Oral history interview with Edmund S. Muskie
Williams J. Oral history interview with Edmund S. Muskie
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview with Edmund S. Muskie. The purpose of this interview was to discuss with Senator Muskie his three visits to the Truman home, one in September 1968 while he was running on the Democractic ticket for Vice President of the United States with Hubert H. Humphrey, and two others in 1970 when he was in Independence for other reasons. The interview also covered background information about Muskie’s association with Harry S Truman when both were in Washington, D.C., earlier in their careers. This interview lasted ninety minutes. However, a tape recorder malfunction on the day of the interview resulted in fewer than ten minutes of audible recording on the tape. The remainder is static. Therefore, this transcript includes portions of the first twenty minutes of the interview only. An attempt has been made to reconstruct the interview from the interviewer’s notes made during and shortly after the interview, from the Muskie materials provided by Bates College, and from archival materials from the Harry S. Truman Library. Users of this transcript, therefore, should keep in mind the limitations of the materials provided, which cannot substitute completely for the information lost in the recorder malfunction.