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Transcript of Princeton Seminar Discussion, Reel 4, Track 1
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- Része ennek Dean Acheson Papers, Princeton Seminars Files
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OCR Page 1 of 142/13/54, Reel 4, Ti Kd 1, F 1
MR. ACHESON:
In all these discussions, as I was saying, you came up against this problem
of whether people 15,000 miles away were going to substitute their judgment
for the judgment of man in command. All this tradition which I've talked
to you about was against doing that. The difficulty of doing it was immense;
once
you
start
doing
this
you've
got
to
issue
the
most
minute
orders
about
what
you do with 24th Division, the First Cavalry, this, that, and the other thing.
If you don't have the cooperation of the theater commander, the most terrible
arm?
confusion can result. To what extent is the political line [1] through the
State Department going to try to influence a strategic military operation;
to what extent do we go to the President to try to get the President to
intervene. All of those matters came up in this period.
Now I want to go over some of the facts of the case here, and I want to say
this before we go any further about it. It seems to me that this advance into
and the loth
North Korea, the defeat of the 8th Army Corps was one of the most terrific
A
disasters that had occurred to American foreign policy, and certainly I think
which
the greatest disaster that occurred to the Truman Administration. It did
more to destroy that administration, and did more to destroy and undermine
communists
American foreign policy than anything that I know about -- the whole Congress
TRUMAN,
in
outing
VAI FORM
NATIONAL
and Government business, the whole corruption doctrine, was really just window-
ADMING
dressing pput upon this great disaster. This is something of colossal impor-
U.S.
tance in the history of the United States. And what I want to bring out here
is to show the effect, the influence in this really terrific event of one
man's desire to do what he felt was the right thing to do, and almost the
complete impotence of the Government of the United States in any effective
way to change or deal with it[him?].
DR. OPPENHEIMER: How generally is the content of the September 30th directive to Genoral
MacArthur known? Is that known publicly?
MR. ACHESON:
It is printed in the MacArthur Hearings. Have you put it in the -
MR. ROSENAU?
I don't think that one is in there.
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