The Kansas City Times from Kansas City, Missouri • 26

TmdoyMrury 20 I960 Clark Clifford Likes a Challenge (Eljg KanflaB Etty Simps (The Morning Kansas City Star) The Kansas City Star Company Owner end Publisher MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Associated Prose exclusively Is entitled to use for republic tion of all local news published hereto as wen as all AP dispatches By John Cauley (Chlaf Th Star- Bureau) ASfflNCW'ON Clark McA dams Clifford who was borvn in Kansas and reared in Missouri soon will take over one of the toughest most challenging and hottest jobs in the federal government that of secretary of defense At the Pentagon he will not only preside over a vast military organization which has a budget of some 7 bill ion dollars a year but be will direct the prosecution of the war in human costs remains limited It has not expanded into a general Asian war or worse To that extent collective security is effective even in Vietnam Certainly it is the best protector of this country in the world as it is today and is likely to continue indefinitely In or Out of Government Service CliHord Is a Busy' Man By John Cauley CM at tun Wmri-soo- iurrm V7ASHINGTON-ln 1910 dark Clifford helped President-" elect John Kennedy smooth the transition from tha Eisenhower administration and later assisted the President in trying to figure out what went wrong in the Bay of Pigs disaster In the period when Kennedy was besieged with office-seekers he recalled how helpful Clifford had been to him and then quipped "Now look at Clark Clifford He is not clamoring for anything All be wants is to have the name of Ids law firm printed on the back of dollar balls- These are busy times for Clifford who is in the process of severing connections with his law firm Ont night recently a reporter who had vainly tried to contact Clifford at has office found him eating a sandwich at a drugstore counter And the other day Clifford called a newspaperman friend and said just have one minute bug in that ooe minute I want to ted you how much I appreciated the story you wrote about me" One night shortly after he was appointed secretary of defense Clifford arrived ai the State department for a high-level conference The guard at the door did not recognu him and it was only after Clifford showed several credit cards and other identification that be final! was admitted KANSAS JUNIOR COLLEGE SITE IS A PROBLEM Vietnam save that this EHE BEARS ITS BURDEN FOR ITS OWN SAKE WHAT if the United States should simply pick up its weapons and forces and economic aid and withdraw to a saying the devil with being a defender of other freedom and independence? Robert McNamara the outgoing secretary of defense has argued strongly and persuasively against such all-out retreat in his seventh and final statement before the Senate armed services committee He said: "That the American people have become tomewhat disillusioned and weary with the problems of the rest of the world is readily understandable: For many years we have borne a large share of the burden of world peace and security and of assistance to the developing nations But w6 must never forget that of all nations we have the most at stake "The existence of an open outward-looking humane society in the United States depends upon the vitality of similar societies elsewhere We must also never forget that our burden is large because our capacity is so much larger in fact than that of any other nation as to make comparisons misleading For better or for worse hopefully for better we are preeminent with all of the obligations which accrue to What McNamara is saying as he does else- rLE chance for a combined city school and junior college bond program in Kansas City never too now seems to have faded completely The plain fact was that the community junior college could wait no longer The aging overcrowded 2-year institution was faced with loss of its accreditation unless the trustees pushed ahead with plans for a bond election to build a new enlarged campus An inspection team from the North Central association the accrediting body was sharply critical of the facilities So the six trustees have announced that they will settle on one of six possible sites at their March 12 meeting and pick a date sometime in May for a 57-million-dollar bond election That amount build the new probably a second election of similar size will be needed but it Is the maximum permitted by Kansas law under the present assessed valuation The city which has bond ceiling problems of its own is waiting on the fate of a bill in the Leg have no illusions about Clark Clifford says referring to his new job know tho difficulties I know the impossibility of satisfying certainly not only everybody but maybe even the majority" islature which would enable it to build some of where in his lengthy statement is that the world projects under a separate public buildings has changed whether any large part of the commission Wichita and Overland Park already country is in a constant state of readiness to defend Itself and honor its commitments and participate at the highest level in decision making whioh wifi have an enormous impact on every American and indeed on the entire world However difficult his job Clifford will be getting off to a good start Seldom has anyone appointed to a high government position been received so enthusiastically by Congress and other government loaders Range of QnaHties The adjectives used to describe Clifford who got his start in the government in 1946 in President Truman's adnanis-trafion range from discreet acute knowledgeable cool and courtly to tough-minded and realistic Senator Symington (D-Mo) who is perhaps closest friend in Washington said that greatest attribute is his sound judgment will be raaning his own shop at the Symington says major decisions