Sunday · September 27, 2026
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19461776 Club

A top-secret report lands on Truman's desk: the Soviets cannot be trusted

Clark Clifford and George Elsey hand the President their assessment of Moscow's intentions, seven months after Stalin's alarming February speech.

By September 1946, White House officials had grown suspicious of Moscow's intentions. On September 24, White House counsel Clark Clifford and his aide George Elsey delivered a top-secret report to President Truman assessing Soviet behavior and intentions since the war's end. The two men drew on Stalin's February speech and mounting evidence of Soviet hostility to conclude the Kremlin could not be dealt with as a normal partner. Truman found the analysis so sensitive he ordered every copy locked away…

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More from September 24
1964

Warren Commission hands Johnson its verdict: Oswald acted alone

Ten months of testimony from 552 witnesses ends with a single conclusion: no conspiracy, foreign or domestic.
1789

Washington signs the Judiciary Act; the Supreme Court gets a chief justice and five associates

The same law creates federal district and circuit courts, and a new office called Attorney General.
2023

A capsule from Bennu drops onto the Utah desert, a minute ahead of schedule

A wiring flaw kept the drogue chute from opening, but the main chute held anyway.
19061776 Club
A 1,267-foot column of igneous rock in northeastern Wyoming becomes the test case for a brand-new law.
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Read the full September 24 edition →Everything that happened on September 24 →
More from Cold War America
1983

Challenger lights up the pre-dawn sky on the shuttle program's first night launch

Guion Bluford rides along, becoming the first African American to fly in space.
1974

An SR-71 crosses the Atlantic in under two hours flat

Sullivan and Widdifield average nearly 1,807 miles an hour, refueling in midair along the way.
1983

Soviet jet destroys Korean Air 007 off Sakhalin; 269 dead, a US congressman among them

The Boeing 747 had drifted deep into Soviet airspace before a Su-15 pilot fired his missiles.
1976

Viking 2 sets down on Mars, tilted on a rock at Utopia Planitia

A stray radar echo fires the thrusters early, cracking the ground beneath the lander's feet.
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