ON NOVEMBER 25, after his lunch, Eisenhower went to his office, sat at his desk, began to sign some correspondence, and suddenly felt dizzy. Shaking off the feeling, he reached for another paper. He had difficulty picking it up, and when he did he discovered that the words seemed to run off the top of the page. Frustrated, bewildered, angry, he dropped his pen. Finding himself unable to pick it up, he got up from the chair, suffered another wave of dizziness, and had to grasp the back of the chair for stability.
He collapsed back into the chair and rang for Ann Whitman. When she came in, he tried to tell her what had happened, only to discover that he could not talk intelligibly. Words came out, but not the ones he wanted to say. Nor were they in any order that made sense.
Whitman was stunned to find the President in the Oval Office talking gibberish. She called for Andy Goodpaster. He came in from his adjacent office, assessed the situation, and took charge. Grasping Eisenhower’s arm, he helped him out of the chair and led him toward the door, saying, “Mr. President, I think we should get you to bed.” Eisenhower had no difficulty walking with Goodpaster’s support, nor did he feel any pain. When they got to his bedroom, Goodpaster helped him undress and lie down. Dr. Snyder was there in a matter of minutes. His patient was comfortable, and turned over to take a nap.1
Snyder called in two neurologists, while Goodpaster called John Eisenhower, and Whitman told Mamie what had happened. The initial medical diagnosis was a minor stroke. Snyder speculated that the President may have had a spasm in one of the small capillaries of his brain. Sherman Adams joined the group in the living room. He said he had called Nixon both to alert him and to ask the Vice-President to replace the President at a state dinner that evening.
To their collective horror, the door opened and there stood the President, in bathrobe and slippers, a big grin on his face, expecting to be congratulated on his quick recovery. As he sat down, Mamie gasped, “What are you doing up, Ike?” Softly and slowly, he replied, “Why shouldn’t I be up? I have a dinner to go to.” Snyder, Mamie, John, and Adams all protested simultaneously that he would do no such thing. “There’s nothing the matter with me!” he said. “I am perfectly all right.” Mamie explained to him that Nixon would take over at the dinner, and warned that if he went, she would not.
Again Eisenhower began to insist that he would go, and to discuss the activities scheduled for the rest of the week that he did not intend to miss. But his words were still jumbled and mispronounced. He was aware that he was making no sense, and his anger swelled up in him. Mamie turned to Adams in dismay. “We can’t let him go down there in this condition,” she said. They finally convinced him to go back to bed. As he left the room, he mumbled, “If I cannot attend to my duties, I am simply going to give up this job. Now that is all there is to it.”2
He slept comfortably, with John and Snyder sharing a night watch at his bedside. In the morning, the doctors found his pulse normal. He continued, however, to have difficulty with words. Pointing toward a watercolor on the wall, he tried to say its name, but could not. The harder he tried, the more frustrated he became. He thrashed about on the big double bed, beating the bedclothes with his fists. John, Snyder, and Mamie shouted any word that came to mind, until Mamie finally remembered the title. “The Smugglers,” she blurted out. Eisenhower shook his finger at her, demanding a repeat. But even after hearing it a second time, he could not say it. He sank back into the bed, exhausted. Later that day, he did some painting of his own. Adams and Nixon came to see him. Nixon said that the state dinner had gone well, and that he was planning to substitute for the President at a NATO conference, scheduled for mid-December.
The following day, November 27, a Wednesday, Eisenhower worked in his room on various papers; on Thanksgiving, he and Mamie attended church services, then drove to Gettysburg for the weekend.3 His speech seemed completely recovered, to everyone but himself. Always very clear and precise in his pronunciation of words, it bothered him thereafter, until the end of his life, that occasionally he would reverse syllables in a long word. In private conversations or public speeches, few if any listeners ever noticed.
But the President was, in the winter of 1957–1958, noticeably more irritable and short-tempered, and complained about his job more than he ever had. The Presidency had begun to take its toll. From the time of Suez onward, as Eisenhower had told Swede, his life had been a succession of crises. They did not bother him so much as did the swelling criticism of his Administration. Although few Democrats were ready to go after General Ike personally, many columnists were, especially on such specific issues as the Middle East crisis, Hungary, Little Rock, and, most of all, Sputnik. Critics were questioning his leadership abilities, and pointing to the inept attempt to put through a civil-rights bill with some meaning and the recession as examples of his failures. The charge that hurt the most was that he had “lost” the space race and had neglected the nation’s defenses. Implicit in all the criticism was the idea that he was too old, too tired, too sick, to run the country.
• •
Especially frustrating was the problem of a test ban. The American position, that the United States would cease testing nuclear weapons only when the Soviets simultaneously accepted a ban on further weapons production, had been consistently turned down by the Russians. Instead, Bulganin proposed, on December 10, 1957, a two- or three-year moratorium on nuclear tests. When Eisenhower went to the NATO meetings a week later, he discussed the test ban with the British and the French. They were unalterably opposed; Britain had tests scheduled, and the French were striving to perfect their own atomic bomb. The Western nations decided to stall by proposing disarmament talks on the Foreign Ministers’ level. The British and the French also agreed to accept American IRBMs on their soil when the missiles were operational.
Not until January 12, 1958, did the President respond to Bulganin’s call for a summit meeting and his offer of a moratorium. Eisenhower said he was willing to meet with Bulganin (and Khrushchev, who was the real power in Russia), but only after meetings at the Foreign Ministers’ level. He could not agree to a moratorium that was not linked to a cutoff in nuclear weapons’ production. Bulganin rejected the proposal.
Then, on March 27, Bulganin resigned, making Khrushchev the Russian dictator in name as well as in fact. On March 31, Khrushchev announced that Russia was unilaterally halting all further tests of nuclear weapons. The overwhelmingly positive worldwide response made Eisenhower and his advisers furious, because they felt it was so transparently insincere. The Russians had only just concluded their most extensive series of tests ever, and they knew that an American series (code name Hardtack) was just about to begin. Especially infuriating was the Russian statement that if the United States and the United Kingdom did not stop their tests, “the Soviet Union will, understandably, act freely in the question of testing atomic and hydrogen weapons.”4 It would be some months before the Soviets could prepare for a new series of tests in any case; Khrushchev’s shrewd maneuver gave him a built-in excuse to resume testing without disruption in the Russian nuclear program, and to put the blame on Hardtack.
