Letter and Memorandum from Russell Leffingwell to President Harry S. Truman
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OCR Page 1 of 7THE WHITE Houst
AUG 30 3 01 PM 51
23 Wall Street
ARCHIVES to MATIONAS RECORDS AND
RECEIVED
it's
New York. 8
R,C. LEFFINGWELL
Lake George, August 29, 1951
Dear Mr. President:
Because of the honor you did me and the confidence you
reposed in me by appointing me to the Commission on Internal Security
and Individual Rights, I feel I should add to my brief formal resig-
nation, which you have most kindly decided to accept, some expression
of my personal views on the pro blems presented to the Commission, in
the hope that they may be of service to you.
First, about the reason for resignation of ther.Com-
missioners in a body, it would of course be absurd to suggest that
there is any real conflict of interest between the duties you called
upon the members of the Commission to perform and their private
employments. The Commission was to study the problems of loyalty
and national security on the one hand, and of individual rights and
civil liberties on the other. The Commission was to have no business
to transact for the Government, no contracts to let, no funds to
distribute, and no executive functions to perform whatever. But
the so-called conflict-of-interest statutes are so many and their
language is so sweeping and indiscriminate that, though no conflict
of interest exists in principle, it was thought they might be held
technically to apply even to the Nimitz Commission, as to the Hoover
Commission and the Defense Production staff, and others, and to
necessitate the same waiver, as had been granted in those cases as
a matter of course. And indeed the House of Representatives did pass the
Relations
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