Rusk XX, Clark Clifford, 1985 March

RICHARD RUSK: --With the Honorable Clark Clifford, from 1946 through 1950, Special Counsel to Harry S. Truman; 1968-1969 Secretary of Defense for the Johnson administration; a long-time friend and colleague of my father. This is Rich doing the interviewing, March 1985.

The thing about you, sir, is that you and my dad go way back. I wonder if we could start back there in the Truman years. I take it you had no contacts prior to the late forties in the Truman administration.

CLARK: I came into the Truman administration two months after President Truman became President. I was in the Navy then. The war was still on. And I came in to 00:01:00assist the naval aide and the handling of the naval aide's office. President Truman was taking his senior staff to Potsdam for the Potsdam Conference with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Stalin. The naval aide wanted me there to look after his office while he was gone. I was out in the Pacific helping to wage the war. While they were gone, I became acquainted with Judge Sam [Samuel Irving] Rosen- man, who was counselor at the White House. [He] was very badly overworked, and I began to help him. I was fascinated with the work that he was doing. When the President came back some weeks later, Judge Rosenman said to him, "Let's keep 00:02:00that young man here at the White House because he's been helping me quite a lot." So I stayed. Within the year Judge Rosenman left to go back to the practice in New York. And I had gotten to know the president, so I succeeded Judge Rosenman. And I might confess to you that is what I hoped would happen from the very beginning, because I had gotten so interested in the work at the White House. By the spring of 1946 I had become Counsel to President Truman. That, then, would be the time that I would have come into contact with Dean Rusk at the State Department. I got to know him. I liked him. I had great respect for 00:03:00his ability and his understanding. And also, something I learned later as time went on, he was uniquely articulate.

RICHARD RUSK: Even then?

CLARK: Even then. His reasoning was good, his cogent ideas were well expressed. As I worked more and more with the president, and I came into contact with State, I would see more of Dean Rusk. And we got to be associates in our governmental work. Later on, in the Truman administration, President Truman to some extent got at odds with the State Department over Israel. And that whole story is a fascinating story.

RICHARD RUSK: What is the best exposition of that story that you know of? I am sure there have been a lot of them.

CLARK: Well, from President Truman's standpoint and mine, I think you would want to read a speech that I made years ago to the American Historical Society. I think it's entirely possible that I have an extra copy, and if I have, you can take it with you. That would be the whole issue from the standpoint of the White House and the President.

[aside] Would you have an extra copy of the speech that I made on Israel to the American Historical Society a number of years ago? Thank you.

In reference to Israel I would come into contact from time to time with Dean Rusk. But I don't remember just what his position was. I know he wasn't on the Middle Eastern desk at the time, for instance. There was a man named [Robert M.] McClintock, who I would see from time to time and receive, and a man named Loy [W.] Henderson. I know that both of them clearly presented the attitude of the 00:06:00State Department. They were both very unsympathetic with the creation of a new independent Jewish state in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, as was General [George Catlett] Marshall, who at the time was Secretary of State, with his defense background. I remember one time James [Vincent] Forrestal, who was the first Secretary of Defense, said to me, "You fellows at the White House just don't understand what is going on in the Middle East. There are three hundred and fifty thousand Jews and about forty million Arabs, and the forty million Arabs are going to push the three hundred and fifty thousand Jews into the Mediterranean." I remember saying that I thought that President Truman viewed it not so much as a question of mathematics, but as a question that involved 00:07:00certain principles.

RICHARD RUSK: Your feeling was that the president's position on the creation of the state of Israel was not simply due to domestic pressures, that it was a principled position?

CLARK: I have been asked whether or not the political factor entered into his deliberation. My answer is yes. Then I followed up by saying politics enter into every important decision that a President makes. You can't avoid it. But it was not the guiding issue in this particular instance.

