Interview with Paul A. Porter, March 19, 1975

BIRDWHISTELL: Mr. Porter, we'll begin by finding out when you first met Fred Vinson and what your position was then, and what your impressions were of him.

PORTER: I think I first met Fred Vinson in 1928. I just recently had become a member of the bar and was practicing with the small firm of Benton and Davis in Winchester. This was the campaign in which Al Smith and [Herbert] Hoover were contesting for the presidency. The political structure in Clark County, that is the old-timers, were a little apprehensive because of the 00:01:00religious bias of participating up front in the presidential campaign. So as a young lawyer, 23 years old, I became the campaign manager for Al Smith in Clark County, Kentucky. Fred Vinson was a congressman from down in eastern Kentucky, Louisa and Ashland, and he was also the coordinator for the '28 campaign in I believe the headquarters in St. Louis. Well, not being overburdened with the practice of the law, I had considerable time to work on the campaign. We 00:02:00organized precinct by precinct. And Fred Vinson came through on one of his periodic trips and made a speech at the courthouse, supporting Al Smith, and reviewed with me my county campaign organization. Now he was very flattering saying that it was the greatest that he'd ever seen. And we had been reasonably financed, we had our precinct chairman, we had our brigade to get out to vote. Virgil Chapman, who was the congressman, then later became senator, he and I 00:03:00spoke in every schoolhouse in county which was probably a mistake. And for the first time since the Civil War, the county went Republican by three votes. There was this religious bigotry. That was my first encounter I believe with Fred Vinson. And incidentally, it was his first political defeat. He was defeated for his seat in the Congress from the eastern Kentucky district, Ashland and Louisa.

BIRDWHISTELL: He came under a lot of fire around the state, I think, for his support of Al Smith. Did he ever discuss with you the reasons behind his such 00:04:00obvious support of a candidate --

