MR. CLIFFORD, WHAT WERE THE DEFENSE OPTIONS OPEN TO PRESIDENT TRUMAN IN EARLY 1947? THIS WAS WHEN THE SOVIETS WERE TRYING TO EXTEND THEIR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN TO GREECE AND TURKEY, IN PARTICULAR.

The options--

I'M SORRY. WHAT WERE THE OPTIONS?

The options were very limited. It was an area in which the United States had not had any previous experience. It had always been under the aegis and general control of Great Britain. And suddenly the British notified us in December of '46 that they would no longer be able to support the Greeks and the Turks. Then the formal message came over early in 1947, and the British said that they could not extend economic or military aid to Greece and Turkey, but they hoped that we might assume that burden. At that particular time we had no military resources in the area to draw from. We had as you know, greatly reduced our armed forces. But President Truman reached the conclusion that if we did not come to the aid of Greece and Turkey then no one else would. And if the Soviets obtained a foothold in that area of the Mediterranean then they would control the southern anchor of the defense line between eastern and western Europe. So President Truman went up in March and gave a speech to the Joint Session of the Congress in which he said, "It must be the policy of our country to come to the aid of those countries who are under pressure either from within or from without. And we must do it and we shall do it." And Congress came into line in that regard and appropriated the money. And Greece and Turkey were saved, else they would have gone right down the drain as far as the Soviets. I always get a surge of pride in that important center in Athens where the statue of President Truman is. Erected it says, "By grateful people for whom he saved our liberty."

ANY DISCUSSION AT THIS TIME OF USING THE BOMB AGAIN?

None. After the President dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was his deepest wish that -

LET ME JUST START YOU AGAIN ON THAT. WAS THE BOMB A VIABLE OPTION AT THIS TIME?

In in March of 1947, he did not consider it so. I say, after he dropped it on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he hoped that it wouldn't ever be used militarily again. That was his hope. And he did not approach crises in Eastern Europe or in the Eastern Mediterranean from the standpoint of it might possibly necessitate the dropping of the bomb. That was not in his mind. If it had taken military assistance in Greece and Turkey to prevail he would have sent conventional military forces there. But keep in mind, if you will, that he did not make his mental processes known to the Soviets. So when he announced the Truman Doctrine they had no way of knowing whether he would back that up with the use of the atomic bomb or not. And we had it, and they didn't. The world was in awe of the enormous destructive force wrecked upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I have no doubt but what that played an important role in the Soviets deciding not to push us too far.

DID YOU HAVE A ROLE, A PERSONAL ROLE IN DRAFTING THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE? CAN YOU TELL ME ANY STORIES ABOUT THE DRAFTING?

Well, yes as I say I happened to be in his office when the first preliminary message was received from the British. And it caused great concern to him. Because for 200 years the policy of our country had been not to be involved in alliances of that kind. Taking over the protection of an area so foreign to us as the Eastern Mediterranean. However, we'd had a year and a half of constant aggressive Soviet expansionism. And I think he felt strongly that if anybody was to stop them, he would have to. In the drafting of the speech, subsequently there has been some criticism of the breadth of the language used. I think we used the right language at the time. It was my function to do quite a lot of the drafting of that message. And we wanted to inform not only Greece and Turkey but Europe, and the Soviet Union and the world that we now had entered the 20th century and we were going to fight for freedom in the world. And I suggest to you that the Truman Doctrine enunciated in March of '47 sent a surge of hope around the entire globe where there really hadn't been any hope before. So it achieved its purpose.

IF YOU CAN JUST TELL ME BRIEFLY WHAT THE MARSHALL PLAN SET OUT TO DO?

