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we ought to have a free press, '' when we were complaining about’
what the press was saying, which was a very good point! [Laughter]
This was their firat experience with a free press, at least their
first decade of experience. I think that Katayama and Allison could
have worked out an agreement which would have nipped this in the
bud within the first few days and I think that it would literally have
bought the good wil' of everybody from the fishermen on to the rest.
FREMONT-SMITH:
prevented this?
EISENBUD:
But it was the State Department policy that
I can't speak for that.
FREMONT-SMITH: i assumeit waa.
EISENBUD: But I do know that there did seem to be the kind of
latitude in the field that was required in order to work out the arrangements, presumably.
BUSTAD: I vote for cecentralization! [Laughter]
WOLFE: Wright, when you were in Spain and you had to make
the decisions, did you have to go to the Ambasszdor and then to
Washington, and then all the way back before you decided to plow or
not to plow or something like that?
LANGHAM:
No,
Insofar as those decisions to do things immedi-
ately were concerned, these were made by General Wilson, head of
the i6th Air Force in whose territory this thing had occurred, and
in dealing with him you begin to realize why he is a general. He
certainly made decisions, and his way of making a decision was to
get the people around him that he thought could advise him, listen
to them, and when they were through talking he made the decision.
That was the experience the first week in the field.
The second time I went back Iwas assigned to the American Em-
bassy. Now, you found here that decisions had to be checked all the
way back through Washington. I think if there is one thing that sur-
prises me it's how dependent cn Washington the Embassy seems to
be when it starts to make a decision, and yet Mr. Duke was a highly
respected man among the Spanish,
As far as I know decisions must
be stamped in Washington before action is taken, I just got the idea
that there was too much centralization of opinion. In other words,