Memorandum of Telephone Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett

67 28 SECRET January 18, 1951 MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION S. TRUMAN Participants: Mr. Lovett "NATIONAL Mr. Acheson fur ARCHIVES SERVICE* AND RECORDS In a telephone conversation which Mr. Acheson and Mr. Lovett had on another matter today, Mr. Acheson brought up the matter of the memorandum from Mr. Bevin about continuing talks on certain matters, such as the talks which Sir John Slessor had been recently engaged in. Mr. Acheson said he had asked Sir Oliver to set forth as accurately and as concisely as possible what he had in mind as to what they wanted in continuing talks. Yesterday, Sir Oliver Franks and Sir John Slessor talked with Messrs. Nitze and Jessup and said that what the British wanted was on a more or less regular basis to have Messrs. Tedder and Franks on one side and representatives of the JCS and this Department talk about certain matters. Mr. Nitze and Mr. Jessup had pointed out that we could not agree to commit ourselves to reach agreement with the British. That would be just one more obstacle in the way of getting decisions and actions. Mr. Jessup suggested to Mr. Acheson that we make clear to them that we are perfectly willing to form the habit of calling them in to tell them that we are working on some particular problem and to inform them of how we are thinking. Mr. Acheson inferred that this would be on a reciprocal basis because he said he thought we would gather more benefit from the procedure than the British would, since they were more apt to come out with a policy about which we had known nothing in advance than we were to come out with one about which we had not advised the British. DECLASSIFIED STATE DEPT. MEMO F-1-14 SECRET Project NLT 82-4 By NLT- HU NARS, Date 9-5-44