Edward P. Cliff Interviewer: Layne R

Edward P. Cliff Oral History Interview—7/2/1964 Administrative Information

Creator: Edward P. Cliff Interviewer: Layne R. Beaty Date of Interview: July 2, 1964 Location: Washington D.C. Length: 17 pages

Biographical Note Cliff, Chief of the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, discusses John F. Kennedy’s (JFK) 1963 U.S. conservation tour, JFK’s interest in forestry and conservation, and the formation of the national forest program, among other issues.

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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.

Suggested Citation Edward P. Cliff, recorded interview by Layne R. Beaty, July 2, 1964, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

Edward P. Cliff

Table of Contents

Page Topic 1 John F. Kennedy’s (JFK) 1963 US conservation tour: Pinchot Institute dedication and Duluth, Wisconsin visit 7 JFK’s interest in conservation and forestry 9 1961 National Forest program formation 11, 14 JFK’s emphasis on increasing conservation research 12 Renewing interest in forestry and natural resources conservation 13 Developing regional conservation programs 15 Italy’s reaction to JFK’s death

Oral History Interview

with

Edward P. Cliff

July 2, 1964 Department of Agriculture Washington, D. C.

By Layne R. Beaty

For the John F. Kennedy Library

BEATY: Well Ed, I know that you have had some interesting personal contacts with John Fitzgerald Kennedy [John F. Kennedy] in connection with conservation affairs. Would you tell us about one of those?

CLIFF: Yes, I have a very vivid memory of my experience with President Kennedy on the occasion of the dedication of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies in Milford, Pennsylvania, on September 24, 1963, just about two months before his tragic death. This was the first appearance of the President on his conservation tour which took him across the country, and he selected, personally, Milford as the place to start this conservation tour. This is the home of Gifford Pinchot, where he grew up, and where he maintained his residence in his mature years when he was the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania. It’s the ancestral home and had been donated to the United States Government for a site for an institute on conservation studies. The President agreed to make the dedicatory address and the Forest Service worked very hard for several weeks getting the old place and

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grounds in condition for the dedication. We were very much aware that the President would be there for a limited time, he had other engagements during the same day and was working against an extremely tight schedule. We arranged our program so as to accommodate this schedule and it was impressed on us by members of the White House staff and the Secret Service that we must keep the schedule exactly and that it was the desire of the staff and of the President to have the speakers who preceded him to have completed their part on the program before he made an appearance on the platform. We had planned it this way and made some trial runs to check our time. You might remember that the program called for the President to land in an opening near the Pinchot Estate in his helicopter. He was escorted up to the Mansion to meet a group of conservation leaders. We then planned to take him on a tour through the Pinchot Mansion, and it was thought that he would remain in there for about ten minutes looking over the Mansion and the collection of books and furniture and to discuss with Gifford Pinchot, Jr.—Dr. Pinchot—some of the interesting things about the house and the estate and the purpose to which it would be put. During this time I was to take the other distinguished speakers down to the platform, and introduce them and get their talks out of the way. Governor Scranton [William Warren Scranton] had been invited to make the welcoming address and he was waiting down at the platform, but while the President was greeting the

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conservation leaders Governor Scranton proceeded to make the best use of his time and was mingling with the crowd and shaking hands with his friends in the crowd. When I got back down to the platform we had a delay in finding the Governor and getting him on the platform to start the program. I no more than got started introducing the Governor when the President made his appearance. He had walked through the house very quickly, and so at that point our schedule was all upset and the staff was upset and you can imagine the consternation that I felt at not carrying out the instructions I’d been working under. The President’s speech had been laid out on the podium in preparation for him, and he greeted Governor Scranton very warmly and then I proceeded, as Master of Ceremonies, to introduce the Governor and the other speakers. The President sat through these preliminary ceremonies, apparently enjoying them; there was no indication from his reaction or any way you could tell that he was at all irritated. In fact he seemed to enjoy this contact with the crowd and to have enjoyed and appreciated the remarks that had been made even though this was not according to the way that we had been instructed to plan it. I’m sure that anyone in the audience could not have detected that there was anything wrong with the way the schedule was being carried out. After the President realized that we were off the schedule he leaned over to me and asked me to recover his manuscript so that it wouldn’t get lost or put into

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disarray. This was done and we proceeded with the program in an orderly way and the President was introduced by Secretary Freeman [Orville L. Freeman] and then gave a very outstanding conservation talk which was the actual kick-off to this series of conservation speeches which he made later in Minnesota and Wyoming and Montana and other places in the West.