On April 2, at a news conference, Eisenhower responded to Khrushchev’s move by dismissing it as “just a side issue.” He said, “I think it is a gimmick, and I don’t think it is to be taken seriously, and I believe anyone that studies this matter thoroughly will see that.” The editors of The Nation commented, “If all this is a ‘gimmick,’ one can only wish to God that our statesmen could concoct such gimmicks once in a while.”5
In April, a new group entered the debate. In the wake of the post-Sputnik demands that the President have a full-time scientific adviser, Eisenhower had created the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) and put Dr. James R. Killian, president of MIT, at its head. Killian and his people, especially physicists Hans Bethe and Isidor Rabi, undertook a thorough review of American policy. They concluded that an inspection system could be created that, although not absolutely foolproof, could detect any nuclear blast down to as low as two kilotons. Dulles then telephoned Eisenhower to recommend that the President write Khrushchev, accepting an earlier Soviet offer to undertake technical talks on a possible test-ban inspection system. Eisenhower said that was fine, then added, “Our position is that we want to look on testing as a symptom rather than a disease.”6
On April 26, Dulles met with Gruenther, Robert Lovett (Truman’s Secretary of Defense), Bedell Smith, and John J. McCloy. It was a carefully selected group—Eisenhower had great admiration for each member of it, and would be impressed by a recommendation from such men. Dulles gave them a full briefing, then got their assent to advise Eisenhower to take the initiative in seeking a test-ban agreement. With their backing, Dulles wrote a draft of a letter from Eisenhower to Khrushchev, repeating his earlier proposal for technical talks on an inspection system, and saying, “Studies of this kind are the necessary preliminaries to putting political decisions into effect.”7
In other words, Dulles wanted to take a decisive step and divorce production of future weapons from a nuclear test ban. That marked a fundamental change in the American disarmament position. To Strauss’ consternation, and Dulles’ delight, Eisenhower accepted the recommendation and on April 28 sent the letter to Khrushchev. Three days later, Eisenhower told Dulles he had made the historic shift in position because “unless we took some positive action we were in the future going to be in a position of ‘moral isolation’ as far as [the] rest of the world is concerned.”8
For the first time in the nuclear age, the superpowers were engaged in serious disarmament talks that offered some prospect of success. Ironically, the man most responsible for convincing Eisenhower to accept the inherent risk in agreeing to such talks, John Foster Dulles, was the man who got most of the blame for the long delay.
• •
By 1958, Dulles had softened considerably on the question of spending for national defense. During Eisenhower’s first term, the Secretary of State had been the leading proponent in the Cabinet for more funds for the Department of Defense (DOD). He had insisted that America had to maintain a clear lead over the Russians in order to have an effective foreign policy. But in the greatest crises of his career, Suez and Hungary in late 1956, Dulles had learned that American military strength was irrelevant in Eastern Europe, where he had hoped for so much, and equally irrelevant in the Middle East, where American economic pressure, not military force, had compelled the French, British, and Israelis to withdraw. After those experiences, and with George Humphrey out of the Cabinet, Dulles became the leading proponent of less spending by DOD.
Not that Eisenhower had lost his concern over defense spending. In the wake of the post-Sputnik hysteria, the President had stood firm against emergency appropriations and crash programs. When on January 28 the Republican leaders told him that the demand for more B-52s was “irresistible,” he complained that “we do things in defense that are just so damn costly,” and pointed out that he could not conceive of any Russian attack that was so successful “that there wouldn’t be enough bombers escaping to go do their job. If six hundred won’t do it,” Eisenhower continued, “certainly seven hundred won’t.”9
At an April 25 NSC meeting, Eisenhower continued to complain about the exorbitant cost of defense. He said that every time there was a test firing of a Titan missile, “we are shooting away $15 million.” At that price, “he hoped there would be no misses and no near-misses!” After the DOD people gave a spirited defense of their program, and justified its costs, Eisenhower commented that “we are now beginning to think of aircraft as becoming obsolescent, and so it is also with first-generation ballistic missiles.” He thought it a mistake to “go ahead full steam on production,” and predicted that the B-52s would remain usable long after the early missiles were obsolete. To attempt to mass-produce both more bombers and new missiles “will create unheard-of inflation in the United States.”
Dulles then entered the discussion. To everyone’s surprise, he thought even the President was going too far in defense spending. Dulles raised fundamental points about the arms race. He reminded Eisenhower that the President had often quoted to the NSC George Washington’s words on “the desirability that the United States possess a respectable military posture.” In his view, Dulles said, “The United States should not attempt to be the greatest military power in the world, although most discussions in the NSC seemed to suggest that we should have the most and best of everything.” He wondered if “there was no group in the government which ever thought of the right kind of ceiling on our military capabilities?” Dulles suggested that a “respectable military posture,” not overwhelming superiority, was the proper goal. “In the field of military capabilities,” Dulles said, “enough is enough. If we didn’t realize this fact, the time would come when all our national production would be centered on our military establishment.” He wanted the Russians to “respect” the American military, not be frightened to death by it.
