Clifford built a solid reputation practicing law in St. Louis between 1928 and 1943. He served as an officer in the
U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946.
Presidential adviser , photographed in spring 1948, during the President's vacation at
Key West, Florida. Left to right: Clark Clifford (White House Counsel), William D. Hassett (White House Correspondence Secretary),
John Steelman (Assistant to the President) and
Matthew Connelly (White House Appointments Secretary). In 1945 he was assigned to the White House and quickly promoted to
captain while serving as assistant naval aide and then naval aide to
President Harry S Truman. He became a trusted personal adviser and friend of Truman. Clifford went to Washington, first to serve as assistant to the President's Naval Adviser, after the naming of a personal friend from Missouri as the President's Naval Adviser. Following his discharge from the Navy, he remained at Truman's side as
White House Counsel from 1946 to 1950, as Truman came rapidly to trust and rely upon Clifford. Clifford was a key architect of Truman's campaign in 1948, when Truman pulled off a stunning upset victory over Republican nominee
Thomas Dewey. Clifford encouraged Truman to embrace a left-wing
populist image in hope of undermining the impact on the race of third-party
Progressive candidate
Henry A. Wallace, who had served as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice-President from 1941 to 1945. Clifford also believed that a strong pro-civil rights stance, while sure to alienate traditional
Southern Democrats, would not result in a serious challenge to the party's supremacy in that region. This prediction was foiled by
Strom Thurmond's candidacy as a splinter
States' Rights Democrat, but Clifford's strategy nonetheless helped win Truman election in his own right and establish the Democratic Party's position in the
Civil Rights Movement. In his role as presidential adviser, one of his most significant contributions was his successful advocacy, along with
David Niles, of prompt 1948 recognition of the new Jewish state of
Israel, over the strong objections of Secretary of State General
George Marshall. Of similar importance, with the input of senior officials in the Departments of State, War, and Justice, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Central Intelligence Group, and utilizing the expertise of
George F. Kennan and
Charles Bohlen, was his preparation, along with
George Elsey, of the top secret Clifford-Elsey Report for President Truman in 1946. That report, solicited by the President, which detailed the numerous ways in which the Soviet Union had gone back on its various treaties and understandings with the Western powers, along with Kennan's
X Article in
Foreign Affairs, was instrumental in turning U.S. relations toward the Soviet Union in the direction of a harder line. During this period he participated extensively in the legislative efforts that resulted in the
National Security Act of 1947 and its 1949 amendments. Clifford was the head of the
presidential transition of John F. Kennedy. Clifford was also a member of
President-elect Kennedy's
Committee on the Defense Establishment, headed by
Stuart Symington. In May 1961, Kennedy appointed Clifford to the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which he chaired beginning in April 1963 and ending in January 1968. After Johnson became president in November 1963 following
Kennedy's assassination, Clifford served frequently as an unofficial White House Counsel and sometimes undertook short-term official duties, including a trip with General
Maxwell Taylor in 1967 to
South Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
USS Liberty incident Clifford served as the chairman of the
President's Intelligence Advisory Board during the 1967
Six-Day War. In this capacity, he oversaw the official investigation of the 1967
USS Liberty incident. As a staunch supporter of Israel, he was perplexed by the Israeli government’s explanation following the attack: “We were baffled. From the beginning there was skepticism and disbelief about the Israeli version of events. We had enormous respect for
Israeli intelligence and it was difficult to believe the
Liberty had been attacked by mistake. Every conceivable theory was advanced that morning. It became clear that from the sketchy information available we could not figure out what happened.” He delved deeper into the inconsistencies in the Israeli explanation: “That the
Liberty could have been mistaken for the Egyptian supply ship
El Quseir is unbelievable.