RICHARD RUSK: Would you make that same analogy with the Vietnam War? My dad has commented that domestic politics may have been a factor in the president's mind, but it was never a factor in their discussions, in every discussion that he 00:08:00participated in.

CLARK: I would think that would be so. As far as your father would be concerned, he was not involved in political questions there. As a matter of fact, during most of the time of the Vietnam War, I think it was not viewed as a political issue. I do recall near the end of President [Lyndon Baines] Johnson's term in office, as he viewed 1968 and what it was going to bring, politics were present then. The schism among our people had been so profound. Bobby Kennedy 00:09:00was in the race. Gene [Eugene Joseph] McCarthy had been running. Pressures were building up. So there was some politics involved in that. I give this to you merely to demonstrate the attitude of Mr. Truman in the White House and mine during the time I was an assistant to him during that period back in 1947 and '48.

RICHARD RUSK: I think my dad's position has become clearer to the historians in the sense that he was, to some extent, on the opposing side of this issue. And your position and the president's did prevail and caused quite a bit of excitement at the United Nations on one occasion, where my dad had to fly up to New York and try to calm the American delegation down. You say that you were not 00:10:00sure of my father's position on the creation of the state of Israel and related issues then. Is that because of the passage of time or is that because he had a certain capacity for reticence even back in those years, as critics have later charged against him?

CLARK: It would be due to two factors. One is the passage of time, because we are talking about situations that are close to forty years ago. And second, because I cannot recall how prominently involved Dean Rusk was back in 1947 and '48. I remember seeing a good deal of him. I just don't happen to remember any specific meetings.

RICHARD RUSK: You have general impressions of his behavior, but no specifics?

CLARK: Exactly. I know that we had a very friendly relationship through that period. I also remember something else about him. That is, at one point in his career, and I do not recall when it was, he served in the Army. That gave him a broader view that I think was very valuable, not only to him but to anyone he might be serving at the time. I also had the feeling that he took a certain pride in his military career. And I don't know how he ended up, but he may have ended up as a Major, Lieutenant Colonel, or something of that sort.

RICHARD RUSK: He was up for General when George Marshall brought him into the Department of State right at the last minute. You had enough of an impression 00:12:00about my dad, perhaps, to have had a reaction to John [Fitzgerald] Kennedy's appointment of him in January 1961 as Secretary of State. What were your impressions?

CLARK: I remember my major impression. My major impression was a sense of relief and acceptance and enthusiasm that President Kennedy had selected a professional; that he had selected a man who had served well before; that he had served in the military and had that background; that he had served in the State Department. And I had remembered him as a man of ability with the articulateness which made such an impression on me at the time. There were other appointments 00:13:00some of them political in nature, other appointments, some of them paying off debts which had been incurred, which happens in every administration. In this particular instance, I thought, "Oh, what a splendid idea: going with a man who has been through it." I remember President Kennedy saying to me that he had been greatly impressed with an article that he had read that Dean Rusk had written. Maybe you know which one it was.

RICHARD RUSK: Yes, it was in Foreign Affairs. He was discussing the role of the Secretary of State.

CLARK: Well, that had a good deal of impact. See I had had quite a close relationship with Senator Kennedy. For four to five years before he became President, I was his lawyer. We went through a number of matters together. Not 00:14:00close and intimate friends, but good friends. I remember one time, for instance, when he felt he had been very badly treated on a television program, a Mike Wallace program, in which Drew [Andrew Russell] Pearson claimed it was a national scandal that John F. Kennedy had received the Pulitzer Prize for the book Profiles in Courage because, as Drew Pearson said, "Kennedy didn't write the book." And, oh, that upset Kennedy. My phone rang early the next morning. Then his father called and said, "Sue the censored." (laughter)

RICHARD RUSK: He did have some help with that book as I recall.

