As for Khrushchev, Eisenhower had indicated that in addition to the public tour, he wanted to meet privately with the Soviet leader at Camp David. This threw the Kremlin into a tizzy. What and where was Camp David? Was it an internment facility? Perhaps a quarantine station? Was the Russian leadership to be held hostage? Frantic messages to and from the Soviet embassy in Washington soon clarified that Camp David was an American version of a Russian dacha that Roosevelt had built as a weekend retreat. An invitation there was a signal of honor. “We never told anyone at the time about not knowing what Camp David was,” Khrushchev confessed in his memoirs. “I can laugh about it now, but I’m a little bit ashamed. It shows how ignorant we were in some respects.”44
Khrushchev arrived in Washington on September 15, 1959, stayed thirteen days, and visited seven cities. The trip was a media circus, and Khrushchev made good copy, whether he was sparring with hecklers at banquets, hurling ears of corn at reporters on the Iowa farm of Roswell Garst, or giving his wristwatch to a worker on an assembly line in Pittsburgh. He was accompanied throughout by the urbane Henry Cabot Lodge, for whom Khrushchev developed a fondness. Lodge had a sense of humor, which Khrushchev appreciated. “He was a pleasant companion to pass the time with during the many hours we spent on planes and trains. We tried to avoid talking business if possible. There was no need to get ourselves all worked up talking politics.”45
Eisenhower and Khrushchev met for three days at Camp David. Ike also took the Soviet leader to the farm at Gettysburg and presented him with a young Angus bull that Khrushchev had admired. When Khrushchev returned to Moscow he reciprocated by sending Ike a small forest of birch trees to be planted on the farm. In the evenings they watched Westerns, which Khrushchev also enjoyed.c The talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev were substantive, covering the full range of issues, but ultimately unproductive. No solutions were forthcoming, but the fact that the meetings were held helped lower the temperature in East-West relations. In effect, Ike and Khrushchev agreed to disagree, and found they had more in common than met the eye.
1959 Herblock Cartoon, copyright by The Herb Block Foundation (illustration credit 27.2)
At one point Eisenhower asked Khrushchev about military expenditures. “Tell me, Mr. Khrushchev, how do you decide on funds for the military?” Before Khrushchev could answer, Ike volunteered to tell him how it was in the United States. “My military leaders come to me and say, ‘Mr. President, we need such and such a sum for such and such a program. If we don’t get the funds we need, we’ll fall behind the Soviet Union.’ So I invariably give in. That’s how they wring money out of me. Now tell me, how is it with you?”
“It’s just the same,” Khrushchev replied. “Some people from our military department come and say, ‘Comrade Khrushchev, look at this! The Americans are developing such and such a system. We could develop the same system but it would cost such and such.’ I tell them there’s no money. So they say, ‘If we don’t get the money we need and if there’s a war, then the enemy will have superiority over us.’ So we talk about it some more, I mull over their request and finally come to the conclusion that the military should be supported with whatever funds they need.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Eisenhower. “You know, we really should come to some sort of an agreement in order to stop this fruitless, really wasteful rivalry.”46
On Berlin, the meetings at Camp David cleared the air. Eisenhower and Khrushchev discussed the issue at length on September 26, with no one present except their interpreters. Eisenhower pointed out that Berlin was simply a part of the larger problem of a divided Germany and said the Soviet ultimatum had created a very difficult situation. Khrushchev replied that “the Soviet Union did not want to take any unilateral action and that he wanted to solve the German problem together with the United States in the friendliest manner possible.”47 As Eisenhower wrote later, Khrushchev “realized he had a bear by the tail on the Berlin issue and was relieved to have found a way out with reasonable dignity.”48
Khrushchev’s explicit withdrawal of his Berlin ultimatum at Camp David paved the way for the Paris summit. The issues on the agenda were Germany and disarmament. Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Macmillan, and de Gaulle agreed to meet in Paris on May 16, 1960. De Gaulle would be host. An agreement banning nuclear testing appeared in the offing, and the Berlin issue had moved to a back burner. Both Eisenhower and Khrushchev wanted to reduce military expenditures, and Macmillan and de Gaulle wanted to participate in the process. “Never in the Cold War did agreement seem closer,” wrote one historian of the period.49 Eisenhower planned to visit the Soviet Union after the summit, and an itinerary had been worked out with the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Mikhail Menshikov. For Eisenhower, as the end of his presidency approached, the world appeared far safer than eight years before. The Cold War was not over, but U.S.–Soviet relations had rarely been better. Domestically, America had never enjoyed greater prosperity. Ike’s final budget would be balanced; the national debt, which stood at 100 percent of the nation’s GDP when Eisenhower took office, had been reduced to 56 percent; unemployment had shrunk to little more than 5 percent; and desegregation in the South was proceeding “with all deliberate speed.” Everything seemed to be coming nicely to fruition as Ike contemplated another trip to Paris.