Eisenhower was startled. Since Taft’s death, he almost never had to defend his Administration from charges that it was spending too much on defense; it was usually the other way around. And he had not anticipated that Dulles, of all people, would advocate spending less, not more. He therefore replied to Dulles’ basic critique that saving money was, of course, “one of the great preoccupations of the JCS.” Dulles interrupted to say “that he was not at all sure that this was so.” He recognized that it was the business of the JCS “to recommend military capabilities which would provide the utmost national security. He did not blame them for this. It was right and it was their job.” But there was another side to the problem, and he complained that it never came out in NSC discussions.10
Allen Dulles and the CIA provided some support for the Secretary of State’s position. The CIA was, at this time, a source of discomfort to the President. The Russians were protesting vigorously against continuing U-2 flights. On March 7, Eisenhower told Goodpaster that he should inform the CIA that the President had ordered the flights “discontinued, effective at once.”11 A week later, Cutler brought in the CIA’s latest “Estimate of the World Situation,” pronouncing it “a very superior piece of work.” Eisenhower did not agree. He told Cutler that it “could have been written by a high-school student.”12
But in June, the CIA brought in its latest estimates on Soviet bomber and missile production, and although the report admitted that the Agency had previously grossly exaggerated the scope of the Soviet effort, Eisenhower was pleased with the new conclusions, as the report indicated there was not so much to worry about after all. For example, in August of 1956 the CIA had estimated that by mid-1958 the Russians would have 470 Bison and Bear bombers and 100 ICBMs. But in June of 1958, the estimate was that the Soviets actually had 135 bombers and no operational ICBMs. Eisenhower commented that “the Soviets have done much better than have we in this matter. They stopped their Bison and Bear production, but we have kept on going, on the basis of incorrect estimates and at a tremendous expense in a mistaken effort to be 100 percent secure.” Secretary Dulles heartily concurred.13
With such strong backing from the CIA and the State Department, Eisenhower was able to hold off the political demands for more military spending. At a Republican leaders’ meeting on June 24, he declared flatly that he did not want any nuclear carriers, because “they would be useless in a big war” and were not needed in a little one. As for more missiles and B-52s, the President said he “just didn’t know how many times you could kill the same man!” Senator Leverett Saltonstall said the country needed more Army reserves, more National Guard, and more Marines. “The President wanted to know why.” He said he had “great admiration” for the Marines, but pointed out that “he had made the two largest amphibious landings in history and there hadn’t been a Marine in them. To hear people talk about the Marines, you couldn’t understand how those two great landings were ever accomplished!” 14
• •
No matter how often the President assured the country that America was well ahead in nuclear delivery systems, few people would believe him until the nation had put a satellite into orbit. In December 1957, amid extensive publicity, the United States had tried with a Vanguard rocket, but it had caught fire, fallen back to earth two seconds after takeoff, and was totally destroyed. Such an embarrassment might prove as costly to the budget as to American pride. Knowland, on January 7, warned Eisenhower that if the United States did not get a satellite into orbit soon, the demands on the budget were going to go “hog-wild.”15
Nelson Rockefeller, running for governor of New York, was one of those who thought there was no limit to the amounts of money available for every conceivable project including flying to the moon. On January 16, he told the President that if the United States used nuclear explosions for propulsion, it could launch a satellite that could reach the moon and return, and predicted that it would be “the most notable accomplishment of our time.” Eisenhower was dubious.16 On February 4, he told Republican leaders that “in the present situation, he would rather have a good Redstone [IRBM] than be able to hit the moon, for we didn’t have any enemies on the moon!”17 But the idea of flying to the moon was too exciting to pass up. On February 25, at a meeting in the Oval Office, Killian and Deputy Defense Secretary Donald Quarles proposed a nuclear aircraft, and expenditures of $1.5 billion over the next few years in order to send a nuclear-powered rocket to the moon.
Eisenhower was not convinced. He regarded such talk as Buck Rogers fantasy, unrelated to reality. On March 6, he announced that he was rejecting any proposal to build atomic-powered airplanes, holding that such a prestige effort was a waste of scarce resources and talent. Scientists were critical. Eisenhower ignored them.
On January 31, the United States had put its first satellite into orbit, but it was almost as much of an embarrassment as Vanguard, because the satellite, named Explorer I, weighed only thirty-one pounds. In March, the Navy finally got a Vanguard rocket to work, but the satellite it put into orbit weighed only three pounds. The embarrassment deepened in May when the Russians put Sputnik II into space—it weighed three thousand pounds.
Eisenhower’s basic approach to missiles and satellites had been to let each service develop its own program and hope that one of them would score a breakthrough. The result had been failure. The generals and admirals squabbled with one another, made slighting remarks about their fellow services’ efforts, and ignored the Secretary of Defense. In January 1958, Eisenhower proposed a reorganization of the Pentagon, to give more power to the Secretary and to keep the service Chiefs away from congressional committees (where they always said that the Eisenhower Administration was not giving them enough funds to carry out their missions). But Congress was extremely reluctant to give up its power to appropriate separately for the services, and some of Eisenhower’s critics charged that he was trying to create a Prussian General Staff. Others pointed out that Eisenhower was asking for centralization at the top, but ignoring the real problem, which was waste and duplication in the space program; they wanted him to put all space activities into one super agency, outside the Department of Defense.
Eisenhower was opposed to the creation of a separate Department of Space. He feared it would put its priority on satellites, while he wanted to keep the priority on missiles. He regretted not putting all space activities into the office of the Secretary of Defense in the first instance, and he wanted nothing to do with any moon shots, or other prestige operations, because he did not want to “put talent etc. into crash programs outside the Defense establishment.” 18
But the President could not hold his ground in opposition to nearly every Democrat, most Republicans, and a majority of columnists and scientists. On April 2, he retreated. He asked Congress to establish a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The bill gave NASA control of all space activities “except those that the President determined were primarily associated with national defense.” At a press conference two weeks later, James Reston said he had “often wondered why” it had taken the President five years to get around to establishing NASA.
“I think the answer to that is I have had plenty of troubles over the five years,” Eisenhower snapped back. He then became completely incomprehensible. Even after the editors of his transcripts had smoothed out his reply, it read: “. . . it did not seem that that was a big factor that we should advance in an argument that, to my mind, has become very, very important.”19 But jumbled syntax or not, and Eisenhower’s misgivings notwithstanding, the United States had a civilian space agency.
• •
Sherman Adams, meanwhile, was in deep trouble. No one, except Eisenhower himself, had ever liked him very much. Adams’ abruptness and absence of emotion were principal reasons for his vast unpopularity. The man just seemed to have no human feelings at all. Once Eisenhower had painted a portrait of Adams, taken from a color photo. The President worked on it many hours. When he presented it, Adams’ only remark was “Mr. President, thank you, but I think you flattered me.” He then turned on his heel and walked out.20
Foolish stories, wildly exaggerated, about Adams’ supposed immense influence with the President were a standard feature of Washington gossip and newspaper columns. The truth was that Adams had almost no influence on the President’s policies—he was the gatekeeper, the schedule maker, the man who smoothed things over, but never was he involved in making decisions. Nevertheless, every man who had had a request turned down by the White House blamed Adams; every man whom Eisenhower did not want to see in the Oval Office blamed Adams for his failure to gain admission; every man who objected to a specific Eisenhower decision blamed Adams. Old Guard Republicans hated the man, whom they blamed for Eisenhower’s refusal to adopt their pet projects. The Democrats hated him because he was a Republican, and because in January 1958 he had delivered a blistering attack on the Democratic Party, blaming it for Pearl Harbor and the loss of the space race.