BEATY: Mr. Cliff, I was there that day and I recall that in the audience there were a large number of young people, since I think the local schools had turned out for the occasion. Do you think the presence of those youngsters made a difference in what the President said or the way he received the crowd that day?

CLIFF: The crowd, the reaction of the crowd was remarkable to me. As soon as the President made his appearance there was a great, great applause from the audience. There must have been between ten and fifteen thousand people on that hillside. It was a beautiful day and there were a large number of youngsters. The greeting was warm and the President responded in a very warm manner. I’m sure that it must have had some influence on his reaction. He demonstrated there that day a very warm and human personality. Another incident that I was very much interested in. Bear in mind that during the program we were somewhat off schedule and I think that we had lost about eight or ten minutes, and the staff people who had had responsibility for getting the President on to his next stop were becoming very much upset and uneasy

[-4-] about this lapse of time, because they knew that there’d be another crowd waiting at the next destination and they didn’t want anything to interfere with keeping on the exact schedule. We got a little behind schedule. Mrs. Amos Pinchot [Ruth Pickering Pinchot], the wife of the late Amos Pinchot, who was a brother of Gifford Pinchot, was on the platform with the President and other distinguished guests, and one of Mrs. Pinchot’s daughters [Mary Pinchot Meyer] was a close personal friend of Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy]. After the ceremony was over the President turned to Mrs. Pinchot and said, “I would like very much to see your home. May I see your home?” And, of course, she was delighted and he took her in the car, which was provided there. Secretary Freeman and I and several others drove up to Mrs. Pinchot’s home with them and he took the time to go through the home, and look at the family portraits and visit casually with Mrs. Pinchot, and of course this was I’m sure a highlight in her life—it was a very gracious thing for him to do and I think he did it from genuine impulse and because he admired Mrs. Pinchot and her family. It was an extremely nice thing to do. But this had the effect of throwing us all further behind schedule and by that time the people who were responsible for making the arrangements were completely agitated and a dash made, after the President got through with his visit in Mrs. Pinchot’s home, there was a dash made to the helicopter awaiting in the clearing. Everybody in the President’s party got on the aircraft and left in a great

[-5-] hurry. I was invited to accompany the President’s party on to Duluth. We transferred from the helicopter to an airplane at the airport some distance away which was large enough to accommodate the President’s jet plane. This was another interesting and personal experience for me to be able to mingle with the press corps and the members of the President’s staff which accompanied the party to the West.

BEATY: Did you have...? Excuse me.

CLIFF: At Duluth there was another demonstration of the President’s liking for people and their warm response to him. We were able to pick up some time flying to Duluth so we were pretty much on schedule when we got to Duluth. The President emerged from the plane, and there was a large crowd waiting at the airport. They were behind the link wire fence on the edge of the airport, and the crowd responded with a great deal of cheering, and the President left his bodyguards—I’m sure this didn’t make them very happy, but he left his bodyguards and went over to the crowd and shook hands with the crowd and mingled with them and visited with them until the bodyguards finally got a hold of him and got him into another helicopter which took him and members of the Senate, the Governor of Wisconsin [Gaylord Nelson] I believe was in that party, on a trip over the Apostle Islands to look at them as a possible location for a National Park or a National Wildlife Refuge. After this, the President came back to Duluth and was greeted on his ride in an open limousine through the streets of Duluth. This

[-6-] ride was through a downpour and he disregarded the weather and the rain and greeted the crowds just as warmly as though it were a good bright sunny day. Well these things, these little insights into the President’s personality convinced me of something I already believed, that he was a warm individual, a very human man and he liked people, he responded to people’s feelings. It was one of the highlights of my life to have this experience.

