FOR EISENHOWER, 1960 turned out to be a bad year, the worst of his Presidency. He made a series of mistakes, particularly in his dealings with Khrushchev and Castro, mistakes brought on by his own fetish for secrecy and his misplaced trust in the CIA. He had hoped to leave office in an atmosphere of budding trust between the superpowers, with the Communist threat turned back in Latin America, Berlin secure, and disarmament under way. These were, however, inherently contradictory aims, which was one overriding reason for the lack of success. On the one hand, Eisenhower was trying to inspire Khrushchev, and the American people, with his vision of peaceful coexistence; on the other hand, he was willing to do almost anything to get rid of Castro. His readiness to take major risks in pursuit of disarmament was counterbalanced by his unwillingness to risk working toward a new relationship with Castro and Cuba specifically or Latin American radicalism generally.
Forces beyond Eisenhower’s control were a factor in the failures of 1960. While he tried to concentrate on peace, his fellow politicians concentrated on the presidential election. It was characteristic of such elections, in the era of the Cold War, for each party to try to outdo the other in promising to get tough with the Communists (Eisenhower himself had used that theme against the Democrats in 1952). Getting tough meant, primarily, spending more money on arms; to Eisenhower’s disgust, both candidates promised to do just that. The press was far more ready to see dangers in peaceful coexistence than it was to envision hope. Powerful men, in such bureaucracies as the CIA, the AEC, the JCS, and the DOD, and their suppliers in the defense industry, were firmly opposed to any outbreak of peace, and together they helped to sabotage Eisenhower’s vision. Despite Eisenhower’s efforts, the Cold War by the end of 1960 was more dangerous, more tension-packed, than it had been at the beginning of the year.
By January of 1960, Eisenhower and his advisers were determined to do something about Cuba. Castro’s verbal abuse against the United States was reaching new levels, as was his confiscation of American-owned property. There were, however, many problems in dealing with Castro. He was politically astute and adroit. His anti-American diatribes were based on a Latin, not a Communist, critique of Uncle Sam, and he had managed to convince millions of Latins that any attempt by Washington to link him with the Communists was simply the old Yankee trick of accusing all Latin American reformers of being Communists. He was widely popular among the Latin masses, and retained a certain popularity even among liberals in the United States, who were arguing that the United States ought to try cooperation instead of confrontation with the new Cuban government. Privately, the rulers of Latin America were telling Eisenhower that they hoped the United States could get rid of Castro, one way or another, but neither individually nor collectively, through the Organization of American States (OAS), would they speak out against Castro.
The OAS had long since committed itself (in the Caracas Declaration of 1954) to opposition to Communist intrusion in the New World. The problem was proving that Castro was a Communist. The Administration could not prove to the OAS that Castro was Communist because it could not prove it to itself. The ambassador to Cuba told Eisenhower that he personally did not think Cuba was a Communist dictatorship, and he expected that Castro’s foreign policy would be to seek neutrality in the Cold War. Secretary of State Herter reported in March 1960 that “our own latest National Intelligence Estimate [prepared by the CIA] does not find Cuba to be under Communist control or domination . . .”
Herter added that because of an uncertainty about the direction in which Castro was moving, the anti-Castro refugees in Florida were unable to unite in their opposition. Some wanted to bring back Batista, others only wanted to be rid of Fidel, none were willing to cooperate to create a government-in-exile. Herter warned against any action to drive Castro from Cuba until responsible Cuban opposition leadership was ready to take over, because otherwise Cuba might end up with someone worse than Castro.1
At a January 25 meeting, a frustrated and angry President said that “Castro begins to look like a madman.” He indicated that if the OAS would not help remove him, then the United States should go it alone, for example, by imposing a blockade on Cuba. “If the Cuban people are hungry,” Eisenhower declared, “they will throw Castro out.” Calmer heads prevailed, pointing out that the United States should not punish the whole Cuban people for the acts of one madman. Eisenhower admitted that that was true.2
Eisenhower turned to the CIA for help in solving the Cuban problem. In February, the President called Allen Dulles to the Oval Office to discuss Castro. Dulles brought along some U-2 photographs of a Cuban sugar refinery, along with CIA plans to put it out of action by sabotage. Eisenhower scoffed at this puny effort, noting that such damage could easily be repaired and telling Dulles that the CIA had to come up with something better. He told Dulles to go back to his people and return when they had a “program” worked out.3
The CIA then began a series of assassination attempts against Castro. There were some harebrained schemes, including using the Mafia to gun Castro down, poisoning Castro’s cigars or his coffee, and rigging an exotic seashell with an explosive device to be placed in Castro’s favorite skin-diving area. None worked.
Whether Eisenhower knew about these attempted assassinations or not, or whether he ordered them or not, cannot be said. There is no documentary evidence that this author has seen that would directly link Eisenhower with the attempts. He could have given such orders verbally and privately to Dulles, but if he did he acted out of character. Further, Eisenhower himself indicated to the CIA that he did not want Castro removed until a government-in-exile had been formed, because he feared that the probable successor to Castro in the event of a premature assassination would be Raul Castro or Che Guevara, either of whom would be worse than Fidel.
The record is clear on what Eisenhower did approve. On March 17, he met with Dulles and Richard Bissell, the CIA agent Dulles had put in charge of preparing a “program” for Cuba. Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to the program Bissell presented to him. It had four parts: (1) creation of a “responsible and unified” Cuban government-in-exile; (2) “a powerful propaganda offensive”; (3) “a covert intelligence and action organization in Cuba” that would be “responsive” to the government-in-exile; and (4) “a paramilitary force outside of Cuba for future guerrilla action.” Eisenhower indicated that he liked all four parts, but put his emphasis on Bissell’s first step, finding a Cuban leader living in exile who would form a government that the United States could recognize and that could direct the activities of the covert and paramilitary forces.4
• •
In early 1960, Eisenhower’s thoughts were primarily on his retirement, and on the upcoming summit conference, where he had high hopes on getting started on some genuine disarmament. Nearly every other politician in America, however, had his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election. Eisenhower stayed aloof from the Democratic struggle for the nomination, although in private he expressed his anger and disgust at Kennedy’s constant harping on a “missile gap” and other exaggerated remarks. At a Republican meeting on April 26, for example, Styles Bridges informed the President that Kennedy had said the day before that seventeen million Americans went to bed hungry every night. Eisenhower snorted, then commented, “They must all be dieting!!!”5
Similarly, Eisenhower remained aloof from the Republicans’ pre-convention activities. Early in 1960, Rockefeller was still a candidate, which gave a bit of drama to the Republicans but no satisfaction to Eisenhower, who had long ago decided that Rockefeller did not have either the brains or the character to be President. He did write Rockefeller a long letter of advice, of which the principal point was to stick to the middle of the road, but he so deplored Rockefeller’s deficit financing in New York State, and Rockefeller’s calls for more defense spending, that he could never support the man for the Presidency. That left him with Nixon, the only viable Republican candidate, but he was not happy with Nixon either. Still, he had no one else to support, and as between Nixon and any of the Democratic candidates, he much preferred Nixon.
He would not, however, give Nixon his support until the Republicans, meeting in convention, actually nominated him. After Rockefeller withdrew from the race, Marvin Arrowsmith asked Eisenhower at a press conference if he would not now endorse Nixon. Eisenhower refused to do so, maintaining “that there are a number of Republicans, eminent men, big men, that could fulfill the requirements of the position . . .” Then he added lamely that Nixon “is not unaware of my sentiments” toward him. Later in the same conference, William Knighton asked if the President did not think that the country ought to have the benefit of his advice as to which Republicans he regarded as qualified. Well, Eisenhower replied, “There’s a number of them.” Then, from Nixon’s point of view, he made things worse by saying, “I am not dissatisfied with the individual that looks like he will get it,” but still he would not endorse Nixon by name.6
Nevertheless, he was not completely resigned to Nixon’s nomination. He tried to persuade Robert Anderson to become a candidate; when that failed, he asked Oveta Culp Hobby to get the Texas Republicans to organize behind Anderson as a “favorite son.” If that was not possible, he suggested that she might become a candidate herself. He also tried to get Al Gruenther to run.7 Nothing worked, as no one was ready to take on Nixon, because his strength with the party organization was too great.