The Democrats controlled Congress, and thus the committees and investigations. Like the Republicans from 1953 to 1955, they wanted to use that power to expose their political enemies. In early June 1958, a subcommittee of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee charged that Adams had allowed a New England industrialist named Bernard Goldfine to pay some of his hotel bills in Boston, and that in return Adams had engaged in influence peddling for Goldfine, who was having tax and regulatory problems with the SEC.
On June 17, Adams made his appearance before the committee. He admitted to a lack of prudence in his dealings with Goldfine, but insisted that the only thing he had done for the man was to place one phone call to the SEC, asking it to expedite its hearings in Goldfine’s case. The following day, Eisenhower opened a news conference with a prepared statement. He issued a ringing defense of Adams. No one, the President said, could doubt Adams’ “personal integrity and honesty.” As for himself, Eisenhower said, “I personally like Governor Adams. I admire his abilities. I respect him because of his personal and official integrity. I need him.”21 But the Democrats, smelling blood, were not deterred. The investigation continued, more Goldfine gifts were uncovered, and the Old Guard Republicans, seeing their opportunity, began demanding Adams’ resignation (Barry Goldwater and Bill Knowland were the first to do so).
On June 23, Eisenhower expressed his feelings about the uproar to Paul Hoffman. “Nothing that has occurred has had a more depressive effect on my normal buoyancy and optimism than has the virulent, sustained, demagogic attacks made upon Adams,” he said. Eisenhower admitted that Adams had been “less than alert” in his dealing with Goldfine, but “the fact remains that he is not only honest, effective, and dedicated, but in most cases, his attackers know this to be true.” At the least, Eisenhower said, he would have hoped the Republicans would not add to the clamor. “I grow to despise political expediency more every day.”22
Nevertheless, Eisenhower could not completely ignore what was becoming an almost unanimous Republican demand that Adams resign. In July, the President sent Nixon to talk to Adams about the situation, emphasizing that he felt such deep loyalty to Adams “that he did not want to even discuss the possibility of a resignation.” But he did want Nixon to point out to Adams what a liability he had become.23 In his talk later that morning with Adams, Nixon put the stress on the upcoming congressional elections. He warned Adams that if the Republicans did badly (which was widely anticipated), they would inevitably, if unfairly, blame Adams. But Adams refused to resign. He told Nixon that only Eisenhower could decide what the proper course of action should be. Meanwhile the investigation went on. Goldfine appeared before the committee and made an awful impression. The Republican Party was distraught, Eisenhower hardly less so.
• •
In January of 1958, Nasser had announced that Egypt and Syria were uniting into a new nation, the United Arab Republic (UAR). The UAR then began propaganda broadcasts over the radio to appeal to pan-Arab sentiment in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. In response, the feudal monarchies of Jordan and Iraq formed their own federation, the Arab Union.
By that time, too, a situation had developed that Eisenhower had said he never wanted to see take place—there was an active arms race in the Middle East, with the United States supplying Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and (to a slight extent) Lebanon with military equipment, while the Russians supplied Syria and Egypt, and the French sold arms to Israel. As the Middle East became an armed camp, Eisenhower’s worries increased. Although for public relations purposes he said his concern was with internal Communism in the Arab countries, he had no evidence to support such a charge, and solid evidence against it, beginning with the fact that the Communist Party was outlawed in Egypt.
What Eisenhower really feared was radical Arab nationalism. Nasser was almost openly appealing to the Arab people of the feudal states of Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia to revolt against their monarchs and join the UAR. If he succeeded, and continued to rely on the Soviets for arms and money, Khrushchev might possibly get a stranglehold on the Western world’s basic energy source, and Israel could be crushed. Under those circumstances, Eisenhower could only conclude that America’s vital interests were at stake. He therefore began searching for a way to demonstrate, unequivocally, America’s readiness and capability for action, and its determination to use force to prevent the domination of the area by anti-Western pan-Arab nationalism.
On July 14, pro-Nasser forces in Iraq pulled off a coup in Baghdad, overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy and assassinating the royal family. Although there was no direct evidence linking Nasser to the coup, Radio Cairo was urging regicide throughout the feudal Arab states. Hussein was the target of plots in Jordan; Saud was worried and demanding that the United States send troops to the Middle East, else he would be forced “go along” with the UAR. In Lebanon, Allen Dulles reported, President Chamoun had requested British and American intervention. The entire Middle East seemed on the verge of falling into the hands of anti-Western pan-Arabs controlled by Nasser.
This was a major crisis. To deal with it, Eisenhower called the Dulles brothers, Nixon, Anderson, Quarles, Twining, Cutler, and Goodpaster into the Oval Office. Cutler recalled that the President “sat sprawled back in the chair behind his desk in a comfortable position, the most relaxed man in the room. . . .” Cutler had the feeling that Eisenhower “knew exactly what he meant to do.”24
He did indeed; as Eisenhower put it in his memoirs, “This was one meeting in which my mind was practically made up . . . even before we met. The time was rapidly approaching, I believed, when we had to move into the Middle East, and specifically into Lebanon, to stop the trend toward chaos.”25
Eisenhower turned to Twining to discuss the readiness of the Sixth Fleet and the Marines in the eastern Mediterranean. Secretary Dulles asked, almost plaintively, “Would you wish to hear my political appreciation?” Obviously embarrassed, Eisenhower replied: “Go ahead, Foster, . . . please.” Dulles said the Russians would be content with making noise, but he warned that “if the United States went into Lebanon we could expect a very bad reaction from most Arab countries.” He feared for the pipelines and the canal. But he assured Eisenhower that from a legal viewpoint, an American landing in Lebanon was far different from that of the British-French attack on Suez, because Chamoun had invited American troops into his country. He also warned, however, that few people would make the distinction.
