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Transcript of Princeton Seminars Discussion, Reel 2, Track 2
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- Parte de Dean Acheson Papers, Princeton Seminars Files
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OCR Page 1 of 1710/10/53 - Reel 2, track 2 - Page
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MR. ACHESON:Well, I'll continue wi th what I was saying, then turn it over to
Paul Nitze, who struggled with this for a long time. This problem
resulted in all sorts of undigested issues coming up to the
National Security Council, being presented in a way which was
wholly improper to the President, in the form of the Secretary of
Defense presenting views which had not been considered by anybody
because they - we never heard about them until the afternoon two
or three hours before this meeting occurred, then a discussion,
and then - in my experience, always - the President deciding in
favor of what I thought was the sound view, which was the one I
presented to him. So that the issue was really not this issue
between the Defense Department and the State Department. The
important thing was that the thing hadn't been thrashed out.
Where all the facets of the problem should have been developed
at an early stage, so that the decision could have been wiser
than it was; if it was an issue between the Defense Department
and the State Department, the President was almost always inclined
to decide in favor of the view which I presented, not because I
presented it, but because the other view was so silly. There
wasn't any sense to it. It hadn't been thought out; there was
no sense to that at all. The grave problem of this whole thing
TRUMAN,
is that in the developmental stages of a policy you do not get
Es "NATIONAL RECORDS ADMIN GENERAL
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that cross-fertilization which comes from a discussion at the
COVERAGE
top levels. Now, in a moment I would like to talk about an
opposite side of this where the wholly different thing occurs, and
at this point I would like to have Paul talk for a moment about
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