CLARK: Some people did some research on it. But what we did, we went back over 00:15:00piles of longhand notes written in his handwriting. And he and I went to New York and spent two days with the ABC [American Broadcasting Company] people and went over his longhand notes, much of it page by page by page. And then went over the fact that memos would be submitted to him about certain information, and how he would handle the memo, then put it in the book. At the end of two days, they said, "We give up. You have persuaded us." On the next weeks program, I think it was a Monday night, same time as the first program had gone on, the President of ABC appeared on the television program and said, "I wish to read a complete apology to both Senator Kennedy and the Pulitzer Prize Committee. Independent investigations show that he did write the book, and we are sorry." 00:16:00And it cleaned that whole thing up, just like that.

RICHARD RUSK: I'll be darned. That's a good story.

CLARK: But I thought it was so fortunate that he had selected somebody like him [Dean Rusk]. And I knew Dean and knew of his ability. Then I served President-elect Kennedy in the capacity of conferring with his appointees and working out any kind of arrangement. I remember [Robert Strange] McNamara coming in to be Secretary of Defense. And we worked out a blind trust for him.

RICHARD RUSK: You were involved with that?

CLARK: Yes. He had acquired some assets just a few weeks before with the president of Ford Motor Company. And I talked to Dean Rusk at the time.

RICHARD RUSK: I didn't think he presented the same type of problem.

CLARK: He did not. He did not. But we merely went through it. I saw every member of the cabinet. And we would have a visit. And there were some things that they had to do. We wanted to check and see what securities they might own, whether there were any conflicts.

RICHARD RUSK: And you did that for the president?

CLARK: Yes I did that for him and for all the members of the cabinet and other key appointments. So that brought me back into contact. We had lost track of each other. I had encountered him maybe once or twice. And he was head of a foundation in New York.

RICHARD RUSK: That's right. The Rockefeller Foundation.

CLARK: Yes, the Rockefeller Foundation. So once in a while I would come into contact with him. But it was one of those governmental associations that you have back in the forties. Then along comes the fifties and you are busy with your life and he is busy with his life. But you still vaguely are aware of each other.

RICHARD RUSK: Let me ask a very general question in moving quickly with my questions. You had a definite impression of my father and his capabilities during the Truman years. Were you surprised by any aspect of his performance as Secretary of State during the sixties in the sense that he either had certain qualities or lacked certain qualities that you failed to see as part of his record in the Truman years?

CLARK: I don't know that I could be as specific about that.

RICHARD RUSK: And I hope my presence as a member of the family is not going to inhibit you in any way.

CLARK: As you may know, he and I differed quite a lot.

RICHARD RUSK: Oh, yeah. I'm aware of the differences on the war. I'm not writing a critical book about my dad in any case. But I am collecting things for an oral history. And I feel obliged to ask the obligatory types of questions.

CLARK: Oh, I am happy that you have. When I began to see him again in the Kennedy administration, I continued to be aware of my sense of gratification that President Kennedy had picked an experienced diplomat and a man who had had an active part in the State Department, so he wouldn't go into that spot cold, which many have done. And also I remember having the feeling that in the time since I had known him in the forties there had been a good deal of growth occur in him. Part of that is due to the important position that he had. There is always a certain aura and romance that goes around it. He is easily, ordinarily, 00:20:00the second senior man in the whole executive department: first the president, then the Secretary of State. He handled it with grace. He always was a modest man. He was not given to any braggadocio of any kind. He spoke and he spoke well. I think your father was a rather personal man. He had friends, but I do not know how close he came to his governmental friends. I don't know that. I think that I found him all business, always found him pleasant. I still have 00:21:00hanging on the wall of my library a photo with a friendly inscription from him. I am struggling a little to try to get the right shade of feeling over. For a number of years we were associates and even friends. I don't believe I ever felt that he considered me to be a close intimate of his. I think he was a private man. Maybe that is a little better word.

RICHARD RUSK: I think so. Welcome to the club.

CLARK: Yes, a private man. You could get to know him right up to a certain point. You would get to know him up to the point where he wished you to know 00:22:00him. And beyond that point, he was a very private person.

