The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  50. Donovan, Eisenhower, 190; “Atoms for Peace,” December 8, 1953, speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Voices of Democracy, www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/eisenhower-atoms-for-peace-speech-text.

  51. Reactions to the speech in New York Times, December 9, 1953, both on the editorial page and in a piece by Hanson Baldwin; Washington Post, December 9, 1953, and December 11, 1953, editorial page.

  52. For evidence that the UN speech was not at all a disarmament proposal, see Memorandum by the special assistant to the president (C. D. Jackson) to the Operations Coordinating Board, December 9, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 2: pt. 2, 1293; Jackson to Eisenhower, December 29, 1953, reproduced in Young, Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, vol. 3, document 119.

  53. The text of Dulles’s speech is in New York Times, January 13, 1953. Hanson Baldwin penned a withering attack on it in the Times on January 24, 1953.

  54. Dulles, “Policy for Security and Peace.”

  CHAPTER 6: CONFRONTING MCCARTHY

  Epigraph: Press conference, November 18, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 781–89.

  1. West, Upstairs at the White House, 129–30. A comprehensive and well-researched account of Mamie’s role as first lady is provided by Holt, Mamie Doud Eisenhower. See also Brandon, Mamie Doud Eisenhower; Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike, 275–87.

  2. West, Upstairs at the White House, 130.

  3. “Ike and Mamie in the White House,” U.S. News and World Report, January 23, 1953. An excellent analysis of the decline of the intellectual in politics, and especially the problems faced by Stevenson in 1952 on this score, is in Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 221–29. “Now business is in power again; and with it will inevitably come the vulgarization which has been the almost invariable consequence of business supremacy,” wrote Schlesinger in “The Highbrow in Politics,” 162.

  4. Andrew Tully, “Ike and Mamie at Home,” Collier’s, June 20, 1953; “When It’s Tea-Time in Washington,” U.S. News and World Report, March 6, 1953.

  5. “What Goes On at Ike’s Dinners,” U.S. News and World Report, February 4, 1955.

  6. A superb assessment of Eisenhower’s religious attitudes is provided by Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 257–309; and see Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, 440–50; Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, 99–108; Holmes, Faiths of the Postwar Presidents, 24–44.

  7. Greenstein uses the word strategy repeatedly to impart an overall coherence and consistency to Eisenhower’s handling of the McCarthy problem (The Hidden-Hand Presidency, chapter 5, especially 157, 169).

  8. An excellent synthesis is Fried, Nightmare in Red, 53–113.

  9. Essential works on McCarthyism include Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense; Griffith, The Politics of Fear. A brilliant contemporary analysis is Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy.

  10. “Veto of the Internal Security Bill,” September 22, 1950, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=883.

  11. Memorandum on Rosenberg case in European press, January 14, 1953, NSC Staff Papers, PSB Central Files, box 26, DDEL. For details on the French reaction, see Kuisel, Seducing the French, 48–52.

  12. Press release, February 11, 1953, NSC Staff Papers, PSB Central Files, box 26, DDEL; cabinet minutes, February 12, 1952, Papers as President, Cabinet Series, box 1, DDEL.

  13. Douglas Dillon to secretary of state, May 15, 1953; New York Times, June 15, 1953; flyer with Michael Rosenberg letter, all in Papers as President, Administration Series, box 32, DDEL; Sophie Rosenberg telegram, June 16, 1953, DDE White House Central Files, Alphabetical File, box 2672, DDEL.

  14. Herbert Brownell Oral History, OH-157, May 5, 1967, DDEL; C. D. Jackson to Herbert Brownell, February 23, 1953, C. D. Jackson Papers, box 2, DDEL.

  15. Letter to Clyde Miller, June 10, 1953, and letter to John Eisenhower, June 16, 1953, PDDE, 14:289–91, 298–300.

  16. New York Times, June 20, 1953.

  17. McCarthy to Eisenhower, February 3, 1953, Papers as President, box 22, DDEL. For the substance of the criticisms against Smith and Conant, whose appointments were approved by the Senate, see New York Times, February 7, 1953.

  18. New York Times, March 3, 14, 15, and 16, 1953; press conference, March 26, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 37. Bohlen’s memoir provides a detailed account of the debate on Yalta at the hearings (Witness to History, 309–36).