One of Eisenhower’s major objections to Rockefeller was that the New York governor was sounding like an echo of Kennedy in his positions on defense spending. That Rockefeller would adopt the Democratic position on defense (spend more, now, on every conceivable weapon) irritated Eisenhower no end. So did the partisan use of the issue by the Democrats. “I don’t take it very kindly,” Eisenhower told a January 13 press conference, “the implied accusation that I am dealing with the whole matter of defense on a partisan basis.” Hauling out his heaviest artillery, he pointed out that with regard to national defense, “I’ve spent my life in this, and I know more about it than almost anybody.”8 In short, he wanted the people to “trust Ike” and turn away from the Democratic critics.
At his private meetings with Republican leaders, Eisenhower was blunt and direct in castigating the Democratic candidates. “By getting into this numbers racket,” he said of Kennedy, Symington, and the others, “and by scaring people, they are getting away with murder.” The President wondered “how much deterrent could possibly be wanted by the critics. Did they just want to build more and more Atlases for storage in warehouses? It was unconscionable.”9
The Air Force was the darling of congressional Democrats, and the Air Force’s pet project was the B-70 bomber. Eisenhower did not like the project at all. In February, he received a long memorandum on the B-70 from Kistiakowsky that concluded, “Putting it crudely, it is not clear what the B-70 can do that ballistic missiles can’t—and cheaper and sooner at that.” The President decided to cancel the B-70. General White, Air Force Chief of Staff, testified before Congress that the B-70 was “vital” to the nation’s defense. A furious Eisenhower called Secretary Gates on the telephone. According to Whitman’s notes, “The President said that ever since the days of the Fair Deal and the New Deal, discipline had been lost in the high-ranking officers of the services. Nothing does he deplore more. Everyone seems to think he has a compulsion to tell in public his personal views.” Once a decision was made by the Commander in Chief, he insisted, every officer in the armed services was duty-bound to support it. To the Republican leaders, Eisenhower complained that “all these fellows in the Pentagon think they have some responsibility I can’t see.” He continued, “I hate to use the word, but this business is damn near treason.” 10
Eisenhower was fighting virtually a one-man battle on holding down the costs of defense. The JCS would not support him; neither would his new Secretary of Defense, Tom Gates; nor would McCone, the head of the AEC; nor would the Republican leaders, who tried to convince him that the JCS were not out of line in expressing their own views. Further, not a single member of the White House press corps was on his side; the questions he received at his press conferences were uniformly hostile. Why wasn’t the United States doing more? When would we catch up with the Russians? Did not the President fear a Soviet first strike? Was not the President’s insistence on fiscal soundness imperiling the nation’s security?
With a great effort of will, Eisenhower calmly and patiently answered all the questions. He insisted that there was no missile gap, that American prestige was not at stake in the space race, that there was no need to be afraid. He cited history to prove his point: “Only three or four years ago,” he said, “there was a great outcry about the alleged bomber gap.” Congress appropriated nearly a billion dollars more than Eisenhower had asked for to build new American bombers. “Subsequent intelligence investigation,” however, “showed that that estimate was wrong and that, far from stepping up their production of bombers, the Soviets were diminishing it or even eliminating that production.” 11
Eisenhower also tried logic. On February 3, the journalist Merriman Smith wanted to know, “Do you feel any sense of urgency in catching up with the Russians?” Eisenhower replied, “I am always a little bit amazed about this business of catching up. What you want is enough, a thing that is adequate. A deterrent has no added power, once it has become completely adequate, for compelling the respect for your deterrent.” But, Rowland Evans protested, the Air Force was insisting that unless the B-52s were put on a full air alert, “our deterrent of heavy bombers cannot be properly safeguarded.” Eisenhower’s reply was short and scathing: “Too many of these generals have all sorts of ideas.”
But neither historical truth nor logic was Eisenhower’s best weapon. It was his personal prestige that counted most. When Charles Shutt asked him to comment on Democratic charges that he was “complacent in advising the people of the danger we face in world affairs,” and that Eisenhower was allowing his commitment to fiscal soundness to “stand in the way of developing some weapons we may need,” Eisenhower stiffened, reddened, glared at Shutt, then replied: “If anybody—anybody—believes that I have deliberately misled the American people, I’d like to tell him to his face what I think about him. This is a charge that I think is despicable; I have never made it against anyone in the world.” Then he insisted, “I don’t believe we should pay one cent for defense more than we have to,” and concluded with a personal assurance: “Our defense is not only strong, it is awesome, and it is respected elsewhere.”12
But wherever he turned, Eisenhower was confronted with the charge that he, the man most responsible for it, had neglected the nation’s security. In March 1960, he attended the annual Gridiron dinner in Washington. Senator Symington was the principal speaker, and his theme was the need for more and better weapons. When he finished, Eisenhower took the mike. The President described the day he moved into the Oval Office, and how the JCS started coming in even before he had hung his pictures on the wall or had the carpet put down. The Chiefs insisted that they had to have more of this and more of that. After he had gotten rid of them, Eisenhower related, he paced the bare floor, looked out the window, and said to himself, “My God, how did I get into this?” Then he went into what one observer called a “magnificent explanation of the responsibilities of the Presidency and how they far exceed the importance of weapons . . . He went into the responsibilities to the whole nation and to the family and the whole man. He talked about the spiritual things as well as material things. He built an awesome and inspiring and yet heartwarming image of the broad scope and high responsibilities that are a President’s. And then he said goodnight.”13
Eisenhower’s basic position was that there was no missile gap. The proposition could not be proved, however, without revealing the U-2 flights and showing the photographic evidence demonstrating that the Russians were not building ICBMs on a crash basis. But Eisenhower was extremely sensitive about the flights, and about the resulting Russian protests, and he insisted that the U-2 be kept top secret (within the White House, only he, Gordon Gray, Goodpaster, and John Eisenhower knew about the project). He “exploded,” therefore, when The New York Times ran a story, based on a leak from unnamed sources, hinting at American knowledge of Russian missile developments at Tura Tam in Central Asia. Kistiakowsky noted that “the President is exceedingly angry and has talked at length about lack of loyalty to the U.S. of these people. In his estimation Joseph Alsop is about the lowest form of animal life on earth . . .” 14
By early 1960, Eisenhower had made a test-ban treaty, to be followed by some actual disarmament, the major goal of his Presidency, indeed of his entire career. It would be the capstone to his half century of public service, his greatest memorial, his final and most lasting gift to his country. To that end, he wanted to make an offer to the Russians that he felt had a good chance of being accepted by Khrushchev at the summit. On February 11, he announced at his press conference that he was willing to accept a test-ban treaty that would end all tests in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and in outer space, as well as underground tests “which can be monitored.” 15
On March 19, the Russians did indeed respond positively to Eisenhower’s proposal. The Soviets would agree to all of it, provided that the United States agreed to a moratorium on low-kiloton tests underground. By so doing, the Russians were making considerable concessions—accepting a supervised test ban for all atmospheric, underwater, and large underground tests, which meant opening their borders to American inspection teams. All they asked in return was a voluntary cessation of small underground tests based solely on good faith.
On March 29, Eisenhower issued a statement outlining his acceptance. At a press conference the following day, he said “that we should try to stop the spreading of this, what you might say, the size of the [nuclear] club. There are already four nations into it [France in February had exploded its first bomb], and it’s an expensive business. And it could be finally more dangerous than ever . . .” Eisenhower also insisted that “all the signs are that the Soviets do want a degree of disarmament, and they want to stop testing. That looks to me to be more or less proved.” 16
At another press conference, a month later, after Eisenhower had announced that he, de Gaulle, and Macmillan agreed that disarmament, not Berlin or Germany, should be the number-one topic at the Paris summit, Laurence Burd wanted to know if disarmament would not mean economic depression for the United States. Eisenhower explained why it would not: “We are now scratching around to get money for such things as school construction . . . road building. There are all sorts of things to be done in this country . . . I see no reason why the sums which now are going into these sterile, negative mechanisms that we call war munitions shouldn’t go into something positive.” 17
Eisenhower was prepared to go to Paris to seek a genuine accord. Never in the Cold War did one seem closer. A President of the United States was on the verge of trusting the Russians in the most critical and dangerous field, nuclear testing. He had de Gaulle and Macmillan with him, and Khrushchev seemed by every indication to be sincere in his own desire for disarmament. There were, however, powerful men determined to stop the progress.