RICHARD RUSK: He would never confide in you or share intimacies of any kind?

CLARK: Like you have with some men. It wasn't anything that bothered me because that was the nature of the man. We always got on well together. We always worked together well. And it always interested me and intrigued me that when we differed so sharply about our country's policy in Vietnam, Dean Rusk and I never 00:23:00had a harsh word. I never heard him refer to others as "Clifford's lost his mind," or "Clifford's reasoning is poor," or "Clifford is just a plain jerk," or anything like that. Never caught any of that back. And he never would have caught any of it from me because I had the deepest respect for him. But, often times, we would differ in front of the president.

RICHARD RUSK: Sharply on both sides?

CLARK: Oh, sure.

RICHARD RUSK: And the Tuesday luncheons I take it--

CLARK: Yes, sir, certainly. The president would listen intently to each of us. Dean might say, "Now Clark gave such and such a position. I think that the 00:24:00reasoning is just incorrect." And then I might pick it up again. I'm a lawyer and I have spent all my life in that kind of exchange with opposing counsel.

RICHARD RUSK: You're a very good one, I have heard. Was he able to hold his own with you in there?

CLARK: Oh, yes. Very much. Very much. He knew it so well and had good background, and I say again, was so articulate. A little interesting anecdote: Somebody told me this who was present. When Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968, President Johnson had two or three meetings with Richard Nixon, which were appropriate and somewhat routine. An outgoing President gives 00:25:00a certain amount of time to the incoming President. And they discuss the issues of the day. Somebody sat in a meeting one time when President Johnson was talking with Richard Nixon. And Richard Nixon said, "Well, I am interested in the relationship that you had with your senior advisers, President Johnson." President Johnson said, "Well, this last period of time I had Rusk at State and Clifford at Defense." He said, "It's been a very difficult time for me because it is so much more comfortable for a President if his senior advisers are in accord: much easier. When there are such sharp disagreements between them," he 00:26:00said, "It's very, very wearing on the president." He said, "Often times at the Tuesdays luncheons and in the meetings we had in the cabinet room day after day all through that period that Vietnam was an obsession," he said, "The differences were so sharp, that often times I wondered if someday they could get together. Because it's very difficult for a President to make decisions with these two conflicting. "Nixon spoke up and said, "Well, I would think that it would be very helpful to have it that way. Then you are more like a judge and you get the benefit of hearing both sides." And the president said, "You'll find that isn't so. If you were to ever go through a series of Tuesday luncheons with 00:27:00Rusk and Clifford at each other's jugular, you would get over that feeling."

RICHARD RUSK: Is that right?

CLARK: That was the way he described it. President Johnson had a great inclination to dramatize situations. He would take a story and turn the story into something that was very vivid. But this fellow was greatly impressed and he had remembered it word for word. But your father and I did disagree. But that's the function of senior officials in a President's cabinet. It doesn't do the President any good if everybody just says that we all agree. Yet, as I say, there was no personal hostility in our relationship. Maybe I am going too far in 00:28:00my comments. I know there was none on my part, and I never detected any on Dean Rusk's part.

RICHARD RUSK: No. I know enough of my dad's feelings towards you that you are right in your assumption there. It was not a personal thing.

CLARK: But it was the most prominent, the most dramatic, the most obvious difference of opinion in President Johnson's cabinet. And it worried him greatly. Now, your father was absolutely consistent in his position. He was thoroughly logical in it. He made an exceedingly able opponent as we presented our views. At one time I was in complete accord with the position that your father took, as far as Vietnam was concerned. I just went through so many 00:29:00experiences both out there and at the Pentagon that I finally concluded that we had hold of a real loser.

RICHARD RUSK: I guess it was your trip to those Pacific rim countries that started some rethinking.