The background of the Marshall Plan is very interesting. As soon as the Second World War was over, it was President Truman's fondest wish that we could work out a series of agreements with the Soviets. There had been agreements at Yalta and at Tehran, and at Potsdam. And in the year following the close of the war, which ended in August of '45, the Soviets went about violating most of the agreements that they had made. And the pressures began to build up in Western Europe. Pressures on Greece that I've referred to, a lot of pressure on Italy, pressures on France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain. In addition to open and avowed pressure, the Soviets developed what was known as the Comintern that was the creation of a communist cell in these various countries, from which then would spread out communist operatives. Europe was prostrate after the war. If they were going to be able to recreate their industry and their way of life and stand up against the pressures of communism, they were going to have to have economic help. I attribute the major thinking to the fertile brain of Dean Acheson. He was really the author of the concept of the Marshall Plan. The fact is he came over to the White House one time, and I sat in with him and President Truman when he discussed the concept and said that he was going to go to someplace in Alabama and make a speech and he thought he might try this concept of economic aid to Europe as a trial balloon. He did, and it received rather surprisingly favorable comments in the press throughout the United States. The President was very concerned about it, because we had spent hundreds of billions of our Treasury in the second World War, lost hundreds of thousands of men, and he was not sure that the American people would support a plan. War ending in 1945, here now in 1948, he wanted to go into this very expensive program. He didn't know whether the Congress was able to do it or not. So after the original reaction to it was rather good, we went to work in writing the preparatory outline of the Marshall Plan and then preparing much of the speech that would be given. I had the hope that President Truman's name would be associated with it. But when I mentioned that to him, he smiled a little at my youth and inexperience, and said, no, anything that went to the Hill with the name Truman on it would die unborn. He said, let's think about that. After it was worked up almost to the final dotting of the i's, he decided that the speech should be given to General Marshall, who was Secretary of State and Marshall made the commencement address in the spring of '48 at Harvard, and it was an enormous success, and three days later it became known as the Marshall Plan, and been known ever since. And it went right through the Congress, because every Republican on the Hill if he wanted to could vote for the Marshall Plan where he certainly couldn't vote for the Truman.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE EARLY DAYS OF THE AEC AND PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S RELATIONS WITH THE AEC? I'M THINKING OF DAVID LILIENTHAL, IN PARTICULAR, AS THE CHAIRMAN.

I sat in on those meetings because the President gave me the assignment of interviewing prospective members of the first Atomic Energy Commission. And so I sat in and had pretty much the feel of how he felt. He had an important decision to be made. Up until that time the only use made of this new discovery, atomic energy, had been the military use of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was his fervent hope that this great invention could be used for the benefit of mankind and not for the destruction of mankind. So he decided basically that he wanted civilian control of atomic energy and not military control. The military worked very hard for it, saying that this was the great weapon of the future and they would be able to develop -- the President turned that suggestion down, put it in the hands of a five man Commission headed by David Lilienthal, who I might say made a superb chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. And it was the President's instructions to them to utilize the major efforts and aim of the Commission to developing peacetime uses. That is, develop it for industrial energy, for medical purposes also of course, there...the military would be involved within the limitations that the President said so that we could begin to develop as a military weapon also. But throughout the Truman Administration he constantly maintained civilian control over it and did not let the military get in possession of this new weapon.

DO YOU RECALL ANY CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE STOCKPILE? THE SIZE OF THE STOCKPILE?

Only that after some time that they'd been manufacturing them I think the President was rather startled that so few weapons had been made. Perhaps the Atomic Energy Commission was taking his position a little too literally, that they just give attention to the civilian uses of atomic energy. So I think he felt that we should be developing it militarily on a more extensive basis, and that was done. I remember at the very beginning when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forced the Japanese surrender it was an extraordinarily tense waiting period to see what the Japanese could do, would do because we only had two bombs, and we had dropped them both.

CAN I JUST ASK YOU TO REPEAT FOR ME THE PRESIDENT'S REASON FOR INITIALLY DISCOURAGING MILITARY PLANNING FOR THE USE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS?

Well um, I think maybe that is possibly something of an overstatement. I don't think he minded their making plans so long as they weren't actually beginning to carry out such plans. I think he understood having been a military man himself that there are always future studies going on in the military. War plans, in the event war is entered into. But what we wanted to do was to confine the military to the suggested plans and not having them actually begin overt plans and constructions to increase the possibility of the use of atomic energy in war. It was his expressed hope again and again that the only atomic bombs that would ever be dropped in the history of the world were those that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He hoped that they would never be used again. So he was constantly in control of the military to see that they didn't go further than they wanted him to go.

CAN YOU REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE -- WHAT THE ATMOSPHERE WAS LIKE AT THE CZECH COUP WHEN THERE WAS THE COUP D' ETAT IN THE SPRING OF '48, IN FEBRUARY OF '48, AND KLEMENT GOTTWALD TOOK OVER FROM PRESIDENT BENES?

As I said before, the President was so hopeful that we could work out plans with the Soviet Union. Instead you may remember that during the closing days of the war, and thereafter, they started it and they took control of all the nations on their western periphery: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia a little later Hungary Yugoslavia, and this was of course a matter of the deepest concern. We had hoped that Czechoslovakia could remain independent when the coup took place and they moved in and Czechoslovakia in effect fell to Soviet domination. It emphasized the threat of Soviet expansionism and made the President more conscious of the fact that we were faced with this constant inexorable plan of the Soviets to expand communist control throughout the world.

