This collection consists of 282 transcripts of tape-recorded interviews concerning John Foster Dulles (Princeton Class of 1908) and his times by men and women who knew and worked with him, such as Roswell P. Barnes, Robert R. Bowie, Walter Judd, and Carl McCardle. Some of the main topics covered in the various interviews are the Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations, the Federal Council of Churches, the San Francisco Conference on World Organization of 1945, the United Nations Charter, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Japanese Peace Treaty of 1951, McCarthyism, the Bricker Amendment, and relations of Secretary of State Dulles with the president, Congress, the Dept. of State, his staff, family, friends, and American and foreign statesmen.

A note about the sources in this collection: most of the witnesses whose testimony is here recorded were "friendly." Many made an obvious effort to be objective; some were critical; but very few could be called "hostile." Opinions of all sorts were solicited, but in most instances witnesses who presumably might have been unfriendly to Dulles simply refused to testify.

Every transcript in the collection has been reviewed and approved either by the author or a legal representative. With few exceptions, the only textual changes made in the transcripts have been to improve clarity of meaning. These transcripts represent the nearly verbatim record of informal and unrehearsed conversations.