Hopkins Papers: Telegram
The President’s Secretary (Early) to the President’s Special Assistant (Hopkins)1
From Mr. Early to Mr. Hopkins.
Supplementing White 74,2 also acknowledging your Black fifty.3 Reuters’ treatment Cairo story provoked bitter resentment by American newspapers. Protests have been sent to Bracken and according to press reports today Reuters premature release was subject of heated debate in House of Commons today.4 Bracken disclaimed responsibility. However, the Reuters story, circulated generally elsewhere some 33 hours ahead of official release[,] was not permitted by British censors to be published in England.
I am receiving protests, including one from Roy Roberts. Ever since your departure we have pleaded with British censorship and government for greater security. Reuters action seems most reprehensible to us. Their reports gave away practically the entire Cairo story except actual text of communiqué. The text was about all they did not publish in advance of communiqué. Washington correspondents are disposed to place the responsibility for Reuters’ actions on the British, not on us. They appreciate we did everything possible to protect story.
They are making on their own responsibility formal protest to Halifax here.
Our press, of course, published Reuters’ reports but carefully refrained from publishing anything else although they had received fullest advices from their own correspondents. None of the latter was published until the release hour fixed by Cairo. As Roy Roberts protests “The release by Reuters destroyed much of the effect of what should have been one of the epochal highspots of the war.”
Press here received today from London following, “Ankara reported Stalin Roosevelt arrived Teheran.” To date except for speculative pieces that Roosevelt moved from Cairo to meet Stalin presumably in Teheran, nothing important has been published yet about Teheran conference.5
[Page 455]Only suggestions I have to make were included in previous dispatch. However, I urgently repeat that those suggestions be enforced.6 I repeat that despite Reuters’ actions, the Cairo conference reaction most favorably received by people of this country and the morale effect of the three power pledges is evident everywhere.
Regards to all.
- Sent via military channels.↩
- Early’s previous telegram of December 2, 1943, ante, p. 453.↩
- Telegram printed supra.↩
- See Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 395, cols. 517–520.↩
- For premature releases concerning the Tehran Conference, see post, pp. 641 ff.↩
- For Roosevelt’s decision altering the method of handling press releases, see post, p. 848.↩