First, the politicians. The Democrats, controlling the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, held hearings on the proposal. Dr. Teller, and many others, testified that the Russians would cheat, that the proposed inspection systems were woefully inadequate, that the whole thing was a disaster for American security interests. John McCone, purportedly the prime mover behind the hearings, told Kistiakowsky that the proposed ban was “a national peril” that might force him “to resign his job.” Arthur Krock believed that the Democrats were holding the much-publicized hearings in order to cast doubts in advance on any treaty Eisenhower managed to obtain, so as to deprive the Republicans of the peace issue in the November election. Eisenhower himself thought “that goddamned joint committee will certainly do anything in its power to embarrass me.”18
Second, the military. The Pentagon wanted no part of a ban, wanted to resume testing, and wanted a major buildup in ICBMs. At an April 1 NSC meeting, Eisenhower “sharply questioned” the Defense people about the rate of proposed buildup. The reply was that they were seeking a production capacity of four hundred missiles per year. Eisenhower, according to Kistiakowsky, “remarked in obvious disgust, ‘Why don’t we go completely crazy and plan on a force of 10,000?’ ”19
Third, the scientists. Teller and the AEC scientists, and their friends, were determined to continue testing. Their device was through “peaceful” explosions. They appealed to Eisenhower’s great desire to use nuclear energy for the good of mankind to make all sorts of proposals. Teller told an April 26 Cabinet meeting that he wanted to dig a tunnel through Mexico and another parallel to the Panama Canal; he wanted to blast a harbor in northern Alaska, with a short channel and a turnaround basin; he wanted to deposit heat in underground caverns by setting off a bomb, then draw on the energy later; he saw splendid opportunities for strip mining through atomic blasts. Given the opportunity, he said, he could squeeze oil out of the sands. All these glittering prospects could become reality only if he were allowed to test. When Defense Secretary Gates asked him how much these experiments would add to weapons developments, Teller assured him a great deal would be learned. He also added that the proposed moratorium “can be evaded with complete safety by us . . . it can easily be evaded.”20
Fourth, the intelligence community. The CIA and other intelligence gatherers were strongly opposed to any unsupervised ban, and were especially insistent that U-2 flights over the Soviet Union be continued and even expanded. They were concerned about “gaps” in the coverage. In a meeting with the Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, on February 2, General Doolittle urged Eisenhower to use the overflights to the maximum degree possible. Eisenhower, according to Goodpaster’s notes, “pointed out that such a decision is one of the most soul-searching questions to come before a President.” He added that at Camp David, Khrushchev had outlined for him Soviet missile capability, and “every bit of information I have seen [from the overflights] corroborates what Khrushchev told me.”
Goodpaster’s notes continue: “The President said that he had one tremendous asset in a summit meeting, as regards effect in the free world. That is his reputation for honesty. If one of these aircraft [the U-2s] were lost when we are engaged in apparently sincere deliberations, it could be put on display in Moscow and ruin the President’s effectiveness.”21
Despite this basic recognition, Eisenhower approved additional flights, but only at the rate of one per month. One reason was the standard assumption by the intelligence community that even if the Soviets ever shot down a U-2, they never would admit it, because they would then also have to admit that the flights had been going on for years and they had been unable to do anything about them. The logic was questionable, but the eagerness to get more photographs was real enough. In late March, Richard Bissell explained to Eisenhower why the CIA thought the Russians might be building new missile sites, while John Eisenhower and Goodpaster traced out for him on a huge map of Russia the proposed flight route.
Eisenhower set aside his personal objections and authorized one flight. It went on April 9. The Russians tracked the U-2 with their radar and made a number of attempts to knock it down with their surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), but the flight was a success. The photographs revealed no new missile construction. In early April, Bissell asked for another flight. Eisenhower authorized him to fly any day in the next two weeks. Every day for the next fourteen days, however, Russia was covered by clouds. The U-2 needed near-perfect weather to get its photographs.
When the weather did not improve, Bissell applied for an extension. Eisenhower told Goodpaster to call Bissell and tell him the flight was authorized for one more week. Goodpaster made it formal with a memorandum for the record: “After checking with the President, I informed Mr. Bissell that one additional operation may be undertaken, provided it is carried out prior to May 1. No operation is to be carried out after May 1.” Eisenhower had insisted on that date because he did not want to be provocative on the eve of the summit meeting.22
On May 1, the weather cleared. That morning, in Adana, Turkey, Francis Gary Powers, a young pilot employed by the CIA, took off for Bodo, Norway, his flight route taking him directly over the Soviet Union.
• •
Meanwhile, Eisenhower prepared for the summit. In March and April, he met with de Gaulle and Adenauer in the White House, getting their agreement to make disarmament the main topic in Paris. He indicated that he intended to follow the test-ban treaty with a new variation on Open Skies, an offer for continuous aerial inspection, divorced from any disarmament aspects, and operating in selected regions, for example, Siberia and Alaska. Eisenhower’s hopes were high. His own desire to make a breakthrough in the arms race, as his final act as a world leader, was greater than ever. His Secretary of State, Herter, was distinctly milder toward the Soviets than Foster Dulles had ever been. Eisenhower had a science adviser who assured him that a test ban would strengthen not only America’s moral position but its strategic situation as well. The JCS were no longer his contemporaries, as Bradley and Radford had been in the early years, but relatively junior officers from World War II, men who could not impress him. Macmillan wanted a test ban; de Gaulle wanted peace; Khrushchev wanted an agreement; Eisenhower was ready to take some risks and make some concessions. The atmosphere, on the eve of the summit, could not have been better.
• •
On the afternoon of May 1, two weeks before Eisenhower was scheduled to fly to Paris, Goodpaster called him on the telephone: “One of our reconnaissance planes,” he said, “on a scheduled flight from its base in Adana, Turkey, is overdue and possibly lost.”
The information was disturbing but not alarming. If the plane had crashed, or been shot down, there was no possibility of the pilot, Francis Powers, escaping alive. Further, the CIA had assured the President “that if a plane were to go down it would be destroyed either in the air or on impact, so that proof of espionage would be lacking. Self-destroying mechanisms were built in.” The CIA had not told Eisenhower that the “self-destruct mechanism” had to be activated by the pilot, or that it was only a two-and-one-half-pound charge, hardly sufficient to “destroy” a craft as big as the U-2, or that the hundreds of feet of tightly rolled film would survive a crash and/or fire, thus by itself providing the Soviets with all the evidence they would need. Eisenhower assumed that Powers was dead, his U-2 burned to cinders. He thanked Goodpaster for the information and went on to other business.23
The next morning, May 2, Goodpaster came into the Oval Office. “Mr. President,” he said, “I have received word from the CIA that the U-2 reconnaissance plane I mentioned yesterday is still missing. The pilot reported an engine flameout at a position about thirteen hundred miles inside Russia and has not been heard from since. With the amount of fuel he had on board, there is not a chance of his still being aloft.”24 If Powers was not aloft, he was dead, and his craft destroyed. Eisenhower therefore decided to do nothing, leaving the next move to Khrushchev, who it was assumed (or hoped) would also do nothing. Having shot down a U-2, the Russians had made their point. If Khrushchev was sincere about the summit, he would either downplay the event or ignore it altogether, contenting himself with a private remark or two to Eisenhower in Paris.
On May 5, Khrushchev made a speech to the Supreme Soviet in which he claimed that the Soviet Union had shot down an American spy plane that had intruded Soviet airspace. Khrushchev angrily denounced the United States for its “aggressive provocation” in sending a “bandit flight” over his country. In the course of a long harangue, Khrushchev said the Americans had picked May Day hoping to catch the Soviets with their guard down, but to no avail. Khrushchev provided his own interpretation of the provocative flight: “Aggressive imperialist forces in the United States in recent times have been taking the most active measures to undermine the summit or at least to hinder any agreement that might be reached.” He did not blame Eisenhower, however; instead, he suggested that the militarists were acting without the President’s knowledge.25
The President decided to make no rejoinder, nor any explanation. He could have refuted the charges immediately. He might have issued a statement taking full responsibility, pointing out that no U-2 flight ever left the ground without his personal approval, insisting that because of the closed nature of the Soviet Union and because of fears of a nuclear Pearl Harbor, the overflights were necessary to the security of his country. In the process, he could have reminded the world that, as everyone knew, the KGB was far more active in spying on the West than the CIA was in spying on Russia. He might have given a brief outline of the history of the U-2, then made the most fundamental point of all—that the evidence gathered by the overflights provided convincing proof that there was no missile gap, despite Khrushchev’s boasting about Soviet rockets, and that as a result of the photographs, the United States had been able to keep some kind of control on its own defense spending.
