In the immediate aftermath of the showdown in the Oval Office, Clifford had one chief aim: to help Truman officially recognize Israel before the clock ran out. He would do this with or without the help of the secretary of state. He did not have a background in foreign affairs, he knew little of the history of the region and he lacked many of the key foreign-policy contacts that would be crucial to his effort. Armed only with his keen persuasive gifts, his intelligence and the imprimatur of the president, he set to work doing what the rest of Truman’s foreign-policy team would not.
Clifford arrived early at the White House on the morning of May 14, 1948, with the equivalent of a month’s work to do in just ten hours. He needed to do an end-run around the secretary of state and identify a powerful ally in the State Department to help him keep the UN delegation out of his way as he single-handedly executed a major foreign-policy shift. Without alerting the Russians or the Arabs to what he was doing, Clifford needed to convince the Israeli leadership to officially request recognition from the US. Finally, Clifford would need the US delegation in the UN to get on board at the precise moment and help him convince other countries not to oppose US efforts—and he would need to accomplish this by 6:00 p.m., to coincide with Israel’s planned announcement of statehood.
Clifford first reached out to Eliahu Epstein, who he knew would probably be the first Israeli ambassador to the US, and asked him to approach the Israeli provisional government to request an official letter of recognition from the president. Clifford would need such a letter to protect Truman in case Marshall decided to object in public.
After receiving the request for recognition from Israel, and with only fifteen minutes left on the clock, Clifford called Dean Rusk, the deputy secretary of state, to inform him that the US would be issuing a press release recognizing Israel in a matter of minutes. He instructed Rusk to inform the UN delegation immediately. Rusk objected, saying that it would be a great embarrassment to them, given that they had been working for weeks to delay the recognition of Israel. He warned Clifford that the entire US delegation might resign in protest. Clifford didn’t care. This was going to happen over the objections of Marshall or Rusk or anyone else who stood in his way.
When the head of the UN delegation, Warren Austin, got the call that US recognition of Israel was imminent, rather than face the embarrassment, he hung up the phone, called for his government limousine and went home without informing anyone, including the rest of the US delegates, of what he had learned.
Then, around 6:15 p.m.,13 as the UN was about to debate an issue regarding the Middle East, a seemingly bizarre rumor began to circulate that the US had just officially recognized the state of Israel. The rumor drew laughter from everyone who heard it, including the US delegates, who immediately discounted it as ridiculous. Then someone produced a press release stating that recognition had in fact occurred only moments ago. When Marshall was informed of what Clifford had done, he called Rusk from California, ordering him immediately to New York to keep the US delegates from resigning en bloc.
Marshall would never speak to Clifford again. For Clifford, it didn’t really matter—he didn’t need Marshall. His performance proved that as Truman’s right-hand man, he could be just as powerful as the secretary of state when he needed to be. Only three short years before, Clifford had been a newcomer in the White House, an unknown quantity, an outsider. Now, he was arguably the most powerful staffer in the government—and his greatest accomplishments still lay before him.
II
A Gambler’s Heart
Clark McAdams Clifford grew up in St. Louis at a time when people still rode in horse-drawn carriages and when a man went around each evening at dusk lighting the gas-powered street lamps by hand. The young Clark was not an indifferent student, but he preferred to focus his attention on baseball and tennis. In college he followed his mother’s advice and joined the theater club, where he developed a flair for the dramatic that would be the foundation of his gifts for persuasion and presentation in later life.
In his memoirs, Clifford told a story that captures who he was at his core. He recalled a childhood memory of something no son should ever have to see—the breaking of his father’s spirit. An unassuming, mid-level railroad executive with few ambitions beyond serving his family, Frank Clifford had learned early not to expect too much from life. Then, one day the railroad company assigned a new boss to his division, and it was as if the clouds had parted. The new boss had big dreams, and he offered to take Frank along for the ride. Clifford described the transformational effect this new opportunity had on his father and how his characteristic pessimism was supplanted by an energy and optimism that Clifford had never seen before. Then suddenly Frank’s boss suffered a heart attack, and, like a smoke ring, the promising career path vanished into thin air. Crestfallen, Frank reverted back to the passive, quiet man his son knew all too well. Frank’s reaction to his sudden misfortune etched forever in Clifford’s mind the image of the type of man he never wanted to be. For decades, Clifford told this story to explain the driving need for independence that inspired his decision to become a lawyer, but listeners must have wondered whether he knew how much more it said about him.
That painful childhood experience might have taught Clifford persistence, but it must have also taught him the importance of making his own luck. Clifford would spend his whole career making and capitalizing on opportunities he generated on his own. The first of such opportunities came not long after he graduated from law school.
Coming of age during the Great Depression, when jobs were hard to come by, Clifford struggled to find a firm that would hire him. He finally decided he would settle for gaining legal experience any way he could. He walked into the biggest firm in St. Louis and convinced one of the partners, Jacob Lashly, to permit him to sit in the firm’s library and work for free over the summer. He offered to keep the library tidy and run whatever errands the attorneys needed. Lashly agreed, and at the end of the summer, Clifford met with him to express his gratitude for the opportunity.