HOW DID PRESIDENT TRUMAN ASSESS THE CONVENTIONAL STRENGTH OF THE SOVIET UNION AT THIS TIME?

Oh, he thought it was very great. During the war we had our factories running on a full-time basis. We shipped literally mountains of material to the Soviet Union. We sent every kind of war material, we sent fuel, we sent food, we sent supplies of all kinds, so although the Soviet Union had 20 million casualties in the war, when the war was over they were at peak military strength as evidenced by the very aggressive campaign they made from the east in the closing days of Hitler and the Third Reich. So he had a very real respect for the Soviet military power. Our power had dwindled rather rapidly, our men were glad to -- anxious to get out and wanted to get home and take up peacetime pursuits. But in that whole period behind the actions of the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of the world was the existence of the atomic bomb. There was no defense to it, we were the only nation that had it, and it played an enormous part although we never threatened to use it was in the minds of all thoughtful men all over the world.

DID THE ADMINISTRATION ASSESS THE CHARACTER AND THE INTENTIONS OF THE SOVIET LEADERS AT THIS TIME?

And which time is this?

'47 - '48.

Yes. At first it was thought here in this country that we would be able to reach agreements. It seems so logical. We had worked together so closely with the Soviet Union as allies during the war, and it was a feeling that because of the relationship that had been developed that we could do the same and work toward peace. It was not to be. The Soviets did not wish it. They had their own plans for their own area and how they were going to build up a bulwark of nations as a protectorate against some future excursion from the west. So that as time went on, the president became more and more convinced that the one great foreign policy problem of the United States - was the Soviet Union. And he expressed it in that manner, he treated it that way, in the campaign of 1948 he assured the American people that this country would do everything in its power to stem the advance of the Soviet Union that is that we could reasonably do. He recognized the difficulty of it. He commented on the fact that the Soviets had made an effort to penetrate our government here and the FBI was very busily trying to find communist spies in this country. It was that kind of a period in which the administration at that time and the American people were beginning to accustom themselves to the fact that for as long as one could see looking into the future, the Soviet were going to be a problem. I regret to say that's the way it's been ever since.

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY PERSONAL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT JOSEPH STALIN? DID HE EVER TALK TO YOU ABOUT STALIN?

Well, yes, when he came back from Potsdam, he was rather euphoric about the meeting. And he said, he had an expression one time that got picked up by the papers, he said, you know, "I rather liked old Joe," which was a rather startling statement. I think Stalin had been proved there, had perhaps sent five to ten million people to their deaths, some incredible number of that kind. But he felt that they'd gotten along well. Stalin came over for instance in Potsdam when he first was there, I think maybe his first day, to pay just a courtesy call, and President Truman invited him to stay for lunch. So they had about an hour and a half talk, one on one. So he came back encouraged, but the next year brought constant disillusionment to him about the attitude of the Soviets. So then he knew that we had a problem on our hands and we would have to face up to it.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE CLAY TELEGRAM BEING RECEIVED IN WASHINGTON? GENERAL CLAY'S TELEGRAM WARNING OF POTENTIAL -- WELL IT WAS A WAR SCARE?

I have some recollection that in the spring of '47 the Soviets were engaged, as I say again, in this expanding policy of theirs, and General Clay was in Germany, and my recollection is not too clear on it, but I think that he sent a telegram pointing out a number of activities in which the Soviets were engaged and calling our government's attention to the fact that we had better face up to the realities of Soviet aggression.

CAN I JUST ASK YOU TO REPEAT THAT, INCLUDING "GENERAL CLAY'S TELEGRAM WAS RECEIVED IN WASHINGTON."

Yes, it was in the spring of 1947. And General Clay in the telegram, pointed out activities of the Soviets which showed so clearly their aggressive designs. The President took it seriously and the policy of the Administration then was to recognize the realities of Soviet expansionism and face up to it.

WHY DID PRESIDENT TRUMAN THINK IT NECESSARY TO CALL THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS IN MARCH 17, 1948, ST. PATRICK'S DAY?

