by Kai Bird
34. During the early 1950s, the CIA helped create West Germany’s largest media conglomerate by funneling an estimated $7 million to Axel Springer. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, pp. 114–16.) Tom Braden, who headed the Agency’s International Organizations Division during these years, has estimated that the Congress of Cultural Freedom received $800,000 to $900,000 annually from the CIA. (John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA from Wild Bill Donovan to William Casey, p. 246.)
35. William B. Pickett, “The Eisenhower Solarium Notes”, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, vol. 16, no. 2 (June 1985), pp. 1–10; Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, p. 244; FRUS, 1952–1954: National Security Affairs, vol. II, pt. 1, pp. 349–34.
36. Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), p. 177.
37. Eisenhower to McCloy, 8/15/53, DDE.
38. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower the President: 1952–1969 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), p. 113. List of invitees, stag dinner at the White House, 9/23/53, DDE.
39. Memorandum by John J. McCloy to the secretary of state, 3/16/53, FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. V, pt. 1, pp. 770–73.
40. NYT, Oct. 18, 1953, Oct. 22, 1953.
41. New York Herald Tribune, May 30, 1953; see also M. S. Handler, “Germans Look to Future,” NYT, Aug. 9, 1953.
42. NYT, Oct. 29, 1953; WP, Oct. 29, 1953.
43. Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography (New York: Stein & Day, 1982), p. 530; Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, pp. 349–50; Richard M. Fried, Men Against McCarthy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 273–77.
44. C. D. Jackson diary, 11/27–12/2/53, DDE; Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, p. 352; Fried, Men Against McCarthy, p. 274; Reeves, Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, pp. 530–31. At this point, the only public figure associated with the army willing to challenge McCarthy by name was retired Brigadier General Telford Taylor, then practicing law in New York. In a speech at West Point, Taylor courageously called McCarthy a “dangerous adventurer.” For this, McCarthy promptly showed reporters a copy of Taylor’s confidential civil-service form, which he pointed out contained a security “flag” indicating an “unresolved question of loyalty.” Taylor’s commission as a reserve officer, McCarthy demanded, should be revoked. Once again the senator had displayed an uncanny ability to produce leaked security documents which, however unsubstantiated, somehow lent credence to his slanderous charges. (Reeves, Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, p. 524.)
45. NYT, Nov. 27, 1953.
46. Reeves, Life and Times of Joe McCarthy, p. 525.
47. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, p. 360.
48. Philip M. Stern, with the collaboration of Harold P. Green, The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 223.
49. AP, NYT, Feb. 7–8, 1954.
50. WP, Feb. 10, 1954; Washington Star, Feb. 10, 1954.
51. Tyler Abell, ed., Drew Pearson: Diaries 1949–1959 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974), p. 297.
52. Washington Star, Feb. 17, 1954; NYT, Feb. 17, 1954.
53. Frankfurter to McCloy, 3/3/54, McCloy to Frankfurter, 3/8/54, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
54. Frankfurter to McCloy, 3/10/54, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
55. Telcon: Eisenhower and Lucius Clay, 2/25/54, DDE.
56. H.C. Lodge to Eisenhower, 2/23/54, DDE.
57. In his 1945 congressional testimony, McCloy said, “I was responsible as much as anyone.” (George E. Sokolsky, WP, March 22, 1954.)
58. Thomas, When Even Angels Wept, p. 465.
59. Drew Pearson, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, March 13, 1954.
60. Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, p. 401.
61. NYT, March 19, 1954.
62. Washington Star, March 19, 1954.
63. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
64. E. Murphy to Mr. Franklin, 6/4/56, “Facts on Dr. Oppenheimer’s connection with the Council’s study group on U.S.-Soviet Relations,” CFR.
65. NYT, June 20, 1954.
66. McCloy to Frankfurter, 4/13/54, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
67. He told Ike there were so few qualified scientists to work on the Manhattan Project that “we would have put a pro-German to work who had these qualities . . . or even a convicted murderer.” (McCloy-Eisenhower, 4/16/54, 4/23/54, DDE; McCloy interview, March 19, 1986.)
68. Stern, The Oppenheimer Case, p. 197.
69. Arthur Krock, NYT, July 1, 1954. Lloyd Garrison believed that McCloy was “one of the two or three strongest witnesses.” (Lloyd Garrison interview, Jan. 31, 1984.)
