Clark Clifford: The making of a Washington legend

The following dissertation is a political biography of Clark Clifford, Special Counsel to the President for Harry S. Truman and Secretary of Defense during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. While covering most of Clifford's career, the focus is on his rise to prominence during the Truman administration and his unprecedented success in parlaying his White House experience into an extremely lucrative private legal practice. A prominent theme of the dissertation is Clifford's capacity for self promotion and his proclivity for appropriating the work and ideas of others in the administration and government. Clifford's importance is widely regarded by historians but it is his memoirs, Counsel to the President which goes the farthest in terms of establishing him as an important figure in American history during the last half of the twentieth century. As a response to Clifford's memoir, and to fill in the gaps in the historical literature, this dissertation attempts to properly evaluate his place in Cold War American History.; The methodology involves a study of the progression of Clifford's career from St. Louis lawyer to the most influential White House advisor to Harry S. Truman, and analyzes his role in the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, the recognition of Israel and Harry Truman's improbable electoral victory in 1948. His transition to private practice focuses on how he capitalized on his accomplishments while serving in the Truman White House and his connections inside government. Finally, his role as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson and his unheeded warning to avoid escalation in Vietnam is briefly examined.; Based upon primary and secondary sources, including materials in the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and Clifford's personal papers in the Library of Congress, Clifford is seen as a man of impressive talents, physical presence, and relentless ambition. These traits, combined with the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time, allowed Clifford achieve the pinnacle of success as a lawyer, lobbyist and power broker in Washington.