will be his And he will be more prone to listen to the military people than has been true in recent A measure of CSSfford depth and character can be ascertained in his explanation of why he accepted the appointment Here he was with a Mghjy lucrative law practice the inde-: pendence of a private citizen and the entree to high places with his reputation as an Clifford said what a great many other men say when they take on a big job in government that when the President of the United States puts it up to you as a matter of duty one cannot refuse But then Clifford continued: have no illusions about it I know the difficulties I know the impossibility of satisfying certainly not only everybody have that authority For Kansas City Kansas a new city hall and city-county health building are the main goals The public school district for its part seems to have accomplished little toward satisfying any of the objections which solidly defeated its 17-mil-lion-dollar bond improvement program last October The school board still talks of holding a series of meetings with the divergent protesters American public may like it or not In the years between the two World wars the United States with a small military budget pursued a policy of isolation and neutrality It did not work In the end this country was forced into the world struggle against the aggressions of Nazi Germany Italy and Japan The results were far more costly In lives and property than an earlier recognition of the menace to the survival of the United States would have been As presidential adviser Clark Clifford helped Harry Truman win re-election in 1945 Much of Mr Treenail's strategy came from a 43-page memorandum Clifford wrote on how the campaign should be conducted field included and more than any other lawyer He said he came out even on the year after paving off his debts baying a house outfitting a law f- speeches on foreign policy and announce more foreign policy decisions himself rather than having them made public by the State department to combat the false impression mas day 1906 in Fort Scott Kas and when he was a boy the family moved to St Louis where his father was an official of the Missouri Pacific railroad His brother Clark McAdams after whom he was named was a widely-known crusading editor of the St Louis Post-Dispatch Sokiaa high school in St Louis Clifford played on the tennis team with William Mc-Cbeeney Martin now chairman of the Federal Reserve board Joined Law Firm After graduation from the law school of Washington university in St Louis in 1928 Clifford joined the firm of Lashley a high principled lawyer who had a great influence on Clifford at this point in his life By the time he was in his early 30s Clifford had gained the reputation of being one of the mosi brilliant trial lawyers in St Louis One day in 1943 Clifford confined to a friend that he was rET some Americans deny that the past is prologue to the future Their dangerously then stationed on the West coast to help him at the White House ability and versatility soon made an impression on Mr Truman and also on Judge Samuel I Rosenman special counsel and speech writer for President Roosevelt who had remained to assist President Truman When Vardamari was appointed to the Federal Reserve board Clifford became President naval aide One day Judge Rosenman told President Truman that ho would have to leave the government to make more money for his family Mr Truman asked Rosenman how he would ever get anyone to replace him Clifford is your the judge told the President Clifford soon was elevated to special counsel and in 1948 when Mr chances for election appeared dim to most people Clifford emerged as a political strategist of the first rank He wrote a 43-page memorandum on how the campaign should be conducted President who is also a candidate most be in the Clifford wrote must resort to the kind of trip Roose- but maybe even the majority in the Navy it over first the friend advised you are 37 years old and you have a wife and three children to support You can help the war effort more effectively here at you say is logi- However at this particular time with the difficulties that are inherent not only in that job but which exist in the country I think maybe that made it more attractive to me than it otherwise Would have Clifford was born on Christ- announcement was the disclosure that all six campus sites under consideration lie west of Fifty-fifth and the reported favored site is at Seventy-second and State avenue Several factors are cited against a more central location but we would guess that more discussion will be needed on that issue The perfect site to please everyone never can be found witness the controversy over the Metropolitan Junior College-Kansas City site proposals The fact is a college campus must be determined for the long future as well as for immediate needs But the sites mentioned are a long way from the Kansas City Kansas center of population even if as surveys show the overwhelming majority of the present students travel by car either their own or in a pool It might be possible that many potential students could be lost by a campus far from the center of population The situation has the unhappy potential for another squabble such as the site fnss which has not yet been resolved in Kansas City not difficult to guess that the Kansas City Kansas junior college board will be hearing from its patrons whatever site they choose next month There is no doubt of the need for them to make a move A Texas junior college expert has projected the present enrollment of 1300 to reach 2500 in five years and 3800 in 10 years His study recommends an expanded curriculum especially in technical studies for those students who will not go on to finish four years of college The blueprint for a long-needed major improvement