70. NYT, July 1, 1954, June 20, 1954; John Crosby, WP, July 2, 1954; Stern, The Oppenheimer Case, p. 346.
71. Though Chevalier apparently had already rejected the British engineer’s overture, he nevertheless thought it was something Oppenheimer should “know of.” (Stern, The Oppenheimer Case, pp. 44–45.)
72. Ibid., p. 347; NYT, June 20, 1954; John Crosby, WP, July 2, 1954.
73. Stern, The Oppenheimer Case, pp. 381–83.
74. McCloy to Frankfurter, “Tuesday,” n.d., Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
75. Frankfurter to McCloy, 7/16/54, Frankfurter Papers, LOC.
76. On April 24, 1953, a Ford Foundation officer visited C. D. Jackson in his White House office and said that “Ford Foundation policy has shifted again and [we] may be able to do something in [the] cold war.” A few days later, McCloy was formally elected a trustee of the Foundation.
The Foundation’s officers had for some time been uncertain about how to respond to requests from the CIA to fund various projects. Back in the spring of 1951, Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles, and Frank Wisner visited New York and met with Foundation President Rowan Gaither. The Agency’s officials wished to feel out Gaither concerning whether the Foundation could support seven different CIA projects: the CCF, the University of Free Berlin, the National Committee for Free Asia, the University of Teheran, an unnamed research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a proposal made by George Kennan to fund Russian and East European defectors. Minutes of the meeting indicate Gaither listened sympathetically to the Agency’s pitch.
A few weeks later, the Foundation seemed to have decided on a policy in dealing with the CIA: Foundation officer Bernard L. Gladieux wrote Gaither that such requests from the Agency should first be cleared with Tex Moore, McCloy’s old friend from Cravath who now was the Foundation’s chief outside counsel. If Moore saw no legal problems, the request would be sent through the Foundation’s normal staff channels. Only a few days later, however, vigorous objections from the Foundation’s lower-ranking staff led Gaither, for the moment, to turn down the Agency’s requests.
This was not the end of the matter. By late 1952, after McCloy had joined as a consultant on international projects, the Foundation’s leadership evidently had undergone a change of heart: at least one grant of $150,000 was awarded that year to the National Committee for a Free Europe, which as a CIA front ran Radio Free Europe. (C. D. Jackson diary, 4/24/53, DDE; conference memo, 4/3/51, folder “Central Intelligence Agency,” box one, Gaither Presidential Papers, FF; Bernard L. Gladieux to Rowland Gaither, 4/23/51; Gaither to Gladieux, 4/27/51, folder “Central Intelligence Agency,” box one, Gaither Presidential Papers, FF; Blum, Forgotten History, p. 356.)
77. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
78. Ibid.; Ranelagh, The Agency, p. 218.
79. Don Price oral history, pp. 61–62, FF. Bob Bowie, then director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, also weighed in, encouraging the Foundation to finance exchange programs involving lawyers, public administrators, doctors, and engineers. The idea, he said, would be “to strengthen in the underdeveloped countries the institutional structure and growth of the middle class. . . . We should be doing business with private institutions, quality institutions on an elite basis, and hook i
n with a local selection apparatus.”
80. Don Price oral history, p. 63, FF.
81. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
82. Don Price memo, May 21, 1954, found in appendix to Don Price oral history, FF.
83. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986. Price himself later justified the arrangement by saying, “I don’t think we could have kept clean if our policy had been never to talk to the government.” (Don Price oral history, 6/22/72, p. 70, FF.)
84. Ibid., p. 70.
85. Memo, n.d., Congress for Cultural Freedom file; Don Price oral history, 6/22/72, p. 69, FF. Some Foundation monies were funneled directly to CIA-sponsored publications. Melvin Lasky, editor of the German-language magazine Der Monat (and later the London-based and CIA-funded Encounter magazine), recalled how he visited McCloy at his Chase office in the spring of 1954 and explained that he needed to find a private source of funding to replace Agency subsidies. “McCloy was crucial to getting us new funding,” recalled Lasky. “He took the proposal to the Ford Foundation board and arranged three years of funding for the magazine. I thought that was quite a lot at the time.” Altogether, the Foundation replaced some $60,000 to $70,000 of CIA subsidies for Der Monat (Melvin Lasky phone interview, Jan. 2, 1987; Don Price oral history, p. 56, FF; New York Herald Tribune, July 9, 1954.