Eisenhower knew all that already. Cutler noticed that the President, “calm, easy, and objective . . . was dealing with something which he thoroughly understood. His unruffled confidence was apparent to all.” He told Dulles to have Lodge request an emergency meeting of the Security Council for the following morning; he told Jerry Persons to assemble the legislative leaders that afternoon; he told Twining to start the Sixth Fleet and the Marines toward Lebanon.26
Intervention proved to be a difficult proposition to sell to Congress. The legislative leaders were not at all enthusiastic. Some argued that intervention would undo America’s good reputation; Sam Rayburn feared that America was getting into a civil war; Senator Fulbright doubted seriously that this crisis was Communist-inspired. Only three men supported action. But Eisenhower had not called the congressmen together to elicit support, or for consultation—he had called them in to inform them of what he intended to do. At the conclusion of the meeting, he met with the Dulles brothers, Twining, Quarles, Hagerty, and Goodpaster to “fix firmly upon specific action steps.” Eisenhower told Twining to send the Marines ashore at 3 P.M. Lebanon time, which was 9 A.M., July 15, Washington time. No one, not even Chamoun, should be given advance notice, because the President did not want to give the rebels in Lebanon an opportunity to prepare resistance. Eisenhower instructed Foster Dulles to have Lodge tell the Security Council that the United States sought only to stabilize the situation until the U.N. could act.27
Eisenhower then called Macmillan. The Prime Minister had also received Chamoun’s call for help, as well as one from Hussein of Jordan—“the two little chaps,” Macmillan called them. Eisenhower informed Macmillan that American Marines were on their way to Lebanon. Macmillan laughed and said, “You are doing a Suez on me.” Eisenhower laughed at his end. Macmillan wanted to act jointly; Eisenhower insisted on a unilateral American intervention in Lebanon, and asked Macmillan to be prepared to move into Jordan with British paratroopers. The President did not want to give the impression that the two countries were acting in collusion (although obviously they were), so he promised full logistical support for the British in Jordan, but refused to include American armed forces in that movement. He also assured Macmillan that he would not abandon his ally.28
• •
Thus did Eisenhower unleash the American military for the only time in his Presidency. A quarter of a century later, his motives still seemed unclear. Lebanon was under no real threat; Chamoun had already announced that he would not seek a second term; evidence of any Russian, or Egyptian, involvement in Lebanon or in the coup in Iraq was lacking; there were no vital American interests in Lebanon itself. Eisenhower’s decision to intervene, in addition, contrasted sharply with his response to the various crises in the Far East from 1953 through 1955. Then he had been cautious and prudent, far more so than his professional and political advisers. Now he was much more eager to intervene than were the politicians or the State Department people; indeed he had been eager to go into Lebanon for more than a year, and was just waiting for a proper excuse. Why was he so much more aggressive in the Middle East than in the Far East?
For one reason, because the chances of a clash between the superpowers were so much less in Lebanon, and the potential for indigenous resistance was far less in Lebanon than in Indochina or on the Chinese coast. Further, by 1958 one of the Democratic charges against Eisenhower had become his defense policy, with its emphasis on big planes and big bombs. Maxwell Taylor, as Army Chief of Staff, had joined the Democrats in this criticism, which had become widespread, and claimed that for America it was all or nothing—the country had no capability of making a flexible response appropriate to the occasion. By intervening in Lebanon, Eisenhower proved that was not true. Within two weeks, he had the equivalent of a full division in the country, equipped with Honest John rocket batteries that had atomic weapons, with another two divisions alerted on a few hours’ flight from Germany. Lebanon, in short, was a show of force—and a most impressive one.
Against whom was it directed? Not the Soviets, who already knew, roughly, what American capability was. Not the Lebanese, virtually unarmed. The real target was Nasser. As Eisenhower later summed it up, he wanted to bring about a change in Nasser’s attitude. Nasser, according to the President, “seemed to believe that the United States government was scarcely able, by reason of the nation’s democratic system, to use our recognized strength to protect our vital interest.” Eisenhower wanted to impress Nasser, and to show him that he could not count on the Soviets, in order to give him “food for thought.” Eisenhower was also anxious to demonstrate to King Saud that the United States could be counted on to support its friends. (The President had told the legislative leaders that Saud had made it clear that “if we do not come in we are finished in the Middle East.”) Most of all, Eisenhower’s gunboat diplomacy in the Middle East was based on his perception of the importance of the area to the United States and its allies. In his judgment, the Middle East was more vital to the interests of the United States than the Far East.29
The Marines landed without incident, to find a country going about its business. Having made the commitment, Eisenhower downplayed its significance. In a special message to Congress, in Cabot Lodge’s announcement to the Security Council, and in his own nationwide radio and television address that evening of July 15, Eisenhower expressed the hope that the U.N. could quickly come into Lebanon and “permit the early withdrawal of United States forces.” He used the words “stationed in” Lebanon rather than “invading.” American forces would secure the airfield and the capital, but would otherwise not operate in Lebanon.
Two days later, on July 17, the British sent twenty-two hundred paratroopers to Jordan to bolster King Hussein’s shaky regime. Macmillan still wanted direct American participation; Eisenhower again refused. By early August the United States began to withdraw from Lebanon. The Russians, as Eisenhower had predicted, limited their response to diplomatic maneuvers (Krushchev was calling frantically for a summit meeting to deal with Lebanon, while denouncing American aggression). In less than four months, the crisis was over; by October 25, the last American troops were withdrawn. Eisenhower had accomplished his basic objectives without risking general war (Nasser had flown to Moscow in July, only to find that the Soviets had no interest in challenging the United States in the Middle East). The whole affair, Eisenhower noted in his memoirs, brought about “a definite change in Nasser’s attitude toward the United States.”30
• •
Despite the impressive demonstration of American strength in Lebanon, the Democrats continued to charge that Ike was neglecting the nation’s defenses. Senator Symington took the lead. In public, he said that the President had left the country vulnerable to a Soviet attack. Ike called him into the Oval Office for a meeting and carefully explained to him that the CIA had been overestimating Soviet development and capability; in fact, America had a significant lead in all categories of strategic weapons. In a grand understatement recorded by Goodpaster, “the President said he thought it would be out of character for him to be indifferent to valid assessments of Soviet strength.” Symington was not convinced.31
Ike was even having trouble with his own administration. Neither John McCone, Strauss’ successor as head of the AEC, nor Quarles, nor Neil McElroy were convinced that Eisenhower’s desire for a test ban was good for the country. They wanted more tests. In late July, they proposed to the President a new series designed to test the ABM. The AEC and DOD proposed conducting the tests from Eglin Airfield, on the Florida Gulf Coast, firing out into the Gulf. Secretary Dulles was appalled; he said it would do great damage to relations with both Cuba and Mexico. (No one at the meeting raised the question of what the American residents of the Gulf Coast might think.) On the basis of Dulles’ advice, Eisenhower ordered the series canceled.
