Editorial Note

On July 6, the National Security Council met to discuss Korea. A memorandum for the files, in Department of State top secret file [Page 312] 795.00/7–650, which covered Mr. Acheson’s discussions with his principal Department of State advisers prior to the meeting, was not declassified by the National Security Council in time for inclusion in this volume. The memorandum dealt chiefly with the blockade of North Korea. At the NSC meeting, the Secretaries of State and Defense agreed that the two Departments should clarify the extent and meaning of the blockade of North Korea (NSC Files: NSC Action No. 310b).

A published account of the NSC meeting, covering topics other than the blockade, is printed in Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, pages 344–345.

Also at the July 6 NSC meeting, the President instructed the members that all proposals for presidential action in the current Korean crisis were to be forwarded to him through the NSC machinery; no unilateral proposals for his action were to be sent to him directly. (Harry S. Truman Library: Files of Charles S. Murphy, Box 22, Folder “Korea”; Elsey to Murphy, July 7, 1950)