86. Don Price oral history, 6/22/72, p. 58, FF; Cleon O. Swayzee to Donald Mulcahy, CIA, 4/30/59 et al., General Correspondence, 1959, reel 1316, FF.
87. Charles Merrill, The Checkbook: The Politics and Ethics of Foundation Philanthropy (Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1986), pp. 447–50.
88. The Bricker Amendment was an attempt by isolationist Republicans to restrict the power of the executive branch to conduct foreign policy. McCloy bluntly warned Ike that “there can be no compromise” on the issue, that as the “trustee of the executive powers of the President” he could not relinquish his constitutional prerogatives. After a lengthy exchange of correspondence, Eisenhower—who had been tempted to compromise—was persuaded by McCloy to stonewall the Congress. (McCloy cable to Eisenhower, 1/54; Eisenhower to McCloy, 1/13/54; McCloy to Eisenhower, 1/18/54, DDE.)
89. McCloy to Eisenhower, 1/21/54, DDE.
90. McCloy to DDE, 4/16/54; DDE to McCloy, 4/23/54; telcon, 4/29/54, DDE.
91. Ambrose, Eisenhower the President, p. 73.
92. Eisenhower to Joseph McConnell, 1/16/61, DDE.
93. Ambrose, Eisenhower the President, p. 75; McCloy to DDE, 1/21/54, DDE.
94. Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review, vol. 87, no. 1 (Feb. 1982), pp. 87–122.
95. Eisenhower to F. Dulles, 1/16/54, DDE.
96. NYT, March 11, 1954; Matthew Josephson, The Money Lords (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1972), pp. 242–45.
97. CFR list of members attending dinner in honor of J. F. Dulles, 1/12/54, AH; NYT, Jan. 13, 1954.
98. DDE to C. D. Jackson, 5/17/54, DDE.
99. C. D. Jackson diary, 7/8/53, DDE.
100. Robert Cutler to DDE, 8/18/54, DDE.
101. C. D. Jackson diary, 8/7/54, DDE.
102. C. D. Jackson log, 8/4/54, DDE.
103. Ibid.
104. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, p. 177.
105. C. D. Jackson diary, 8/11/54; untitled memo, 8/11/54, DDE.
106. Laurence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust, p. 197.
107. John Donald Wilson, The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945–198$, P. 79.
108. Wall Street Journal, March 14, 1955; London Times, March 14, 1955.
109. WP, March 11, 1955.
110. Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), p. 452.
111. McCloy interview, July 10, 1986.
112. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 1955.
113. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Summit Books, 1987), pp. 258–59.
114. Lacey, Men and Machine, pp. 453–54.
115. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 1955.
116. Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth 1933–1962 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), p. 422; Dr. G. van Hall to Rowan Gaither, 11/23/55, Rowan Gaither Files, box VI, file “Ford Motor Co. Correspondence,” FF.
117. Nevins and Hill, Decline and Rebirth, pp. 422–23.
118. Judge Wyzanski statement at board-of-trustees meeting, 1/4/56, Rowan Gaither Files, box VI, file “Ford Motor Co. Correspondence,” FF.
119. Statements at board-of-trustees meeting, 1/5/56, Rowan Gaither Files, box VI, file “Ford Motor Co. Correspondence,” FF.
120. Lacey, Men and Machine, pp. 454, 658, 705; Nevins and Hill, Decline and Rebirth, p. 424.
TWENTY-TWO: IKE’S WISE MAN
1. Victor E. Rockhill oral history, 9/13/79, 10/5/79, p. 21, CMB.
2. John D. Wilson, The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945–1985, p. 41; Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), p. 142; State Department cable from Gallman in Baghdad to secretary of state, 2/21/56, DOS FOIA; Eisenhower telcon with Herbert Hoover, Jr., 3/15/56, DDE (“President said McCloy went over unquestionably to keep King Saud from transferring big account to Switzerland”).
3. Later that year, in September 1956, Kim Philby arrived in Beirut and met his future wife, Eleanor, in the Saint George bar. Eleanor was then married to New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer.