  19. New York Times, March 19, 1953; Washington Post, March 21 and 23, 1953. The headline of James Reston’s piece in the March 24 New York Times captured the battle well: “Main Issue in Bohlen Case: Who May See FBI Files?” For details on the file contents, see Ruddy, The Cautious Diplomat, 120–21. Eisenhower was fully informed; Dulles spoke to him on March 16 to report that all his information indicated that Bohlen had “a normal family life.” On constitutional grounds, though, Eisenhower sided with Brownell’s position that Congress should not have free access to an FBI file. See minutes of Dulles-Eisenhower telephone conversation, March 16, 1953, and memorandum of conversation with Eisenhower, Brownell, and Dulles, March 22, 1953, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda Series, box 8, DDEL.

  20. Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government, Interim Report Submitted to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, 81st Congress, December 15, 1950, Washington, D.C., GPO, 1950.

  21. New York Times, March 26, 1953. Taft and Dulles colluded to produce this outcome, as is clear from their telephone call on March 23, 1953. Minutes of the call are in Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda Series, box 8, DDEL.

  22. Letter to Edgar Eisenhower, April 1, 1953, and diary entry, April 1, 1953, PDDE, 14:141–42, 136–37.

  23. Johnson, “The Eisenhower Personnel Security Program.”

  24. “Television Report to the American People,” June 3, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 374–75.

  25. “Remarks at the Dartmouth College Commencement Exercises, Hanover, New Hampshire,” June 14, 1953, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9606. See also Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense, 276–80. Cohn and Schine did not engage in book burning. In fact it was the libraries themselves that were compelled to destroy some volumes that had to be removed from the shelves.

  26. Letter from Philip Reed, June 8, 1953, and reply, June 17, 1953, DDE Office Files, Administration Series, microfilm, reel 24, DDEL; letter to Swede Hazlett, July 21, 1953, PDDE, 14:404–7. In the same vein, see his letter to Milton Eisenhower, October 9, 1953, 576–79.

  27. New York Times, October 24, 1953; Washington Post, October 24, 1953.

  28. Text of Brownell’s remarks in Chicago, New York Times, November 7, 1953.

  29. New York Times, November 8, 1953; Adams, Firsthand Report, 137; Marquis Childs, Washington Post, November 11, 1953; Walter Lippmann, “Brownell and McCarthy,” Washington Post, December 15, 1953.

  30. Press conference, November 11, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 757–65; James Reston, New York Times, November 11 and 12, 1953; see also comments of Arthur Krock, New York Times, November 14, 1953.

  31. New York Times, November 17, 1953.

  32. Press conference, November 18, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 781–82, 788–89.

  33. Text of McCarthy’s speech, New York Times, November 25, 1953.

  34. Stewart Alsop, “The McCarthy Challenge,” Washington Post, November 27, 1953. Hagerty comment in Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary Series, November 27, 1953, box 1, DDEL.

  35. C. D. Jackson notes, November 27 and 30, December 2, 1953, C. D. Jackson Papers, box 68, DDEL; Dulles-Jackson telephone conversation, December 1, 1953, Dulles Papers, Chronological Series, box 6, DDEL; New York Times, December 2, 1953; press conference, December 2, 1953, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 800–803. For reaction to Eisenhower’s message, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1953.

  36. For deft portraits of some key senators from the era, see McPherson, A Poli
tical Education, 27–84, Knowland remark on 74. On the tragedy of Senator Lester Hunt, see Abell, Drew Pearson Diaries, 321–25; Johnson, The Lavender Scare, 141.

  37. For details, see Tananbaum, The Bricker Amendment Controversy.

  38. Nixon, RN, 140; Mazo, Richard Nixon, 132–33.

  39. Memorandum for the NSC, December 28, 1953, “Review of Internal Security Legislation,” in Young, Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, vol. 6, document 4, pp. 25–44.

  40. Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 20, 24; DDE Diary, Legislative Leadership Meeting, March 1, 1954, microfilm, reel 3, DDEL.

  41. New York Times, March 4, 1954; press conference, March 4, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 288–97.

  42. Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1954. For insightful analysis of the Eisenhower-McCarthy exchange, see James Reston, “Other Cheek Is Struck,” New York Times, March 4, 1954.

