AT EISENHOWER’S July 1 news conference, Merriman Smith asked the first question. He wanted to know if the President was “hopeful or optimistic about the prospects of an armistice.” Eisenhower said he was. He admitted that “we are having an acute example of the difficulties that arise among allies . . . It is the history of coalitions; we shouldn’t be too discouraged about it.” Without mentioning Rhee’s name, Eisenhower pointed out that “people in emotional states are very apt to even overstate their cases, and it becomes extraordinarily difficult to get a reasonble solution.” But by no means was he ready to throw up his hands: “I still, in my own mind and in my very deepest convictions, believe that a satisfactory solution is coming out of it.”1
In Seoul, meanwhile, Walter Robertson and General Clark were conferring daily with Rhee, threatening him with an American pull-out if he did not cooperate in the armistice, promising him virtually unlimited American aid if he did. Rhee resisted the pressure, helped by reports from the States that seemed to indicate a near revolt by Republican senators against their own Administration. Ralph Flanders had said that Robertson and Clark were putting “us in the position of threatening the Korean government with an attack from the rear while the ROKs were attacking the Communists at the front.” Bridges and McCarthy believed that “freedom-loving people” should applaud Rhee’s defiance of the armistice. An Old Guard representative introduced a resolution in the House commending Rhee for releasing the prisoners. And on July 5, the acting majority leader, Senator Knowland (Taft was in the hospital for treatment of a cancer in his hip), blamed Eisenhower for a “breach” with Rhee and announced his support for Korean unification before any armistice agreement was signed.2
Despite the clamor, Eisenhower insisted that Robertson and Clark be firm with the old man. They were, and ultimately persuaded Rhee that it was futile for South Korea to try to go it alone. On July 8, Rhee finally issued a public statement promising to cooperate.
On July 12, with peace imminent, the Communists launched a massive assault, several corps strong, against an ROK division and its supporting American field artillery battalion. The attack evidently had a twofold purpose—to get better defensive positions before the final cease-fire line was established, and to demonstrate to Rhee how vulnerable his ROK units were. Clark rushed the U.S. 3d Infantry Division (Eisenhower’s old outfit, which had been pulled out of the line the night before) into the breach. One of the regimental officers in the 3d Division was John Eisenhower. When the Americans appeared on the line, the Chinese called off their attack at that spot, resuming it the next day farther to the east, against only ROK targets.
Eisenhower wrote a furious memorandum to Wilson. He reminded the Secretary of Defense that he had suggested, some weeks earlier, strengthening American forces in Korea. At that time the JCS had rejected his suggestion, on the grounds that unless the U.N. intended to undertake an offensive, more troops were not needed. “Moreover,” Eisenhower complained, “there was no great value attached by anyone to my further suggestion that the arrival in that region of reinforcements might have a good effect upon the hostile negotiators at Panmunjom.” Now several ROK divisions, and an American artillery battalion, had been overrun, which “would seem to indicate that some of the confidence in our defensive strength was misplaced.” He instructed Wilson to undertake a “complete review” of the situation, and insisted that “we must take no gamble with the integrity of our defensive position.” He wanted two additional divisions sent to Korea immediately.3
On July 23, at an NSC meeting, Eisenhower pointed out that the truce that was about to go into effect would mean that no more troops could be brought in on either side. He therefore ordered two American divisions already in Japan, plus one still in the States, sent to Korea. He also ordered that there be “no publicity.”4
The next day, Dulles called Eisenhower on, the telephone to inform the President that Rhee had just sent a message demanding ironclad guarantees of post-truce American aid. Dulles said that it appeared to him “as if Rhee at the last minute was trying to run out on his commitment to us.” Eisenhower said he was “astonished” at this development and instructed the Secretary to tell Rhee that “this is what we can do and beyond that we cannot go.”5 Dulles sent the word to Rhee, and when the truce was finally signed, two days later, Rhee made no public protest.