BEATY: Mr. Cliff, on that day that the President spoke to two gatherings he made two stops, widely separated, almost by half a continent, two occasions directly concerned with conservation. Now, this pretty well, I think, demonstrates his keen interest in conservation, but did you know before that of this intense interest that he had in conservation and not only that, but since he came from the city of Boston, and I don’t know, of course he had a great interest in the water—the sea—he sailed on it. Where do you suppose he got this interest in conservation and forestry?

CLIFF: Well, I knew of course of his interest in conservation for some time before the incidents which I’m talking about. I first became aware of it during the presidential campaign in 1960. He made numerous speeches during that campaign, of course, and in many of them, he talked about conservation and the nation’s need to conserve and wisely use our natural resources. He talked about the natural resources being a source of strength of our country and of our people,

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and the need for research. This was not only once; it was repeated many times during the course of the campaign. This is where I first became aware of his interest and I’m sure it was a genuine interest because after he was elected president he followed through on his campaign statements and promises and demanded action. Now it isn’t strange to me that a man from Boston, and especially one who had had his wide experience, should become interested in this field. He traveled all over the world and he’d seen countries that had been unwise in the use of their natural resources and he was a very wise man and naturally could see the direct tie between natural resources, conservation and use, and the development of wealth and strength in our nation’s economy. I’m sure he enjoyed the out of doors. He enjoyed swimming, he enjoyed boating. He had a very keen feeling for the esthetic values; he talked many times about the National Parks and the National Forests and the need for developing recreational opportunities for the people, and having lived in an urban community much of his life, I think he appreciated the need for getting urban people out close to the land, and giving them an opportunity to enjoy the out of doors and to commune with nature. You know we’re becoming an urban nation and many of our people are quite far removed from the land, and the urge to get back to the land is inherent in our people. This is the reason we’re having a recreational boom. I think the President sensed this.

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Having been an urban dweller I think he knew that he had an appreciation for the land and a desire to get back to the land himself.

BEATY: Mr. Cliff, the President I think soon after his Inauguration, began to manifest interest in conservation which had nothing directly to do with legislation which came about at that time.

CLIFF: Well, that’s right. We interpreted statements that he made during the campaign in which he urged and pledged that this nation would pay attention to the development and wise use of natural resources and in some of his early messages as instructions that something be done about it. So the Forest Service with the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture developed a long-range program for the development of the national forests. This is a program which envisages full development in accordance with the nation’s needs of all of the resources, of the national forests, for recreation, timber growth, wildlife, watershed protection and water production and forage where this is appropriate. We had the basic information and had done some planning in this regard, but after the Democratic administration came into power in 1961, we prepared this program. This consisted of establishing goals for ten years of accomplishment in all of the resource management fields for which we are responsible on the national forests, with long- term goals looking forward to the year about 2000. This program was presented to the President by

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Secretary Freeman with Secretary Freeman’s endorsement, and in September 1961, September 21st to be exact, the President submitted this program to Congress with his endorsement. And in the letter of transmittal which accompanied this program to Congress, the Speaker of the House [Sam Rayburn], and the President of the Senate [Lyndon B. Johnson], he said that one of our most important natural resources and one of the most neglected is our forest land. We need to give special emphasis to improvement of the 256,000,000 acres of small privately-owned farm woodlands and other small forests. I think I’ve misstated myself here—this was the statement he made in his first agricultural message, and one of the statements which encouraged us to make these program proposals. But in his transmittal letter to the members of Congress he made this statement, “As our nation’s population increases and our industrialization grows, the obligation to preserve and to protect our nation’s forests become greater. The forward looking program outlined in this report holds great hope.” So this is not a legislative matter; an appropriation matter and a programming matter and it was it has proved to be one of the most significant developments in the history of the Forest Service in many, many years. This gave our program new impetus, and we have been able to get more adequate funding for most of our work; we’ve been able to keep this program in reasonable balance, one activity with another, and we’re far ahead of where we would have been without the development of the program or the endorsement of

