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looking for him. Word came from somebody that Morgenthau wouldn't be at the airport, that he had arranged a private flight from Poughkeepsie and would make better connections from there.
Then we said to each other, “What's happened? What do you know?” None of us really knew anything except that there was shooting somewhere. Hackie hadn't explained anything. There hadn't been time for us to go check with our usual sources. Nobody had heard a radio. Francis Biddle said later that it was the same way with him. He was out in Ohio, making a speech at some meeting or other. The first thing he knew was when we was paged that Washington wanted him to come right back. He learned from the telephone operator what I had learned, “It's about the war.” He didn't know if the war involved us, or if Churchill had been shot dead, or London had been captured by the enemy, or what.
I suppose the last thing that occurred to any of us was attack by the Japanese, although I must say that the thought did flash through my mind, “What became of the Japanese fleet that was at sea last Friday?” Still that didn't seem likely because we knew that it would be some time before they had further information about where it was going. So we didn't know anything. Neither of those two men or myself knew anything. The young man who was with me knew more about it, but I wasn't letting him know that we didn't
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