\(Note attached to following document\)
Marina\'s list called for
April 28 DA
no further identification. I think this must be what she meant.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE Memorandum of Conversation
DATE: April 28, 1950
SUBJECT: Meeting with Senator Wiley re Bipartisan Policy
PARTICIPANTS: Senator Alexander Wiley The Secretary Mr. McFall
COPIES TO: U - Mr. Webb
====================================================================
Mr. McFall and I called on Senator Wiley late yesterday afternoon and talked with him for about a half hour. I opened the conversation by telling him that we had come to discuss some our problems in connection with maintaining the bipartisan policy with the thought that he may have some ideas that might be helpful to us in the efforts we are making in this field. I pointed out that we are now going through the third phase of problems in the maintenance of a bipartisan policy during recent years. The first phase was when Cordell Hull was Secretary and there were four Democratic and four Republican Members who were kept continuously informed about the developments leading up to the United Nations Charter. Following this era, Senator Vandenberg provided the needed ingredient for carrying on appropriate consultation looking to preserving the bipartisan approach. Confronted as we are now with Senator Vandenberg\'s lamentable illness, I pointed out that we are posed with a serious problem that we are searching means and methods to solve.
We next entered into a discussion of the developments on the consultative committees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I pointed out in connection therewith that we entertained the firm view that the only way that we can carry on a consultation aimed at bipartisan approach on foreign policy issues is through the regularly constituted Committees of the Congress that are concerned with foreign relations. I pointed out the difficulties that lay in the path of endeavoring to have individual consultations with Senators who are not Members of the Foreign Relations Committee saying that I felt it must essentially remain the responsibility of the Republican Party to set its own house in order whereby the Republican Membership of the Foreign Relations Committee can truly and effectively represent the attitudes for the Republican Membership-at-large on foreign policy issues and that if we once go outside the bounds of the Committee in our consultations then it opens up a whole chain of demands for others being taken into confidence to a point where we would essentially be consulting so many people so often that we would have no time left to get anything accomplished. I told Senator Wiley that I was expecting to discuss this problem with several Republican Senators with the idea of soliciting their views as to just how we might proceed to meet their wishes for consultative processes but I felt I should reassure Senator Wiley that my position at the time was that I could not see any alternative course to the one of dealing on these matters through the regularly constituted Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator Wiley replied that he was not thin-skinned on the subject at all and that he did not care who I talked to or when. He said that while he was very flattered at my calling on him, he did not expect any consultation individually and that as far as he was concerned he was satisfied with my appearances before the Foreign Relations Committee in posting him on what we are doing in the Department on the various issues at stake. He then suggested that I might give thought to having a series of breakfast parties with various Members at which time I could discuss world problems with them. He said he thought it would be a good idea if arrangements could be made for me to appear before the entire bodies of both the House and Senate from time to time to explain what the State Department was doing. I intervened here and told him that I personally endorsed Senator Kefauver\'s plan, over two years ago which looked toward establishing such a procedure but that I felt that considerable difficulty would be experienced in endeavoring to convince Congress that they wanted to take a step as revolutionary as this in executive-legislative relations. I then told him that Senator Kefauver had mentioned what he regarded to be the desirability of my talking informally to the House and Senate Members perhaps in the Library of Congress Auditorium and I told the Senator that I would be happy to do this somewhat along the line General Marshall followed when he was Secretary.
Senator Wiley then addressed himself to the McCarthy matter, saying that he was endeavoring to maintain a completely judicial view on the charges and that he had told his people in Wisconsin that he was keeping a completely open mind and intended to weigh the evidence and withhold his decision until all the evidence was in. He then jocularly suggested that he might be called upon before he died to either vote for or against Dean Acheson and/or Joe McCarthy for President of the United States.
While I do not feel anything concrete was accomplished by the conversation, it is possible that there may have been some goodwill created that may serve its purpose in our relationships in the days ahead.
H:JKMcFall:cd:br