PORTER: Well, I remember a story he used to tell about a political defector whom I shall not identify, who switched from the Democratic party to the Republican party. Judge Vinson said about him that he had all the qualities of a cur dog except loyalty. [Laughter] So it was a matter of party loyalty. Of course, he was elected the next time. He came onto Congress and became one of the most important and influential members of the House Ways and Means Committee. And he was credited and I am sure that this was true, of knowing more about the intricacies of the tax code and the tax laws than any member of 00:05:00Congress. President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt appointed Vinson to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and he still maintained his warm friendships in Congress and at Speaker [Sam] Rayburn's famous board of education sessions at twilight where some of the old timers would gather around with bourbon and branch water to formulate policy and reminisce. Then Vinson left 00:06:00the court after Pearl Harbor -- and became director of [the Office of] Economic Stabilization. At that time I was the administrator for the rent control program, federal rent control program at OPA [Office of Price Administration]. Well, that program had been installed, was in place, and it was working, so Judge Vinson insisted that I come over to his small office -- we didn't have 00:07:00much of a staff -- and be the deputy director of economic stabilization and his general counsel. Now fundamentally this was a policy-making office. But perhaps equally important, this office had the mandate to decide disputes, for example between Chester Bowles whom I later succeeded as OPA administrator, who wanted to maintain a tight ceiling on prices and the items that went into the cost of living, and Clinton Anderson, then secretary of agriculture, who was 00:08:00consistently contending that the price system was the only mechanism to get needed foodstuffs and food production for war purposes. And some of those disputes got pretty rugged, and Judge Vinson would decide them. I would make my analysis and get all the relevant documents together and usually make a presentation to him. But perhaps the most historic one while Judge Vinson was in his capacity as the director of economic stabilization, was the dispute over 00:09:00crude oil petroleum prices. And when I look at the price level now and think what we were dealing with in those days, there is a certain amount of irony because Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, who was in charge of all the solid fuels for the energy program had recommended a 25 cent a barrel increase. Chester Bowles was vigorous in his opposition to such an increase. He contended 00:10:00that that would have a ripple effect, that it would pyramid through the price structure, and it would be very adverse in his responsibilities as price administrator. Hence the dispute came to Judge Vinson. Now, both Ickes and Bowles were pretty formidable individuals, and I was assigned the task by Judge Vinson to make an analysis of the issues. I spent most of that summer, it must 00:11:00have been in the summer of '46 I guess, or '45, collecting data and receiving memoranda from both parties. I had conferences with the oil industry and conferences with consumers' groups. The rationale of Ickes' insistence on this 25 cent a barrel increase was that it would again be an incentive for increased production. And there was the gas rationing program on. We were the principal 00:12:00suppliers for our allies of crude petroleum to fight the war. So I made the best I could of an analysis in depth. It came out that this 25 cents a barrel increase was not necessary. It would not achieve the purposes. This is what the record showed. And I believe I wrote about a 125-page memorandum opinion to submit to Judge Vinson. Well, he read the conclusion and said, "I'd better take it home with me and study this more and think about it," which he did. Well he had a favorite expression, "I'm going to get out my lead pencil," and he edited 00:13:00this down. He was a very fine editor of economic and legal documents -- without limiting any of the essential points that had been raised and adding some of his own. There was a great legislative push by the oil lobby and others. I suppose that one of Fred Vinson's most intimate friends was Speaker Rayburn. And Rayburn had told him that unless this was done administratively that Congress would do it legislatively and would mandate it as a legislative matter. So with 00:14:00Vinson's edited decision, he gave his office the authority to publish it. He signed the order denying the increase. But before it was released, eh called Speaker Rayburn and told him. And I suppose Fred Vinson is the only person of that generation who could have called Mr. Sam, as he was affectionately known, and gotten away with it. Well, the speaker expressed his deep regrets and said, "Fred, I'm gonna have to fight you for the first time in my life on the floor of the Congress." So a bill was introduced, and the speaker got down from the 00:15:00speaker's box into the well of the House and made a speech in support of the legislative increase. The interesting thing to me was that there were two young Congressmen from the southwest and the oil states that voted against the increase. One was Mike Monroney from Oklahoma, later senator from Oklahoma, and the other was Lyndon Johnson, a young congressman from the oil state of Texas. He thought he was signing his political death warrant, and he got into his naval uniform and went off to war until Roosevelt called all the Congressmen back. So 00:16:00the Vinson order stuck and Congress was not successful in legislating that increase. And thus, according to our calculations, it saved literally oh, I don't know how you would make a precise calculation, but billions of dollars in the prosecution of World War II. There were other episodes less dramatic than that which came to our office from time to time. Vinson of course left as the war was winding down. Oh, and another important function he had was to monitor 00:17:00labor's demands for wage increases as the price level inched up. And you would usually have this kind of thing in which there would be sort of a conspiracy between industry and labor at the bargaining table, because collective bargaining was not abandoned during the war. The War Labor Board tried to mediate it, with the late Bill Davis as the chairman of that board. Industry would say to the union, "We will give you a wage increase within the perimeters 00:18:00of your demands if you can get an agreement with the price administrator and the stabilization office that we can pass it through." So we would never yield that kind of a consent in advance. We said we'd take a look at any agreement that was reached and see whether industry had the capacity to absorb whatever seemed to be a reasonable increase in the wage scale. So that was another important thing that occupied our time. Well then, as you know, Vinson left and became the head of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, the secretary of 00:19:00the treasury, and then chief justice of the United States. I recall that the Kentucky Society, when he became chief justice, gave him a dinner in honor of this great event. I had the honor of being designated as toastmaster, and Alben Barkley was the principal speaker. And, of course, the late Senator, or the late Vice President Barkley, he had a story or an anecdote that would fit every occasion. He described Vinson's achievements chronologically. The impression down in McCracken County where Barkley came from, Paducah, was that if Vinson 00:20:00had all these jobs, at least Barkley could get a constituent a job somewhere. And Barkley said it reminded him of the story of the chap that ordered some furniture from a mail-order house, and it was shoddy merchandise and so he didn't accept it. Well, of course the mail-order house kept trying to collect. And they wrote the station master to see if the goods had been received. They wrote the bank to ascertain the credit standing of this purchaser who had reneged on his contract. They wrote they mayor for his recommendation of a lawyer that could prosecute the claim and get a judgment. They got one letter 00:21:00back saying, "As the station master it is my duty to inform you that I received these goods which I had ordered from you, but they were shoddy and not worth the price, and I am not going to accept them. As the president of the First National Bank I can assure you that my credit standing is of the best. As mayor of this community, I can advise you that I'm the only lawyer in town. Were it not for the fact that I'm also pastor of the First Baptist Church, I'd tell you to go to hell!" [Laughter] And he applied that to Fred Vinson's occupying so many jobs, of course which he didn't do simultaneously. Although I believe he functioned in the dual capacity for a while I guess as federal loan 00:22:00administrator and head of the RFC [Reconstruction Finance Corporation] after Jesse Jones had departed. But I could tell many of the experiences we've shared at the Office of Economic Stabilization and elsewhere, but those were just a couple of examples.

