Mike Mansfield Interview, September 10, 1998

Mike Mansfield discusses an assignment from President Roosevelt to go to China in 1944. Mansfield describes the long trip and making stops throughout the Middle East and Western Asia. Mansfield also recalls the difficulties that Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy stirred up during the 1950s, when he included Mansfield as someone he considered a Communist sympathizer. Mansfield remembers McCarthy and his partner Harvey Matusow leading a smear campaign against him, making his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1953 quite difficult. Mansfield then talks about his relationship with President Nixon, who asked Mansfield to meet him for lunch at least once every month to talk about the U.S. relationship with China and what could be done to improve it. Mansfield talks a bit more about his opposition to the Vietnam War and the meetings he had with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson about his views.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/mansfield_interviews/1001/thumbnail.jp