White House Suspects State Department Misled Truman on U.N. Sanctions Decision

Reports here today revealed that there is a strong suspicion in the White House that the State Department was devious in getting the nominal approval of President Truman for the amended Angle-Chinese resolution, supported by the United States delegation and passed by the United Nations Security Council last Thursday night.

On Wednesday, Under Secretary Robert A. Lovett telephoned the President, who was in the middle of an election celebration at Independence, Mo. According to reports, Lovett told the President that the United States delegation wanted to support an amended resolution on Palestine which no longer threatened Israel with sanctions. The President is reported to have replied that, so long as the sanctions were removed, it would be all right to support the resolution.

Lovett did not, however, clear the specific wording of the resolution with the President. And when the final hurried action was taken by the Security Council, the President was aboard his train on the way back to Washington. Approval of the final wording came from Lovett under authority of his previous talk with the President.

When the White House learned that there were some grounds for interpreting the U.N. resolution as still discriminating against the Israelis, the suspicion loomed that Lovett had sold the President on a position without filling him in on this aspect of the question. Whether Lovett intentionally avoided presenting the whole story or, instead, really believed that a fair resolution had been hammered out, is open to differing interpretations here. At any event, the performance did increase the White House suspicion that Lovett and the State Department have not been strictly following the President’s wishes.