Lashly had been watching Clifford closely and had come to appreciate his ambition and dedication. He offered Clifford a job doing pretty much what he was already doing. Clifford would work ten years for the firm, with ever-increasing responsibility, eventually making partner.
Not long after the US entered World War II, Clifford took a leave of absence from the firm to join the naval reserve. He sent his wife and three young daughters to live with a family member in Boston and divided the days of his military service between Washington, DC, and San Francisco, where it was his job to assess and catalog inventory for the Pacific Fleet.
Clifford intended his stint in uniform to be a short one, and as the war began winding down he started to look forward to resuming his comfortable life in Missouri. One day while on duty in San Francisco, he received an unexpected call from an old friend that would change his life forever.
Jake Vardaman, a Missouri business associate who was also in the naval reserve and who was working in the White House, needed an assistant. He offered Clifford a chance to serve at his side. For Clifford, taking the job meant trading the stable, predictable life he hoped to resume in Missouri for the frenetic atmosphere of Washington. Life as a White House official would be a risky pursuit,14 especially given that he had a young family to support, but Clifford must have seen the possibilities as well. After some hesitation, he accepted the offer, and the Cliffords moved to DC.
On his first day on the job, Clifford recognized that he was in an environment of great and rare opportunity. From the sidelines, as he emptied ashtrays and straightened chairs in the Map Room, he closely watched each of the men in Truman’s inner circle—Samuel “Judge” Rosenman (White House counsel), James “Jake” Vardaman (naval aide), John Steelman (special assistant) and Harry Vaughn (military aide)—in order to assess their strengths and weaknesses and compare them to his own. Clifford saw a Truman White House that was riddled with problems of inefficiency and amateurism. He
shared with his wife, Marny, his conclusion that Truman was in desperate need of talented, professional advisers. The right man, with the right qualities, could go a long way in such an environment if he could only gain the trust of the president.
By his own admission, Rosenman’s days as Truman’s counsel were numbered. Since he was a lawyer like Rosenman, Clifford must have thought about succeeding him when the time came. As a man given to careful and strategic planning, Clifford undoubtedly recognized that there were at least four things he must do to succeed Rosenman: First, he would need to prove that he was a team player. Second, he would need to show why his talents qualified him for membership in the president’s inner circle; from there, he could carve out an area of influence and begin to make himself indispensable to Truman. Finally, he would have to bring all these elements together in a way that established him, and him alone, as the best replacement for Rosenman as counsel. It would be an uphill battle. To rise through the ranks, he would need to make Truman and those closest to the president view him as something more than a glorified room attendant.
As he had done with Lashly at the law firm, Clifford made it known to the key figures around the president that he was willing and able to take on any task, for the opportunity to put his gifts on display.
Rosenman would supply an important opportunity when he began assigning Clifford occasional speechwriting assignments—one of the most important jobs in the White House. The task required involvement in all aspects of Truman’s policy affairs, and the person who held the post possessed the greatest opportunity to influence Truman’s thinking as they worked together to shape a speech. Rosenman was that person for Truman in the first year of his presidency. His duties as counsel effectively made Rosenman Truman’s right-hand man. But it was a title he wore loosely.
As Rosenman’s de facto deputy, Clifford soon began to see Truman more and more often. But though Truman was beginning to recognize Clifford’s potential for doing more than emptying dustbins, he still viewed Clifford as an outsider. An opportunity for Clifford to begin to change that perception arrived on the day both Rosenman and Vardaman decided they had grown tired of government service. Rosenman wished to leave for the greener pastures of the New York legal scene, and Vardaman, hoping to capitalize on his background in banking, wanted to join the Federal Reserve Board. Since the only members of Truman’s inner circle were Vardaman, Steelman, Rosenman and Vaughn, the departure of Rosenman and Vardaman would present a huge opportunity. When Truman asked Clifford to help secure Vardaman’s confirmation on the Federal Reserve Board, the significance of the request was not lost on him.
Rosenman had by then recommended that Clifford succeed him as counsel, but Truman was not so sure. Clifford knew guiding Vardaman through the Senate confirmation process would permit Truman to judge up close his political instincts and persuasive skills. Clifford would be required to meet privately with Truman, and he would need to lobby and possibly testify before members of Congress. Given that Vardaman’s abrasive style had made him many enemies in Washington, drawing accusations that he used government workers to perform personal tasks, his confirmation was hardly expected to be a slam dunk. Thus the experience would test Clifford’s political skills. But he was not discouraged. He met with senators of both parties and convinced enough of them that the claims against Vardaman were simply his political enemies’ attempts to settle old scores. Clifford’s professionalism and tactical sense helped secure Vardaman’s confirmation.