I think that he wanted to develop a plan whereby we could increase the political readiness of our country and the strength of our country without having just to rely upon the possession of the atomic weapon. So in that speech in that's...March of '47, he asked the Congress to approve a plan for universal military training. The idea was that young men getting out of high school would serve for a year in the military learn the basics of military service and then they could leave and go into a trade or go on to college but that we would ultimately form an enormous pool of millions of young men who already had rudimentary military training. The Congress turned it down. The reason was that the mothers of America didn't want their sons to be involved in any such program. And the political vicissitudes were too apparent to the members of Congress. Also the President asked for a selective service act so that men could be drafted. That was turned down too. I think a third request he made was for us to begin to cooperate and make substantial contributions to the actions of the European community at the time. So it was felt that this was a step in the direction of additional preparation for our country. It didn't accomplish very much.

AS A SEPARATE QUESTION COULD I JUST ASK YOU AGAIN TO SAY WHY SPECIFICALLY HIS PLANS FOR UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING WERE REJECTED?

It was our understanding after he offered it, in talks that he had with Congressional leaders and in speeches they made and in positions that they took that the program was unpopular in the country. First place, the young men didn't -- most of the young men did not want to do it. They didn't want to give that year. Also the mothers of the country, of young men, didn't want their sons to get into the military service even for that year of training. Keep in mind that we'd been through the Second World War. And the concept at the time was that we had prevailed over Hitler and the Third Reich and now we had the United Nations and we had the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was coming into existence. We had a number of programs, and as a matter of fact there really wasn't going to be any more wars. So there was no need to go through this. But the public response to the offer or suggestion of universal military training was exceedingly negative.

WHAT WAS PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S RESPONSE TO THAT?

He was disappointed in it. But if you can't get support on the Hill from the leaders, and you can take nose counts of Committees and so forth which he did at the time, and he found that he could push it as hard as he wanted to and speak allover the country and all, and he wasn't going to get the Congress to pass a universal military training bill. Now later in other years, they've come up with a different concept that is that boys be drafted into government service for a year after finishing high school. That they then would have the choice of either going into military training or going into some peacetime trade under the aegis of the military. Even...even that doesn't get enough public support to go through.

AT THE TIME OF THE BERLIN BLOCKADE IN JUNE OF 1948?

That was a very dramatic time. The Soviets contrary to the understanding that had existed between the three powers suddenly and without any real warning blockaded Berlin. One intriguing part that I don't know if it's ever been discussed before is, two of the President's top military advisers, recommended a plan of action to President Truman. The plan was to get a train, to arm the train with the most powerful fire power that had ever been assembled, notify the Soviets that the train was going to start from a certain location and that it was going to go to Berlin. Now two results could occur. One is under those circumstances they might decide to let the train go through to Berlin and the blockade would have been broken. If they said no, the train will not be permitted, the train would try to fight it's way through and if the Soviets stopped it would be construed as an act of war. The president considered that advice and rejected it. That was dangerous and too speculative a course of action. He decided instead ultimately upon seeing if we could not with the improved science of the age, supply Berlin by air. A wondrous concept at the time. The airplane had not reached the stage that it had now. So they took these bombers and they flew 24 hours a day, and they supplied them with food, and fuel and all of the necessities of life. And it went on for eight or nine months that we supplied that great city entirely by air. It was a distinct and devastating public relations defeat for the Soviet Union. They had said we're going to blockade Berlin and Berlin just went right on because we were supplying them by air. And they couldn't shoot down American planes. That's a real act of war. After eight or nine months without any warning one day they just lifted the blockade. But it had been an enormous asset to the United States and other free nations that they had tested the Soviet resolve and had won.

WWII, WHAT DID YOU SAY THEY DID -- ACTUALLY WHY DID THE BLOCKADE END, ESSENTIALLY? WHY DID THEY LIFT IT?

They were losing. The blockade was meaningless. And for a nation to say, we are going to blockade Berlin and then be unable to do it, and have no way of stopping our airlifts into Berlin short of war, they finally concluded that they had a real loser on their hands. And the Soviets are exceedingly pragmatic. When they have a loser they just charge off their losses and quit.

NOW ALSO DURING THIS PERIOD IN AUGUST AND IN JULY AS WELL, PRESIDENT TRUMAN CHOSE... HE APPROVED THE DECISION TO SEND ATOMIC CAPABLE B-29S TO ENGLAND. THIS WAS JULY-AUGUST, JUST AFTER THE BEGINNING OF THE BLOCKADE. NOW DO YOU RECALL WHY HE APPROVED THAT DECISION? WHY DID HE SEND ATOMIC CAPABLE B-29S?

I don't have...I don't have a recollection of that. I perhaps wasn't involved in it, but I have no recollection.

