The efforts you made to assure the orderly transfer of government are largely a matter of public record, but I am personally aware of the fact that you went to far greater trouble to accomplish this than almost anyone else could have known.
On the personal side, I especially want to thank you for your thoughtfulness in ordering my son home from Korea for the Inauguration; and even more especially for not allowing either him or me to know that you had done so.32 h
President Truman’s conduct had been exemplary. Not only had he quietly ordered John back from Korea, but he had also destroyed the only remaining copy of General Marshall’s 1945 letter, which could have been so embarrassing to Eisenhower.i But the Trumans would never be invited to the White House during the Eisenhower years, and Truman and Ike did not meet again until General Marshall’s funeral in 1959. They did not bury the hatchet until the funeral of President Kennedy in 1963.
When Eisenhower returned to the White House after the inaugural parade—his first entrance into the Executive Mansion as president—he was presented with a teaching opportunity. Howell Crim, the chief usher, handed him a sealed envelope. “Never bring me a sealed envelope,” said Ike. “That’s what I have a staff for.”33 To Eisenhower, a sealed envelope was concrete proof the White House was badly organized. Letters to the president must be screened, and only those that were essential for him to read should be placed before him. A smoothly functioning staff system was long overdue. Ike was determined to keep routine matters out of the White House, saving his time to deal with those of major importance. Sherman Adams was installed as the first ever White House chief of staff, and Ike left it to Adams to do the rest. Eisenhower never spelled out Adams’s exact duties, but both men knew what was expected. “The president does the most important things,” Adams told a reporter for The New York Times. “I do the next most important things.”34
Governor Sherman Adams was a crusty paragon of New England frostiness. His frugality was legendary. Adams brought his lunch to the White House in a brown paper bag that had been packed by his wife, Rachel, and it was rumored that some of his suits dated back to his freshman year at Dartmouth thirty years before. He was equally parsimonious with language, and never used a sentence when a single word would do. A flinty silence was even better. Eisenhower liked Adams because he made decisions quickly and always assumed responsibility for them. As one biographer noted, rather than being a softer civilian version of Ike’s wartime chief of staff, Bedell Smith, who was famously blunt, decisive, and tactless, “Sherman Adams made Bedell Smith look like an honors graduate of charm school.”35
Eisenhower expected his cabinet officers to run their departments and not come to him with problems within their purview. They were the equivalent of his Army commanders. If First Army had a problem during the war, Courtney Hodges would have handled it. Third Army’s issues had been George Patton’s responsibility. Similarly, matters pertaining to the Treasury were for Humphrey to decide, Agriculture was Benson’s bailiwick, and Commerce belonged to Weeks. Attorney General Brownell enjoyed far greater latitude to set legal policy than he anticipated. Only when matters were of national importance, or when administration policy was unclear, did Eisenhower expect to be consulted. The exceptions were national security issues—State and Defense—where Ike took a direct interest. And the fact is that Dulles and Wilson required more guidance on policy matters than the other members of the cabinet.
Eisenhower met his cabinet regularly on Friday mornings. Ezra Taft Benson suggested the sessions be opened with a prayer. “The suggestion is made only because of my love for you, members of the Cabinet, and the people of this great Christian nation,” said Benson. “I know that without God’s help we cannot succeed. With His help we cannot fail.”36 Eisenhower asked Dulles to poll the cabinet, and it was agreed to have a prayer, but the prayer should be a silent one.37 One Friday morning Eisenhower overlooked the prayer and launched straight into a discussion of the first item on the agenda. Cabinet secretary Max Rabb slipped him a note to remind him of the omission. “Oh, goddamnit,” Eisenhower exclaimed, “we forgot the silent prayer.”38
Neither FDR nor Truman attached much importance to cabinet meetings and preferred to handle major issues in the Oval Office.j Eisenhower looked on the cabinet as his principal sounding board. General Jerry Persons, Ike’s congressional liaison, said the president enjoyed hitting “those fungoes out there just to see what would happen. He would direct questions to each person around the table, and all members were free to contribute their thoughts on any subject, regardless of their responsibilities.”39
Eisenhower expected the cabinet to present options and argue with one another about the superiority of one course of action or another—just as Bradley and Montgomery might have done. The one thing they were not permitted to do was raise matters that pertained solely to their own departments. Eisenhower thought that was something for each of them to decide individually.