But he did none of these things, because he had a fetish about keeping the U-2 a secret. The odd thing about this fetish was that the U-2 was no secret to the Soviets, and had not been since the very first flight, back in 1956. Indeed, all the governments involved—British, French, Turkish, Norwegian, Formosan, and others—knew about the U-2. The people who did not know were the Americans and their elected representatives.
Another option available to Eisenhower would have been to state that since the Soviets had turned down Open Skies, he had decided to unilaterally put it into effect anyway, and then invite Khrushchev to fly all he wanted to across the United States. To do that, however, Eisenhower would have had to make public the U-2 flights. Although it is difficult to see, a quarter of a century later, when Russian and American spy satellites are constantly in orbit around the world, what damage could have resulted, Eisenhower decided to make a desperate effort to keep the overflights a secret, or at least to deny their existence. Instead of confessing, he launched a cover-up.
He did so because he thought a cover-up would work. Acting on the assumption that Powers was dead and his plane in ruins, Eisenhower believed that Khrushchev could prove nothing. The irony—or perhaps the tragedy, considering what was at stake at the summit—was that Eisenhower himself had pointed out that his greatest single asset was his “reputation for honesty,” and that if a U-2 were lost “when we are engaged in apparently sincere deliberations, it could be put on display in Moscow and ruin the President’s effectiveness.” But he clung to the hope that Khrushchev, without any physical evidence, would be unconvincing.
On the afternoon of May 5, after returning to Washington, Eisenhower approved a statement that was then issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It began, “One of N.A.S.A.’s U-2 research airplanes, in use since 1956 in a continuing program to study meteorological conditions found at high altitude, has been missing since May 1, when its pilot reported he was having oxygen difficulties over the Lake Van, Turkey, area.” Presumably, the U-2 had strayed off course, perhaps crossing the border into Russia. The unstated assumption was that Powers’ weather plane was the one the Russians had shot down.26
The following day, Khrushchev released a photograph of a wrecked airplane, describing it as the U-2 Powers had flown. It was not, however, a U-2, but another airplane. The Premier was setting a trap. He wanted Eisenhower to continue to believe that Powers was dead, the U-2 destroyed, so that the United States would stick to its “weather research” story, as it did.
Then, on May 7, Khrushchev sprang his great surprise. He jubilantly reported to a “wildly cheering” Supreme Soviet that “we have parts of the plane and we also have the pilot, who is quite alive and kicking. The pilot is in Moscow and so are the parts of the plane.” Khrushchev made his account into a story of high drama and low skulduggery, interspersed with bitingly sarcastic remarks about Eisenhower’s cover story. Cries of “Shame, Shame!” rose from the deputies as Khrushchev heaped scorn on the CIA, mixed with cries of “Bandits, Bandits!”27
Upon receiving the news of Powers’ capture by the Russians, news that he found “unbelievable,” Eisenhower knew that since Khrushchev had both the plane and the pilot (and the film), there was little point in denying any further the real purpose of the overflights. He was not ready, however, to tell the American people, and the world, that he personally was involved in the distasteful business of spying. Dulles, Herter, and other top officials were frantically trying to find ways to protect the President. On Herter’s recommendation, Eisenhower then authorized the State Department to issue a statement denying that Powers had any authorization to fly over the Soviet Union.28
That statement was so ill conceived and so poorly timed that it made a bad situation much worse. As James Reston reported in The New York Times, “The United States admitted tonight that one of this country’s planes equipped for intelligence purposes had ‘probably’ flown over Soviet territory.
“An official statement stressed, however, that ‘there was no authorization for any such flight’ from authorities in Washington.
“As to who might have authorized the flight, officials refused to comment. If this particular flight of the U-2 was not authorized here, it could only be assumed that someone in the chain of command in the Middle East or Europe had given the order.”29
The attempt to cover up continued that afternoon, when Goodpaster called Herter to say that Eisenhower wanted a statement from the State Department that would indicate that the U-2 flights were carried out under “a very broad directive from the President given at the earliest point of his Administration to protect us from surprise attack.” But, Goodpaster added, “The President wants no specific tie to him of this particular event.”30
The resulting statements added to a national sense of humiliation, shame, and confusion. Reston reported, “This was a sad and perplexed capital tonight, caught in a swirl of charges of clumsy administration, bad judgment and bad faith.
“It was depressed and humiliated by the United States having been caught spying over the Soviet Union and trying to cover up its activities in a series of misleading official announcements.”31
Eisenhower personally remained calm. He told Whitman, “I would like to resign,” and he seemed to her to be depressed in the morning, “but by afternoon had bounced back with his characteristic ability to accept the bad news, not dwell on it, and so go ahead.”32 That afternoon, Eisenhower gave a briefing to the congressional leaders. He explained the U-2, gave a bit of its history, praised the overflights for the information they had gathered, admitted that he had fallen into Khrushchev’s trap, and concluded, “We will now just have to endure the storm.”33
Over the next two days, humiliation gave way to fright as the headlines became increasingly alarmist. “Khrushchev Warns of Rocket Attack on Bases Used by U.S. Spying Planes,” the Times announced on May 10. The following morning, the headline read, “U.S. Vows to Defend Allies if Russians Attack Bases.” Khrushchev, at an impromptu news conference in Moscow, announced that he was putting Powers on trial and added, “You understand that if such aggressive actions continue this might lead to war.” Eisenhower held his own news conference, where he read a prepared statement. In firm, measured tones, without a hint of regret or apology, Eisenhower said Khrushchev’s antics over the “flight of an unarmed nonmilitary plane can only reflect a fetish of secrecy.” Because of the nature of the Soviet system, spying “is a distasteful but vital necessity.” When asked whether his trip to Russia had been canceled, he replied, “I expect to go.” When asked if the outlook for the summit had changed, he replied, “Not decisively at all, no.”34
But of course it had. No one in Washington could have supposed for a minute that Khrushchev would not exploit the fact that he had caught the Americans red-handed, and that they had lied about it. Some of Eisenhower’s advisers urged him to take the way out Khrushchev had offered—deny that he knew anything about the flights and punish someone, presumably Allen Dulles, for them. Such action, the advisers argued, might still save the summit. Eisenhower rejected the advice, first of all because it was not true, secondly because it would be manifestly unfair to Dulles, thirdly because if he did such a thing, Khrushchev could refuse to deal with him at the summit on the grounds that Eisenhower obviously could not control his own Administration.
With only a few days to go before the summit, Khrushchev continued to make belligerent statements, but also continued to express his doubts that Eisenhower personally knew about the flights; at one point, he even said that the KGB often carried on activities that he did not know about. Sorting out Khrushchev’s motives is a hopeless task. He seemed determined to destroy the summit before it got started—but he was the one who had been most insistent about a summit meeting. He must have known he could never get Eisenhower to say that such a major operation as a U-2 flight could take place without his knowledge, just as he must have realized that Eisenhower would not make a personal apology—yet he insisted on both. His histrionics, wild charges, and pretended outrage sat ill with a man who had satellites flying over the United States daily—indeed Russian newspapers had even published photographs of the United States taken by cameras aboard such satellites.
The crisis brought the Western allies closer together. Eisenhower, Macmillan, and de Gaulle had first come together in Algeria in 1943, seventeen years earlier. Their common foe then had been the Nazi dictatorship. Now their common foe was a Communist dictatorship. Their determination to oppose totalitarianism and their resolution to maintain democracy and the Western alliance were as great as ever. They knew each other intimately, these three who had been through so much together.
“I don’t know about anybody else,” Eisenhower said at their first meeting in Paris, “but I myself am getting older.” De Gaulle smiled. “You don’t look it,” he replied.
“I hope,” said Eisenhower, “that no one is under the illusion that I’m going to crawl on my knees to Khrushchev.” De Gaulle smiled again. “No one is under that illusion,” he said. De Gaulle mentioned Khrushchev’s threat to attack U-2 bases in Turkey, Japan, and elsewhere. “Rockets,” Eisenhower replied without smiling, “can travel in two directions.” Macmillan nodded his agreement and pledged his full support.