CLARK: It had a great deal to do with it. President [Dwight David] Eisenhower, back when he was President, had enunciated a theory that became known as the "domino" theory. And he said that, in effect, if Vietnam goes, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, and the rest of southeast Asia would go, and out into the Pacific to the Philippines, one domino after another would fall until it gets clear on over to us. That trip that I went on with General Maxwell [Davenport] Taylor was exceedingly revealing to me. Because in each of seven, eight, or nine countries we went to, we saw the head of state, the chief 00:30:00governmental official. And I didn't find any of them accepting this domino theory. And they were closer to the trouble than we. We were six or seven thousand miles away. They were closer. And it shook me really quite badly. And when I came back, I reported to the president and told him about how I was shaken. And yet, I didn't at that time say, in effect, that we must get out of Vietnam, because all of the reports that we were getting from General [William Childs] Westmoreland, from our other military leaders, and from our ambassador in Saigon, were that we were prevailing in the war, and that the war was in its closing days, and that we were going to prevail. So we were all going along with 00:31:00that assumption until Tet occurred. Then many of us felt that Tet demonstrated the invalidity of the position that the military was taking that we were winning the war.

RICHARD RUSK: You never subscribed to the theory that the results of the Tet Offensive were really a decisive American victory in the military sense?

CLARK: I never did accept that at all. I didn't believe that it was at all. They had said that we had worn the enemy down so. "They're down to the dregs. They are going to the bottom of the barrel. They've got fourteen and fifteen year-old boys carrying guns in there now. And this is kind of just a last gasp on their part." It wasn't that at all. They staged a very effective military campaign, striking simultaneously in a number of different places. They were 00:32:00overrunning a lot of different places. Now, I don't think they kept any of their gains at that time. But they were strong enough to even invade the American embassy. They had to be rooted out of there with bayonets.

RICHARD RUSK: I was a student at Cornell University when that took place. And I can remember being thoroughly shaken, as well was as everyone else, and convinced with the feeling that our war was a loser and we had to get out. I can remember feeling very grateful to you, personally, for your role in helping to swing the president around in the post-Tet Offensive policy review. I am very interested in that process. I am interested in the role that my father might have played as well. Let me ask you a follow-up question to the point that you and my dad disagreed sharply.

END OF SIDE 1

BEGINNING OF SIDE 2

RICHARD RUSK: [When you argued with him, did he answer you in]--a reflexive way, automatically? In other words, was he really listening? Did he give you the 00:33:00full attention and consideration that the situation probably warranted? Another way of saying it would be, how badly was he locked in to that policy, and these other considerations that you were raising did not enter in?

CLARK: My first reaction would be that your father was a careful man. I don't believe I ever heard him make a thoughtless statement. Everything your father said had been considered before he said it. It may be different in his relationship with his children. Some men shoot from the hip, but that isn't his nature. He's deliberate. He's thinking all the time. He comes to conclusions. He 00:34:00expresses those conclusions. He had a deep conviction as far as I could ascertain that we were on the right course, and that we ought to stay with that course, and that we would ultimately prevail. I left him after going through these experiences with the opposite position. And as far as I could tell, I didn't ever have any real impact on his thinking at all. I wasn't able to ascertain that I did.

RICHARD RUSK: Did you ever talk one-on-one, just the two of you, outside of the Tuesday luncheons?

CLARK: I doubt it. We had plenty of opportunities to talk. I remember one time where I never quite understood the meeting. We met in Dean Rusk's office towards 00:35:00the end of March 1968, to go over a draft of a speech that President Johnson was about to make. There were five or six of us there. And the speech started out with President Johnson saying, "I wish to talk to you tonight about the war in Vietnam." We spent two to three hours or more pulling the speech around. And the part that I remember the most was we all ultimately agreed to change that first 00:36:00sentence. And it ended up, "Good evening my friends. I wish to speak to you tonight about peace in Vietnam." I am sure you will want to go into that and study that. I would love to find out what happened in that morning-long conference.

RICHARD RUSK: Did you fight over that first sentence?

