President Roosevelt wasn’t the only one who got a briefing on the Joel Brand offer yesterday. So did Ira Hirschmann.  Hirschmann’s return to Turkey was sped up by about a week, so that the WRB could respond to the offer that a “special representative” was traveling from Washington to confer with Brand. So they were not rejecting the offer, yet, but delaying a formal response and sending Hirschmann to investigate. I’m not always the most sympathetic to Hirschmann–I find him very self-congratulatory but petty in his dealings with others–but I’m sympathetic to him here.  Getting information about this kind of offer, with these implications, and being told that he, civilian department store executive, should go investigate, was undoubtedly daunting.