BIRDWHISTELL: Those were very good. Now you came to Washington with the Department of Agriculture, is that right?

PORTER: That's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: In 1934?

PORTER: Yes.

BIRDWHISTELL: And at that time Congressman Vinson was working in the Congress on many of the New Deal measures, and he was influential in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration legislation in the 1930s, I believe?

PORTER: That's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did you ever talk with him about setting up the AAA and the eventual ruling by the Supreme Court in '36 --

PORTER: Well, it had been established -- AAA had been established, and 00:23:00the processing tax of which Vinson was one of the staunch defenders, and Henry Wallace was secretary of agriculture. And I initially came to work for him with the agreement to stay for three months. Now I have been in Washington since, and that's what usually happens to you. Then I was transferred from Wallace's office to Chester Davis, who was the administrator of AAA, in a sort of crazy arrangement. Administratively, there was an administrator and the secretary of agriculture that had final plenary authority. My job, among others, was to write the legislation, the amendments, and prepare the administrator or the 00:24:00secretary for the presentation and then in that capacity I would frequently seek the advice of Congressman Vinson, which he freely gave, which was usually very wise.

BIRDWHISTELL: So he saw no problem then in supporting a measure such as the AAA which regulated the farmers say in a rural state like Kentucky to the extent that it did? Of course, it was finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 1936.

PORTER: Yes, but then it was a new bill was reenacted when Roosevelt served us his famous court-packing plan which I have always thought was a tactical maneuver. And the Agricultural Stabilization Act, which was almost a 00:25:00reenactment of the AAA, came in order to achieve the announced public policy of getting the farmer his fair share of this national income. And Vinson was a staunch supporter of the Burley Tobacco Allotment Program and the achievement of parity for the agricultural segment of our economy. And I remember when this case was pending. The Hoosac Mills case was attacking the processing tax, and I had worked on the brief for it during that summer. And I was asked by the secretary, Henry Wallace, if I would make a prediction on what the Supreme Court 00:26:00might do. I said, "Mr. Secretary, any lawyer to predict what the Supreme Court might do on any given issue is sort of like trying to guess the weight of a nun." [Laughter] And Russell Lord, who was Wallace's biographer, includes that in his biography. But Fred Vinson did support consistently, I believe, most of the New Deal measures.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yes, that's correct. And it's interesting that one historian has described Vinson as "an innate conservative who played the New Deal game." Would you agree with that assessment?

PORTER: I don't like the semantics and labels. I think they mean many 00:27:00things to many people. And they are used sometimes in a pejorative sense. Sometimes they are misused and I wish we'd forget that whole lexicon of liberals, conservatives, radicals, etc. Fred Vinson was a pragmatist in my view. And he considered, I think, each problem on an individual basis. That is not to say that he was not without a broad political philosophy. Yes. And he was a Democrat both with a big "D" and a little "d". He believed in the party 00:28:00system, in party discipline. He believed in the institutional arrangements that he found when he came here and became a part of the establishment. And he was in no sense a maverick. But to describe him as a conservative, whatever you might want to -- yes, he wanted to conserve a great many of our democratic values. But on tax policy, he told me many times, he said, "The tax resources of this country haven't even been touched. I can think of many, many ways to raise new and additional revenue." And he was known as a technician in this 00:29:00area. Also, an interesting thing to me about Judge Vinson was his remarkable memory. He could probably tell you the batting averages of most every major league ball player. I've been to many ball games with him out at the old Griffith Stadium and he was a great baseball fan. And when he saw Fred M., Jr. was playing baseball and basketball, and Fred, Jr., is now a very able and successful lawyer here in Washington, as you know, and former president of our District Bar Association. His father can tell you to the final decimal point 00:30:00what his batting average was and how well he was doing in basketball. But he was a -- the one thing that he read avidly was the Congressional Record. He still kept in touch with it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Of course, while Vinson served in Congress, he was very active in Kentucky politics still.

