Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  On the Democratic side the outlook was even bleaker. This was not a partisan judgment. Eisenhower respected Johnson and Rayburn, as well as Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio, and a number of Democrats in the Senate. But none could win the nomination. It was the three Democratic front-runners that bothered Ike most. Adlai Stevenson, Averell Harriman, and Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver simply “did not have the competency to run the office of President.” The ill will between Eisenhower and Stevenson was palpable, Kefauver with his coonskin hat was a bad joke, and Harriman was nothing but a “Park Avenue Truman.” “I don’t want to run, but I may have to,” Eisenhower told James Hagerty in early December.47

  It was shortly after Ike’s conversation with Hagerty that Leonard Hall, who had succeeded Arthur Summerfield as chairman of the Republican party, visited Eisenhower in Gettysburg to discuss the nomination. “I chatted with him,” Hall recalled, “and he was really low—the way most men are after they have heart attacks.”

  Finally I said, “Chief, the Cabinet members have all been up here to see you, and when asked by the newspaper men whether they talked any politics with the president, they were able to say no. If I go out of here and say I haven’t talked politics with you, they’ll call me a damned liar.”

  “Len,” Eisenhower replied, “you go out and say what you think you should say.”

  That was the way he operated. Ike was a fellow who could delegate. He would give you tremendous leeway. He wanted you to take the initiative.

  So I went out and said to the press that the ticket was going to be Ike and Dick. George Allen told me later that he was with the president when my statement came over the ticker. He said Ike grinned and said, “Dammit, I didn’t tell Len to say that.” But that was the way Ike worked.48

  Clay met Eisenhower in Gettysburg the following day. Hall’s statement to the press was all he needed. Clay told Eisenhower that he would soon be meeting with various Republican leaders and that he intended to tell them that the president planned to run again, providing his health permitted. “I gave him the opportunity to call me off,” said Clay, “but he didn’t. So I set the meetings up.”49 First at the Links Club on East Sixty-second Street in New York, then at Attorney General Brownell’s home in Washington, Clay assembled the Eisenhower loyalists from 1952. Like a trusted deputy, he spread the word that Ike was running and brought the troops into line.

  Eisenhower still made no public statement. That, too, was typical. If he decided not to run, Clay and Hall could be disowned and no damage would be done. On the other hand, if he was running, it would be useful for them to prepare the way. In early February 1956, Eisenhower checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for what amounted to a final physical. Afterward, Dr. Paul Dudley White announced, “Medically the chances are that the President should be able to carry on an active life satisfactorily for another five to ten years.” The way was clear for Eisenhower to run. If he did, White said he would vote for him.50

  Eisenhower continued to keep his own counsel. From Walter Reed he went to George Humphrey’s Georgia plantation for two weeks of quail hunting, golf, and fishing. He pushed himself physically, played eighteen holes of golf on two occasions, and tromped through the woods like a veteran hunter. But he still made no announcement about his future plans. The word was out through Clay and Hall that Ike was running, but Eisenhower had not confirmed it.

  On February 25, 1956, the president returned to the White House. Three days later he called Clay in New York. “Please come down here for dinner tonight and spend the night with us,” said Eisenhower.

  “I knew that when he called up personally that something was involved,” Clay recalled. “So I said, ‘Of course, except we cannot spend the night.’ ” Clay and his wife, Marjorie, were expected in Houston, Texas, later that evening.

  So we went down to the White House, and we had dinner. And after dinner we went up to the family quarters. And he said he was going to make a decision that night as to whether he was going to run again. He said he had waited until his health was all right, and he was satisfied that there were no immediate health problems.

  He said, “I can’t get Mamie to express herself.”

  She said, “No, I certainly am not going to say one word. It is your decision. If you don’t do it and are unhappy because you didn’t do it, it’s got to be your unhappiness. If you do it and it breaks your health down, that has to be your decision too.”

  Finally, he said, “OK. I have to do it. I’ll run again. I’m going to run again.”

