Editorial Note
In a letter of June 13, 1974 to the Historical Office, Dean Rusk gave the following information concerning some of the events in which he had participated relating to the recognition of Israel by the United States on May 14, 1948:
“The General Assembly was in session that day. About 5:45 that afternoon I got a call from Mr. Clark Clifford, Special Counsel to President Truman, telling me that the State of Israel would be declared at 6:00 p. m., that the United States would recognize Israel immediately and that the President wished me to inform our Delegation at the United Nations. I said, “But this cuts across what our Delegation has been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly under instructions and we already have a large majority for that approach.” Mr. Clifford replied, “Nevertheless, this is what the President wishes you to do.” I thereupon telephoned Ambassador Warren Austin, who had to leave the floor of the Assembly to take my call. He made a personal decision not to return to the Assembly or to inform other members of our Delegation—he simply went home. My guess is that he thought that it was better for the General Assembly to know very clearly that this was the act of the President in Washington and that the United States Delegation had not been playing a double game with other Delegations.
“Just after 6 p. m., a member of the New York Delegation called me to find out what it was all about. I had thought it was Phil Jessup, but he has informed me that it was not he who called. Perhaps it was Jack Ross. Meanwhile, Mr. Jessup’s colleague Francis Sayre had gone to the podium, and, in effect, said he didn’t know anything about the American recognition of Israel. A few minutes later Mr. Jessup returned to the Assembly (which was then in pandemonium), read the press ticker, and confirmed that it was in fact correct.
“When I use the word pandemonium, I think I am not exaggerating. I was later told that one of our U.S. Mission staff men literally sat on the lap of the Cuban Delegate to keep him from going to the podium to withdraw Cuba from the United Nations. In any event, about 6:15 I got a call from Secretary Marshall who said, “Rusk, get up to New York and prevent the U.S. Delegation from resigning en masse.” Whether it was necessary or not, I scurried to New York and found that tempers had cooled sufficiently so that my mission was unnecessary.
“I cannot vouch for this, but there was a story later that some of Secretary Marshall’s friends had told him that he ought to resign because of this incident. He was reported to have replied, “No, gentlemen, you do not accept a post of this sort and then resign when the man who has the Constitutional authority to make a decision makes one. You may resign at any time for any other reason but not that one.” (Dean Rusk to William M. Franklin, Accession No. P740066–0003.)