Clifford, Clark (1906–1998), longtime presidential adviser and secretary of defense.In his role as adviser to many Democratic presidents, the Washington lawyer Clark Clifford was extraordinarily influential at decisive moments of the
Cold War. As special White House counsel during President
Harry S. Truman's first term, the Missourian worked with George Elsey in 1946 on a key top‐secret report to Truman, assessing U.S. Soviet relations. Explaining Soviet policy as a quest for domination, Clifford and Elsey recommended expanded military programs and foreign aid efforts to support potential allies overseas. Clifford also helped draft the
National Security Act of 1947 that created the
Department of Defense and the
National Security Council. Early in 1948, he played a key role in the debate over Palestine by supporting partition and U.S. recognition of the state of Israel.
Resuming private law practice in 1949, Clifford developed an important corporate clientele that made him one of the wealthiest and most influential attorneys in Washington for decades, through the 1980s. Moreover, he developed close personal, advisory, and legal relationships with leading Democratic politicians, including
John F. Kennedy. During the Kennedy‐Johnson administrations, he served as a member, and then chairman, of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), where he strongly supported efforts to modernize intelligence collection capabilities by adopting the latest electronic and satellite technologies.
As an informal adviser to President
Lyndon B. Johnson, Clifford was highly critical of escalating the Vietnam War, which he believed could not be won. Johnson initially rejected his recommendations for a negotiated settlement, but Clifford kept his access to the White House by publicly supporting the war. When
Robert S. McNamara left his position as secretary of defense, Johnson appointed Clifford his successor on 18 January 1968; his official tenure lasted from March 1968 to January 1969.
As Clifford began his work at
the Pentagon, the Vietnamese Communists launched the
Tet Offensive, a development that confirmed Clifford's growing pessimism about the war. Worried that the “bottomless pit” of war could wreck America's social fabric, he began strongly to advocate disengagement. By the end of 1968, he had helped convince the president to stop the bombing of North Vietnam, begin negotiations with the Viet Cong, and support a greater South Vietnamese role in the fighting—a move that presaged
Richard M. Nixon's later “Vietnamization” policy.
Clifford also played a central role in another Johnson initiative renewed by the Nixon administration: an attempt to begin strategic arms limitation negotiations with Moscow, which foundered when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. However, Clifford contributed to escalation of the
arms race by approving air force programs to test multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRVs), also in August 1968. Returning to private law practice after he left the Pentagon in January 1969, Clifford remained a Washington influential, although financial scandal tarnished his reputation at the end of his life.
[See also
Vietnam War: Domestic Course;
Vietnam War: Changing Interpretations.]
Bibliography
Clark M. Clifford , Counsel to the President: A Memoir, 1991.
William Burr
