15. Nixon, Six Crises, 75; Nixon, RN, 80, 87.
16. Speech of July 11, 1952, Official Report of the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Republican National Convention, 432–34.
17. Johnson, The Papers of Adlai Stevenson, 4:11–14; Mary McGrory in Doyle, As We Knew Adlai, 170; Schlesinger, Journals, 10; George Ball in Doyle, As We Knew Adlai, 148.
18. Rovere, Affairs of State, 38.
19. An excellent portrait of the campaign may be found in Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 17–44. For colorful anecdotes about the campaign train, see Howard, With My Shoes Off, 179–224; Cutler, No Time for Rest, 275–92.
20. On McCarthy’s attack on Marshall, see Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy, 170–79.
21. Christian Science Monitor, August 23, 1952; New York Times, August 23, 1952.
22. Marquis Childs, Boston Globe, September 16, 1952; “Campaign Statements of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” unpublished collection available in Reading Room, DDEL.
23. Cutler, No Time for Rest, 280–81; New York Times, September 16, 1952; Roscoe Drummond in Christian Science Monitor, September 16, 1952.
24. The political fund crisis has been carefully annotated by various authors, most exhaustively by Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon, 757–866. See also Costello, The Facts about Nixon, 103–14; Mazo, Richard Nixon, 98–124; Wills, Nixon Agonistes, 91–114; Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 50–54; Perlstein, Nixonland, 37–43. Most intriguing are Nixon’s own accounts, in Six Crises, 73–129 and RN, 92–110.
25. Letter to Robinson, September 20, 1952, PDDE, 13:1360, note 3. According to Brownell, General Clay “was livid and thought Eisenhower should remove him from the ticket as soon as possible” (Advising Ike, 124).
26. Letter to Nixon, September 19, 1952, PDDE, 13:1358–59; letter to William Robinson, September 20, 1952, PDDE, 13:1360; New York Times, September 20, 1952.
27. The text of the address was printed in New York Times, September 24, 1952.
28. Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 1952; James Reston, New York Times, September 24, 1952; Boston Globe, September 24, 1952.
29. New York Times, September 25, 1952.
30. The “you’re my boy” comment was reported in Chicago Daily Tribune, September 25, 1952.
31. An early sense of the rift the fund issue caused was picked up by reporters traveling with the Eisenhower and Nixon campaign teams. “Inside Account of Nixon Affair,” New York Times, September 26, 1952; William A. Clark, “Veep Tactics,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1952.
32. “Kohler Lifts Finger for McCarthy,” Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 1952.
33. On McCarthy’s criticism of Eisenhower during his own reelection campaign, see Joseph Alsop, Washington Post, September 7, 1952. For context, see Broadwater, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade, 26–53. The proposed speech went through many alterations. See Stephen Benedict Papers, box 4, DDEL; Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 42.
34. Adams, Firsthand Report, 30–32; Sherman Adams Oral History, OH-162, DDEL.
35. That Ike was deliberately courting the right was emphasized by Joseph Alsop, “Ike’s Strategy Explained,” Washington Post, October 10, 1952.
36. Speech text in Benedict Papers, box 4, DDEL. Speech was covered in New York Times, October 4, 1952.
37. Truman speaking on October 4, 1952, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. “Public Papers: Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953,” Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php. Also see New York Times, October 5, 1952; Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 1952.
38. New York Times, October 8, 1952; Washington Post, October 8, 1952; Boston Globe, October 8, 1952; Truman, Memoirs. Years of Trial and Hope, 501; Bernard Shanley diaries, typescript, p. 527, DDEL.
39. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 31–35; Adams, Firsthand Report, 42–44; Truman, Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope, 501–2. There is some dispute about who came up with the idea. Hughes claims authorship in his memoir. Adams suggests C. D. Jackson may have been behind it (Sherman Adams Oral History, OH-162, DDEL). But in an interview in 1967, James Hagerty suggests Eisenhower himself had had the idea long before. On the golf course two days after he was nominated, he told Hagerty he would “go to Korea” but to “just keep that quiet” (James Hagerty Oral History, OH-91, DDEL).
CHAPTER 5: SCORPIONS IN A BOTTLE
Epigraph: Inaugural address, January 20, 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/1953_inaugural_address.pdf.
1. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 48. The role of Clay and Brownell in picking cabinet officers is confirmed by Maxwell Rabb, the assistant to Sherman Adams, in Maxwell Rabb Oral History, OH-309, DDEL. The National Security Council met weekly, normally on Thursday mornings. Created in 1947, the NSC was mostly ignored by Truman. Eisenhower, by contrast, thought of it rather like the Combined Chiefs of Staff during the war: the leading officers of government thrashed out problems of policy, and the commander in chief made the final decisions. Eisenhower’s national security adviser, first Robert Cutler, then Dillon Anderson, and then Gordon Gray, kept the decision-making process moving. Ideas and proposals would come to the NSC from the Planning Board; if approved, they would be handed off to the Operations Coordinating Board, which supervised implementation. To follow up on policy decisions, Ike relied on a staff secretary, first Pete Carroll and then, from 1954 on, the estimable Col. (later Gen.) Andrew Goodpaster. See Nelson, “The Top of Policy Hill.”
2. Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles, 6, 142. On Eisenhower’s private assessment of Dulles, see diary entry, May 14, 1953, PDDE, 14:224. For a nuanced assessment of the relationship, see Immerman, “Eisenhower and Dulles.”
3. Gen. Alfred Gruenther urged Eisenhower to consider McCloy or Dewey. Eisenhower told Gruenther that while Dewey might be ideal, he had accumulated too many “bitter political enemies” to be effective in the post. Letter to Alfred Gruenther, November 26, 1952, PDDE, 13:1436–37. On Wilson, see Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 50; Ike’s comment in diary entry, May 14, 1953, PDDE, 14:225.
4. Goldman, The Crucial Decade and After, 241.
5. Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, 51.
6. New York Times, November 19, 1952.
7. Truman, Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope, 520–21.
8. Details on the trip can be followed in a special report filed by Don Whitehead of the Associated Press, published in a booklet as “The Great Deception.” Jim Hagerty also left detailed notes on the planning of the trip (Hagerty Papers, box 11, DDEL).
9. Hagerty letters, December 2 and 6, 1952, Hagerty Papers, box 11, DDEL; Boston Globe, December 6, 1952; Manchester (U.K.) Guardian, December 6, 1952; New York Times, December 6, 1952.
10. Rhee quoted in New York Times, December 7, 1952; DDE, Mandate for Change, 95.
11. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 49–50; Hagerty Papers, box 11, DDEL.
12. Text of Eisenhower’s statement in Boston Globe, December 15, 1952; Christian Science Monitor, December 15, 1952; Truman comments in New York Times, December 12, 1952. For Ike’s personal fury with Truman, see Drew Pearson, “Ike Was Ready to Blast Truman,” Washington Post, December 20, 1952.
13. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 53–54; diary entry, January 16, 1953, PDDE, 13:1506; DDE, Mandate for Change, 100; “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1953, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9600.
14. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War and War, 1–3.
15. NSC 141, “Report to the NSC by the Secretaries of State and Defense and Director of Mutual Security,” January 19, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 214.
16. Oppenheimer, “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” 529. The report by the panel, submitted in January 1953 to the secretary of state, was published by its principal author, McGeorge Bundy, as “Early Thoughts on Controlling the Nuclear Arms Race.”
17. John Foster Dulles, “A Policy of Boldness,” Life, M
ay 19, 1952, 146–57. These ideas had been given longer and more nuanced expression in his book War or Peace, and he had proposed a policy along these lines to Eisenhower in April 1952, during the presidential campaign. For judicious analysis, see Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, 39–41.
18. Dulles opposed any bold appeal to the Soviets, as he told the cabinet at the March 4 meeting (NSC meeting, March 4, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 8:1091–95). This cautious approach was reiterated by the counselor of the Department of State Charles Bohlen on March 10 and repeated by Dulles at a meeting of the NSC on March 11, 1953 (FRUS 1952–54, 8:1108–11, 1117–25). CIA memo, “Probable Consequences of the Death of Stalin,” March 10, 1953, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NSC Series, Subject Subseries, box 5, DDEL.
