Elsey, George  Kane, Jim   Lunghi, Hugh  Roberts, Frank
Interview with George Elsey, 4/12/95  Q: The start of your
career when you were in the map room ... how did President
Roosevelt react in terms of decision making? Did he have lots of
people around him? ... How did he function, especially around
the period of Yalta?  A: FDR had a very different way of dealing
with State Department than President Truman, with whom I worked
very closely also. FDR really functioned as his own State
Department. He had his cronies in the department. He paid
relatively little attention to Cordell Hull, the Secretary of
State, in Hull's last year in office. Harry Hopkins, his
personal adviser, who lived in the White House functioned more
as a diplomatic adviser than any one of the State Department
officers - to the great consternation of course of career
foreign service officers who realised there were many, many
things that President Roosevelt should know and should be taking
into account that he was ignoring and overlooking.