original books written about him in the late 50s and early 60s and sometimes even now. but for whatever reason, nobody really passionately looked at the papers of either dwight eisenhower and richard nixon. and to give another plug, if you re interested, one line and in the major libraries, there are the private papers of the presidency of dwight eisenhower as well as his early years. it s only 21 volumes. so if you wish to peruse it in a half an hour, it should be no problem. but vaney and galambose did this brilliantly. and those manuscripts that were put into book form are terribly, terribly underutilized. another question up here? yeah, my name is jeff kimball, and i have a comment and question about psychohistory. i agree that a lot of the psychohistory i ve read about nixon, the freudian based on freudian theory, is nonsense. but it seems to me that in doing biography, you have to do some kind of psychological analysis. and i have a question about one aspect of
some way connected to journalism as well as being historians. i think there are great historians who were not academic scholars. i think we would be impoverished if that were not the case. on the other hand, there is a lot of journalistic history that is ridiculous. bill o reilly s book on lincoln which is the number one best seller. at least the last time i saw. and it s ridiculous. it s as ridiculous as glenn beck, almost. of course, there are also journalists who write terrible history as well. i think the connection between journalism and history strengthens both things and i really appreciate all of the people who came today and our colleagues on the panel. thank you. we talked a lot about consensus today. please join me in expressing consensus of appreciation to alan and our panelists. [ applause ] thank you very much. in may of 2011, historian richard norton smith led a ten-day bus tour from asheville, north carolina to austin, texas. the group stopped at several
one was mac bundy. one was dean rusk. secretary of state. he said to clay, you shouldn t react to everything that the soviets and east germans do. you should only react when they affect our vital interest. nobody who exactly what that meant. in any case, clay did not listen to him. the british prime minister, harold mcmillan who wanted us out of berlin and told kennedy that, called clay a senile and bitter old ass, which was not exactly a term of endearment. but which reflected the british policy. i wonder whether the documents that you re releasing shows some of this because the british attitude was different from clay s. checkpoint charlie. on october 22nd, when alan leitner went into east berlin to watch the opera he was stopped by the east germans who demanded additional identification, which he wouldn t show. clay was notified. he sent a squad of soldiers. escorted him in and out because american soldiers could go through the checkpoint. east germans had no authority to
and he said, our problem is the soviets are letting the east germans harass us and harass us while they stay mt. background. they beat up on us and they, themselves, appear to take no responsibility. the next time this happened, i ll cobb front them and force the soviets to show their hand. and clay saw this as the ideal opportunity. after all allen wlooirtnor came he sent in them in civilian clothes. low and behold, they were stopped and we walked them through with squads of soldiers with bayonets drawn and this went on for several days. about the third day, clay brought up a group of tanks, a squad of tanks, maybe wo, about ten tanks. only which was about ai a third of all we had. and he brought them up not to the checkpoint itself but to an empty lot that was there. and a soviet officer walked over to the line which they could do. they were authorized to come into west berlin and he looked around and he said we have tanks too, which was not exactly a mystery to us. and