  43. Notes on Eisenhower phone call with Knowland, Diary, March 10, 1954, microfilm, reel 3, DDEL; Stevenson speech text, Washington Post, March 7, 1954; Walter Lippmann, “The Unappeaseable Aggressor,” Washington Post, March 11, 1954. Adviser C. D. Jackson was driven to despair by McCarthy’s behavior and the failure of the Senate leaders to curb him. He wrote to Nixon, with whom he had a close relationship, that McCarthy’s antics “had done more fundamental harm” to the president than anything yet in his term in office and that Eisenhower had lost all the momentum he had gained in December 1953 with his “Atoms for Peace” speech. Unless the president took command and disciplined his party, he could expect certain defeat in the November 1954 congressional elections and lose any hope of pushing a Republican agenda through Congress. C. D. Jackson to Vice President Nixon, March 9, 1954, C. D. Jackson Papers, box 80, DDEL.

  44. Leviero in New York Times, March 11, 1954; press conference March 10, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 299–309; Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 28.

  45. Nixon text in New York Times, March 14, 1954. For Nixon’s account of the speech and its impact, see RN, 144–47.

  46. The Adams report can be seen in manuscript in Fred Seaton Papers, box 5, DDEL. The text that was leaked to the press had been heavily altered and cleaned up by Seaton, who was assistant secretary of defense and was acting in coordination with the White House, especially Sherman Adams, Herbert Brownell, and Assistant Attorney General William Rogers. See Joseph and Stewart Alsop, “McCarthy-Cohn-Schine Tale Was Half-Told,” Washington Post, March 15, 1954.

  47. Adams, Firsthand Report, 145. Brownell confirms the direct role the White House played in compiling and leaking the report (Advising Ike, 257–59). The version the press received can be seen in Washington Post, March 13, 1954. The release of the report was seen as part of a “full-scale attack” by the White House on McCarthy: New York Times, March 14, 1954.

  48. Letter to Bill Robinson, March 12, 1954, and to Swede Hazlett, April 27, 1954, PDDE, 15:949–50, 1042–45; press conference, May 12, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 467.

  49. “Letter to the Secretary of Defense Directing Him to Withhold Certain Information from the Senate Committee on Government Operations,” May 17, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 483–84; Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 53. For Eisenhower’s preparation on the issue of executive privilege, see notes of phone call with Rogers, March 2, 1954; letter from Paul Hoffman, March 25, 1954; phone call with Herbert Brownell, May 5, 1954, all in DDE Diary, microfilm reel 3, DDEL. Also see exchange of letters with Henry Cabot Lodge, May 7 and 10, 1954, PDDE, 15:1062–63; Brownell, Advising Ike, 251–61.

  50. Press conference, May 19, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 490.

  51. “Address at the Columbia University National Bicentennial Dinner,” May 31, 1954, PPP: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 517–25; on applause, Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 59.

  52. New York Times, June 2, 1954.

  53. For a geographical breakdown of the senators who voted on the censure resolution, see Griffith, The Politics of Fear, 312–13.

  54. Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 43.

  55. Ferrell, The Diary of James C. Hagerty, 81. For the transcript of the investigation, see In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

  56. “The President’s News Conference,” June 2, 1954, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9907; “Statement by the President upon Signing the Communist Control Act of 1954,” August 24, 1954, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9998.

  CHAPTER 7: DARK ARTS FOR A COLD WAR

  Epigraph: Papers as President, DDE Diaries Series, October 8, 1953, box 4, DDEL.

  1. Tim Weiner’s best-selling history of the CIA, for example, asserted that Eisenhower’s entire cold war strategy was based on nothing more than “nuclear bombs and covert action”; his book also places heavy emphasis on the Iran and Guatemala coups (Legacy of Ashes, 84). Numerous other writers on the 1950s have also succumbed to the temptation of caricature. Blanche Wiesen Cook’s analysis of Eisenhower’s presidency, she confessed, was so clouded by the evidence she discovered of “covert operations, secrecy, dirty tricks and counterinsurgency” in his administration that she had trouble seeing any other dimension of his leadership. “Eisenhower’s legacy is counterinsurgency and political warfare,” she regretfully concluded (The Declassified Eisenhower, xvi, xix). Stephen Kinzer, an able journalist and chronicler of the dark side of American foreign policy, asserted that “Eisenhower wished to wage a new kind of war,” based on secrecy and subversion. “With the Dulles brothers as his right and left arms, he led the United States into a secret global conflict that raged throughout his presidency” (The Brothers, 114). Tom Wicker’s brief portrait of Eisenhower was deeply colored by the fact that Eisenhower “encouraged infamy in Iran and outrage in Guatemala” (Dwight D. Eisenhower, 133).

