The official record was surprisingly silent about what the two men said about oil. One member of the party later reported that the President and the King did have a long talk on that subject. Whatever was or was not said, both men knew that it was central to the emerging relationship between their two countries. The New York Times foreign affairs correspondent, C. L. Sulzberger, got right to the point. Immediately after the meeting at the Great Bitter Lake, he wrote, “The immense oil deposits in Saudi Arabia alone make that country more important to American diplomacy than almost any other
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