Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation, lot 65 D 238
Memorandum of Conversation With the President, by the Secretary of State
Item 1. Korean Negotiations.1
I reviewed for the President the various messages which had been coming in recently from Admiral Joy, General Clark and Ambassador Murphy,2 relating to the undesirable effects which were occurring in the Far East as a result of the continuance of daily meetings at Panmunjom with the vituperative propaganda of the communists which issued therefrom. I told the President that we might soon expect recommendations from General Clark and that my guess was that he would recommend discontinuance of daily meetings. I said that the Department believed that there was much to be said for this attitude and that the Department is not taking any rigid attitude that the daily meetings must continue. Indeed, we were actively at work on a proposal which would permit recessing the meetings for say two weeks or ten days, but that it was imperative at the same time to take some steps which would restore international confidence in the moral position which we had taken on the POWs. I thought that international opinion and some opinion in this country had been shaken by the Dodd–Colson episode and the continuing difficulties in the prison camps.
The President interjected that he had given Secretary Pace instructions to take vigorous measures to regain control of the camp situation. I suggested to the President that if it were possible to get two or three nations who did not have troops in Korea to undertake an impartial rescreening of the prisoners we had already screened—the nations which suggested themselves were perhaps India, Sweden and Switzerland—I thought we could then have strong international support for requesting the hearings while this took place. I said that I was not asking the President’s approval of such a plan which, if possible to work out, would come to him through regular channels, but that if it did come to him during my absence I wanted him to know that I was strongly in favor of it.
The President said that he liked the idea. He asked the very sound question, whether the presence of any nation on such a rescreening board would interfere with the services of that same nation as a neutral [Page 227] observer of the armistice should one be brought about. I said that this would require careful thought.
- Acheson also discussed at this meeting with the President the EDC and contractual negotiations, the Benton-McCarthy suit, Bolivian recognition, and approval of a message to the Netherlands Government on the question of duration of the EDC Treaty.↩
- For Clark’s and Joy’s messages, see HNC 1236, May 12, p. 193; for Murphy’s recommendations, see telegram 188, May 21, p. 212.↩