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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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she wasn't asked, but still they were going through the living members, and I suppose they had to keep the list down.

So everybody was there really, and it was a most extraordinary affair. The paper the next morning printed a story—it was printed in the Washington Times-Herald and, I suppose, in the other papers—in which they gave the list of the persons present, but incorrectly. I thought that was interesting in itself. This list was never given out by the White House in the usual way. I dare say it was done to ease the tension for whoever wasn't invited. The early morning papers did not say that Johnson was there, did not say that Henry Wallace was there, did not say that George Marshall was there or Francis Biddle. In other words, they speculated, but really quite wrongly. The Charles Sawyers were not there, but that seems to have been explicable because Sawyer was on the high seas. He had been somewhere in Europe and was not back yet. I think there was no intention to either omit him or for him not to be present. Everybody else was there who had ever been in the Cabinet.

You had McGrath, McGranery, Biddle, and Tom Clark who had been Attorneys General under Truman. They were all there. The greatest disparity of temperaments, standards and opinions about each other prevail in that group of men. You had Marshall, Lovett, and Louis Johnson who been Secretaries of Defense.





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