YALTA PAPERS RELEASE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27639, 21 April 1955, Page 11

YALTA PAPERS RELEASE

Action Defended By Dulles (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 19. Mr John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, said today he concluded that when a copy of the Yalta documents was released to the press that the British Government had withdrawn objections to publication. He confirmed in evidence before a Senate Committee that Mr Carl McCardle, Secretary of State for Public Affairs, gave a galley proof of the papers to the “New York Times" on the evening of March 15. “This involved an exercise by Mr McCardle of a discretion that was his. It involved no breach of security,” he The release of a single copy of the “New York Times” ahead of other newspapers came a day after the State Department had said that disclosures of the record of the Yalta talks, attended by President Roosevelt, Sir Winston Churchill and Marshal Stalin, would not be in the national interest. Mr Dulles said he concluded by tpe time the one copy was released that publication would not hurt American relations with the Allies. The Secretary of State said that the galley proof of the documents was handed to James Reston, chief Wash-

ington correspondent of the “New York Times,” at about 8.30 pan. on March 15. ... ~ ... Mr Dulles told the committee that it was not until shortly after 10 a.m. on March 16 that the British Ambassador, Sir Roger Makins “telephoned me that his government agreed to publication. But Mr Dulles said that the British Ambassador had “indicated his concurrence” to publication on March 15. Publication of the Yalta papers, released to the press generally on March 18, raised a political storm in the United States with many Democrats charging that the decision was taken to make capital out of President Roosevelt’s concessions to the Soviet Union

at the conference. „ .. . , Other members of both parties took the view that the documents only gave slight amplification to what was already known.