PORTER: Oh, that's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: Of course, in the Democratic party in Kentucky during the 1930s there were several upheavals and factional battles. I was wondering if he ever talked with you or if you two ever got together and discussed the political situation in Kentucky during the '30s in terms of the [A.B. "Happy"] Chandler campaigns for governor and for senator. I think Vinson opposed Chandler in most instances.

PORTER: I would say I don't think that Fred Vinson regarded Happy Chandler necessarily as an object of hero worship. [Laughter] And on one occasion there was a -- I kept my voting residence in Kentucky for some time until I got a little apprehensive about the tax consequences. I was going to have to pay District tax and Kentucky taxes, too. I used to send in an absentee ballot every year. I had a law school classmate who was practicing in New York who was a right-wing Republican. Here I am using those terms that I denounced. But let's say he was a partisan Republican, and he maintained his voting 00:32:00residence there, and he was a good friend of mine and I used to tell him, "Well, it's just a pair. It's a waste for us to cancel each other's votes." Well I didn't trust him, and I would send my ballot in anyway. Years later at the University Club in New York we were having lunch, and I confessed this. Well, he admitted to me that he did the same thing! [Laughter] No, all I remember is that we would just casually discuss Kentucky politics and I can't even remember who was in this race for attorney general but there was a lot of factions then, so I went in and I asked the judge, I said, "Who are we for?" He said, "At this point I'm for everybody some." [Laughter]

BIRDWHISTELL: In 1938 then, as you point out a few minutes ago, Vinson left the 00:33:00Congress for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I'm sure he talked with you about his decision to --

PORTER: No, he never consulted me about that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right? Well, some questions have been raised about whether politics was ever involved in his move from Congress to the court in terms of the possibility of Chandler making some type of move for a court appointment or trying to get Senator [Marvel M.] Logan appointed to a court position to move into the Senate. Were you ever aware of any type of maneuvering?

PORTER: I can't shed any light on that, I'm afraid. All I can recall about Senator Logan is that through a mutual friend I know that he liked to do two things in Washington. One, teach a Sunday school class and second, go to 00:34:00the wrestling matches. [Laughter]

BIRDWHISTELL: That is an interesting combination, isn't it?

PORTER: That's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: We talked a little bit about your workings with Judge Vinson in the Office of Economic Stabilization, and apparently there were many divisions between various interest groups. And you mentioned Ickes and Bowles and this type --

PORTER: Bowles and Anderson and labor and management and every rough problem ended up on Vinson's desk in one way or another. Jimmy Byrnes you know had left the Court and gone over to the White House as director of war 00:35:00mobilization. And these two offices worked very closely together.

BIRDWHISTELL: What type of relationship did Vinson have with Mr. Byrnes?

PORTER: Oh, very close, very intimate and very close.

BIRDWHISTELL: Of course Judge Vinson succeeded him in the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion.

PORTER: That's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did you ever find that there was any competition between them or anything such as that in their relationship?

PORTER: If there was, it never surfaced to my knowledge.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see. Of course, when Vinson was director of economic stabilization, I suppose that much of the pressure to keep prices down was coming from the White House. Is that --

PORTER: And from the OPA. There is one thing that ought to be made, to 00:36:00use an old cliche that I think now has faded into the obscurity of time, one thing should be made perfectly clear and that is none of these stabilization jobs or these control jobs were sought after. These were not assignments destined to make one popular. These were decisions that had to be made that were tough, and offensive to great segments of our society. And so I think Roosevelt very wisely wanted to select people that had certain political savvy and could make these, yet at the same time have the integrity and determination 00:37:00to preserve what was best for the prosecution of the war.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, I suppose then Judge Vinson had a very good relationship with President Roosevelt.

PORTER: Oh, yes.

BIRDWHISTELL: I suppose being in that office it became a very close relationship in terms of a working relationship.

PORTER: Well, there used to be meetings of the -- no, this came later in the [Harry S] Truman years. And of course he being a member of the Congressional establishment. He and Harry Truman were extremely close and I think were in frequent consultation when Truman was in the Senate before he became vice-president.