4. Eveland, Ropes of Sand, p. 75.
5. Wilbur Crane Eveland interview, July 25, 1982. In his memoirs, Eveland would later write that McCloy told him he was “going to see King Saud to explain the extent to which his foolish policies were making it difficult for Chase to continue the very loans upon which Saud was almost dependent.” (Eveland, Ropes of Sand, p. 142.)
6. Eveland, Ropes of Sand, pp. 142–43.
7. Robert Lacey, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 312. The official view in Washington was, in retrospect, overly alarmist. The Saudi royal family was certainly not anti-Western or even pro-Nasser. Within two years, King Saud would be caught red-handed in a plot to assassinate Nasser.
8. Henry Luce, “To Pin Down One Point of American Policy,” 4/22/56, DDE.
9. Wadsworth cable to secretary of state, no. 370, 2/16/56, DOS FOIA.
10. “Dispatches,” The Nation, June 22, 1985.
11. Gallman to secretary of state, 2/21/56, State Department cable 852, Baghdad, DOS FOIA.
12. McCloy’s private brand of diplomacy was usually regarded as a most useful intervention by U.S. Embassy officials. After his trip to Iraq, one Foreign Service officer wrote a friend, “Jack McCloy made a great contribution in Iraq even though he was in Baghdad only three days.” (Clarence B. Randall to McCloy, 10/17/56, DDE.) McCloy also spent a short time in Teheran on this trip, before returning to New York. (State Department cable 767, Teheran-Washington, “Visit to Teheran of Mr. John J. McCloy,” 3/10/56, DOS FOIA.)
13. Presidential schedule, 3/20/56, DDE.
14. Eugene Black interview, July 24, 1984.
15. America, June 16,1956; London Times, May 24, 1956, May 30, 1956; NYT, May 23, 1956, June 3, 1956; Henry L. Roberts, Russia and America: Dangers and Prospects (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956). A paperback edition of this book was published in the fall of 1956 with a first print run of a hundred thousand. (See AH, McCloy: 1956.)
16. Kennett Love, Suez: The Twice Fought War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 319.
17. America, June 16, 1956.
18. NYT, Oct. 9, 1955.
19. Drew Pearson, “Washington-Merry-Go-Round,” July 27, 1956, July 11, 1956.
20. McCloy to Fulton Lewis, Jr., 8/3/56, DDE.
21. George Whitney to president, 3/9/56, DDE diary, 9/18/54, 10/10/55, 2/9/56, 3/13/56, 4/9/56, 5/25/55, DDE. Ike’s first choice for the vice-presidential spot was always Robert Anderson of Texas. See also Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower the Pre
sident: 1952–1969, pp. 319–26.
22. Kennett Love, Suez, pp. 297, 360. Not everyone in official Washington was taken by surprise. Frank Wisner, deputy director of the CIA, asked one of his subordinates a week before the crisis whether Nasser would nationalize the Canal if the United States reneged on its promise of aid for the High Dam. (See Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations [London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969], p. 24.)
23. If McCloy and Black seemed overly tolerant of Nasser’s concept of a “positive neutrality,” both the Dulles brothers were, by contrast, easily provoked by the Egyptian leader’s actions. At one point during the crisis that summer, Allen Dulles ran out of patience listening to an intelligence officer’s attempt to convey how Nasser saw the situation, and angrily threatened, “If that colonel of yours pushes us too far, we will break him in half.” (Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA [New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979], pp. 85,127.) Miles Copeland reports that Foster Dulles was so angered by Nasser’s nationalization of the Canal that he ordered the CIA to blow up a famous television and radio tower built by Nasser in 1954 with $3 million in CIA funds meant to bribe him. The explosives planted by the Agency, however, were found and defused by an Egyptian intelligence officer. (See Miles Copeland, The Real Spy World [London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974], p. 63.) Citing a retired CIA officer, John Marks says that the Agency sent three assassination teams to Egypt during this period with instructions to eliminate Nasser. Nothing happened. The Church Committee later confirmed that it had investigated this allegation but never came to a conclusion as to whether the assassination attempts actually took place. (See Powers, Man Who Kept Secrets, pp. 335–36.)
24. Jacques Georges-Picot, The Real Suez Crisis (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 55, 59, 101, 123–24, 133–36, 163.
25. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, p. 572.
26. Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., letter to author, Nov. 23, 1982.
27. NYT, Nov. 7, 1956; see also Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Nov. 10, 1956.