In Geneva, meanwhile, the technical experts from Russia and the United States continued their deliberations in an attempt to agree on an inspection system that would justify a test ban. On August 4, Killian reported that they were making progress. Eisenhower told Killian that “if full technical agreement is reached, the weight of argument for doing so [ceasing the tests] would be very great.” Both Twining and McCone strongly protested, but Eisenhower insisted.
On August 21, the Geneva experts adopted their final report. It concluded that “it was technically feasible” to create “a workable and effective control system to detect violations of an agreement on the worldwide suspension of nuclear weapons’ tests.” There was some disagreement among the experts on the number of control posts needed, and on the ability to detect small underground blasts, but that could not obscure the fact that for the first time in the nuclear age, Soviets and Americans had reached an agreement on atomic matters. Eisenhower told the State Department to begin test-ban negotiations with the Soviet Union. On August 22, Eisenhower issued a public statement, offering to enter into test-ban negotiations with the Russians on October 31.32
Five days later, before Khrushchev had replied to Eisenhower’s proposal, McCone met with Eisenhower to ask for “one more test.” He said he needed a decision “immediately.” Eisenhower “expressed some irritation, saying that he had announced the tests’ suspension and now ‘they’ wanted to have another big test.” But McCone persisted, and finally got a weary President to agree; Eisenhower said “he supposed that AEC might as well go ahead.” Part of the reason was undoubtedly the roar of protest that had greeted his announcement, from such people as Teller, Strauss, Hanson Baldwin, and Henry Kissinger. Another factor may have been Macmillan’s actions; on August 22, the day of the announcement, the British began their latest series of tests with an explosion at Christmas Island.33
On August 29, Khrushchev indicated his willingness to enter into negotiations at the end of October; that same day, the AEC began a new series, officially named Hardtack II but called Operation Deadline by the press. Hardtack II set off nineteen separate explosions, most of them in the low-kiloton range, and including one of a nuclear bazooka shell designed to be fired by two men at a range of less than two miles. The Soviets also participated in this orgy of last-minute testing, starting their own series on September 30 and setting off fourteen weapons, most in the megaton range, and in the process releasing vast quantities of radioactive material. In 1958, the year that saw the first respite in testing since 1945, the three nuclear powers set off more bombs than in any other year (the Soviets set off more in October 1958, alone, than they had in all of 1957). The final total was eighty-one blasts. Radioactivity levels were at their peak. But at least there was, for the first time, some genuine hope that it all might soon end.
• •
Hopelessness, meanwhile, was the dominant mood in the Republican Party as the off-year elections came closer. Eisenhower’s veto of a farm bill was one reason, and the relatively lackluster candidates the party was offering another. Little Rock and Sputnik added to Republican woes. The Democrats, anxious to increase their lead in Congress and thus lay a base for the 1960 presidential election, were conducting a vigorous campaign, one in which they were able to reverse the roles of the 1952 campaign—they were on the offensive, while the Republicans were thrown back on the defensive. Under the circumstances, a Democratic sweep seemed certain.
Almost every Republican wanted a scapegoat. Most put the blame on Sherman Adams. In early September the demands for his resignation became irresistible. Still, Eisenhower hated to let Adams go. Both as general and as President, Eisenhower found it extremely difficult to fire a man who had served him well and loyally, no matter how great a handicap the man had become. So it was with Adams.
Eisenhower, greatly depressed, finally said, “My mind is pretty well cleared up as to what would be the better thing to do. The difficulty is to find a good way to do it.” He asked Meade Alcorn, chairman of the RNC, to get together with Nixon and talk to Adams. Alcorn said he would.34
They did, without results. Adams told them, “I will have to talk to the boss myself.” Eisenhower agreed to a meeting, then commented to Whitman, “How dreadful it is that cheap politicians can so pillory an honorable man.”35 At the meeting, on September 17, Adams indicated that he was willing to hand in his resignation, but that he wanted to wait a month or so to get the personnel situation straightened out. Eisenhower told him, “If anything is done and we make any critical decision, as I have always said, you will have to take the initiative yourself.” But after the meeting, the President changed his mind and called Adams on the telephone to tell him that he could not drag the thing out for a full month. Then he added that he wanted to protect Adams “from anything that looks cold and indifferent.”36
Five days later, on September 22, Adams announced his resignation. Eisenhower accepted it with the “deepest regret.” The boil had been lanced, but whether the surgery would cure the desperately ill Republican Party remained to be seen.
• •
Shortly thereafter, Ellis Slater and the rest of the gang spent a weekend at the White House with the First Family. Just before Saturday’s dinner, nine-year-old David came in to present his grandfather with a bill for the work he had done on the farm the past two weeks. David had put the bill in an envelope addressed to “President Dwight Eisenhower”; it tabulated his days and hours—twenty-four hours’ total at thirty cents per hour, with fifty cents for a previous loan deducted from the bill, which Eisenhower then paid. At the President’s suggestion, David marked the bill paid in full and signed it.
Eisenhower cooked Sunday breakfast—cantaloupe from his farm, stacks of wheat cakes, and big link sausages—all served on trays on stands while the guests sat in easy chairs. They talked for three hours, mainly about farming and cattle and fertilizer and fields. Eisenhower said he was desperately looking forward to January 20, 1961, when he could retire and “just sleep and rest and be himself.” Mamie commented that she had a lot of work to do before they left the White House, and said “it wasn’t going to be fun getting ready to vacate that place.” The morning, Slater wrote in his diary, was “refreshing and diverting” for the President.