of this institution has been roughed in and consultants and architects are designing the new campus What the trustees need now are a site and money The choice of the former will need to be generally acceptable to most Kansas City Kansans if they are to get the latter naive argument in effect is that if this nation will only ignore the threat of armed communism it will vanish The weakness of this think-iag is that it disregards the facts of the past two decades Entirely apart from the of concept which the Communists are testing in Vietnam this is the age of nuclear warheads and intercontinental missiles An unfriendly Soviet Union now and a fierce Red China eventually will the capability to strike the American homeland a devastating blow with only a few warning Under the shadow of such a peril the idea of a as a trustworthy shield is illusory Moreover without well-policed disarmament on a global scale which still is but a dream the UMted States does not have the safe option of a retreat to armed or unarmed it did between 1919 and 1940 So we1 have to live in the world as it is unstable and full of menace generated in Moscow and Peking As McNamara observes without allies the United States surely would have to maintain a larger military establishment than present The business and industry would have to be reorganized to develop maximum self-sufficiency Our people would have to endure a standard of living and there would he less economic opportunity A world that is already dangerous would become more heavily fraught with daily peril Abound the globe pressures would build up for the spread of nuclear weapons There could still relative prosperity in a bot we would be alone in a sea of what McNamara calls envious and unfriendly It is a grim prospect of insecurity that can be avoided only by staying with the principles of collective security Those principles have served the United States better than any conceivable alternative from the mid-1940s into the late 1960s Vietnam has become a special trial for the United States (But that conflict with all of its made by enemies that good about the administration in foreign policy is Marshall (George Marshall then secretary of state) and that everything bad is A friend then in the recalls that before the election Clifford wrote on the back of an envelope Ms prediction of the outcome missed one state be said we would the friend related be missed one be said we would not carry Bat all the remainder he got Clifford left the White House in 1950 much to the despair of the liberals Said the left-wing Nation magazine: has bean the mainstay of the fair deal the author of its best presidential speeches and the originator of its most impressive Opened law Office By this time tired and debt Clifford opened a law office in Washington Among corporations who were clients weae the du Pont company which be represented when du Pont was forced to divest of its holdings of 23 per cent of the stock of General Motors: Radio Corporation of America Standard Oil and Phillips Petroleum David LilienthaL a friend of Clifford and the new dealer who once headed the Tennessee Valley authority told in his journal about legal success with Clark Clifford today He told me the whole details of his last year Ms first year of law practice after leaving the White House is simply an incredible story He practices alone Ms partner died two and a half months after they began be hired four young lawyers aDd five stenographers In this a one-man performance he earned probably as much as any professional man in the country amusement tftiblsL (JoJlbSL jjlA Jodmp And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians to catch him in his Mark 12:13 Mr and Mrs Clark Clifford in the living room of their suburban Washington homo The Cliffords who met on a European tour in 1929 have three married daughters and 10 grandchildren Since 1962 Optimism on Vietnam fice etc was uneasy about what will happen to him after Truman is out if he Is wonders if he will keep any of his which is nonsense as he is a very able man with or without No Problem Now If Clifford really had any qualms about his financial future they certainly hare disappeared by this time He is reported to have it in Ml well investments in addition to the fees be received from his clients Clifford worked behind the scenes for President Kennedy when Kennedy was approaching a showdown with the steel industry in 1962 over its price increases He sent Clifford along with Arthur Goldberg then the secretary of labor to negotiate with the steel executives Later Kennedy told a friend any one person deserves the credit for having the steel companies see the light it kas to toe Clark Clifford Since be represents so many of them here in Washington be has immediate entree you just see Clifford outlining the possible courses of action the government could take if they' showed sigas of not moving?" Impressive in Appeal Elegance and class most apt descriptions personal is tall lean has wears and immaculate shirts In 1931 Clifford former Miss Margery Peopereil Kimball of Mass a charming cious girl whom be had met an a European tour in IS Ttoey have three married daughters and lfl grandchildren i i 4iiii FORTY YEARS AGO By John Dootoan The Star's I Jsrartsn From The Star February 24 1829 The Municipal Auditorium committee today turned down the plan whereby the directors of Convention hall would deed that building to the city Instead they hose Use voting of 3H million dollars is balds far an entirely new city -owned building Malcolm Campbell drv his Bluebird Special at a speed of 214 miles an boor at Daytona Fla Entry blanks for the National A A basketball tournament to be held here the week of March 12 went out from tha office of Dr A Reilly today Ed (Strangler) Lewis of Kansas won undisputed sion of the ship wrestling