“With us it is easy,” de Gaulle said to Eisenhower, because “you and I are tied together by history.”35 In the crisis, NATO had held firm, which for Eisenhower was a heartwarming experience that justified all the effort and hope he had put into the Western alliance since December 1950. It was unfortunate that strengthening NATO required deepening the split between East and West, but then it was Khrushchev, not Eisenhower or Macmillan or de Gaulle, who made the decision to ruin the summit conference.
• •
On May 14, Eisenhower and his party had flown to Paris. The next afternoon, he met with Herter, Ambassador to the Soviet Union Chip Bohlen, and Goodpaster. They informed him that Khrushchev, already in Paris, had told de Gaulle that he was prepared to go ahead with the summit, but that the Russian leader had given de Gaulle a six-page statement asserting that if Eisenhower did not condemn such actions as the U-2 flight, renounce such acts in the future, and punish those responsible, the Soviets would not take part in the summit. Eisenhower wanted to know why Khrushchev had not made such specific demands five days earlier—it would have saved him a trip to Paris. Bohlen remarked that the content of the statement, coupled with the fact that it was in written form, indicated that Khrushchev had already decided to break up the conference.
At the initial meeting, de Gaulle, the host, had hardly finished calling the meeting to order when Khrushchev was on his feet, red-faced, demanding the right to speak. De Gaulle looked quizzically at Eisenhower, who nodded his agreement, then indicated that Khrushchev had the floor. Khrushchev launched into a tirade against Eisenhower and the United States. Soon he was shouting. De Gaulle interrupted, turned to the Soviet interpreter, and said, “The acoustics in this room are excellent. We can all hear the chairman. There is no need for him to raise his voice.” The interpreter blanched, turned to Khrushchev, and began to translate. De Gaulle cut him off and motioned to his own interpreter, who unflatteringly translated into Russian. Khrushchev cast a furious glance at de Gaulle, then continued to read in a lower voice.
He soon lashed himself into an even greater frenzy. He pointed overhead and shouted, “I have been overflown!” De Gaulle interrupted again. He said that he too had been overflown.
“By your American allies?” asked Khrushchev, incredulous. “No,” de Gaulle replied, “by you. Yesterday 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?” Eisenhower caught de Gaulle’s eye and gave him a big grin.
Khrushchev raised both hands above his head and said, “As God is my witness, my hands are clean. You don’t think I would do a thing like that?”
After Khrushchev finished his diatribe, which concluded with a statement that Eisenhower would no longer be welcome in the Soviet Union, Eisenhower spoke. He said that Khrushchev hardly needed to go to such lengths to withdraw his invitation, that he had come to Paris hoping to engage in serious discussion, and that it was his wish that the conference could now proceed to matters of substance. Khrushchev and the Russian delegation stalked out of the room. As Eisenhower rose to follow them, de Gaulle caught him by the elbow and drew him aside. De Gaulle said to the President, “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.”36
The summit was over before it started, all the hopes for détente and disarmament gone with it. Eisenhower, with only eight months to serve, would not have another chance to force progress toward genuine peace. He returned home, where he had to endure making a series of reports to various groups, including the public. He issued a formal statement, made a radio and television report, met with the congressional leaders and his Cabinet, and with the NSC. At the latter meeting, Herter said something about the need to “regain our leadership.” Kistiakowsky recorded, “This made the President angry. He lost his temper and said we did not lose the leadership and therefore we didn’t have to regain it, and he would appreciate it if that expression were never used again, especially before congressional committees.”37
On May 23, Herter reported to him that the CIA and the Defense Department wanted to continue the U-2 flights. Eisenhower replied that “he had no thought whatsoever of permitting more of these . . . that they may as well realize that these flights cannot be resumed in the next eight months.”38 By August 1960, the United States had reconnaissance satellites in operation, although the U-2 continues to this day to provide photographic reconnaissance of outstanding quality. Powers was eventually exchanged for a Soviet spy, Colonel Rudolf Abel (what happened to Powers’ U-2 remains a mystery).
In late May, Eisenhower had a private talk with Kistiakowsky. The President said that the scientists had failed him. Kistiakowsky protested that the scientists had consistently warned that eventually a U-2 was going to get shot down. “It was the management of the project that failed. The President flared up, evidently thinking I accused him, and used some strong uncomplimentary language.” After Kistiakowsky explained that he meant the bureaucrats, not the President, were responsible, Eisenhower cooled off. He “began to talk with much feeling about how he had concentrated his efforts that last few years on ending the cold war, how he felt that he was making big progress, and how the stupid U-2 mess had ruined all his efforts. He ended very sadly that he saw nothing worthwhile left for him to do now until the end of his presidency.”39
Eisenhower’s depression was deep, genuine, and appropriate. Of all the events in Eisenhower’s long lifetime, this one stands out. If only Eisenhower had not given permission for that last flight. If only Khrushchev had not made such a big deal out of such a small thing. If only the two leaders could have trusted their own instincts just once, rather than their technicians and generals. Eisenhower was on the verge of agreeing to an unsupervised test ban; Khrushchev was on the verge of agreeing to inspection teams within the Soviet Union. No one knows where the momentum thus generated might have taken the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. But both the old men allowed their fears to override their hopes, and the summit was gone, and with it the best chance to slow the arms race of the sixties and seventies and eighties.
• •
Eisenhower returned to Washington and more problems. Cuba, for one. Although neither Eisenhower nor his advisers could even now decide if Castro was a Communist or not, they nevertheless wanted to be rid of him and the danger he represented. In Eisenhower’s view, the worst possibility was Castro allowing Khrushchev to use Cuba as a base for Soviet strategic forces. He did not, however, think that was likely to happen. At a June 29 meeting with Gordon Gray, Eisenhower “observed that he did not believe that Khrushchev would enter into a mutual-security treaty with Castro,” and added that Chip Bohlen shared that opinion. Khrushchev must know, Eisenhower said, that the United States “could not tolerate” a military alliance between Cuba and Russia.40
On July 6, Eisenhower signed legislation authorizing a major reduction in the Cuban sugar quota, and eliminating it altogether for 1961. As he admitted, “This action amounts to economic sanctions against Cuba.”41
Along with his diplomatic and economic moves against Castro, Eisenhower considered a full range of military or paramilitary options. At a July 7 NSC meeting, Gates briefed him on possible moves, ranging from evacuating American citizens from Cuba to a full-scale invasion and occupation. Treasury Secretary Anderson “gave a fairly bloodthirsty long speech about the need to declare a national emergency . . . [and] argued that what is happening in Cuba represents an aggressive action by the U.S.S.R.”42
Eisenhower was not ready to sound the bugles and direct a charge up San Juan Hill. As he explained to Republican leaders—who, like Nixon, were desperate for some definitive action against Castro before the November elections—“If we were to try to accomplish our aims by force, we would see all of [the Latin countries] tending to fall away and some would be Communist within two years. . . . If the United States does not conduct itself in precisely the right way vis-à-vis Cuba, we could lose all of South America.”43
Nixon wanted public action but Eisenhower continued to refuse. The President was, however, ready to move covertly against Castro. On August 18, he met with Gates, Dulles, and Bissell to discuss implementation of the four-point plan he had approved in March. Bissell reported that point two, a powerful propaganda offensive, was under way; point three, the creation of a resistance organization within Cuba, had been a miserable failure, primarily because of Castro’s police-state control. Bissell was making progress on point four, the creation of a paramilitary force from among Cuban exiles. He had moved the original training camp, outside Miami, to the Panama Canal Zone, then to Guatemala, where the CIA had excellent ties with President Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes.
Bissell wanted to expand the training program. Eisenhower agreed. The CIA had shown him photographs of Czech arms in Cuba, which helped convince him. He approved a $13 million budget for Bissell, and authorized the use of DOD personnel and equipment in the operation, although he insisted that “no United States military personnel were to be used in a combat status.” Later, he also approved the mounting of a U.S. Navy patrol off the coast of Guatemala, supposedly to block a Cuban invasion, actually to keep the Guatemalan training base a secret.