  Then we went downstairs and saw a movie. He didn’t call me down [to Washington] to help participate in his decision. He had already made his mind up. Because of my closeness to him and the part I had played in his first nomination, he wanted to give me the privilege of being there and knowing what he was going to do before he announced it.51

  The following day, February 29, 1956, President Eisenhower told a special news conference that he intended to run. “I have reached a decision,” he told the press. “If the Republican National Convention asks me to run, my answer will be positive, that is, affirmative.”

  “How many persons were in on your secret?” asked Edward Folliard of The Washington Post.

  “Well, since last evening there have probably been a half dozen,” Eisenhower replied.

  “How about before that, Mr. President?”

  “Well, there could have been no one because I didn’t know myself.”52

  Eisenhower was peppered at his news conference with questions about his running mate. Would Nixon be on the ticket? Eisenhower declined to answer. “I believe it is traditional that the Vice President is not nominated until after a presidential candidate is nominated; so I think that we will have to wait to see who the Republican Convention nominates [for president].”

  CHARLES VON FREMD (CBS): Mr. President, I just wonder if you could clarify that further. Should you be nominated by the convention, would you like to have the Vice President?

  THE PRESIDENT: I will say nothing more about it. I have said that my admiration and my respect for Vice President Nixon is unbounded. He has been for me a loyal and dedicated associate, and a successful one. I am very fond of him, but I am going to say no more about it.53

  Eisenhower’s reluctance to endorse Nixon was scarcely a vote of confidence. Earlier he had suggested to Nixon that he might be better off to accept a cabinet post (anything except secretary of state or attorney general), where he could acquire some administrative experience. “The subject came up at five or six of our private conversations,” Nixon recalled, “and I always gave the same answer: ‘If you believe your own candidacy and your Administration would be better served with me off the ticket, you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I want to do what is best for you.’ ”

  According to Nixon, Eisenhower never faced up to the issue. “He always answered somewhat obliquely saying, ‘No, I think we’ve got to do what’s best for you.’ ”54 Sherman Adams and James Hagerty urged Ike to dump Nixon—Adams believed the vice president would cost Eisenhower three or four percentage points—and so, too, did his friends in the Gang. But Eisenhower declined to ask Nixon to step down. Better than most perhaps, Eisenhower recognized that Nixon was his principal link to the Republican Old Guard, and he hesitated to sever that connection. And if it were a matter of retaining that tie, he much preferred Nixon as his go-between rather than William Knowland and the other GOP oligarchs on Capitol Hill.55

  Eisenhower was genuinely conflicted. He would not endorse Nixon, but he would not ask him to step down. The choice was Nixon’s. “He has his own way to make,” Ike told Jim Hagerty in March. “But there is nothing to be gained politically by ditching him.”56 On the other hand, Eisenhower doubted Nixon’s capacity to govern. “I’ve watched Dick a long time,” the president told former speechwriter Emmet Hughes, “and he just hasn’t grown. So I just haven’t honestly been able to believe that he is presidential timber.”57

  At his press confer
ence on April 25, 1956, Eisenhower was reminded that he had said Nixon must chart his own course. “Had he done this?” asked William Lawrence of The New York Times.

  “Well,” Eisenhower replied, “he hasn’t reported back in the terms in which I used the expression … no.”58

  That was Nixon’s opening. He asked for an appointment with the president the following day. “I would be honored to continue as Vice President under you,” he told Eisenhower. “The only reason I waited this long to tell you was that I didn’t want to do anything that would make you think I was trying to force my way onto the ticket if you didn’t want me.”59 Eisenhower said he was pleased. He called Hagerty and said, “Dick has just told me, he’ll stay on the ticket. Why don’t you take him out right now and let him tell the reporters himself. And you can tell them that I’m delighted with the news.”60

  * * *

  a Eisenhower insisted that the meeting not be “unduly prolonged.” A lengthy meeting, he wrote Eden, “will inevitably lead the public to expect concrete solutions to the specific problems that obviously trouble the world. A meeting of a very few days could logically be accepted by the people as an effort to ease tensions and to outline means and methods of attacking the tough problems we have to face. But a prolonged meeting would lead to expectations which cannot possibly be realized.” Eisenhower to Anthony Eden, May 31, 1955, 16 The Presidency 1720–21.

