19461776 Club
A top-secret report lands on Truman's desk: the Soviets cannot be trusted
Clark Clifford and George Elsey hand the President their assessment of Moscow's intentions, seven months after Stalin's alarming February speech.
By September 1946, White House officials had grown suspicious of Moscow's intentions. On September 24, White House counsel Clark Clifford and his aide George Elsey delivered a top-secret report to President Truman assessing Soviet behavior and intentions since the war's end. The two men drew on Stalin's February speech and mounting evidence of Soviet hostility to conclude the Kremlin could not be dealt with as a normal partner. Truman found the analysis so sensitive he ordered every copy locked away…