El Quseir has one-fourth the displacement of the
Liberty, roughly half the beam, is 180 feet shorter, and is very differently configured. The
Liberty’s unusual antenna array and hull markings should have been visible to low-flying aircraft and torpedo boats. In the heat of battle the
Liberty was able to identify one of the attacking torpedo boats as Israeli and to ascertain its hull number. In the same circumstances, trained Israeli naval personnel should have been able to easily see and identify the larger hull markings on the
Liberty. The best interpretation of from available facts is that there were gross and inexcusable failures in the command and control of subordinate Israeli naval and air elements…The unprovoked attack on the
Liberty constitutes a flagrant act of gross negligence for which the Israeli Government should be held completely responsible, and the Israeli military personnel involved should be punished.” Immediately after the attack, he had pressured the Johnson administration to hold the Israelis responsible: “My concern is that we are not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it. Manner egregious. Inconceivable that it was accident. 3 strafing passes, 3 torpedo boats. Set forth facts. Punish Israelis responsible.” He expressed his desire to hold Israel accountable in an eponymous 1967 report that he had authored: “I do not know to this day at what level the attack on the
Liberty was authorized and I think it is unlikely that the full truth will ever come out. Having been for so long a staunch supporter of Israel, I was particularly troubled by this incident; I could not bring myself to believe that such an action could have been authorized by
Levi Eshkol. Yet somewhere inside the Israeli government, somewhere along the chain-of-command, something had gone terribly wrong – and then had been covered-up. I never felt the Israelis made adequate restitution or explanation for their actions.”
Secretary of Defense in 1968. On January 19, 1968, Johnson announced his selection of Clifford to succeed
Robert McNamara as the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Clifford estimated that, in the year just prior to his appointment, he had spent about half of his time advising the President and the other half working for his law firm. Widely known and respected in Washington and knowledgeable on defense matters, Clifford was generally hailed as a worthy successor to McNamara. Many regarded the new secretary as more of a
hawk on Vietnam than McNamara, and thought his selection might presage an escalation of the U.S. military effort there. Clifford attempted to allay such fears when, responding to a query about whether he was a hawk (favoring aggressive military action) or a dove (favoring a peaceful resolution to the
Vietnam War), he remarked, "I am not conscious of falling under any of those ornithological divisions." Policy planning director
Les Gelb recalled in 2018, however, that Clifford was secretly opposed to the war since 1965.
Vietnam Clifford took office committed to rethinking Johnson's Vietnam policies, and Vietnam policy consumed most of his time. He had argued against escalation in 1965 in private counsel with the president, but then provided public support for the president's position once the decision was made. At his confirmation hearing, he told the
Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Senate that the limited objective of the U.S. was to guarantee to the people of South Vietnam the right of self-determination. He opposed ending the U.S. bombing of
North Vietnam at the time, but acknowledged that the situation could change. In fact, on March 31, 1968, just a month after Clifford arrived at the Pentagon, Johnson, in an effort to get peace talks started, ordered the cessation of bombing north of the
20th parallel, an area comprising almost 80 percent of North Vietnam's land area and 90 percent of its population. In the same address, Johnson announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection in 1968, surprising everyone, Clifford included. Soon the North Vietnamese agreed to negotiations, which began in Paris in mid-May 1968. Later, on October 31, 1968, to encourage the success of these talks, the President, with Clifford's strong support, ordered an end to all bombing in North Vietnam. Clifford, like McNamara, had to deal with frequent requests for additional troops from military commanders in Vietnam. When he became secretary, the authorized force in Vietnam was 525,000. Soon after moving into his Pentagon office, Clifford persuaded Johnson to deny General
William Westmoreland's request for an additional 206,000 American troops in Vietnam. At the end of March 1968, however, Johnson agreed to send 24,500 more troops on an emergency basis, raising authorized strength to 549,500, a figure never reached. Even as he oversaw a continued buildup, Clifford preferred to emphasize the points Johnson had made in his March 31, 1968, address: that the
