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“I regard him as your subordinate.”
“Well,” I said, “he isn't my subordinate. He's my colleague. He's appointed by the President for a special function.”
“I'll take no talk from them - none whatever. I just won't have it. Don't you know that he's written me?”
I said, “No, I don't know anything about it.”
“Well, I will send you a copy of my reply to him. I'm sending it over right now, and I'll send a copy to you.”
In the course of fifteen minutes in comes a messenger from the Department of the Interior with a copy of a letter from Mr. Ickes to Mr. Morse. The original had been delivered to Mr. Morse upstairs. Their offices were just above mine. I read it. I remember calling in Miss Jay and someone else, whom I don't remember, to listen to it. We just simply shook with laughter. You wouldn't believe that grown-up people could dip their pens in such poison and write the most terrible language of vituperation. I don't mean there were any obscenities, but anybody who has read Harold Ickes' literary memoirs can gather some idea of the kind of thing he said when he was laying the law down. I still have some of this correspondence.
Within an hour Wayne Morse came down demanding to see me. Miss Jay guessed what was up buy his wild eye, and knew that he needed to let off steam to somebody, and I was to be the one. He came in saying to me, “I've never had anything so
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