No. 326
Editorial Note
On December 18, 1953, attorneys from Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Standard Oil Company of California, and The Texas Company [Page 770] met with Stanley Barnes, Assistant Attorney General, and Leonard J. Emmerglick, the prosecuting attorney for the Department of Justice in the case of The United States v. Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) et al. The oil company representatives urged the Department of Justice to reappraise the suit because information in the possession of the companies caused them to believe that the national security, to the extent that it depended on Middle East oil, was being harmed by the suit.
In a letter to the General Counsel of The Texas Company, dated December 24, not printed, Barnes informed him that “it is our conclusion that we [the Department of Justice] must look to official governmental sources for information, and more particularly, evaluation of developments bearing upon a proper weighing of the relationship between anti-trust litigation and the national security… if any of the companies is in possession of information which it believes is not known to our Government and which has national security significance, we must assume it will come to us through the responsible governmental agencies, such as the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, to which it should be made available.” (880.2553/4–554)
On January 5, 1954, representatives of Socony-Vacuum, Standard Oil of California, and The Texas Company wrote to the Secretary of State and requested an opportunity to present information in their possession which had national security significance. They advised that they were sending a similar letter to the Director of Central Intelligence. (880.2553/4–554) In a letter dated January 20, not printed, the Under Secretary of State informed the General Counsel of Socony-Vacuum that he would be happy to meet with representatives of the three companies on January 23 to discuss the information mentioned in the letter. (880.2553/4–554)
The only record of the January 23 meeting found in Department of State files is a 57-page (presumably verbatim) transcript. The first 43 pages of the document consist of a report given by James R. Withrow, a partner in the firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton, and Irvine, attorneys for Socony-Vacuum. His report concerned a survey he had made on a trip to the Middle East with King and George W. Ray, General Counsel, Aramco, neither of whom was present at the meeting. Only some extracts of Withrow’s Report are printed in the transcript of the January 23 meeting, infra. The last 14 pages of the document cover the question-and-answer period following Withrow’s report, and that part of the transcript is printed in full. A complete copy of the transcript is in Department of State file 880.2553.