  b “To this day, the Russians are still trying to figure out how we did it,” wrote General Vernon Walters, who served as one of the translators for the American delegation. Vernon A. Walters, Silent Missions 289 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978).

  c In a 1965 interview, Eisenhower said, “We knew the Soviets wouldn’t accept it [“Open Skies”]. We were sure of that.” But there is little contemporary evidence to support Ike’s assertion. To the contrary, American actions at Geneva indicate they were exceedingly anxious for the Soviets to accept. Also see Eisenhower’s letter to General Gruenther, July 25, 1955, in which he extols the possibility of agreement with the Russians. For whatever reason, perhaps because of renewed tension in Berlin or the war in Vietnam, Eisenhower chose to back away from the “Open Skies” proposal. It is another example of Ike’s effort to recalibrate history, not unlike his rewriting of his wartime relationship with Kay Summersby. For Eisenhower’s 1965 comments, see Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dulles Oral History, Princeton University. The Gruenther letter is in 16 The Presidency 1790–91.

  d Bulganin replied on August 9, 1955. He agreed with Eisenhower that progress toward peace would be slow. “But the fact that we succeeded in clearing the ground for quests for agreement and in making a beginning toward sincere cooperation is very encouraging. There may be differences in ideological questions, but this must not interfere with our being good neighbors.” Bulganin to Eisenhower, August 9, 1955, 16 The Presidency 1795n6.

  e Robert Wood, the longtime head of Sears, Roebuck, was cochairman of For America, an activist isolationist organization dedicated to keeping the United States free of international commitments. Fred A. Hartley, Jr., was the coauthor of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Eisenhower’s classmates were retired generals James Van Fleet and George E. Stratemeyer, both of whom had joined For America. Senators George W. “Molly” Malone (R., Nev.) and Joseph McCarthy (R., Wis.) anchored the right wing of the GOP in the Senate, and Bertie McCormick was Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and with Wood a founder of For America.

  f Eisenhower’s relationship with Dr. Snyder was not unlike that of FDR’s with Admiral Ross McIntire, who was Roosevelt’s White House physician. Like Snyder, McIntire was a friend of the family and a poker-playing crony of the president. He was an ear, nose, and throat specialist and had been engaged originally because of FDR’s chronic respiratory problems. But he had no training in cardiology, and allowed Roosevelt’s hypertension to go for years without treatment. Like many physicians at the time, McIntire believed older people needed higher blood pressure to move their blood through narrowing arteries. In both cases. FDR and Eisenhower were poorly served by their doctor friends. Jean Edward Smith, FDR 602–6.

  g The only cover-up was Dr. Snyder’s subsequent attempt to conceal the fact that he had misdiagnosed the president. Most early biographers, as well as the Eisenhower family, accepted Dr. Snyder’s version of events: namely, that he recognized from the start that Ike had suffered a heart attack and treated him accordingly. Many heart specialists familiar with Eisenhower’s case were skeptical of Dr. Snyder’s statement, but the full record was not revealed until Professor Clarence G. Lasby of the University of Texas published Eisenhower’s Heart Attack in 1997. Professor Lasby provides convincing evidence that Dr. Snyder erred in his initial diagnosis, and details Snyder’s subsequent attempt to conceal the fact. See especially pages 57–112.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Suez

  Foster, you tell them, Goddamnit, that we’re going to apply sanctions, we’re going to the United Nations, we’re going to do everything that there is so we can stop this thing.

  —EISENHOWER TO JOHN FOSTER DULLES,

  October 29, 1956

  As the domestic caldron bubbled, the political situation in the Middle East deteriorated. The armistice that ended Israel’s victorious war in 1948 had not been followed by a peace treaty, and the new Egyptian regime, headed since 1954 by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, did nothing to halt the raids by Palestinian Arab guerrillas into Israel from the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. An Israeli ship, sent to test whether Egypt would allow Israel’s commercial vessels passage through the Suez Canal, had been seized by the Egyptians. Allen Dulles warned the National Security Council on March 8, 1956, that “Arab-Israeli hostilities could break out without further warning.”1