After giving his approval to Bissell’s expanded plans, Eisenhower asked about the original point one—“Where’s our government-in-exile?” Bissell and Allen Dulles explained that it was difficult to get the Cubans to work together, because some were pro-Batista, most were anti-Batista, all were hot-tempered and hardheaded, few were willing to compromise. Thus no genuine leader had emerged. Eisenhower, impatient, remarked, “Boys, if you don’t intend to go through with this, let’s stop talking about it.” He would not approve any action, he insisted, without a popular, genuine government-in-exile.44
• •
Eisenhower made a halfhearted effort to keep the Geneva disarmament talks going even after Paris, but on June 27 those meetings came to an end when the Soviet delegation walked out. Their collapse, although hardly unexpected, was a blow to Eisenhower, who had in 1953 set disarmament as one of his major goals, but who by 1960 had to recognize that the arms race was out of control. By 1960, the American nuclear arsenal had grown to proportions that by 1953 and 1954 standards Eisenhower had called “fantastic,” “crazy,” and “unconscionable.” Just how big it was becoming, Eisenhower was reminded on August 15, when McCone informed him that the United States was now producing, each year, more bombs than the estimated total requirement had been back in the mid-fifties. Partly this was a result of Eisenhower’s own inability to stand up to the AEC and the DOD over the years and say no to the expansion, but as he said, “being only one person, he had not felt he could oppose the combined opinion of all his associates.”45
America had gone far beyond what it needed for deterrence, at least in Eisenhower’s view, without getting anywhere close to a first-strike capability. After paying the cost in money and tension for the arsenal, which now contained more than six thousand weapons of all sizes, the United States was less secure than it had been in 1953. Eisenhower hated that result, but could not do anything about it.
In his last half year in office, Eisenhower’s conversations about disarmament proposals were exclusively concerned with propaganda advantage, or the effect of this or that proposal on the election, never with seeking a compromise that could lead to a breakthrough in the talks. Indeed, he agreed, albeit reluctantly and for the first time, to an increase in DOD appropriations, primarily because the Democrats were making such an issue out of national security. In so doing (the amount was one-half a billion dollars), Eisenhower admitted that the additional arms were not necessary for military purposes, but perhaps they “would carry sufficient credibility to create the psychological effect desired.”46
Despite his increasingly belligerent attitude toward the Russians, the President refused to be swept away on the national-security issue. The NSC, DOD, AEC, and Henry Luce all urged him to institute a nationwide civil-defense program. Nelson Rockefeller joined the chorus. Eisenhower responded that such a program would cost the federal government more than $10 billion and that in any case, building fallout shelters was a responsibility that “rests upon the locality and the private citizen.” Eisenhower would not put any federal money into shelters.47
Eisenhower also resisted entreaties that he spend more on the space race. Nixon, Republican leaders, and the Defense Establishment were all urging him to go all out on Project Mercury, designed to put a man in orbit around the earth, and on a man-on-the-moon project. Eisenhower called the latter “a multibillion-dollar project of no immediate value . . . He said he felt the project is useless at this moment and he would not think it really worth the money . . . The President said he likes to see us go ahead on useful things but he is not much of a man on spectaculars. He realizes that some stunts, such as the Lindbergh trip across the Atlantic, have some virtue, [but] he emphasized that he would not be willing to spend tax money to send a man around the moon . . . He said there is such a thing as common sense, even in research.”48
• •
For Eisenhower, the 1960 presidential election campaign was dominated by three thoughts. First, his intense concern about the future of his country, a concern that expressed itself in a partisan manner, as he convinced himself that victory by the Democrats would mean disaster for the country. Second, his feeling that the election was a vote of confidence and approval of his policies over the past seven and a half years. He knew this was silly, even irrational, that if he himself were the candidate there could be no question of the outcome, but he could not escape the feeling. Nor could he escape a third feeling, one of ambiguity about Nixon.
Since the time of the Checkers speech in the 1952 campaign, Nixon had served Eisenhower loyally and effectively, especially at the time of Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack. For Eisenhower, the problem was that he never seemed to grow, never seemed to consider a problem from any point of view other than the partisan political considerations, never seemed quite ready to take over. In 1956, Eisenhower had agreed to run for a second term primarily because he could not think of anyone qualified to succeed him. Repeatedly, in the summer of 1960, he told friends that his greatest failure was the failure to develop more Republican “comers.” He regretted that Nixon did not have more competition for the nomination. But—and there was always a “but” in the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship—he thought Nixon a far better man than his only serious competitor, Nelson Rockefeller. And as between Nixon and any of the Democratic hopefuls, Eisenhower never hesitated. Although Eisenhower could not believe that Nixon was even yet ready, Nixon was so superior to any alternative that Eisenhower gave him his backing.
The nature of the campaign put an additional strain on the already difficult Eisenhower-Nixon relationship. It was inevitable that Nixon would stress his experience in government, and in the process claim for himself a leading role in the decision-making process of the Administration. But this was precisely the area in which Eisenhower was most sensitive. The Nixon claim reinforced the standard Democratic criticism of Eisenhower, that he reigned rather than ruled, that he did not make the decisions himself. Eisenhower could not escape thinking of the election as a referendum on his Presidency, and he could not and would not allow it to be said that he delegated his decision-making powers. Nixon, of course, could hardly see the election as a referendum on Eisenhower; it was Nixon versus Kennedy, and he needed all the support from Eisenhower that he could get. He did not want Eisenhower to campaign on the basis of the record of his Administration, but to cite Nixon’s great contributions and describe Nixon as “indispensable,” “statesmanlike,” “judicious,” and so forth. But Eisenhower nevertheless spent the campaign defending his own record.
A second major problem revolved around differences in perceptions. When he was a candidate, Eisenhower had instinctively gone into the middle of the road, with the explicit goal of winning the independent vote. He had won the 1952 nomination despite the intense opposition of the Old Guard; he was not a professional politician; he did not draw his strength or his power from the Republican Party; he simply was not a party man. Nixon, by contrast, was the quintessential party man. He drew his strength and his power from the Republican Party. Thus Nixon was more partisan in his approach, especially during the 1960 campaign, than Eisenhower would have wished.
Nixon’s felt need to unite the Republican Party, added to his perception of what the voters wanted to hear on the issue of national defense, led to the deepest wound of all. Nixon deserted Eisenhower on defense. Rationally, Eisenhower knew it had to be done, that the clamor for more defense spending had become irresistible. He also knew that Nixon had to be his own man, had to establish himself as something more than “Ike’s boy,” had to show that the Republican Party was not a standpat party. But emotionally, it felt to Eisenhower like cold rejection of everything he had stood for and fought for over the past seven and a half years.
The result of all these structural difficulties, and of Eisenhower’s ambiguity toward Nixon, was that Eisenhower’s contribution to Nixon’s campaign was worse than unhelpful—it actually cost Nixon votes, and probably the election.
• •
Defense spending was a central issue in the campaign. The Democratic candidates were stumping the country with it, charging that Eisenhower had allowed a “missile gap” and a “rocket gap” to occur, and that as a result America was in retreat around the globe. Nelson Rockefeller joined the chorus. On June 8, he called for a $3.5 billion increase (about 9 percent) in the defense budget. “I suspect that Nelson has been listening too closely to half-baked advisers,” Eisenhower commented at a Republican leaders’ meeting.49
That evening, Rockefeller telephoned Eisenhower. He wanted to know Eisenhower’s thinking on whether or not he, Rockefeller, should once again become an avowed candidate. Eisenhower took the occasion to first of all give Rockefeller a short lecture on defense spending. Whitman recorded that “the President said he did not believe it was right to alarm people unnecessarily—he thought a fair question was whether we were doing these things fast enough.” As to Rockefeller re-entering the race, “The President said he was afraid he would be called ‘off again, on again, gone again, Finnegan.’ . . . he thought Nelson’s chances were very remote.” Eisenhower told Rockefeller that anyone who wanted a Republican nomination in the next four or five years “would have to get some kind of blessing from the President. He said therefore he hoped that the reasoned and positive approach he had advocated would be adopted by Nelson (instead of jumping on everybody).”50
The following day, Rockefeller announced that although his previous withdrawal from the race still stood, he would accept a draft. That same day, June 11, Eisenhower spoke with Mrs. Hobby. She had called him to deplore Rockefeller’s defense-spending statement, but she also remarked that “the other one [Nixon] is not easy.” Eisenhower assured her that “Dick is growing in stature daily.” Hobby complained that Nixon’s partisanship was driving away independents and Texas Democrats who had voted for Eisenhower. She asked the President to urge Nixon to be constructive and nonpartisan in his approach. Eisenhower did as requested, dictating a letter to Nixon repeating Hobby’s advice and noting, “personally, I concur.”51
The Democrats, meanwhile, met in Los Angeles and nominated Senator Kennedy as their candidate. He chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Eisenhower was appalled, even though he had predicted the outcome. He was vacationing at Newport at the time. Bill Robinson was with him. Robinson had breakfast with Eisenhower the morning Kennedy was to announce his choice. Eisenhower asked him who he thought it would be. Symington, Robinson replied, then asked Eisenhower who he thought it would be. “He said, without hesitation, Lyndon Johnson.” Robinson remonstrated: “How could Lyndon Johnson—having said all the things he did about Kennedy, having said over and over again he wouldn’t be a vice-presidential candidate—even consider it?”