Charles Wilson talked too much, Dulles pontificated, Durkin felt uncomfortable, and Weeks was back in the Stone Age, but Eisenhower appeared satisfied. “All of my early cabinet meetings have revealed the existence of a spirit of teamwork and friendship that augurs well for the future,” he confided to his diary in early February. “Everybody is working hard and doing it with a will.” Ike thought the White House staff was also rounding into shape. His problems were on Capitol Hill. “The Republicans have been so long in opposition to the executive that Republican senators are having a hard time getting through their heads that they now belong to a team that includes the White House.”40
Two weeks after the inauguration, Eisenhower heeded political advice and joined the Presbyterian church. Clare Boothe Luce in particular had pressed Ike to join. It was what the country expected, she said. On February 1, 1953, Ike and Mamie joined the congregation at the National Presbyterian Church at 1764 N Street in Washington. Eisenhower was baptized in a private ceremony beforehand. “We were scarcely home before the fact was being publicized, by the pastor [Dr. Edward Elson], to the hilt,” said Eisenhower. “I had been promised, by him, that there was to be no publicity. I feel like changing at once to another church of the same denomination. I shall if he breaks out again.”41
The cabinet was Eisenhower’s sounding board. The National Security Council (NSC) was his instrument of policy. Created by Congress under the National Security Act of 1947, the NSC was designed to fuse the nation’s security policies into an integrated whole. It was patterned after the British war cabinet, and to a very large extent arose out of the lack of coordination that contributed to Pearl Harbor. Its statutory members included the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the director of central intelligence, the director of defense mobilization, and the vice president. The president was chairman. At President Truman’s insistence when the act was before Congress, the NSC was made an advisory body only. Unlike the British war cabinet, it had no decision-making authority. Truman insisted that this rested with the president.
Eisenhower saw the NSC as his principal tool for governing. He expanded its regular membership to include the secretary of the Treasury, the director of the Bureau of the Budget, and the director of foreign aid. If trade issues were to be discussed, Weeks was invited; if military matters loomed, the service chiefs came; Brownell was often present for his legal contribution, as was any other senior official whose expertise might be relevant. Robert Cutler, the hardworking Boston banker who had been Ike’s deputy chief of staff during the campaign, became his special assistant for national security affairs. Unlike his successors who went to academia for their national security advisers, Eisenhower did not need foreign policy advice.k What he wanted was a staff secretary to organize the agenda, prepare the documentation, and record the results. Cutler fit the bill admirably. His credentials included wartime service on the staff of Henry L. Stimson, where he rose to the rank of brigadier general, and a literary flare unique among Boston bankers. He had been class poet of
the Harvard Class of 1922 and was the author of two novels.l Cutler was also blessed with a winning personality (George Marshall called him “a rose among cabbages”) and got along well with all of the NSC principals—whom he referred to as “the whales.”42
Under Truman, the NSC met sporadically, and until the Korean War broke out in 1950 the president rarely attended. Eisenhower scheduled meetings for every Thursday morning and presided personally. Agendas and background documents were distributed beforehand, CIA director Allen Dulles led off with a twenty-minute intelligence briefing, Cutler moved through the agenda briskly, and the meetings adjourned promptly at noon. During the first 115 weeks of the Eisenhower administration, the NSC met 115 times. Of the 343 council meetings between January 29, 1953, and January 12, 1961, Eisenhower presided at 319. Those he missed were because of illness or because he was out of town.43
As with the cabinet, Eisenhower presided actively. But unlike the cabinet the issues were more focused and Eisenhower preferred to allow the discussion to proceed until it reached a logical conclusion. Sometimes he announced his decision, often he did not. But the regularity of the meetings, combined with the precise agenda, assured that Eisenhower kept firm control, just as he might have done at staff meetings as supreme commander. “Eisenhower made all the vital decisions and firmly enforced them,” said Gordon Gray, who succeeded Cutler as the president’s national security assistant. “His reliance on the staff system stopped at the deciding line. His grasp of complex issues was profound, and his exposition of his own views was forceful and clear.” The mythical Eisenhower, who left decision making to subordinates, whose mind was “lazy” and who was not very bright, cannot be found in the minutes of the National Security Council, said Gray.44