CLARK: No. We talked a lot. In that morning the whole tone of that speech was changed. It was not changed over the opposition of your father. I don't understand what was going on that day. I felt only a deep sense of gratification that the changes were being made. I didn't explore. I didn't stay afterwards and say, "Dean, old friend, what has happened?" or anything like that. When two men 00:37:00are friends, as we were, and yet they're disagreeing on the principal policy question of the day, it does interfere with the personal relationship to some extent. You said, "Did you ever sit down and talk with him?" I think I probably assumed that he had had enough of me and he just didn't want to sit down and talk with me. He probably assumed that I had had enough of him.

RICHARD RUSK: You had had your own experience with President Johnson.

CLARK: We discussed the whole thing before and so forth. But that meeting has always been an engima to me because the speech ended up where I had hoped all along it might be. But we didn't reach that point until that morning, and I 00:38:00think that was the day before he was to make that speech.

RICHARD RUSK: Here he had fought you in the Tuesday luncheons, and yet, more or less agreed with you in going along with the changes in the draft of that speech on that given day.

CLARK: And I don't know why.

RICHARD RUSK: Has anyone ever cast any light on it for you? There have been a number of accounts.

CLARK: There have been a number of accounts, and I am not sure that I have ever found out what that answer was. There are men who were there. I think Harry McPherson was there; Bill Bundy was there.

RICHARD RUSK: Arthur Goldberg was there, I believe, for the revision of the Presidential speech. He was there.

CLARK: I would be surprised at that, but I could have forgotten.

RICHARD RUSK: Townsend Hoopes wrote a book called The Limits of Intervention, in which he lays out the case that you and your colleagues in the Defense Department were instrumental in helping Lyndon Johnson turn his view around on 00:39:00Vietnam. A fellow named Warren [I.] Cohen wrote the only biography to date on my father, published in 1980. Have you seen a copy of that?

CLARK: No, I would be fascinated to see it.

RICHARD RUSK: Well, I'll get you a copy. It didn't sell; it was a dull book. He did not get into this question. In his research he believes that through the documents he got hold of and a couple of interviews with my dad--although My dad really didn't get into it with him--he believes that My dad also, in a quieter way, had concluded in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, more because of the reaction of the country and the loss of support for the war, that we had to change course. That in a quieter way, not at the Tuesday luncheons, but in 00:40:00separate sessions with the president he was working as well in conjunction with you to help swing Lyndon Johnson around.

CLARK: That's fascinating.

RICHARD RUSK: Warren Cohen had plenty of axes to grind about the Vietnam War. It was a critical book.

CLARK: Critical of your father?

RICHARD RUSK: Yes. And I don't think he was soft-pedaling my dad's role at all. He was objective throughout. He nailed him at the end of the book for his Vietnam involvements. But that was his analysis, that you both were working to turn the president around, that neither one of you knew what the other was doing. I asked my dad about this and his comment was that Lyndon Johnson himself was ready to move. Remember that my dad still today does not divulge his 00:41:00personal relationship with the president or the specific advice he gave him. He's still an official spokesman for that policy, even with me. I can't get in there and get the nitty-gritty. But he's still that way; he will go to his grave that way. And, yet, he's suggesting that Lyndon Johnson was himself ready to move.

CLARK: Obviously, that had to be the result. And we were working assiduously to take advantage of every opportunity. There was a small group of us that were absolutely determined to change the president's mind. We even had little conspiratorial questions that we would ask each other, sometimes guardedly over the phone. We might say something about so-and-so. I remember I would say, "Is 00:42:00he one of us?" I began to feel like a conspirator in the French Revolution.

RICHARD RUSK: Isn't it amazing that you had to conduct yourselves that way, and I am sure you did, to effectively create a different look at that policy.

CLARK: Not entirely unusual. I can remember back, my first serious experience in government was with President Truman. If I felt strongly about some policy issue, I began to try to look around for colleagues and supporters. Particularly if they had some access to the president.