On May 1, 1960, Eisenhower’s proverbial luck ran out. Russian surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) finally succeeded in shooting down an American U-2 spy plane, this time 1,200 miles inside the Soviet Union near Sverdlovsk (formerly known as Yekaterinburg). And it happened on May Day—the most festive day on the Communist calendar. For the next two weeks the world was treated to a comedy of errors as Washington attempted to cover up, while the Soviets released the evidence piece by piece. Khrushchev and his colleagues may not have known where or what Camp David was, but they surely knew how to exploit an American miscue.
By 1960 it had become clear that the U-2 was fast becoming obsolete. Soviet missiles were improving in range and accuracy, and it was only a matter of time before a plane would be shot down. The United States had developed a highly secret satellite program (Corona) to replace the U-2, but it was not yet operational. And so in the early spring of 1960, the intelligence community requested permission to mount several additional U-2 flights to fill in “gaps” in the coverage. Eisenhower was reluctant. Khrushchev, the president said, had outlined Soviet missile capability at Camp David, and “every bit of information I have seen from the overflights corroborates what Khrushchev told me.” According to the notes of the White House meeting kept by General Goodpaster, “The President said that he has one tremendous asset in a Summit meeting [and] that is his reputation for honesty. If one of these aircraft were lost when we were engaged in apparently sincere deliberations, it could be put on display in Moscow and ruin the President’s effectiveness.”50
Despite his initial reluctance, Eisenhower granted the CIA permission to launch a flight on April 9, 1960. The flight took place without incident, and photographs revealed no new missile sites. The CIA asked for another flight. Eisenhower agreed, providing it took place within the next two weeks. Weather intervened and Allen Dulles asked the president for an extension. Again, Eisenhower agreed, this time for one more week. “After checking with the President,” wrote General Goodpaster, “I informed Mr. Bissell that one additional operation may be undertaken, provided it is carried out by May 1. No operation is to be carried out after May 1.”51
On the morning of May 1, the weather cleared and Francis Gary Powers, a veteran U-2 pilot who had flown missions over the Soviet Union for the past four years, took off from Peshawar, Pakistan, heading for Bodø, Norway. The flight would require nine hours and would cover 3,800 miles, passing over suspected Russian missile sites en route. Ironically, it was to have been the last flight of the U-2.