Eisenhower often used NSC meetings to raise the consciousness of his more insular colleagues. When Charles Wilson objected to expanding trade with Eastern Europe, including the sale of low-grade military hardware (“I don’t like to sell firearms to the Indians,” said Wilson), Eisenhower rebuked him sharply. “The last thing you want to do,” said Eisenhower, “is to force all these peripheral countries—the Baltic States, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the rest of them—to depend on Moscow for the rest of their lives.”45 When Humphrey opposed foreign aid to India because he thought the nation was becoming socialist, Eisenhower reined him in. “George,” he said, “you don’t understand the Indian problem. Their situation isn’t like our situation. We can operate a free-enterprise economy, but it depends on a whole lot of underpinnings that the Indians simply don’t have. If I were the prime minister of India, I would have to resort to many measures which you would call socialistic. So it’s quite a mistaken idea that we should judge the Indian situation or the Indian needs or the Indian policies by criteria which may be relevant for us.”46
Late in February 1953, Eisenhower prepared for his first presidential visit to the Augusta National. On February 25, the day before leaving, he met the press. Questions pertaining to foreign affairs dominated the session. May Craig, then with the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, asked about the wartime agreements with the Soviet Union. Should FDR and Truman have foreseen that the Russians would violate them?
“I have no interest in going back and raking up the ashes of the dead past,” Eisenhower replied. “I think it was perfectly right in the past years to try to establish a method of friendship, of finding this thing that Latin scholars call a ‘modus vivendi.’ Of course we should have sought it.”
A follow-up question pertained to Stalin. Robert Clark of the International News Service noted that Stalin had recently said he would look favorably on a face-to-face meeting. “Would you be willing to go out of this country to meet with Stalin?”
“I will meet anybody, anywhere, where I thought there was the slightest chance of doing any good,” said Eisenhower. What he meant, he explained, was that defending freedom “is not just one nation’s job. I would go to any suitable spot, let’s say halfway between, and talk with anybody, and with the full knowledge of our allies and friends as to the kind of things I was talking about.”47
Eisenhower spent four days in Augusta and returned to the White House on March 2, 1953. On March 3, he met extensively with Prince Faisal al-Saud, the foreign minister and later king of Saudi Arabia, and promised to try to correct deteriorating relations between the United States and the Arab countries. He went to bed early that evening.48
At 2 a.m. on March 4, Allen Dulles called Robert Cutler at his home on H Street. “Uncle Joe has had a stroke and is either dead or dying,” said Dulles. “Do you think I should wake the Boss?”
“No, Allen, I wouldn’t,” Cutler replied. “He gets up at six. Why not wait until then. When you call him, why don’t you say we will be waiting in his office at seven-thirty?”
When Eisenhower walked into the Oval Office at seven-thirty, Cutler and Dulles were there, along with press secretary James Hagerty and presidential assistant C. D. Jackson, a skilled wordsmith and former publisher of Fortune. Ann Whitman, the president’s secretary, remembers that Ike was dressed in brown that morning. Brown suit, brown tie, brown shoes. Whenever Eisenhower appeared in brown, according to Whitman, they were in for a hard day.
“What do you think we can do about this?”asked Eisenhower.49
He was surprised to learn that neither State nor Defense had any contingency plans, but pleased that Cutler and Jackson had each drafted statements for him to issue. For the next two hours Ike worked with Cutler and Jackson to combine the two statements into one, and then went to a regularly scheduled meeting of the NSC.50 Shortly before noon, the president’s message was sent to the press: a carefully crafted, nonincendiary statement that in the Cold War context hit all the right notes. Stalin was neither praised nor vilified (in fact, he was not mentioned by name), but the sympathy of the American people was expressed in unmistakable terms.