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the Administration of it. I think this is one of the real landmarks in conservation history. This program, of course, is a living thing; it’s going to have to be modified and changed as time goes on and conditions change, but it’s our guidelines and we’re still following it in the administration of the national forests. The President also emphasized the need for research. He was very keenly aware of the need for good basic research upon which to build Natural Resource programs. He talked about this on a number of occasions and made statements regarding it in several of his messages to Congress. He was also keenly interested in outdoor recreation as I mentioned earlier. He gave strong support to the Wilderness Bill, which has yet to pass, but it was in his list of important measures I think every year during his Administration.

BEATY: Ed, you became Chief of the Forest Service after President Kennedy went to the White House. What were you doing before that?

CLIFF: Well, I was Assistant Chief of the Forest Service—one of six assistant chiefs of the Forest Service. My responsibility was to supervise the administration of the National Forest Resource Management Activities of the Forest Service.

BEATY: Do you think the President had anything to do with your appointment as Chief when Chief McArdle [Richard E. McArdle] retired.

CLIFF: I think so. At least, I’m sure he was influential, and I’m sure from some of the things I know that he was insistent that the position of Chief of the Forest Service be

[-11-] filled with a professional forester, and preferably with a professional forester from within the Forest Service. This has been traditional in the Forest Service. All of the Chiefs of the Forest Service have been professionally trained in forestry and most of them have come from within the ranks of the Forest Service. I know that he expressed a desire when this position was vacant, when my predecessor Richard E. McArdle retired and consideration was being given to filling the position, the President expressed a desire that the position be filled with a professional man preferably one from within the ranks of the organization. I don’t think he had any influence in any way in selecting me as that man. I think the choice was made personally by Secretary Freeman. I have no reason to think that President Kennedy knew about me or knew who I was. I’m sure that he didn’t indicate in any way that he wanted any particular man to have this position.

BEATY: He wanted a professional forester.

CLIFF: He was talking about a principle, and one that we in the Forest Service have felt is an important principle.

BEATY: Well, Ed, looking back on the Kennedy years in the White House would you like to make a kind of a summary in connection with forestry?

CLIFF: Yes, I would. There was a great deal of progress in forestry and natural resource conservation during the Kennedy years. Just one month after his inauguration President Kennedy sent a message on natural resources to the Congress

[-12-] and this marked the beginning of a new emphasis on conservation, which is one of the hallmarks, I think, of his Administration. In this message he stated that our forest lands present the sharpest challenge to our foresight. He showed a keen awareness of the time element involved in timber-oriented programs. He recognized in order to accomplish what we needed to do that we must use time as our ally rather than our adversary. He stated this in several of his messages. Two months before he died he again demonstrated his continued interest in conservation by dedicating the Gifford Pinchot Institute which I’ve already talked about. In the short period between these two events President Kennedy was able to achieve a great impact in the field of conservation and enabled us to take a major step forward in the— what he called a long journey into the future. Now this reawakening and renewal of interest in conservation under his leadership is a very significant and, I think, a far-reaching contribution. I think that future generations will appreciate it even more than we do today, or than people are inclined to appreciate it today. Now for example I’ve talked about the development program for the National Forests which immensely increased the amount of work that we could do on the National Forests looking to the future needs. And then he stressed regional programs, such as the Appalachian program—here he had a concern for people and the tie between natural resources and the welfare of people—and similarly he endorsed the land-and-people

