The remark comes from Acheson's 1969 memoir, Present at the Creation, and is worth quoting at some length. In the course of describing NSC-68, a hair-raising official document that his assistant Paul Nitze wrote in 1950 with an eye toward raising alarm about the coming Soviet aggression and to galvanize support for higher U.S. military budgets in response, Acheson wrote, "The purpose of NSC-68 was to so bludgeon the mass mind of 'top government' that not only could the President make a decision but that the decision could be carried out." The "task of a public officer seeking to explain and gain support for a major policy," he continued, "is not that of the writer of a doctoral thesis. Qualification must give way to simplicity of statement, nicety and nuance to bluntness, almost brutality, in carrying home a point. … If we made our points clearer than truth, we did not differ from most other educators and could hardly do otherwise." One wonders if any current officials have this excerpt pinned to their bulletin boards, with a headline in boldface: "What would Acheson do?"