Toward the end of the breakfast session, however, Eisenhower got to talking about what a terrible year he had had; he called 1958 “the worst of his life.” He then commented that years ending in eight always seemed to be bad ones for him. In 1918, he said, he had missed World War I. In 1928, he had been in Paris, writing a guidebook—pleasant enough, but it had given him a feeling of treading water in his career. In 1938, his last year in the Philippines, he had gone through some bitter battles with MacArthur and feared he would never get away from the islands or the man. In 1948, he had retired from the Army and gone to Columbia, where he found much frustration and little satisfaction. In 1958, he had suffered a stroke, found himself in frequent disagreement with his chief foreign-policy adviser and with Congress, lost Sherman Adams and Lewis Strauss, endured a series of international crises and an economic recession, and had to anticipate major Republican defeats in the next election. Small wonder he was looking forward to retirement.37
But he was naturally an optimist. In a letter full of grousing to George Humphrey, he concluded, “Actually, of course, the sun is shining . . . the United States is still populated by relatively happy people, and by and large our grandchildren do not seem too much worried.” He thought everything would work out all right.38
• •
Even with the departure of Sherman Adams, Eisenhower and the Republican Party were gloomy on the eve of the off-year elections. The Democrats were hitting them hard in the campaign, most of all on the charge that “six years of leaderless vacillation have led us to the . . . brink of having to fight a nuclear war inadequately prepared and alone.”39 The charge that Eisenhower had allowed a “missile gap” to develop, which Stevenson had used without much success in 1956, and which Symington had been using since, began paying off for the Democrats in the 1958 elections.
Eisenhower tried to keep the issue out of politics. His first effort was to attempt to convince the Democratic critics that they were wrong; to do so, he had Allen Dulles give them a briefing. But he would not allow Dulles to reveal any hard information about the U-2 program, so Dulles, unable to cite his sources, was unconvincing. In his press conferences, meanwhile, Eisenhower always managed to say a word or two about how adequate America’s defenses were, and to pooh-pooh any missile gap, but he did so in such a vague manner, without citing statistics or sources, that he too was unconvincing.
Another favorite Democratic charge was that the Republican Party was hopelessly split between the Old Guard and the moderate Eisenhower Republicans. Eisenhower tried to turn that one on its head. On October 20, in a major campaign speech in Los Angeles, the President declared that the Democratic Party “is not one—but two—political parties with the same name. They unite only once every two years—to wage political campaigns.” One wing consisted of southern conservatives, the other of “political radicals,” the wild spenders. A Democratic victory would mean innumerable new social programs, more money for defense, and a tax cut, all of which would lead to uncontrollable inflation and an unstoppable growth of the federal government.40
On November 4, 1958, the Republican Party, despite Eisenhower’s warnings and efforts, suffered its worst defeat since the advent of the Depression. In the new Congress, Democrats would outnumber Republicans by nearly two to one in both houses. The Democrats had thirty-five governors, the Republicans only fourteen. Rockefeller’s victory in New York had been balanced by Knowland’s defeat in California, where he had run for governor. It was, all together, a humiliating defeat for the Republican party, which had been decisively rejected by the people even though its leader was a highly popular President. It left Eisenhower with the dubious distinction of being the first President to face three successive Congresses controlled by the opposition party.
• •
Since 1954 and the CIA-supported overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the United States had more or less ignored Latin America, as Eisenhower and Dulles concentrated on Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The Administration, and especially its expert on Latin America, Milton Eisenhower, had called for more economic assistance to the area, but obtaining funds from Congress was difficult at best, and little was accomplished. As always, Latin radicals blamed Uncle Sam for the widespread poverty and discontent; as always, the United States ignored the agitation so long as it did not threaten to actually overthrow a pro-American government.
It was in Cuba, one of the most prosperous of the Spanish-speaking countries, that the policy fell apart. There Fidel Castro was leading a revolt against the corrupt and reactionary dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Batista had an odious record; Castro was young, romantic, dynamic.
On New Year’s Day of 1959, Batista fled Cuba as Fidel entered Havana in triumph. The United States joined other American countries in recognizing the new regime. Castro appointed Cuban liberals to the top posts in his new government, a cause for hope in Washington, but in mid-January he made the Communist Party legal in Cuba, and by the end of the month his first Premier had resigned in protest over the executions of Batista supporters and the increasingly anti-American quality of Castro’s speeches. On February 13, Castro himself became Premier, and in the ensuing weeks the executions and the attacks on the United States mounted.
The classic American response to radicalism in Latin America was to send in the Marines, an option that Eisenhower would not even consider, because of Castro’s popularity not only in Cuba but throughout Latin America and even within the United States, and because of the probable effect of such action on world public opinion. In any event, the CIA gave him an alternative to the Marines.
Under Allen Dulles’ direction, and with Eisenhower’s encouragement, the CIA had been conducting covert operations around the world. None were as successful or spectacular as Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, and some—for example, Hungary in 1956—had been disastrous failures. Nevertheless, covert operations remained one of Eisenhower’s chief weapons in the Cold War. The trick now was to find a way to use the CIA capabilities to get rid of Fidel.
• •
On October 31, 1958, in Geneva, the Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons Tests commenced. One week earlier Gordon Gray met with the President to discuss the line the American negotiating team should follow. Gray was taking his post as National Security Adviser seriously. He was more forward than Cutler had been in raising subjects with Eisenhower, more bellicose and more active. He had even less trust in the Russians than Foster Dulles had, and he warned Eisenhower to be extra cautious in the test-ban talks. Eisenhower, however, thought it was necessary to take some risks. Although he insisted he would never jeopardize the real security interests of the United States, Eisenhower said that because of the numbers of such weapons and the improving means of delivery, “he would wish in any negotiation to err somewhat on the liberal side.” To continue testing and the arms race, he said, “frightened him.”41
Despite the President’s attitude, the talks got off to a bad start. On the first day, they deadlocked. The issue was the agenda. The Russians wanted to begin by discussing a comprehensive test ban, while the Americans insisted on starting with discussions of an inspection system. These were becoming classic positions that left little room for negotiating anything. But at least there was a voluntary moratorium on testing. Although the Russians had cheated and conducted two tests in the first week of the Geneva talks, Eisenhower had promised if they would stop testing, so would he, and after November 3 the Russians did no more testing. Thus, as Time magazine pointed out, Eisenhower had done what he had always claimed he would not do, “stopped [American] tests primarily on good faith, without any provision of inspection.”42
Having gotten from Eisenhower the unsupervised test ban they had wanted, the Russians finally agreed at Geneva to put the inspection system first on the agenda. The negotiators accepted an 180-post inspection system, but then deadlocked again when the Russians insisted on a veto in the seven-nation control commission. Eisenhower, eager to find a way out of the impasse, was therefore receptive to a mid-November proposal from Senator Albert Gore, a member of the American delegation in Geneva. Gore had concluded that there was no hope for a comprehensive test-ban agreement because of the inspection problem. He urged Eisenhower to announce a three-year unilateral ban on atmospheric tests, the type that spread radioactivity around the world. Gore told Eisenhower that the Russians have been “whaling us over the head” on fallout, but if the United States limited itself to underground tests, “the Soviets would have to do the same or be put on the defensive propaganda-wise.”43
Eisenhower was perplexed. He wanted a test ban badly; he wanted more than just a ban, in fact, he wanted some real disarmament. But he felt he could not trust the Russians. On December 9, he explained to the visiting Queen Frederika of Greece that “we cannot be naive and put the whole safety of the free world in their [the Soviets’] hands.” If America pulled out of NATO and surrendered its lead in nuclear weaponry, “then we have no recourse except to try to accept the communist doctrine and live with it.” Eisenhower said “he would not want to live, nor would he want his children or grandchildren to live, in a world where we were slaves of a Moscow Power,” because at that point “you would pay too big a price to be alive.”44
On January 12, Dr. George Kistiakowsky, a Ukrainian-born chemist who was a member of the PSAC, warned the President that in his opinion that Russians had an operational ICBM force. Eisenhower remarked that it might possibly be so, but he still doubted that they had the numbers or the accuracy to do much damage with them. “He then asked the question, if the Soviets should fire these weapons at us, where this action would leave them. They would still be exposed to destruction. In his mind there is the question whether this is a feasible means of making war; he granted that it is a feasible way of destroying much of the nation’s strength, but the resulting retaliation would be such that it does not make sense for war.”45
Back in 1956 most of the scientists who later joined the PSAC had been opposed to further testing, Killian most of all. In the spring of 1958, Killian and the others had concluded, again, that a test ban would benefit the United States, and that a relatively small number (180) of inspection sites would discover all but the lowest-yield underground tests. It was on that basis that Eisenhower had agreed to the Geneva talks and the unilateral suspension of testing.
