, as you know, has been holding hearings on the present NATO situation. McCloy and others, including myself, have testified, and “Scoop” has tried earnestly to create a record which will make more sense than that provided by the group of screwballs who now function as the Committee on Foreign Relations. Eisenhower wrote a letter giving some rather confused views, but on the whole supporting NATO. “Scoop” has asked me to ask you whether you would express your views in a letter for the record.

  As you remember from the old days, I tried never to present a problem without suggesting a solution. In this case I know that it would be an awful nuisance for you to undertake from scratch a letter on the present NATO situation. Therefore, I have tried my hand at a draft. In it I have kept away from all controversy about General de Gaulle, about where various headquarters should be transferred, and whether or not the US contingent should be decreased or transferred in part to home bases. I do think it would be helpful, since NATO was one of the great works of your Administration, to have a word from you stressing the essential foundations of NATO, which have not changed.

  If this whole matter seems to you a burden, just let me know and I will make everything all right with “Scoop.” If you like the draft, use it in any way you wish.

  We congratulate you and the Boss on another grandson. Margaret is the Mother of the Year.

  With love to you both.

  As ever,

  Dean

  July 26, 1966

  Dear Dean:

  I was glad to comply with your suggestion and have written Scoop Jackson urging continued support to NATO.

  It is always stimulating to hear from you—and I hope you will write again soon giving me your views on the shape of things.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  Acheson’s younger brother, Edward Campion Acheson, died in late September.

  September 30, 1966

  HONORABLE DEAN ACHESON

  BESS JOINS ME IN SENDING OUR LOVE AND SYMPATHY TO YOU AT THIS SAD TIME.

  HARRY S TRUMAN

  Acheson writes Truman the promised gossipy letter about Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. For about three months, from April to July 1966, Acheson had coordinated the Johnson administration’s response to the crisis within NATO caused by France’s withdrawal. The book Acheson mentions is his memoir of his service with the State Department under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. He titled it Present at the Creation.

  October 3, 1966

  Dear Mr. President,

  The message which you and Mrs. Truman sent me was most kind and thoughtful of you, as you have always been to me. My brother, who was ten years younger than I, died very suddenly, as he was reading at home. He had no history of heart trouble, though he had been in poor shape for some years from progressive emphysema. One of his proudest memories was of holding the title of your “Personal Representative” in late ’47 or ’48 when John Hilldring sent him off to Scandinavia to buy fish for the Germans to eat o
n Fridays. Now I am the only one left of my generation in the family, although I was the oldest.

  We had hoped to go to an Army dinner in honor of you and were saddened to get word that the Boss had wisely decided to save your energy for other things. It is too long since we have seen you. I do hope that you are coming back strongly from your illness.

  This year I put in five months of what Lincoln called “unrequited toil” in the State Department for LBJ and Dean Rusk on the De Gaulle NATO crisis. I found it—between you and me—a most disillusioning experience in regard to both men. I recommended Rusk to Kennedy when he wanted to appoint, of all people, Fulbright; and had high hopes of him. He had been a good assistant to me, loyal and capable. But as number one he has been no good at all. For some reason, unknown to me, he will not disclose his mind to anyone. The Department is totally at a loss to know what he wants done or what he thinks. All sorts of channels spring up between various people in the Department and White House aides which result in conflicting policies getting rumored about.

  LBJ is not much better. He, too, hates to decide matters, is a worse postponer of decisions than FDR. The phrase for that now is “to preserve all one’s options.” That means to drift and let decisions be made by default. It passes for statesmanship in our town today.

  Two other things about LBJ. He can’t carry on more than a few matters at once. Now-a-days his preoccupations are Vietnam and the balance of payments. So Europe is forgotten and a great deal that you, General Marshall and I did is unraveling fast. For the Chief of the world’s greatest power and the only one capable of world responsibility, this is a disaster.

  The other is that he is not only devious but would rather be devious than straight forward. While I was doing my best to advise him on NATO, and while he was writing messages and making speeches I wrote for him, he was circulating rumors in the press that my views were not his. If they were not, a half hour talk could have gotten us together. But it was not until I blew up that we had it and then I never did find out what he wanted done differently.

  At any rate, I am now a free man; writing a book about my years in the State Department and about another President who used to do things very differently.

  It is really too bad about LBJ. He could be so much better than he is. He creates distrust by being too smart. He is never quite candid. He is both mean and generous, but the meanness too often predominates. He yields to petty impulses such as the desire to surprise everyone with every appointment. It is too childish.

  Well, I have gotten a lot off my chest.

  Alice who is blooming (can you believe that we shall have been married 50 years next May!) sends her love to you and Bess, as I do.

  As ever,

  Dean

  October 19, 1966

  Dear Dean:

  As always I was glad to hear from you.

  As you may well imagine I was disturbed by all you had to say about the situation as you found it after taking a good look at it! I can only hope that with experience and the conditioning and strength that comes to the man after he has weathered the storms of criticism, vilification, disappointments and betrayals that he will rise to the full measure of the great calling of that office.

  Bess joins me in sending you and Alice our warmest greetings and our best wishes.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry Truman

  Joseph Alsop wrote a syndicated column called “Matter of Fact.” One of these columns, titled “ ‘Never Again Panmunjom,’ ” likened the possibility of a cessation of American bombing of North Vietnam in order to facilitate the beginning of peace talks to a “standstill order” that Truman allegedly issued to General Matthew Ridgway, the commander of United Nations forces in Korea, at the time peace talks with the communists were beginning. “The results of President Truman’s standstill order,” Alsop wrote, “were two more needless years of war and some 90,000 additional American casualties.… The standstill order—really a unilateral cease fire—was, in fact, the worst mistake that President Truman ever made.”