ALSO, FALL OF 1948, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BERLIN CRISIS, SECRETARY FORRESTAL WAS MAKING PLANS TOWARDS THE INCREASED USE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS. AND I WONDERED WHY TRUMAN, HE WAS BEGINNING TO TURN AROUND, HE WAS BEGINNING TO ACCEPT HIS ADVICE. CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT FORRESTAL AND ALSO HOW TRUMAN WAS BEING SWAYED IN THAT DIRECTION, I.E., THE ATOMIC DIRECTION?

I'm not sure that President Truman was swayed. The whole period of the Berlin Blockade was an exceedingly tense period. When the Soviets said, we're going to blockade Berlin and then we chose to violate that order and beat the blockade with our airlift it was a very tense period between the two countries. One didn't know the Soviets might someday inform us that no more American planes would be permitted. What happens then, you see? All through that period there was some threat of an ultimate confrontation, and Forrestal and other civilians over in the military just wanted to prepare any event for any contingency. So one of the contingencies might possibly encompass the use of atomic weapons. So what they wanted to do was to be ready in the event that any such decision of that kind was made. My recollection is that President Truman permitted them to make the plans, but I'm quite sure that at no time did he ever really think that he would ever give the orders to drop them. However it's entirely possible that the fact that we were making plans in that regard could have been upsetting to the Soviets. You just don't know how much one country knows about another. There aren't very many secrets that are kept.

HOW DID ATOMIC ISSUES FIGURE IN THE PRESIDENT'S 1948 ELECTION CAMPAIGN? DID THEY FIGURE AT ALL?

I think they did not. I think that he had made such a firm commitment that atomic energy was not to be used again militarily. I think it was not really an issue. Foreign policy was an issue, the Republicans tried to hang a communist badge on the democrats. They were not successful in that regard. The President during the campaign of '48 took a very hard position regarding the Soviets, and said that we were confronting them, that we understood the problems that they were presenting and that we would face up to them, we would continue to try to get along with them, but we were learning more about them all the time. So I would say that it was not really an important issue in the '48 campaign.

HE SAID IN PHILADELPHIA, HE SAID THAT I'D RATHER HAVE PEACE THAN BE PRESIDENT. WAS THAT TYPICAL OF...?

I think that in many instances he talked about peace. And he worded it in different ways. About the responsibility of the president to explore every path to peace. That a President should go to almost any length to avoid war. We've seen what the Holocaust of the second World War had done. So it's a typical speech that he was making during that period.

HOW DID THE US ATOMIC BOMB FIGURE IN TALKS WITH THE EUROPEANS ABOUT THE BIRTH OF NATO?

It was there. They were glad to be protected by the umbrella of atomic energy. The greater emphasis however, was put upon the development of conventional strength. Each country was to make a contribution. The major value of NATO oversimplified was NATO said to the Soviet Union, attack anyone of our allies in Europe and you have attacked the United States and you are at war with the United States. NATO has kept the peace for some 38 years in Europe.

DO YOU RECALL ANY CONVERSATIONS WITH PRESIDENT TRUMAN ABOUT SOME OF CHURCHILL'S SPEECHES AND VIEWS ON THE BOMB?

No, I don't recall. You will remember that in the spring of 1946, Mr. Churchill came to the United States and went with President Truman out to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill made his speech at Westminster College. The famous speech, it was. It was called The Iron Curtain Speech. I don't remember any particular remarks that the president might have made about any private conversation that he had with Churchill. I was on that trip. We made the trip by train so that the two men could get better acquainted. So it took us a week to go out and come back. And they discussed many subjects, but I never remember him specifically referring to that. I think that Great Britain and the United States understood each other quite well. They had participated in the development of the bomb.

HOW ABOUT NATO? WERE YOU ACTUALLY THERE AT THE TIME THAT THEY -- WERE YOU INVOLVED IN ANY OF THE NATO?

No. No. The White House didn't take part in that. The State Department did that. And to some extent the Defense Department was involved, but the White House personnel did not...did not personally take part in it.

DO YOU RECALL PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S RESPONSE TO THE DETECTION OF THE FIRST SOVIET BOMB?

Only that I think it was quite shocking to him as it was to others. We'd had this wonderful posture of being the only one that had it. We hoped that we'd been able to maintain sufficient secrecy so that none of our secrets would get to them. That proved not to be true. The fact is too that the Soviets appropriated all the top German scientists, and treated them very well and put them to work. But it was a surprise. We knew they were working on it. But still it was a shock.