ABSTRACT
After the cold war paper in 1968 there was another lull until 1973 when I was interviewed for the Oral History Project of the Harry S. Truman Library at Independence, Missouri. The interview was conducted by Richard D.McKinzie of the Department of History of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, who has graciously allowed his questions to stand without further editing. My own testimony is similarly unedited beyond that which may have been provided in typing up the interview. I am normally terrified by a transcript of what I have said. Many citizens and especially editorial writers used to fault President Eisenhower’s mangled syntax, prose that did not parse, thoughts that would start off in one direction and then change course. I have always been deeply resistant to this sort of criticism. This excerpt of 40 pages out of a total running to 118 pages-loosely typed to be sure-was rescued from total incomprehensibility by McKinzie. It is somewhat repetitious of material contained in the early and later chapters in this book-which perhaps adds to the verisimilitude of an otherwise unconvincing tale-but has a freshness that conversational recall imparts.
