Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1942, Europe, Volume III

740.0011 European War 1939/26333c: Telegram

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Henderson) to the Secretary of State

Kuibyshev (Moscow), December 8, 1942—noon.
[Received December 9—4:07 p.m.]

[Unnumbered.] Personal for the Secretary.

1. I venture to suggest that before Admiral Standley’s departure¹¹ it might be helpful in case you have not already done so if you could discuss with him the extent to which you desire the Embassy to keep you informed, so far as it is able to do so, regarding the activities in the Soviet Union of various special missions composed of or including American officials. Since some of these missions are operating under instructions which have not been issued through the State Department and are reporting through channels other than the State Department, we have hesitated fully to report to you regarding such of their activities as have been made known to us. We have not, for instance, attempted to pass on to you all of the information which has come to our attention regarding the Bradley, Hurley, and Adler visits. Similarly, it was not easy for the Ambassador to determine the extent to which he should report to you his impressions regarding the Churchill-Harriman Mission and the Willkie visit. Since some of these missions negotiate or discuss matters which may vitally affect present and future relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, it would appear that unless [you are?] informed of what they are doing the Department may have difficulty in making decisions with regard to current problems of American-Soviet relations in full consonance with the activities in which some of these special missions are engaged. The situation therefore, is that the Embassy is reporting to you all important developments which come to its attention in relations between other countries and the Soviet Union but is not reporting fully all that it learns regarding certain activities here which affect American-Soviet relations.

2. As you are aware, the President and Stalin are exchanging messages regarding matters affecting American relations. At this end the messages from the President are received through the channels of the Naval Attaché who turns paraphrases of them over to the Embassy for transmission under cover of personal and secret notes to Molotov for delivery to Stalin. Stalin’s replies are sent through Molotov to Litvinov for transmission to the President. Molotov uniformly furnishes the American Ambassador or Chargé d’Affaires copies of all messages to the President sent through Litvinov. Thus both Molotov and the American Ambassador are kept fully informed regarding these exchanges. It is not clear whether you and Litvinov are also in possession of full sets of these extremely important messages.¹²

Henderson

11. The Ambassador left Washington on his return flight on December 19, 1942, and finally landed at Kuibyshev on January 8, 1943.
12. The files of the Department did not contain a full set of the correspondence exchanged between the President and Stalin.