19. Session of USSR Supreme Soviet, March 15, 1953, in Current Digest of the Russian Press 8, no. 5 (April 4, 1953): 3–5. One crucial ally was deeply skeptical about Soviet good intentions: German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, meeting with Dulles on April 7, scoffed at the idea of a serious change inside the USSR. “While it was true that the Soviet Union might extend a peace offer which could be acceptable to the West,” he told the secretary, “the West must not relax its vigilance, but instead should continue to build its strength since the only way to negotiate with a totalitarian country was to negotiate from strength. Although the Federal Republic had no desire for war, the danger of war would increase if the West relaxed its build-up efforts” (U.S. Delegation minutes of the first general meeting of Chancellor Adenauer and Secretary Dulles, April 7, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 7: pt. 1, 433).
20. Meeting of the NSC, March 11, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 8:1122; Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, 103; Meeting of the NSC, March 25, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 261–62.
21. C. D. Jackson letter to John Foster Dulles, March 10, 1953, and accompanying memo, “Notes for a Draft Outline of a U.S. Political Warfare Plan,” in C. D. Jackson Papers, box 104, DDEL. Jackson worked closely with Walt W. Rostow of MIT to draft these proposals. Rostow wrote a book about the origins of the speech, Europe after Stalin, and included many relevant documents.
22. “The Chance for Peace,” delivered to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9819. For a masterful account of the “Chance for Peace” speech and its failure to alter the cold war, see Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 84–150.
23. Adams, Firsthand Report, 97. For details on the dissemination see “Foreign Policy Speech,” June 4, 1953, C. D. Jackson Papers, box 104, DDEL.
24. The power struggle among the Soviet collective leadership after Stalin’s death, and its connection with the June 1953 uprising, is ably recounted in Knight, Beria, 176–94.
25. John Foster Dulles, “The Eisenhower Foreign Policy,” April 18, 1953, reprinted in Rostow, Europe after Stalin, 122–31.
26. Figures from “Review of the 1954 Budget,” by Joseph Dodge, August 27, 1953, Office Files, Administration Series, microfilm, reel 10, DDEL. Also see figures in Morgan, Eisenhower versus “The Spenders,” 49–53; NSC minutes, March 25 and March 31, 1953, FRUS, 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 258–64.
27. A careful analysis of these debates can be found in Leighton, Strategy, Money and the New Look, volume 3 of the official History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 88–113; Hogan, A Cross of Iron, 387–99.
28. Diary entry, May 1, 1953, PDDE, 14:195–97; for further details, see FRUS, 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 316.
29. Historical Tables, Office of Management and Budget, Table 3.1, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/omb/budget/Historicals.
30. Press conference, April 30, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 242.
31. Radio address, May 19, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 317. For similar comments to the National Security Council, March 25, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 261. See also his letter to Al Gruenther, May 4, 1953, PDDE, 14:203. For careful analysis of Ike’s defense budget policy, see Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace, 96–108. In a letter to an old friend, Brig. Gen. Benjamin F. Caffey Jr., Eisenhower expressed his philosophy about taxes clearly: “The federal deficit must be eliminated in order that tax reduction can begin. Reverse this order and you will never have tax reduction” (July 27, 1953, PDDE, 14:429).
32. NSC 147, “Possible Courses of Action in Korea,” April 2, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 15:842; DDE, Mandate for Change, 171, 181.
33. James Shepley, “How Dulles Averted War,” Life, January 16, 1956, 70–80. A similar accounting was given by Adams, Firsthand Report, 98–99. This view was also enshrined by journalist Robert Donovan in his admiring account of the first years of the administration, Eisenhower: The Inside Story, 115–16. Fred Greenstein repeated this uncritically in The Hidden-Hand Presidency, 61–62. For historians retelling the Dulles story, see Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, 106; Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War, 29–31; Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace, 574. See also Newton, Eisenhower, 99–101; Thomas, Ike’s Bluff, 74–81.
34. For a careful discussion of the alleged nuclear threat in the armistice negotiations, see Dingman, “Atomic Diplomacy during the Korean War.” On Ike’s discussions about using nuclear weapons, NSC meeting, February 11, 1953; memo of conversation with Robert Cutler, March 21, 1953; NSC meeting, March 31, 1953, all in FRUS 1952–54, 15:769–70, 815, 825–27.