RICHARD RUSK: That's the way the government works.

CLARK: That's the way it works.

RICHARD RUSK: It's not necessarily the way my dad worked.

CLARK: No, it may not have been. We brought some pretty good guns to bear in 00:43:00talks with Dick Russell, President (unintelligible), [Nicholas deBelleville] Katzenbach, and men like that.

RICHARD RUSK: Was Dick Russell helping in swinging the president around?

CLARK: I can't ever be sure, but I think he was. Katzenbach felt as we did. Katzenbach was at that time the number two man at State; Harry McPherson in the White House. We kept enlarging it all the time: anybody that we thought could help. I had a picture of President Johnson saying, "I'm going to stick with this till I nail the coonskin on the wall": an old expression. I was with him in Vietnam when he said it to the officers.

RICHARD RUSK: That was the expression he used?

CLARK: Yes. "We are going to stay with it, men, till we nail the coonskin on 00:44:00the wall": an old Texas expression. I thought if he did that--We had an awful row with the military wanting another two hundred thousand men at one point. I thought, "My God, if he sends them, then we will be whole-hog." Then the military from time to time wanted to stage an Inchon-type landing into North Vietnam with our troops and go in and cut North Vietnam in half, which was militarily feasible. It could have been done. But every southeastern expert that we had come in, and we put that question to him, said, "If you do that, then the North Vietnamese will trigger the mutual assistance pact they have with Red China. And they will just say to the Chinese that, 'We now, under the pact, want you,' and the Red Chinese would have been delighted." To be at war with the 00:45:00Chinese in the jungles of southeast Asia, when they were right on the border and we-were seven thousand miles away, we would have bled to death.

RICHARD RUSK: Is that intelligence assessment a matter of the public record?

CLARK: It must be; it must be. And that's what they would have said. I remember not over two years ago on the radio, the president's national security adviser, Walt [Whitman] Rostow was on a television program, and he was still saying we should have invaded North Vietnam. I don't know how your father felt about that, but I knew that it would be just like our country having a bleeding artery. And the Chinese with a billion people. So, the president made the right decision in that regard.

RICHARD RUSK: He did. It was one of the most dramatic decisions in our history. 00:46:00It committed us to withdraw from Vietnam. And I knew as a student at Cornell I had heard the reports of the 206,000 additional troops being required. I can remember calling my dad on the phone and begging him for the first and only time in that war, the only time I ever did, "Don't do it, Pop. You can't do this." I told him what the kids were feeling. And I cried; I hung the phone up and just cried because here I am adding one more piece of a burden to the load that he was carrying. His own son had laid this on him. But, you know, we knew when President Johnson made his speech, we knew we were going to get out of Vietnam.

CLARK: I regret only that it took us another five years or so to get out.

RICHARD RUSK: Oh, absolutely!

CLARK: That was a national tragedy. They should have gotten out long before. I'm running out of time.

RICHARD RUSK: Okay, very good.

CLARK: You have a fascinating job to do. I want to help you in every way I can. And if by any chance as you see others and you have other questions, I'm here and I would be glad to see you again.

RICHARD RUSK: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

CLARK: You might, next time, be ready with things that you picked up and wish to talk about. I have had that happen every now and then. Somebody will be writing a book and we'll visit generally, kaleidoscopically, at different items. And then after a while he'll call and say "Since our talk I've seen a number of others and I have a list of questions that I want to ask you." And if you happen to be in that posture, you only have to write me or phone me and we'll set aside a time.

RICHARD RUSK: Very good. I have two major questions and not very many minor questions, and we can do that on another occasion. And I really appreciate your time.

CLARK: Thank you. Well, I've enjoyed meeting you.

RICHARD RUSK: I'll do my best with that book. In a sense, I'm writing this 00:48:00story for all of you. You all came down that trail together.

END OF SIDE 2