South Vietnamese army could take over a greater share of the fighting, that the administration would place an absolute limit on the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam, and that it would take steps, including the bombing restrictions, to reduce the combat level. Eventually Clifford moved very close, with Johnson's tacit support, to the views McNamara held on Vietnam just before he left office—no further increases in U.S. troop levels, support for the bombing halt and gradual disengagement from the conflict. By this time Clifford clearly disagreed with Secretary of State
Dean Rusk, who believed, according to
The Washington Post, "that the war was being won by the allies" and that it "would be won if America had the will to win it." He later recalled how he turned against the war: "I found out that we couldn't win the war with the limitations that we had, which I thought were correct limitations, and I thought all we were going to do was just waste the lives of our men and our treasure out in the jungles of North and South Vietnam." After he left office, Clifford, in the July 1969 issue of
Foreign Affairs, made his views very clear: "Nothing we might do could be so beneficial ... as to begin to withdraw our combat troops. Moreover ... we cannot realistically expect to achieve anything more through our military force, and the time has come to begin to disengage. That was my final conclusion as I left the Pentagon ...". Although the Johnson Administration ended under the cloud of the Vietnam War, Clifford concluded his short term as Secretary of Defense with his reputation actually enhanced. He got along well with the
U.S. Congress, and this helped him to secure approval of at least some of his proposals. He settled into his duties quickly and efficiently, and capably managed the initial de-escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam; indeed, he apparently strongly influenced Johnson in favor of a de-escalation strategy. As he left office to return to his law practice in Washington, Clifford expressed the hope and expectation that international tensions would abate, citing the shift in the Vietnam confrontation from the battlefield to the conference table, and the evident willingness of the Soviet Union to discuss limitations on strategic
nuclear weapons.
Church Committee On Friday, December 5, 1975, Clifford recommended to the Church Committee that the National Security Council and a Director General of Intelligence—not the Central Intelligence Agency—be the ones with the authority to decide whether or not to engage in covert action.
Special presidential emissary to India Clifford's legal practice and lobbying work made him wealthy, and he was considered one of Washington's "superlawyers" due to the reach of his influence and seemingly limitless connections. Clifford's office overlooked the
White House, emphasizing his long experience in the capital. In 1980, President Carter appointed him as special
presidential emissary to
India. Clifford made waves by threatening the newly established
regime of
Ayatollah Khomeini of
Iran with war for its intransigence in negotiating the release of the hostages seized from the U.S. embassy in
Tehran. He also referred to President
Ronald Reagan as an "amiable dunce" at a Washington dinner party. From 1982 to 1991, Clifford served as chairman of First American Bankshares, which grew to become the largest bank in Washington, D.C. The bank was nominally owned by a group of Arab investors, but in order to assuage fears from the
Federal Reserve, Clifford had assembled a board of distinguished American citizens to exercise day-to-day control. In 1991,
Robert M. Morgenthau, the District Attorney for
New York County (coterminous with the
borough of
Manhattan), disclosed that his office had found evidence that BCCI secretly owned First American. Morgenthau convened a
grand jury to determine whether Clifford and his partner,
Robert A. Altman, had deliberately misled federal regulators when the two men assured them that BCCI would have no outside control. An audit by
Price Waterhouse revealed that contrary to agreements between First American's nominal investors and the Federal Reserve, many of the investors had borrowed heavily from BCCI. Even more seriously, they had pledged their First American stock as collateral. When they missed interest payments, BCCI took control of the shares. It was later estimated that in this manner, BCCI had ended up with 60 percent or more of First American's stock. There had long been suspicions that First American's investors were actually nominees for BCCI. However, the audit was solid confirmation that BCCI secretly—and illegally—owned First American. A "Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate", prepared by U.S. Senators
John Kerry and
Hank Brown, noted that a key strategy of "BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans", Clifford among them. Clifford, who prided himself on decades of meticulously ethical conduct, summed his predicament up when he sadly told a reporter from
The New York Times, "I have a choice of either seeming stupid or
venal." ==Death==