BIRDWHISTELL: You were talking a few minutes ago about the increase in prices 00:38:00on petroleum products and the congressional battle that arose. I suppose Vinson was in contact with many of the Congressmen and tried to influence them in favor of his position, such as Lyndon Johnson --

PORTER: No, he didn't have to get in contact with them. They got in contact with him.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, is that right?

PORTER: And then he would give them his views. I don't know, a copy of this decision must be kicking around somewhere. A chap by the name of [Willard H.] Pedrick, who is now a law professor, had worked on this during that summer. He later became Vinson's clerk.

BIRDWHISTELL: I think he's now in Arizona. We are going to get in contact with 00:39:00him, too, I believe. You mentioned the day-to-day workings of the office. You mentioned that it was a small staff.

PORTER: Yes.

BIRDWHISTELL: Of course Vinson gained the reputation of a great administrator. Apparently from what you said he let the people working with him bring together the facts and then he would --

PORTER: He knew how to delegate, but he wouldn't delegate to anybody he didn't trust, either as to their loyalty or as to their competence.

BIRDWHISTELL: But you found him always willing to make the hard decision when the time came?

PORTER: That's right.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well then in April, 1945, he became the director of war mobilization and reconversion. From your vantage point were there any noticeable changes in the way Vinson ran that office and in the way Byrnes had?

PORTER: No, their styles were reasonably similar, and their work habits were somewhat similar.

BIRDWHISTELL: Of course in that position Vinson again had the problems of different interest groups putting pressure on -- Did he ever mention any particular instances when the interests collided and he had to make a decision in that office in terms of war production?

PORTER: Oh yes, there were a number of those instances. I don't know how many I can recall. I remember when John Small was director of one part of the 00:41:00reconversion program and he was trying to increase the prices of pig iron and he wanted again to use the price system. And I resisted this. By this time I had succeeded Bowles as price administrator and that was when they got into a fight in which I never quite understood what Fred Vinson's participation was. But John Snyder had apparently made what he thought was a commitment for an increase in steel prices. Now I'm getting my chronology mixed up here, because I think 00:42:00by this time Vinson had gone on the Supreme Court. But there was a cry for -- and I would say use the allocation system and direct industry to make goods that were in short supply. Nails were an example. Nails were sort of a by-product of the steel operation, and the profit margins on other products were greater than on nails, for example. But Small wanted to use the price system to encourage production and I sent the allocation directives. But that was during the Truman period really, and Vinson had gone on the Court.

BIRDWHISTELL: Soon after Vinson was appointed director of the Office of War Mobilization by F.D.R., Truman succeeded him in the presidency. I was curious that when Truman became president if this altered in any way Vinson's running of the office or his influence in that position.

PORTER: By that time I was busy liquidating OPA, decontrolling, the war was winding down. When finally meat decontrol came up and Truman ordered the price administrator to take the prices off beef I said, "Well, the ball game's over and I'm not going to raise a fuss about it." I could understand your 00:44:00reasons for doing it. Because he was told by congressional leaders that unless there was an administrative decontrol that the first act of the new Congress would be a legislative decontrol and that there were enough votes to override any veto. And for reasons I could go into in great detail, Truman decontrolled meat and so I didn't want to sit around the agency. I wanted to come back to the private sector and practice law. Then Truman sent me to Greece and started the Truman Doctrine -- Vinson was then on the Court, and the process of liquidation was done by your professional GSA [Government Service Agency?] types. And I was in ravaged Greece trying to fashion an economic rehabilitation program.

BIRDWHISTELL: Vinson had a role to play in this effort of rebuilding Europe in terms of what the United States could afford to put into a program of that sort. What was his attitude toward a rebuilding of Europe after the war? Did he make any particular plans in his office for that type of procedure?

PORTER: No, I think that was largely in the State Department with General [George C.] Marshall, the Marshall Plan. Judge Vinson's participation in foreign policy was I think largely directed to [Winston] Churchill's 00:46:00admonitions, "Give us the tools and we'll do the job." Well he was trying to get the economy geared up to produce the implements of war and the goods of prime necessity.

BIRDWHISTELL: We mentioned Vinson's relationship with Truman. How large an influence in the Truman administration was Vinson in the decisions that were made? In several books about the Truman administration you get the feeling that Vinson was a very important figure.