Moscow initially made no announcement of having shot down the plane. Late in the afternoon of May 1, Goodpaster informed Eisenhower that the U-2 was missing, but that triggered no alarm since
it was assumed that the plane would be destroyed on impact and the pilot would be dead. Additional reports that day indicated that Powers had spoken of an engine flameout, but that, too, caused no upset. Eisenhower thought it best to ignore the incident, hoping that Khrushchev might do the same in the interest of harmony at the summit. Those hopes were dashed on May 5 when Khrushchev, in a lengthy speech to the Supreme Soviet, announced they had shot down an American spy plane deep inside the Soviet Union. Khrushchev blamed “Pentagon militarists” for the act. Eisenhower was not mentioned nor was the fact that Francis Gary Powers was in Soviet custody. “I went out of my way not to accuse the President,” Khrushchev wrote later.52
In Washington the cover-up began. NASA issued a press release that one of its U-2 meteorological research planes had been missing since May 1, “when its pilot reported he was having oxygen difficulties over the Lake Van, Turkey area.” Presumably the plane had strayed off course and been shot down by the Soviets. The State Department issued a similar denial. “It is entirely possible that having failure in the oxygen equipment, which could result in the pilot losing consciousness, the plane continued on automatic pilot for a considerable distance and accidentally violated Soviet airspace.”53
Two days later Khrushchev sprang the trap. Speaking once again to the Supreme Soviet, the chairman announced that he not only had the wreckage of the plane, but the pilot and the film. “The pilot’s name is Francis Gary Powers. He is thirty years old and works for the CIA.” Khrushchev then displayed some of the photos showing Soviet air bases with fighters lined up on the runway. “The whole world knows that Allen Dulles is no weatherman,” said Khrushchev.54
In Washington, Eisenhower exploded. For years he had been assured by Allen Dulles that no U-2 pilot would fall into Soviet hands alive. Now Khrushchev had irrefutable proof that the United States had systematically violated Soviet airspace. Nevertheless, the cover-up continued. “As a result of the inquiry ordered by the President,” said a State Department press release, “it has been established that insofar as the authorities in Washington are concerned, there was no such authorization for any such flight as described by Mr. Khrushchev.”55 The story did not hold water. The press was skeptical and Eisenhower himself soon had second thoughts. After attending Sunday service in Gettysburg on May 8, the president telephoned Secretary Herter and instructed him to issue a new statement acknowledging that for the past four years U-2s had regularly been sent into the Soviet Union under orders from the president to obtain knowledge of the Soviet military-industrial complex.56 Milton Eisenhower, now president of Johns Hopkins, told his brother that he must not take the rap for the U-2. Ike disagreed. He said he would not blame subordinates for his decisions. It would be a “glaring and permanent injustice.” John suggested his father fire Allen Dulles. Again Ike said no. “I am not going to shift the blame to my underlings.”57 The following day, Monday, May 9, Eisenhower told a meeting of top officials in the Oval Office, “We will now just have to endure the storm,” meaning that he personally would be the one who did the enduring.58
Eisenhower’s decision to accept personal responsibility for the U-2 flights may have been the finest hour of his presidency. Rather than force Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell to walk the plank for reasons of state, Eisenhower acknowledged his own culpability. FDR would not have done so; Ronald Reagan was shielded from Iran-Contra, and nobody knows what Reagan’s successors might have done. John F. Kennedy announced his personal liability for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but except for dimming the luster of the New Frontier, little damage was done. In Eisenhower’s case the president, by taking direct responsibility, doomed the Paris summit, scuttled an impending nuclear test ban treaty, blew the chance to reduce defense expenditures, and forfeited the possibility of progress on the German question. “I had longed to give the United States and the world a lasting peace,” Eisenhower said later. “I was able only to contribute to a stalemate.”59
Ike was always his own harshest critic. In May 1960, his essential decency and personal sense of responsibility had carried the day. “He had this thing about honesty,” said Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon. “That was the military tradition.”60 d Cynics would argue that such sentiment is out of place in the Oval Office. But it was not out of place for Eisenhower. Ike knew the difference between right and wrong, and tried to apply that knowledge to politics and diplomacy. That is why the country always trusted him.
The Paris summit convened on May 16, 1960, in the high-ceilinged conference room of the Palais de l’Élysée, only a few rooms removed from de Gaulle’s own office. As host, the French president presided. After calling the conference to order, de Gaulle recognized Eisenhower to speak first. Since he was the only head of state (other than de Gaulle), it was strictly protocol that Ike should speak first. Khrushchev heatedly objected. All delegation chairmen were equal, he insisted, and he demanded to speak first. De Gaulle shot a glance toward Eisenhower, Ike shrugged, and de Gaulle recognized Khrushchev. For the next forty-five minutes Khrushchev lambasted the United States and the U-2 overflights as though haranguing a party rally in Red Square. At one point Ike passed a mordant note to Christian Herter: “I think I’m going to take up smoking again.”61 When Khrushchev, having lashed himself into an oratorical frenzy, pointed to the ceiling and shouted, “I have been overflown!” de Gaulle had had enough. “I too have been overflown,” the French president interrupted.