  2. For details on Dulles’s wartime life, see Grose, Gentleman Spy, chapters 7–10. Dulles provides his own biographical sketch in The Craft of Intelligence, 1–5. The richness of Dulles’s reports from Bern can be sampled in Petersen, From Hitler’s Doorstep. A mostly admiring account of Dulles was penned by Wayne G. Jackson in 1973 as part of a CIA secret internal history, Allen Welsh Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence.

  3. NSC 10/2, June 18, 1948, FRUS 1945–50, Emergence of the National Intelligence Establishment: 713–15; Rudgers, Creating the Secret State, 19–46.

  4. CIA, “Office of Policy Coordination, 1948–1952,” DDO, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/4mTQx9. On Frank Wisner, see “Address by CIA Director Richard Helms, at Memorial for Frank Gardiner Wisner,” January 29, 1971, Langley, Virginia, in DDO, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/4mTVr7; Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, 24, 32, 48–51, 73–77. Wisner suffered health problems in the mid-1950s and had a breakdown in the mid-1960s. In 1965 he took his own life.

  5. The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, Public Law 81–110, Legis Works, http://www.legisworks.org/congress/81/publaw-110.pdf.

  6. CIA, “DCI Historical Series: Organizational History of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1950–1953,” available by subscription at Digital National Security Archive.

  7. NSC 10/5, October 23, 1951, and Walter Bedell Smith to the NSC, April 23, 1952, FRUS, 1950–55: The Intelligence Community, 206–8, 250–54.

  8. CIA memo for the president, March 1, 1953, and NSC Minutes, March 4, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 10:689–701.

  9. CIA, “Analysis of Iranian Political Situation,” October 12, 1951, DDO, tinyurl.gale group.com/tinyurl/4mTXg6.

  10. William Roger Louis, “Britain and the Overthrow of the Mossadeq Government,” in Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammad Mossadeq, 126–77.

  11. CIA, “National Intelligence Estimate 75: Probable Developments in Iran through 1953,” November 13, 1952, DDO, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/4mTZp3. See also CIA, “Prospects for Survival of Mossadeq Regime in Iran,” October 14, 1952, DDO, tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/4mTbg4; National Security Council, NSC 136/1, “United States Policy regarding the Present Situa
tion in Iran,” Top Secret Report, November 20, 1952, National Security Archive, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran521120.pdf.

  12. CIA History Staff, “The Battle for Iran,” a secret internal study of the coup prepared in 1974, declassified in 2014, National Security Archive, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB476/. See also the secret CIA report prepared in 1954 by Dr. Donald Wilber, which confirmed Bedell Smith’s role in first authorizing initial planning, “Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran,” March 1954, revealed and published by the New York Times in 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html. See also Woodhouse, Something Ventured, 120–35.

  13. “National Intelligence Estimate 76,” January 15, 1953, FRUS 1952–54, 9: pt. 1, document 114.

  14. CIA History Staff, “The Battle for Iran,” 26; date of official approval given in CIA, “Clandestine Service History,” 18. Kermit Roosevelt’s memoir Countercoup provides an unreliable and self-centered account of the Iran coup and should be supplemented by the far more revealing and candid CIA assessments.

  15. CIA, “Clandestine Service History.” One example of the propaganda the CIA circulated has been published by the National Security Archive. It denounces Mossadeq’s use of spies and internal repression to create an authoritarian dictatorship in Iran. “Mossadeq’s Spy Service,” undated, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/docs/Doc%2021%20-%201953-00-00%20144%20propaganda%20-%20spy%20service.pdf.

  16. The American ambassador in Baghdad, Burton Y. Berry, met with the shah on August 17 and found him “worn from three sleepless nights” and puzzled as to why the plan to oust Mossadeq had failed. Berry to State Department, August 17, 1953, National Security Archive, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB477/docs/Doc%206%20—%201953-08-17%20Baghdad%20cable%2092%20re%20Shah%20meeting%20with%20Berry.pdf.