PORTER: That's my impression, too, although I was not privy to any of those discussions or conversations.

BIRDWHISTELL: That was just your impression?

PORTER: Yes.

BIRDWHISTELL: Then of course in 1946 Vinson was appointed to the Court. We've talked a little about that. Were you surprised by Vinson's appointment as chief justice?

PORTER: Not particularly. No, because I knew that there was a strong personal relationship between Truman and Vinson and that philosophically they had shared many beliefs. Ideologically they were, I suppose you'd say, almost soul mates. And also Vinson, having been a former member of Congress, he knew there would be no great scrap over the confirmation. But how much of that was a factor, I don't know.

BIRDWHISTELL: I think some Court historians have looked at the Vinson decisions and looked at the Truman administration's policies and from that concluded that possibly Truman had a great influence on Vinson's decisions as chief justice. Do you think this would be the case or would it be more of what you point out 00:48:00just a minute ago -- the fact that they had basically --

PORTER: I think they had basically the same approach. I doubt if Vinson ever called Truman and asked him how to vote on a particular matter or a case.

BIRDWHISTELL: In talking with Vinson while he was chief justice, did he ever give you any indication of how he viewed the Court in terms of its role in society? It's often been pointed out that he had a rather conservative view of the Court, that it shouldn't press for social change.

PORTER: Vinson was a man of the Congress primarily. And he did not believe that the Court should engage in what some commentators have referred to legislative decisions, legislation by judicial fiat. And I think he probably 00:49:00could be called more or less a strict constructionist in the term interpreting the Constitution for the meaning of the words and not trying to import whatever his own philosophy might have been into the -- And that was his record, as I reflect on it, in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

BIRDWHISTELL: But Chief Justice Vinson and the Vinson Court have been criticized because of its stand on civil liberties cases.

PORTER: Right.

BIRDWHISTELL: You knew the man personally. Do you think these decisions reflected his involvement in the war, in the developing Cold War, or how did he 00:50:00view personal liberty do you think as against the needs of the government?

PORTER: Well I think that he would give the government priority as being in the public interest. I think you will find that Judge John J. Parker's tribute, I guess you've seen that, to Judge Vinson at the memorial ceremonies at the Supreme Court takes out pretty much of the record of the Vinson Court. Law professors, legal theologians, and Supreme Court students have too often been hypercritical about Chief Justice Vinson's service on the Supreme Court. I recall reading comments that he was "pro-government" and not sufficiently sensitive to the civil liberties issues of the times. What is generally overlooked is the fact that Fred M. Vinson as chief justice was in the vanguard of equal opportunity and a staunch opponent of race discrimination. The great [Earl] Warren Court is probably remembered principally for the decision in Brown v. Board of Education which outlawed segregated public schools. However, prior to that time Chief Justice Vinson speaking for a unanimous court wrote a decision in the October term of 1949 which required the University of Texas Law School to admit a qualified black student, holding that "the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires that petitioner (a black) to be admitted to the University of Texas Law School." On the same day a companion case was decided by the Court on an appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education et al, Chief Justice Vinson required the admission of a black student to the University of Oklahoma Graduate School so that he could pursue studies and courses leading to a doctorate in education. Those two cases laid the foundation for the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Warren Court and in my opinion earned for Fred M. Vinson a cherished niche in the pantheon of our great chief justices.

BIRDWHISTELL: In 1952 then when President Truman decided not to make a bid for reelection to the presidency, there was a great deal of speculation that Chief 00:51:00Justice Vinson might make the race. Did he ever discuss that with you?

PORTER: No.

BIRDWHISTELL: Why do you think he decided against being a candidate for the presidency?

PORTER: I would have no insight as to his mental processes at that time.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see. Well, Mr. Porter, I think this has been very helpful. Is there anything that we haven't discussed --

PORTER: Oh, there are a lot of things we haven't discussed. BIRDWHISTELL: -- that you think we might, that we should inject into this interview?

PORTER: No, I think that I have given you pretty much, sort of a personal reminiscence of the man who was my friend. I admired him greatly. And he regarded me as "one of his boys." But he was a great American. And that sums 00:52:00it up.

BIRDWHISTELL: I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

PORTER: Okay.

[End of interview.]

Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History University of Kentucky Libraries