This was a big win for Clifford. But although he had shown he was capable of being effective with Congress—a key element of the job of White House counsel—Truman still wasn’t sure how Clifford would perform when the stakes were highest: when the president’s own credibility was in question. Clifford’s chance to show Truman he had what it took came only a few weeks later, when the administration was confronted with its first real challenge—the labor strikes of 1946.
Millions of Americans had spent the war years standing by without complaint as their wages stagnated, even as they watched their corporate bosses grow fat on profits from government contracts. When the war ended, so did their willingness to sacrifice. After years of barely getting by, they felt they had earned the right to be paid a fair market wage. When their repeated requests went unanswered, the strikes began.
On a single day in May 1946, more than a million Americans—eight hundred thousand steelworkers; two hundred thousand meatpackers; and tens of thousands of glass workers, telephone operators and electric company employees—walked off the job. One electric plant shut down when its thirty-five hundred employees walked out, impacting a hundred thousand workers in other areas. And then came a thunderbolt—rail workers, the custodians of the nation’s transportation and commercial arteries, threatened to cut off the country’s blood supply unless they received a substantial pay increase. Unlike the other strikes, the rail strike was deadly serious. It meant no mail delivery, no food on the store shelves, and no coal to heat people’s homes in the winter. Truman had to act.
After a few false starts, Truman, with the help of his chief labor adviser, John Steelman, finally got a handle on things. Steelman managed much of the negotiation for the dispute, while Clifford was tasked with drafting a speech for Truman criticizing the rail workers’ union for putting the country’s financial health at risk. By now, Rosenman and Vardaman were no longer with the administration. Of the president’s original inner circle, only Steelman and Vaughn remained. Clifford had assumed Rosenman’s role in all but name, and Steelman, who had risen to prominence due to his deep involvement in White House operations, appeared to be filling the advisory and personal role of Vardaman. A new team was forming, and Truman was watching to see how everyone jelled.
On the day of Truman’s big speech to a joint session of Congress, Clifford spent most the day working on the draft while Steelman continued to seek a resolution with the union. Clifford finished only just in time and placed the draft in the president’s hands on the limousine ride to the Capitol. As Truman spoke to a packed congressional chamber, Steelman was still working feverishly against the clock with the railroad unions. Clifford was watching the president’s speech from the antechamber when Steelman called to announce a last-minute concession by the unions. The strike was over! Clifford quickly scribbled a note to Truman, which someone handed to the president during a pause in his speech. Truman looked up from the note with a smile and announced that the rail strike had just been resolved—and that it had been resolved on his terms. The room erupted in celebration, with mighty cheers and applause.
The ending of the rail strike was a great success for Truman, and it improved his public image as a decisive and strong leader. It was also a great success for Clifford, who was from that day forward embraced by Truman as a full member of his team. Clifford’s conduct under the pressure of the whole affair must have put to rest Truman’s doubts about Clifford’s readiness for the bright lights of White House politics. Without ceremony, on June 27, 1946, Truman notified Clifford after a meeting in the Oval Office that he was to immediately leave the naval reserve and assume the full duties of White House counsel.
Clifford now held the office that had enabled Rosenman to become Truman’s right hand, but Clifford was under no illusions. He still had much to do if he wanted to enjoy the same respect Truman held for Rosenman. Vardaman and Rosenman were gone, but Vaughn and Steelman remained as credible threats to his ambition to become the president’s chief adviser. Vaughn and Clifford had never really gotten along well, and the rail strike had exposed a bitter rivalry between Steelman and Clifford that would fester for as long as Clifford worked in the White House. Truman’s new inner circle would be an uneasy alliance.
By any measure, John Steelman was a success story. The former hobo, who had ridden the rails during the Great Depression, was smart and competitive and had the ego of two men. Before entering government service, he clawed his way to a PhD in economics at the University of North Carolina. He joined the Ro
osevelt Administration to work on labor issues and accepted Truman’s offer to assume the same duties in his administration. He became one of the most important members of Truman’s staff, and some regarded him as the first White House chief of staff.
Clifford and Steelman had a strained relationship for much of the time they served together. Even years later, in an interview, Steelman betrayed a strong note of bitterness toward his former colleague.15 As rivals for the post of Truman’s chief adviser, Clifford and Steelman were on a collision course, and they came crashing together during the next major labor crisis of the administration.
The coal miners’ strike was unexpected. The matter was thought to have been resolved after a contract between the miners and the administration some months earlier. Then, out of the blue, the charismatic leader of the coal miners’ union, John L. Lewis, decided to use the upcoming congressional elections as leverage to squeeze more concessions out of Truman.
Lewis’s threat was potent. Coal fueled nearly all the locomotive activity in the country, at a time when trains were the only real way to move large quantities of goods. It also powered most of the nation’s electricity. Truman interpreted Lewis’s reneging on the signed agreement with the coal miners as a personal affront and a threat to national security. He called his team together to discuss a solution.
Steelman advised appeasement. The coal miners were a large and formidable force in American politics, and Steelman felt the only way to deal with such a force was to roll over and give them what they wanted. Clifford disagreed.
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