Eisenhower replied, according to Robinson’s diary, “Of course, that’s very sound thinking and fairly good deduction, unless you know Johnson. He is not a big man. He is a small man. He hadn’t got the depth of mind nor the breadth of vision to carry great responsibility. Any floor leader of a Senate majority party looks good, no matter how incompetent he may be. Johnson is superficial and opportunistic.”52
Eisenhower disliked Kennedy even more. He told Ellis Slater, who was a friend of Joe Kennedy’s, that he feared if the Kennedys ever got in “we will never get them out—that there will be a machine bigger than Tammany Hall ever was . . . ”53 Eisenhower told one of his big-business friends, “I will do almost anything to avoid turning my chair and the country over to Kennedy.” And he gave Kistiakowsky “a long discourse on how incompetent Kennedy is compared to Nixon, that even the more thoughtful Democrats are horrified by his selection, and that Johnson is the most tricky and unreliable politician in Congress.”54 In 1956, Eisenhower had pronounced the Stevenson-Kefauver ticket “the sorriest” in the history of the Democratic Party. In 1960, he decided that Kennedy-Johnson was even worse.
But in 1956, he could confront Stevenson-Kefauver directly; in 1960, he had to confront Kennedy-Johnson through Nixon. He could and did, however, see to it that Nixon made the confrontation on a platform acceptable to him. The convention was to open on July 25. The week before, Eisenhower talked twice daily at least with Nixon on the telephone; the President told Bill Robinson that he was “quite content with the Nixon position.” Then, on July 22, Nixon unexpectedly flew to New York for a meeting with Rockefeller. They hammered out a joint statement, one that reporters immediately called appeasement on Nixon’s part, because on most issues (civil rights, housing, schools, and jobs) the statement reflected Rockefeller’s more liberal views. But what really upset Eisenhower was the statement on defense: “The United States can afford and must provide the increased expenditures to implement fully this necessary program for strengthening our defense posture. There must be no price ceiling on American security.”
Eisenhower confessed that he found the statement, which echoed Kennedy’s charges, “somewhat astonishing,” especially as it came from two men “who had long been in Administration councils and who had never voiced any doubt—at least in my presence—of the adequacy of America’s defenses.” Gabe Hauge called Robinson “in somewhat of a panic.” He told Robinson that the statement “really involved a repudiation of the President’s position on defense.” Worse, Rockefeller was insisting on putting the pledge to increase defense spending into the platform. Robinson talked to Eisenhower, who commented that “it would be difficult for Nixon to run on the Administration record if the platform contained a repudiation of it.” Eisenhower said he would still be President for six more months and he intended to stick to his policies. “Any position by Nixon or the platform in repudiation of these policies would bring discord and disunity in the Republican Party efforts.”55
The following day, Eisenhower telephoned Nixon, who claimed that Rockefeller had put out the statement unilaterally. “What I’m trying to do,” he said, “is to find some ground on which Nelson can be with us and not against us.” Eisenhower told Nixon that he would find it “difficult . . . to be enthusiastic about a platform which did not reflect a respect for the record of the Republican Administration . . . ”56 Nixon then instructed his lieutenants to eliminate the offensive passage, substituting for it a compromise: “The United States can and must provide whatever is necessary to insure its own security . . . and to provide any necessary increased expenditures to meet new situations. . . . To provide more would be wasteful. To provide less would be catastrophic.” That was acceptable to Eisenhower.
On July 26, Eisenhower addressed the convention. He spoke not of Nixon’s qualifications to take over the Oval Office, but rather about the accomplishments of his own Administration. Nixon won the nomination easily, then selected Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., as his running mate. Eisenhower was disappointed—up to the end he had hoped it would be Al Gruenther or Bob Anderson, and he doubted that Lodge would be an effective campaigner—but he accepted Nixon’s decision. 57
• •
Immediately after the Republican Convention, Eisenhower tried to convince Kennedy to tone down his criticism of defense policy. He instructed Allen Dulles to give a briefing to both Kennedy and Johnson. Eisenhower wanted Dulles to put his emphasis on how strong the American defense posture was. But in the briefing, Dulles only wanted to talk about developments in Berlin, Cuba, Iran, the Middle East, Formosa, NATO, and the Congo. The Democratic senators were only interested in developments that might arise during the campaign. Kennedy did ask Dulles directly, “How do we stand in the missile race?” Dulles recorded, in a memorandum for the President on the briefing, that “I replied that the Defense Department was the competent authority on this question . . .”58 That was hardly a satisfactory answer, and Kennedy felt free to continue to speak of a “missile gap.”
Kennedy’s campaign made Eisenhower more determined than ever to stop him. He met with Nixon and they agreed that the President would save his effort until the last days of the campaign, when he would barnstorm for Nixon. Behind the scenes, however, Eisenhower began the process of persuading his millionaire friends to put some of their money and energy into the election. On August 8, for example, he called Pete Jones. Jones was one of his gang, as well as head of Cities Service Oil Company. Eisenhower told Jones to use his influence to see to it that “industry do something to talk a little optimistically, not pessimistically, these next three months.” He wanted Jones to get active in fund raising. “The President also said that the government was accelerating some of its spending; that certain companies might do the same.”59
Besides stimulating the economy and raising campaign funds, Eisenhower could most help Nixon through his press conferences. He tried to do so, but the results were bad. No matter what he was asked about Nixon, it seemed, or what he intended to say, his answers could always be read two or more ways, and never constituted that clear-cut, total endorsement that Nixon so desperately needed. The total effect was almost devastating.
On August 10, a reporter asked if Eisenhower was going to give Nixon “a greater voice . . . than you have in the past, in view of his responsibility as the candidate.” Eisenhower replied that he alone could make the decisions. He would continue, as always, to consult with Nixon, but if a decision had to be made, “I’m going to decide it according to my judgment.” Did he think that Nixon had gone too far in trying to appease Rockefeller? “Well,” Eisenhower replied, “I don’t think he feels that he was appeasing.” Peter Lisagor asked if Eisenhower had any objections to Nixon holding his own press conference, so that he could speak for himself on the defense issue. Eisenhower said he had no objections: “As a matter of fact I am quite sure that while, with the exception of minute detail, he would be saying exactly the same thing I would be, I have no objection to his going and making any kind of public talk . . .”
Sarah McClendon wanted to know if Eisenhower’s recent request for larger military appropriations “is a change that you took in light of the world situation or were you influenced to do this by Mr. Nixon or Mr. Rockefeller.” Eisenhower snapped back, “I wasn’t influenced by anybody except my own military and State Department advisers and my own judgment.” Charles Bartlett asked if there were any differences between Nixon and the President on the question of nuclear testing. “Well,” Eisenhower responded, “I can’t recall what he has ever said specifically about nuclear underground testing.”60
Nixon’s major claim in his confrontation with Kennedy was that he was experienced in making the tough decisions. But at one half-hour press conference, Eisenhower had denied that Nixon, or anyone else, really participated in the decision making. He specifically denied that Nixon had been consulted on increasing the military budget. And he admitted that he could not even remember what Nixon’s advice might have been on the testing issue.
Two weeks later, at the next press conference, things got worse. Sarah McClendon asked Eisenhower to “tell us of some of the big decisions that Mr. Nixon has participated in . . .” Eisenhower replied, “I don’t see why people can’t understand this: No one can make a decision except me . . . I have all sorts of advisers, and one of the principal ones is Mr. Nixon . . . Now, if you talk about other people sharing a decision, how can they? No one can because then who is going to be responsible?”