cro Louis when be feated Joe Stecher of Neb in a finish match Three Kansas Citians are among the 20 best known kvisg alumni of the Univcrtety of Kansas They are Lyle Harrington an engineer Mayor Albert Beach and Nichols William VoDter was elected chairman of (ha board of directors of Research hospital The Rev John Sauer is velt made famous in the inspection matter how much the opposition and the press point out the political overtones of these trips the people paid little attention for what they saw was the cMef of state performing Ms Clifford also suggested that Mr Truman make more Clifford replied to his friend going into tho Navy entry into the Navy was the first link in the chain of circumstances that led to Ms going to the White House to work for Mr Truman James (Jake) Vardanian who had been appointed naval aide to Mr Truman summoned his friend Clifford who was ence feel that the enemy knows that he can no longer win a military victory in South Really We Had a Lovely Visit UMted States after another visit to Vietnam reported have stopped losing the July 9 McNamara returning from a council of war in Honolulu stated have been thwarting the enemy plans inflicting very heavy losses on him cautiously The UMted States then had 280000 men in Vietnam March 1 McNamara told White House reporters that the UMted States had 415000 troops in Vietnam has permitted a very substantial increase in the rate of July 12 1967 Returning from Ms ninth trip to Vietnam McNamara talked of and substantial July 19 Rusk declared other side is hurting and they are hurting very November 21' Gen William Westmoreland the commander in Vietnam told the National Press club at a lunchon that 1968 would be a year the end begins to come into He said it was that within two years or less we will be able to phase down the level of our military effort and withdraw some The South Vietnamese government prove its he said and the South Vietnamese army show that it can handle the Viet judgment that the major part of the military task can be completed by the end of 1965 although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of training personnel America then had 14000 in Vietnam February 24 Rusk said think the resources and capabilities are there to get this job done on the present basis of assistance to the Vietnamese so that they themselves can handle this problem primarily with their own May 14 1964 McNamara said on Ms return from Ms fifth visit to Vietnam firmly believe that the persistent execution of the political-military plans wMch the government of Vietnam has developed to carry out that war with our assistance will lead to It might be necessary he said to send additional to Vietnam but oMy to expand the training of South Vietnamese forces July 20 McNamara leaving Saigon after his sixth visit to Vietnam said over-all situation continues to be serious As a matter of fact in many aspects there has been deterioration since I was here last 15 months ago But the picture is not all black by any means The Vietnamese people contmue to be willing to fight and die in their own On July 28 President Johnson ordered American forces in Vietnam to be raised from 75-000 to 125000 November 30 McNamara arriving back in the By William McGaf fin (Servlc of Cfecaao Dally News) WASHINGTON If optimistic comment by government officials could win a war Vietnam tfould have been over long ago -From the very start a rosy-Itued view was taken by high-level spokesmen despite the complications and problems of a- conflict into which the United Slates was drawn ever more deeply It generally is agreed the administration has contributed to the confusion and frustrations of the public by its stream of assurances that all going well tout its policy of lotting the best possible light the developments in Vietnam is one that it appears reluctant tp abandon 'Here are some samples over the years: May 11 1962 Robert McNamara secretary of defense said in Saigon at the conclusion of Ms first visit to the war theater that he was by developments in South Vietnam IJe had stated two days earlier on his arrival that is no for introducing American Xmbat forces to the theater February 1 1963 Dean secretary of state reported that are some definitely encouraging On February 13 he an-ignmced momentum of the Communist drive has been October 2 1963-This is what the White House said in a statement issued after a trip to Vietnam by McNamara and (Jen Maxwell Taylor then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: McNamara and I (Jeneral Taylffir reported their February 2 At the end of a week in which the Viet Cong launched a major sur-prise offensive against Saigon and other cities the President said at a news conference that the enemy had suffered complete militarily February 4 Rusk said on the NBC Meet the Press program have no doubt that there are some people in South Vietnam who are grumpy because somehow it was not possible to give them complete protection against what has happened in the last few days But on the other hand we find a widespread sense of outrage and reaction against tMs campaign of tecror put on by the Viet THE UNITED STATES is awaiting what administration spokesmen have warned will be the biggest enemy offensive of the war against the isolated marine outpost of Khe Sanh For 10500 additional troops are being rushed to join the 500090 already in Vietnam But the joint chiefs of staff have assured the President in writing that Khe Sanh and should be and that it will not turn into a humiliating defeat such as the French suffered at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 The current administration line is that this offensive be the last big push by the enemy before coming to the con-conference THE WILWAIWEE JOIENU raUfeten-Xoit SjWican January 1 President Johnson said at a press confer-.