  In his diary that evening, Eisenhower lamented his failure to bring the two sides together. “Of course, there can be no change in our basic position, which is that we must be friends with both contestants in that region in order that we can bring them closer together. To take sides could do nothing but to destroy our influence in leading toward a peaceful settlement of one of the most explosive situations in the world today.”2 a With American support, Britain attempted to establish an alliance of Arab states, the “Baghdad Pact,” which was designed to impede Soviet penetration of the Middle East. But Nasser balked at joining the pact, which he saw as an effort to perpetuate Western colonialism. Instead, he sought to put Egypt in the forefront of the effort to create a global “third force” that would be independent of the two Cold War blocs.

  The Arab-Israeli dispute, which was complicated enough, was exacerbated by the rise of anticolonialism in the region, the decline of British and French power, the growing influence of the Soviet Union, and Western Europe’s need for oil—all of which conspired to make an intractable problem all the more intractable. In 1950, the United States, Britain, and France issued the Tripartite Declaration pledging to enforce the existing boundaries between Israel and its neighbors, and agreeing not to supply any state in the region with arms that might be used for offensive purposes.3 The declaration was hortatory and left the signatories considerable wiggle room. France discovered Israel to be a natural ally against Arab nationalist movements in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and soon undertook to provide a wide array of weaponry for the Israeli armed forces. Britain, for its part, was stung when Egyptian Army officers overthrew King Farouk in 1952, denounced the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, and ordered British forces out of the country. The governments of Churchill and Eden also saw Israel as an ally against the rising tide of Arab nationalism and quietly began to provide arms for the Israelis. Only the United States held fast to the strict letter of the declaration, and for the most part ignored the growing tension along Israel’s frontiers.

  On February 28, 1955, an Israeli commando raid into Gaza resulted in heavy Egyptian casualties, and was condemned unanimously by the UN Security Council. Egypt responded with a counterstrike, triggering a wave of raids and reprisals. Preside
nt Nasser had been assured by the United States and Great Britain that “everything would remain quiet in the region.”4 An American envoy was dispatched to the area and shuttled between Jerusalem and Cairo for two months, failing to calm tensions. With the frontier ablaze, Nasser appealed to the United States for weapons. Egypt was short of everything, said U.S. ambassador Henry Byroade. Her Air Force had only six serviceable planes, tank ammunition would last for only an hour of battle, 60 percent of her tanks were in need of major repairs, and her artillery was in a similar deplorable state.5 When Eisenhower saw Nasser’s request, he was astonished. “Why, this is peanuts,” he told Dulles.6 But no action was taken. The administration hesitated to stir up pro-Zionist sentiment in Congress, and officials at the State and the Defense departments dragged their feet by insisting that Egypt pay for the weapons in cash, contrary to the military aid the United States provided to most nations.7

  When the weapons negotiations with the United States broke down, Nasser turned to the Soviet Union. Washington officials, from Secretary of State Dulles down, believed Nasser was bluffing and that in any event the Russians had no surplus arms to give him. Even when Nasser told U.S. authorities that he preferred American weapons to those the Soviets would provide, Washington turned a deaf ear. When the truth finally dawned at the State Department that Nasser was indeed serious, Dulles dispatched Kermit Roosevelt to Cairo to dissuade him. Roosevelt, the CIA head in the Middle East who had masterminded the coup in Iran, was a personal friend of Nasser’s, but by then it was too late. The deal with the Soviets had been struck. Asked by Nasser how he could soften the blow, Roosevelt suggested half-humorously that he might call it a Czech deal. “Say you are dealing with Prague”—which Nasser did. On September 27, 1955, three days after Eisenhower suffered his heart attack in Denver, Nasser formally announced the acquisition of Soviet arms from Czechoslovakia. The equipment was estimated to be worth between $90 and $200 million, far more than the $27 million Nasser had requested from the United States. In Washington, Dulles conceded that it was “difficult to be critical” of Egypt for seeking the weapons, which “they sincerely need for defense.”8 When Israel asked the United States for arms to offset those Egypt would receive from the Soviet Union, Eisenhower declined, fearing it would only contribute to the arms race in the Middle East.9