“By your American allies?” asked Khrushchev.
“No, by you,” de Gaulle replied drily. “That satellite you launched just before you left Moscow to impress us overflew the sky of France eighteen times without my permission. How do I know you do not have cameras aboard which are taking pictures of my country?”
“You don’t think I would do a thing like that?” asked Khrushchev.
“Well,” replied de Gaulle, “how did you take those pictures of the far side of the moon?”
“That one had cameras.”
“Ah,” said de Gaulle, “that one had cameras. Pray continue.”62
Khrushchev resumed reading his prepared text with increasing venom. He closed by announcing that unless Eisenhower personally apologized for the overflights, the conference could not continue. Almost as an afterthought, Khrushchev rescinded the invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union. “How can I invite as a dear guest the leader of a country which has committed an aggressive act against us?”63
Eisenhower replied briefly, pointing out that the U-2 flights involved no aggressive intent, were only gathering information to guard against surprise attacks, and in any event had been permanently discontinued.64 At that point the Soviet delegation rose and left the conference room. The other delegations looked at one another. De Gaulle said he would stay in touch with the Russians, and everyone got up to leave. De Gaulle walked over to Eisenhower and took him by the arm. “I do not know what Khrushchev is going to do, nor what is going to happen, but whatever he does, or whatever happens, I want you to know that I am with you to the end.”65
Eisenhower was deeply moved. As he walked down the stairs of the Palais de l’Élysée he turned to Colonel Vernon Walters, who had overheard de Gaulle’s remarks. “That de Gaulle is really quite a guy,” said Ike.66
Eisenhower played only a minor role in the 1960 election. He declined to endorse any candidate prior to the GOP convention, briefly tried to coax Robert Anderson, then Oveta Culp Hobby, into running, and accepted Nixon’s nomination as inevitable. Nixon had served Ike loyally for the past eight years, yet Eisenhower was still not ready to concede that his vice president was capable of taking command. If the alternative was Nelson Rockefeller, Ike preferred Nixon. But it was a Hobson’s choice. When Eisenhower addressed the Republican National Convention in Chicago on July 26, he devoted his entire speech to the accomplishments of the past eight years and never once mentioned Nixon, although Nixon by that point was the only candidate in the race.67 e
Nixon, for his part, wanted to prove that he could win in
his own right and was content to keep Ike in the background. Perhaps the president could put in a good word or two at his press conferences, but Nixon did not want Eisenhower barnstorming the country. The press conference strategy proved a disaster. Asked on August 10 whether he intended to give Nixon a greater voice in the administration “in view of his responsibilities as the nominee of the Republican Party,” Eisenhower replied that he alone would make the decisions. He would continue to consult Nixon, said Ike, but “I’m going to decide according to my judgment.” Charles Bartlett of the Chattanooga Daily Times asked if there were any differences between Nixon and the president on nuclear testing. “Well,” Eisenhower responded, “I can’t recall what he has ever said specifically about nuclear underground testing.”68
It got worse. At Ike’s next news conference, Sarah McClendon asked Eisenhower to “tell us some of the big decisions that Mr. Nixon has participated in … as Vice President?” The president was almost gruff in his reply. “No one participates in the decisions.… No one can make a decision except me.… I have all sorts of advisers, and one of the principal ones is Mr. Nixon.… When you talk about other people sharing a decision, how can they? No one can, because then who is going to be responsible?”
Charles Mohr of Time wanted to know more. Nixon’s experience had become an issue in the campaign, he said. The Republicans claimed that Nixon “has had a great deal of practice at being President.” In light of the president’s answer to Ms. McClendon, asked Mohr, “would it be fair to assume that what you mean is that he has been primarily an observer and not a participant in the executive branch of the Government?” Eisenhower, whose command of the English language was always impeccable, particularly at news conferences, and especially when he wanted to evade a question, tried to work his way out. “I said he was not part of the decision-making. That has to be in the mind and heart of one man.” But every leader has to consult, said Ike. And for the past eight years the vice president has participated in every consultative meeting that has been held “and has never hesitated to express his opinion.”
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 84