Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Central and Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume IV

400.119/10–1150

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of European Regional Affairs (Martin)

secret

[Washington,] October 11, 1950.

Participants:	S—The Secretary
	E—Mr. O’Gara1
	RA—Mr. Martin

The Secretary reported that Mr. Foster, ECA Administrator,² called to say that ECA operations were being seriously interfered with by the refusal of Commerce, despite repeated requests, to issue licenses for 1–A and high 1–B items to ECA countries. These licenses were being put on the shelf pending further negotiations to insure that the ECA countries were controlling adequately the export of similar items to the Soviet area.

It was pointed out that the NSC decision,³ upon which the Secretary of Commerce based his action, was badly in need of clarification but that to refuse to issue licenses pending such clarification would not only impair the ECA program but jeopardize the success of East-West trade negotiations to be held shortly in London with the British and the French. It was also reported that repeated efforts to persuade Sawyer and Blaisdell⁴ to change the Commerce position had failed.

The Secretary proposed that he attempt to secure the signature of the President, before his departure for the Pacific, to a letter to the Acting Secretary of Commerce indicating that the action being taken by Commerce was not the action he intended and had approved in NSC 347, and that he, therefore, wished that, pending the President’s return from the Pacific, at which time the matter could be straightened out, Commerce would issue licenses in those cases in which the ECA Administrator indicated they were essential to the success of ECA purposes.

The Secretary further proposed that he meet with the President, accompanied by Foster and Blaisdell, to secure approval of such a letter.

This procedure was approved by telephone by Harriman⁵ and Foster.

On communicating this proposal to Blaisdell, Blaisdell said that Secretary Sawyer, before his departure for the Caribbean, had given him authority to modify the Commerce position and that rather than bother the President he would give the Secretary his word that Commerce will issue new licenses that the ECA Administrator said were necessary and that the Secretary of State said should be issued to prevent embarrassment at the forthcoming negotiations with the British and French. On the basis of these assurances, the proposal to secure a letter from the President was dropped.

Edward M. Martin

1. John E. O’Gara, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.
2. On October 1 President Truman appointed William C. Foster, until then Deputy Administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration, to succeed Paul G. Hoffman as Economic Cooperation Administrator.
3. The reference here is to National Security Council Action 347 of August 24; see p. 179.
4. Thomas C. Blaisdell, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Foreign and Domestic Commerce; during Secretary Sawyer’s absence from Washington in mid-October, Blaisdell served as Acting Secretary of Commerce.
5. In late June 1950, W. Averell Harriman, until then the Special Representative in Europe for the Economic Cooperation Administration, assumed the post of Special Assistant to President Truman.