Later in the same conference, Charles Mohr of Time brought the subject up again, justifying it on the grounds that Nixon “almost wants to claim that he has had a great deal of practice at being President.” Could not the President give an example of how Nixon fit into the decision-making process? Eisenhower said that Nixon attended the meetings and gave his opinion. “And he has never hesitated . . . to express his opinion, and when he has been asked for it, expressed his opinion in terms of recommendations as to decision. But no one [at the meetings] . . . has the decisive power. There is no voting . . . Mr. Nixon has taken a full part in every principal discussion.”
By this point, Eisenhower was obviously becoming irritated at answering the same simple question over and over. But Mohr persisted. “We understand that the power of decision is entirely yours, Mr. President,” he said. “I just wondered if you could give us an example of a major idea of his that you had adopted in that role, as the decider and final—”
Eisenhower cut him off. “If you give me a week,” he said, “I might think of one. I don’t remember.” And with that, the conference ended.61
Eisenhower realized immediately how terrible that remark sounded. When he returned to the Oval Office, he called Nixon to apologize and express his regret. The Democrats, of course, and the press, made the most of it. Shortly thereafter, Nixon made a plaintive appeal to Eisenhower “to be tied into the President’s action in Cuba in some way.”62 (Nixon was urging decisive action against Castro and wanted Eisenhower to give him the credit for it.) Eisenhower refused, saying, “This would be very difficult to do in any acceptable way.” To Whitman, Eisenhower complained that Nixon had made a big mistake in 1956, when Eisenhower offered him the job of Secretary of Defense. Had Nixon taken that post, Eisenhower argued, he could have gained all the decision-making experience he wanted, and “he would be in a lot better position today in his bid for the Presidency.”63
On August 30, Eisenhower went to see Nixon in the hospital—the Vice-President was in Walter Reed Army Hospital with an infected knee. When he returned from the visit, Eisenhower told Whitman that “there was some lack of warmth.” Whitman’s diary continues: “He mentioned again, as he has several times, the fact that the Vice-President has very few personal friends.” Eisenhower confessed that he could not understand how a man could live without friends. Whitman wrote that the difference between Eisenhower and Nixon “is obvious. The President is a man of integrity and sincere in his every action . . . He radiates this, everybody knows it, everybody trusts and loves him. But the Vice-President sometimes seems like a man who is acting like a nice man rather than being one.”64
The highlight of the campaign was the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Eisenhower advised Nixon against agreeing to debate, on the grounds that Nixon was much better known than Kennedy and therefore should not give Kennedy so much free exposure. Nixon rejected the advice, on the grounds that debate was one of his strongest points. Eisenhower then advised him “to talk on the positive side . . . and not try to be too slick.” Nixon replied that “he was going to be gentlemanly, let Kennedy be the aggressor.” After the first debate, Nixon phoned Eisenhower. Nixon must have been crushed when Eisenhower explained “that he had not been able to hear the debate . . .” And he must have been hurt as Eisenhower nevertheless proceeded to advise him to “once in a while . . . not appear to be quite so glib, to ponder and appear to think about something before answering a question.”65
In late October, Eisenhower finally began active campaigning for Nixon. What he talked about, however, was not Nixon’s superb preparation for the Presidency, but the record of his own Administration. He told a Philadelphia audience, for example, that in the past eight years personal income was up by 48 percent, individual savings were up by 37 percent, school construction up by 46 percent, college enrollments up by 75 percent, that 9 million new homes had been built, the most ever in one decade, that the GNP was up by 45 percent, that inflation had been controlled, that the Interstate Highway System had become a reality, as had the St. Lawrence Seaway, that in short the past eight years had been wonderful. Few disagreed, although Nixon might have said that the point was that the election was about who was going to lead America forward into the 1960s, not back into the fifties.
Nevertheless, the Eisenhower speeches were eliciting a response. Eisenhower decided he wanted to do more campaigning and indicated that he wished to have an expanded schedule of speeches. Nixon was all for it. But on October 30, eight days before the election, Mamie called Pat Nixon to say that she was distraught at the thought of her man taking on additional burdens, and told Mrs. Nixon she feared that Eisenhower “was not up to the strain campaigning might put on his heart.” She had tried to dissuade him, but could not, and therefore “begged” Pat Nixon to have her husband convince Eisenhower to change his mind, without letting Ike know she had intervened. The following morning, Dr. Snyder added his opinion, telling Nixon to “either talk him out of it or just don’t let him do it—for the sake of his health.”
In his memoirs, Nixon related that “I had rarely seen Eisenhower more animated than he was when I arrived at the White House that afternoon.” He showed Nixon an expanded itinerary. Nixon began giving reasons why the President should not take on the extra burden. According to Nixon, “He was hurt and then he was angry.” But Nixon insisted and Eisenhower “finally acquiesced. His pride prevented him from saying anything, but I knew that he was puzzled and frustrated by my conduct.”66
If Nixon was not ready to risk Eisenhower’s health in his cause, he was ready to call into question Senator Kennedy’s physical condition. On November 4, Whitman noted that an “air of desperation” had taken over the Nixon camp. She cited as an example a statement Nixon wanted the White House to release. Rumors were flying around the country to the effect that Kennedy had Addison’s disease. The proposed statement referred to Eisenhower’s position in 1956, when he had made public the results of a complete physical examination, and called on the 1960 candidates to do the same. Nixon indicated that after the President signed and issued the statement, he would immediately make his own physical records public.
Jim Hagerty was furious. He called it a “cheap, lousy, stinking political trick.” Eisenhower felt the same way. When an aide tried to explain to the President about the rumors of Addison’s disease, Eisenhower cut him off and said, “I am not making myself a party to anything that has to do with the health of the candidates.” The idea died.67
Hagerty’s and Ike’s attitude is difficult to understand. Nixon was right to point out that Ike had set a precedent in 1956, and Kennedy had already made an issue of Johnson’s health (Johnson had had a heart attack; in the preconvention maneuvering, Kennedy had questioned his ability to give full-time service). In the seventies and eighties, the candidates’ health became a standard subject for discussion and consideration.
On November 4, the Nixon people called Whitman with another proposal. Nixon wanted to say in a speech that night that if elected, he would send Eisenhower on a good-will tour to the Communist-bloc countries. Eisenhower was “astonished, did not like the idea of ‘auctioning off the Presidency’ in this manner, spoke of the difficulty of his traveling once he is not President, and felt it was a last-ditch, hysterical action.” He told Hagerty to call Nixon’s people and tell them no.
Two days later, Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, called Whitman to ask her to make sure the President listened to Nixon’s taped speech at 9 P.M. that night. Eisenhower did, and was again astonished as he heard Nixon make the promise to send Eisenhower on a tour. Eisenhower was so angry he told Hagerty to call Nixon and force him to retract the promise. Hagerty got the President calmed down. Then, Whitman reported, “The President dictated . . . a congratulatory telegram on the speech . . . to send to Nixon.” Speaking for everyone who has attempted to plumb the depths of the Eisenhower-Nixon relationship, as well as for that larger group that tries to make sense of American politics, Whitman confessed, “I do not understand.”68
• •
November 8 was election day. Eisenhower joined John and Barbara to watch the returns. The early reports were discouraging, as Kennedy was sweeping the East. At 11 P.M., Eisenhower went to bed, thinking the worst. When he woke the next morning, Nixon had closed the gap in the popular vote, which stood almost dead equal, but still looked to be hopeless in the electoral vote. Shortly after noon, Nixon called from his California headquarters. He thought he would take California, Illinois, and Minnesota, but it would not be enough. Nixon pointed out that he had run some 7 percent ahead of the Republican Party, and that he lost because of the “weakness of the Republican Party.” Eisenhower urged Nixon to take a good rest. He then made a remark that summarized nicely his perspective on the campaign and election: “We can be proud of these last eight years.” Nixon replied, “You did a grand job.”69
Nixon later told Eisenhower that he had never heard the President sound so depressed. Eisenhower agreed that it was so. What he did not tell Nixon, but did tell Whitman, was the reason. It was not so much Nixon’s defeat as it was his own sense of rejection. All morning, Whitman recorded, “The President kept saying this was a ‘repudiation’ of everything he had done for eight years.”70