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Transcript of Princeton Seminar Discussion, Reel 3, Track 2
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- Parte de Dean Acheson Papers, Princeton Seminars Files
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Reel 3, Track 2, Page 1
MR. MeGHEE (?)
As I remember this discussion about price, on this very first day, when
you first met him, he said, "will you make a deal if I sell the oil at
three pounds per barrel-per ton?" Remember this?
MR. ACHESON:
Yes, I remember that.
MR. McGHEE: (?) We thought about this and finally came to the conclusion that this we could
not quite do.
MR. NITZE: (?)
What did that amount to per barrel, do you recall?
MR. McGHEE: (?)
Dollar twenty. See, he went down twenty per cent from a dollar seventy-five
in the discussions with us, which evidently was as much as he was permitted
to go down; and we talked with him in terms of a dollar five, which
if he had borne the cost of production would correspond to the amount that
governments in the Persian Gulf area were receiving.
MR. ACHESON:
But in all these discussions, the thing that Averell thad spoke about earlier
and
always caem up. After you'd talked an hour and a half/ you were almost
somewhere, you discovered you were right back where you started from and
the last hours' discussion washed out.
MR. MeGHEE: (?)
He reneged on only one point in his discussions with you that he had told
us previously-a very important one. He told us he'd be willing to have a
certain number of Englishmen, and he even mentioned the percentage of
Englishmen he would have--two or three hundred, for example, in the refinery.
With you, without saying why, he said he'd changed his mind; he couldn't have
TRUMAN
any Englishmen at all.
-NATIONAL ARCHIVES A RECORIK 'ADMIN
MR. NITZE: (?)
Of course, that was an important point with the British.
MR. ACHESON:
Well, these discussions us same hope. They also brought out a
very interesting thing which I think Averell' 's account has also brought out,
which was his complete and absolute distrust of his own people. He was
far more ready to be frank and free with us than he was with any on his
own side. And during all the discussions which I had with him, and I think
it is true of you two, he never had any Iranian with him at all. Not one,
not anybody. He wouldn't even have an interpreter; the interpreter was our
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