But once the scientists became formal advisers to the President, a number of them—led by Killian and Kistiakowsky—began to have doubts about the wisdom of a ban. In late December, the PSAC informed the President that it had decided it could not detect underground blasts as large as twenty kilotons, and that therefore thousands of inspection sites would be required to police a comprehensive test ban. Eisenhower was understandably furious with the scientists, because he knew that the demand for a quantum leap in the number of inspection sites would give the Russians an opportunity to charge that they had been double-crossed, and because he hated being given the wrong information, and even worse having acted on it.
But he felt he had to stick by his scientists, so on January 5, 1959, the American delegation at Geneva revealed the results of its latest findings and demanded more inspection sites. The Russians refused to even discuss the data, and the talks deadlocked again. Eisenhower instructed Killian to set up a new committee to find ways of making adequate inspection without so many sites.
On January 16, McCone came to the President with a request that the AEC be allowed to build a new reactor, in order to produce more bombs, as required by the DOD. Eisenhower exploded that there were no “requirements” until he had approved them, and stated that he could see no point to building bombs at a faster rate than the current pace of nearly two per day. He said the Defense people were getting “themselves into an incredible position—of having enough to destroy every conceivable target all over the world, plus a threefold reserve.” He said “the patterns of target destruction are fantastic.” Eisenhower had seen a graph on America’s projected atomic weapons figures by 1968, which called for numbers of bombs that he could only regard as “astronomical.” “Some of these days,” he continued, “we are going to realize how ridiculous we have been and at that time we will try to retrench.”
Eisenhower concluded by saying that “we are taking council of our fears,” and by suggesting “that we indoctrinate ourselves that there is such a thing as common sense.”46
Common sense, however, was hard to find. On February 18, Eisenhower met with Gordon Gray. During the course of a wide-ranging conversation, Eisenhower returned to the subject of numbers of weapons, and to earlier JCS claims that by hitting seventy targets inside Russia, the Soviets would be effectively destroyed. The new plans contemplated targets in the thousands, involving tremendous numbers of weapons of megaton size. The JCS were planning on using thousands of weapons averaging 3.5 megatons in an all-out war; Eisenhower “wondered what would be the cumulative effect of ground bursts of such a magnitude of megatonage on the Northern Hemisphere . . . He expressed his concern that there just might be nothing left of the Northern Hemisphere.” The United States already had a stockpile of “five thousand or seven thousand weapons or whatnot.” Eisenhower wondered why more were needed.47
(Getting accurate figures on the American nuclear arsenal was the most difficult research task in this study. The figures were always given to the President in oral form, by the head of the AEC. As far as the author can tell, Eisenhower inherited an arsenal of about fifteen hundred weapons ranging from the low-kiloton yield to bombs of many megatons. If there were six thousand or so weapons by 1959, the AEC had built about forty-five hundred weapons during the first six years of the Eisenhower Administration, or more than two per day.)
The American ability to hit the Russians was already awesome. In late November of 1958, the President undertook a review of the DOD budget request for fiscal 1960. The JCS had asked for $50 billion; DOD had brought that figure down to $43.8 billion; Eisenhower wanted it reduced to $40 billion. In a discussion with McElroy, Twining, Quarles, Gray, Goodpaster, and others, Eisenhower examined the current retaliatory capacity. In addition to SAC (which still carried the most and biggest bombs and was virtually invulnerable), there were the various IRBM and ICBM projects going forward, including the implanting of IRBMs in Europe, and six Polaris submarines were under construction. After looking it all over, Eisenhower asked rhetorically, “How many times do we have to destroy Russia?” Still the JCS and DOD wanted more of everything, including a second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Eisenhower objected. He said he did not “visualize a battle for the surface of the sea,” and that existing conventional carriers provided sufficient mobility to meet the purposes of any small war, or of an intervention as in Lebanon. The DOD and JCS people kept coming back to the nuclear carrier, however, until the President snapped that “Our defense depends on our fiscal system.” He insisted that the carrier be put on hold, and that other cuts in defense be made, bringing the total down to $40 billion, because “unless the [federal] budget is balanced sooner or later, procurement of defense systems will avail nothing.”48
Eisenhower’s campaign for fiscal integrity, coupled with his use of the veto, worked. When the Democrats proposed spending $450 million per year for four years for urban renewal, Eisenhower objected strongly enough, and got enough support from southern congressmen, to defeat the bill. When Congress finally did pass a housing bill, with lowered expenditures, Eisenhower vetoed it. The Senate failed to override the veto, because of southern votes. That pattern held throughout the year, and to his delight Eisenhower ended up fiscal 1960 with a surplus of a billion dollars.