At this moment in history when multitudes of Russians are anxiously concerned because of the illness of the Soviet ruler, the thoughts of America go out to all the people of the U.S.S.R.…
Regardless of the identity of government personalities, the prayer of us Americans continues to be that the Almighty will watch over the people of that vast country and bring them, in His wisdom, opportunity to live their lives in a world where all men and women and children dwell in peace and comradeship.51
It was a masterly document designed, as Eisenhower wished, to extend a friendly gesture—an overture for peace, without explicitly doing so. Cold War rhetoric was kept to a minimum, and the references to the Almighty were designed as much for American consumption as for the Soviets. As seen in the Kremlin, the message was unmistakable.m
On March 15, 1953, Georgy Malenkov, Stalin’s successor as prime minister, responded in a major speech to the Supreme Soviet. Speaking to thirteen hundred delegates in the great hall of the Kremlin, Malenkov announced: “At the present time there is no dispute or unresolved question that cannot be settled peacefully by mutual agreement of the interested countries. This applies to our relations with all states, including the United States of America.”52
Washington was caught off guard. “Ever since 1946 the experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies and what we should do about it,” Eisenhower told the cabinet. “Well, he’s dead. And you can turn the files of our government inside out looking for any plans laid. We have no plans.”53
Eisenhower stepped into the vacuum. When speechwriter Emmet Hughes entered the Oval Office shortly after Malenkov’s address to review some routine matters with the president, Ike said there was a danger of dropping the ball. “I am tired—and I think everyone is tired—of just plain indictments of the Soviet regime. What are we ready to do to improve the chances of peace? Malenkov isn’t going to be frightened with speeches. What are we trying to achieve?”54
Eisenhower got up from his desk and began to pace around the room. He wheeled abruptly to face Hughes. “Here is what I would like to say:
“The jet plane that
roars over your head costs three-quarter of a million dollars. That is more money than a man making ten thousand dollars every year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead us? At worst, to atomic warfare. At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil.”
Eisenhower told Hughes he wanted to see the resources of the world used for bread, clothes, homes, hospitals, and schools but not for guns. He did not want to make a speech that included the standard criticism of the Soviet Union. “The past speaks for itself. I am interested in the future. Both their government and ours now have new men in them. The slate is clean. Now let us begin talking to each other. And let us say what we’ve got to say so that every person on earth can understand it.”55
Hughes was swept away by Eisenhower’s intensity. But he interjected a note of caution. He told the president he had just spoken with Secretary Dulles about the possibility of peace in Korea. According to Hughes, Dulles said he would be sorry to see it until we gave the Chinese “one hell of a licking.”56
Eisenhower froze in place. He was visibly angry. “All right,” he told Hughes. “If Mr. Dulles and all his sophisticated advisers really mean that they can not talk peace seriously, then I am in the wrong pew. For if it’s war we should be talking about, I know the people who should give me advice on that—and they’re not in the State Department. Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace—or we forget the whole thing.”57
On March 27, Eisenhower informed the cabinet that he had begun work on a major foreign policy speech that he intended to give as his keynote address to the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors at the Statler Hotel in Washington on April 16. The Soviets, meanwhile, were continuing to send peace signals. Travel restrictions were relaxed in Berlin, the Russian press began to play up the wartime cooperation that had existed with Britain and the United States, and at the United Nations, the Soviet delegation agreed to support Dag Hammarskjöld to succeed Trygve Lie as secretary-general. In Korea, the long stalemate also showed signs of thaw. In late February, Mark Clark, having been so instructed by Washington, had offered to exchange sick and wounded prisoners with the Chinese and North Koreans in accordance with article 109 of the Geneva Convention.n On March 28, General Peng Teh-huai and Marshal Kim Il Sung, the respective Chinese and North Korea commanders, not only replied positively to Clark’s offer, but suggested that full-dress peace negotiations—which had been suspended for the last six months—be resumed at Panmunjom.58 Chinese foreign minister Chou En-lai, back in Beijing after attending Stalin’s funeral in Moscow, added his support on March 30. Chou went further and suggested the return of all prisoners who wished to be repatriated, clearly indicating that the Communists would no longer insist on forcible repatriation,59 which had been a major stumbling block to negotiations.
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 63