[-13-] program for the Northern Great Lakes States. He recognized in these programs the need to build up resources, to build up people, to get at the problem of poverty. During his Administration he put emphasis on what you might call the social aspects of forestry programs and one of these was the Accelerated Works Program, where the forestry agencies were given an opportunity to put people to work for the mutual purpose of accomplishing conservation work on the ground and at the same time to provide the jobless with some income. This was another highlight of accomplishment during President Kennedy’s Administration. He was interested in industrial uses; he recognized the importance of using resources in addition to just conserving them. He took keen interest in the timber industry. During the past several years the timber industry has had some soft markets and some difficult times, and he instructed the federal agencies that had responsibilities in timber marketing of providing timber for use to work on the problems that were causing difficulty, and we have been able to make great progress in getting lined out and are making headway and getting access to timber stands. We’ve made progress in getting better understanding, developing better methods of appraising timber, and in getting more public timber on the market where it’s needed to support local industry. Now as to research, the President had an unusual awareness of the importance of having good basic information to under-gird

[-14-] all of these programs and he talked about this a number of times. He characterized this generation’s potential contribution to conservation as an application of the great discoveries of science. During the White House Conference on Conservation, which incidentally was another thing he sponsored and took personal interest in, he appeared personally before this conference and did a remarkable job of talking clearly and directly to the issues. At this conference he said that application of science to conservation is going to be the great contribution of our day. During his administration the Forest Service, with the encouragement of the administration which we felt stemmed directly from the President’s interest, developed a National Forestry Research Program which is a companion to the program for development of the national forests. This program which was developed during President Kennedy’s lifetime was finally submitted to Congress by Secretary Freeman just a few months ago. This was developed during President Kennedy’s administration and is directly a result of his interest. Now, we’ve made noteworthy progress in advancing our forestry research; the program has more than doubled since 1961, both in money available and in accomplishments. We’ve made great progress in getting desirable research facilities financed. We’ve spent over nine and a half million dollars on laboratories in the last four years, and this all stems I’m sure from the Kennedy Administration’s keen interest in natural resource research.

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I have another matter that might be of interest, and this is a personal thing. I was in Italy in November 1963 attending the Conference of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome. After my part in the meeting concluded, the Italian forest service took me on a tour of some of the Italian forests—we got into Northern Italy among other areas. We spent about a week, and I arrived in Turino the evening of the day of the President’s assassination. We had just got back to our hotel rather late in the evening when the news was flashed across the wires. At first it seemed incredible, it seemed impossible. But the thing that impressed me, aside from the shock of hearing about the tragedy—I could hardly believe it even after seeing the reports on TV—was the reaction of the Italian people. They seemed to be just as shocked and distressed as we were. The people with whom I was traveling were most sympathetic. The Italian radio stations and TV stations stopped broadcasting except for news of the assassination. They called off all programs and the people of Italy wanted them to stay off until morning. The next day I flew back to Rome en route back to the United States, and in Rome it was a funeral air, a funeral atmosphere. I stayed in a hotel right across from the American Embassy and there were great crowds all day and all night long assembled in front of the Embassy, many of them just standing there in a state of mourning; some carrying flowers and just leaving them in the Embassy yard;

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people of all walks of life—well-dressed people and those not so prosperous—and the whole atmosphere was just about the same as I sensed when I came back to the United States. The President had developed a very strong following among the common people of the world, of this I’m convinced after experiencing this reaction. The sense of loss was universal, and especially among the rank and file. I had a chance to observe this and to feel it and to be a part of it. It impressed me very much. It was very much the same kind of a feeling I sensed when I watched the funeral procession here in Washington, D. C. I thought you might be interested in this little sideline.

BEATY: Yes. Well, Ed, this has all been very interesting and informative and, I think, quite germane to our purpose here.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[-17-] Edward P. Cliff Oral History Transcript Name List

Freeman, Orville L., 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 15

Johnson, Lyndon B., 10

Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 5, 6 Kennedy, John F., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17

McArdle, Richard E., 11, 12 Meyer, Mary Pinchot, 5

Nelson, Gaylord, 6

Pinchot, Amos, 5 Pinchot, Gifford, Jr., 2 Pinchot, Gifford, 1, 2, 13 Pinchot, Ruth Pickering, 5

Rayburn, Sam, 10

Scranton, William Warren, 2, 3