35. Documents collected by the Woodrow Wilson Center make it possible to analyze the Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean attitude toward the armistice. See in particular USSR Council of Ministers resolution of March 19, 1953; memorandum of the Soviet representative in Korea, Vasilii Kuznetsov, to Moscow, March 29, 1953; Molotov statement on Korea at the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers, March 31, 1953; and a Soviet Foreign Ministry report on the history of the war, August 9, 1966, all at “Korean War Armistice,” Wilson Center Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/169/korean-war-armistice. For a thoughtful review of this evidence, see Gaddis, We Now Know, 107–10.
36. NSC 147, “Possible Courses of Action in Korea,” April 2, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 15:839–57.
37. Commander in chief, UN Command, Gen. Mark Clark, to Joint Chiefs, April 11, 1953; Rhee to Eisenhower, April 9, 1953; Eisenhower to Rhee, April 23, 1953; Clark to JSC, May 8, 1953, all in FRUS 1952–54, 15: 903–4, 902–3, 929–30, 987.
38. NSC meetings, May 7 and May 13, 1953, and Joint Chiefs memorandum, May 19, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 15:977, 1012–17, 1059–64.
39. Memorandum of conversation between Nehru and Dulles, May 21, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 15:1068–69; Dingman, “Atomic Diplomacy during the Korean War”; Foot, “Nuclear Coercion and the Ending of the Korean Conflict”; Jones, “Targeting China.”
40. DDE, Mandate for Change, 185–87; NSC meeting, June 18, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 15: pt. 2, 1200–1205.
41. Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace, chapter 8, provides an excellent analysis of each task force. The Solarium documents are quite extensive. The final reports of each task force can be seen in White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, NSC Series, Subject Subseries, box 9, DDEL. Draft materials are in White House Office, NSC Staff Papers, 1948–1961, Executive Secretary’s Subject File Series, boxes 11, 15, and 17, DDEL. See also “Notes taken at first plenary session of Project Solarium,” June 26, 1953, and “Summaries prepared by NSC Staff of Project Solarium Presentations,” July 22, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 2: pt. 1, 388–93, 399–434.
42. Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, box 4, NSC summaries of discussion, July 16, 1953, DDEL. George Kennan, who shaped the policy of containment, enjoyed the delicious moment when he was able to lecture Dulles, in front of the president, about the reasons for continuity instead of the more reckless alternatives Dulles had favored (Kennan, Memoirs, 1950–1963, 181–82). The shrewd observer was Andrew Goodpaster. See Goodpaster Oral History, OH-477, DDEL.
43. A complete text of NSC 162/2 has been put online by t
he Federation of American Scientists at http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-162-2.pdf. For a lucid discussion of this strategy document and its links to NSC 68, see Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 149–63.
44. Churchill had been thinking of this even before Ike was elected. In June 1952 he told his private secretary John Colville that “if Eisenhower were elected president, he would have another shot at making peace by means of a meeting of the Big Three.” This was before Stalin died (Colville, The Fringes of Power, 650).
45. Colville, The Fringes of Power, 683. The American minutes present a slightly more delicate version of Eisenhower’s language. First Plenary Session, December 4, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 5:1761.
46. On Eisenhower’s atomic pool idea, see Young, Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, vol. 3, memorandum for Admiral Strauss from Robert Cutler, September 10, 1953, document 53; on Strauss’s evaluation, memorandum for the president, September 17, 1953, document 59; correspondence between Jackson and Strauss, September 27, 1953, document 62; Jackson memorandum for the president, October 2, 1953, document 66.
47. Memorandum of conversation, December 4, 1953, Papers as President, International Meetings Series, box 1, DDEL.
48. Churchill’s reaction to Eisenhower’s remark was redacted from the official record and declassified only in 2003. For the complete text, see Minutes, meeting of December 5, 1953, Papers as President, International Meetings Series, box 1, DDEL. Also Colville, The Fringes of Power, 685.
49. Dulles notes, December 5, 1953, and Eisenhower diary entry, December 6, 1953, reproduced in Young, Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, vol. 3, document 90. Eisenhower developed these ideas further in a meeting three weeks later with his senior advisers. “The President said that the U.S. had come to a point where it could not back off from atomic weapons. Both the U.S. and the other side are in too deep.” The minutes of this meeting have been only partially declassified. “Notes on conference in President’s office,” minutes taken by Robert Cutler, December 22, 1953, NSC Staff Papers, Executive Secretary’s Subject File Series, box 5, DDEL.
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