  November 16, 1966

  Dear Boss,

  Will you please get Mr. Noyes to help me in a battle I want to fight to correct an error which Joe Alsop has now printed four times about you. I enclose his last rendition of it today. I think better of Joe than you once did—I remember your references to Alsop—but unless firmly corrected he will go on repeating an error until people begin to believe it.

  Paul Nitze and I having compared notes, are sure that you never sent a standstill order to Ridgway. To accuse you of causing 90,000 needless casualties and two needless years of war is outrageous.

  I am asking Bradley to search his memory and papers about this and also Joe Collins. Paul will have a search made in the Pentagon. Will you ask Noyes to see whether your papers show anything on the subject. I don’t want to quote anybody or any paper. I only want to assert on my own authority that after inquiries which convince me that I know the facts that you issued no standstill order in connection with any armistice talks nor interfered in any way with military operations at that time. You followed at all times your normal relations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State and of Defense.

  These columnists try to rewrite history as much as the communists.

  I hate to bother you with this, but I do think that it is important not to let this repeated misstatement continue without correction.

  Alice sends her love to you both.

  All your successors demonstrate what rugged health you had—yet you were never paid for overtime.

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  Truman asked his assistant David Noyes to look into Alsop’s contention about a “standstill order.” Noyes headed a search of Truman’s papers and discovered much evidence that no such order was issued. Robert Dennison was President Truman’s naval aide at the time of the Korean War. Sidney Souers, who was a special consultant to the President on military and foreign-policy affairs at the time the order was allegedly issued, confirmed with certainty that no such order had been issued.

  November 21, 1966

  Dear Dean:

  I have no idea where or from whom Alsop could have picked up the notion of a standstill order or how he came to make the ugly charge in his column. It was bad enough when you and I had to put up with this sort of thing in the days when it was our responsibility—but to use it now in relation to the Viet Nam situation is a little hard to take.

  Dave had dug up some passages from the documents which may help. We tried to reach Bob Dennison but he is out of the country. Sid Souers suggested that the most likely source for a final check would be Omar Bradley.

  Bess joins me in sending you and Alice our best.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  Acheson sends Truman a copy of a letter he received from General Matthew B. Ridgway regarding Joseph Alsop’s allegation of a standstill order. Ridgway wrote Acheson: “My recollection is very clear and positive that no such order was ever given by the President or other competent authority.” William Bundy, who was Acheson’s son-in-law, was a State Department official during the Johnson administration who advised the President on the Vietnam War. James “Scotty” Reston was a journalist with the New York Times. Eric Sevareid was a journalist with CBS News.

  December 5, 1966

  Dear Boss,

  I am most grateful to you and David Noyes for your letter and his memorandum on the Joe Alsop article. You will both be interested I know in the letter from Matt Ridgway which I enclose. It supports your recollection and your files in every way—so does the memory of General Bradley and General Collins’s search of the Pentagon files including the official army history of the Korean War not yet released for publication.

  I have had a long talk with Joe Alsop who has been so far rather difficult, but will—I hope—on reflection be more straight forward. His attitude after I stormed his outer works is that if he is wrong about you, he will retract the personal att
ribution, but still asserts that the whole administration, military and civil, let the enemy escape destruction by way of a quasi truce for negotiation. This, I say to him, is false. Ridgway says that the enemy was not subject to destruction except by augmentation of our land and air forces and by tactics which no one, military or civil, advised—it is Joe Alsop against the world. We shall see. Perhaps, as in his very decent letter of apology to you which David enclosed, his more gentlemanly side—which exists—will prevail.

  I will see Bob Dennison when he gets back—we had lunch just before he left—and get his recollections, too.

  Europe is a very worrisome spot these days. Disintegration is going so fast that it would be hard to check; and no one seems interested in doing so. The sentiments are expressed in an orthodox way by LBJ and DR but their hearts are not in the expressions, nor are their backs in any determined push.

  Our son-in-law Bill Bundy went off with Rusk yesterday for another ten day visit to Asia. This part of the world, which does evoke a great deal of hearty interest in the President and Secretary, is doing much better, though the worries are still great. If everyone would stop talking and keep on plugging the results might be great.

  Today Reston & Sevareid said to me that LBJ could conceivably lose in 1968. I said that first they must think up some one to whom he could lose. I saw no one and didn’t believe it anyway.

  Alice joins in affectionate greetings to you and Bess. We are off to Antigua a month from tomorrow.

  Yours ever,

  Dean

  In Joseph Alsop’s “letter of apology,” to which Acheson refers above, dated March 12, 1965, Alsop wrote to Truman: “My purpose is simply to apologize for the inexperience and bad judgment which led me to underrate your leadership of our country while you were in office. When I look back now, I must say with greater opportunities for comparison, your years in the White House seem to me a truly heroic period. Nowadays, I never lose a chance to say that in print. But I did not say it then, and that is why I think an apology is owed.” Truman replied to Alsop on March 15, 1965: “There is something in my make-up that rebels at the thought of exacting an apology from anyone who has publicly disapproved of me—and I surely would not expect to receive one from so talented an observer as yourself. But I warmly welcome your reassessment of ‘the period’ and dare hope that it might be sustained by the ultimate judgment.”