At 9:30 P.M. on July 26, Eisenhower received word of the signing. A half hour later, he made a radio and television address to the American people. The shooting was over, he said, a fact that he greeted with “prayers of thanksgiving.” Still, he felt it necessary to remind the American people that “we have won an armistice on a single battleground—not peace in the world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest.” He concluded his low-key remarks with a quotation from Lincoln (“With malice toward none; with charity for all.”). There were no victory celebrations, no cheering crowds in Times Square, no sense of triumph. Instead Republicans like Jenner, Dewey Short, McCarthy, and House Speaker Joe Martin complained because the Administration had not sought victory, while Lyndon Johnson warned that the armistice “merely releases aggressive armies to attack elsewhere.”6
The armistice was, despite its reception, one of Eisenhower’s greatest achievements. He took great pride in it. He had promised to go to Korea; he had implied that he would bring the war to a close; he had made the trip; despite intense opposition from his own party, from his Secretary of State, and from Syngman Rhee, he had ended the war six months after taking office. Just as de Gaulle almost nine years later was the only Frenchman whose prestige was great enough to allow him to end the war in Algeria without himself being overthrown, so too was Eisenhower the only American who could have found and made stick what Eisenhower called “an acceptable solution to a problem that almost defied . . . solution.”7 His solution was acceptable only because he had put his own immense prestige behind it; he knew that if Truman had agreed to such a settlement, Republican fury might have led to an impeachment attempt and certainly would have had a divisive effect on the country.
What stands out is Eisenhower the leader. The Supreme Allied Commander of 1945, the victor who would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, had become the peacemaker of 1953, a man who would accept a compromise settlement that left him far short of victory, much less unconditional surrender. There were fundamental differences in the two situations, obviously, but this should not obscure the truth. The truth was that Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unimaginable, and limited war unwinnable. This was the most basic of his strategic insights.
The alternative between unimaginable and unwinnable was continued stalemate. That was the policy urged on him by nearly all his advisers, Republican colleagues, and most Democrats. At this thought, Eisenhower the man rebelled. The U.S. Army had suffered nearly one thousand casualties a week in Korea during the time since Rhee released the prisoners, on the eve of a successful completion of the truce. The thought of those five thousand dead and wounded boys made Eisenhower sick. The man who had ordered the Allied troops back onto the Continent and into the hell of the Bulge could not bear the thought of American boys dying for a stalemate. He wanted the killing ended, and he ended it.
Eisenhower liked to make up lists in his diary, lists of men who had pleased him or disappointed him, of events, of accomplishments. From the end of July 1953 onward, whenever he listed the achievements he was proudest of, he always began with peace in Korea.8
• •
Immediately upon the conclusion of the armistice, Eisenhower moved to make good on his promises to Rhee. On July 27 he sent a special message to Congress, asking for authorization to spend $200 million for reconstruction in Korea, the money to come from savings in the Defense Department “that result from the cessation of hostilities.” One week later, Congress responded positively.9
Eisenhower had a much more ambitious plan in mind, one that went far beyond a mere $200 million. On July 31, he sent a memorandum to Dulles, Wilson, and Stassen on “Assistance to Korea.” Eisenhower said that “it strikes me that never before have the armed forces of the United States had a better opportunity to contribute more effectively than they now have in Korea toward helping win the Cold War.” He felt that if the U.S. Eighth Army in Korea, then commanded by General Maxwell Taylor, could develop a “proper understanding” of the opportunity, and “if we can produce the enthusiasm that leadership should be able to develop,” then the Eighth Army could go to work rebuilding South Korea. It would be “something almost unique in history. It is the opportunity of an army in a foreign land to contribute directly and effectively to the repairing of the damages of war; to rebuild and revive a nation, to give to itself the satisfaction of constructive and challenging work, dedicated to the preservation and enhancement rather than to the destruction of human values.”
Eisenhower was quite specific about his vision. He wanted Taylor to use his men to restore productive facilities such as roads, railways, lines of communications, and in addition to rebuild schools, restore hospitals, train teachers and medical staffs, and engage in “countless other activities that would bring into play all of the talents present in this great Army.” Eisenhower thought that if Taylor and the Eighth Army put their hearts into it, “an amazing transformation could come about, within the space of months, almost weeks. The effect of this upon the world would, in my opinion, be electrical.” It would demonstrate that America was “engaged in helping humans, not merely in asserting and supporting any particular government system.” It would cement the bonds of friendship between the Korean and American people. It would overcome the boredom “that always attacks an occupying army.” Most of all, it would “improve the health and living standards of the Korean people, and assure that that region will remain a real bulwark of freedom.”10
But however grand the opportunity seemed to Eisenhower, it held no interest for Dulles, Wilson, or Taylor. They simply ignored it. Eisenhower, with other things on his mind, failed to follow up until the end of September, when he asked an aide what was being done. The answer was, nothing. Taylor was preoccupied with building a defensive line in the rear of the neutral zone; Dulles was worrying about Vietnam, Iran, and other crises around the world, and had put Korea out of his mind; Wilson was trying to cut costs, not find new ways to spend DOD money.
On September 30, Eisenhower wrote Wilson another memo. Rather than accuse Wilson directly of ignoring his orders, he began: “Because it appears that a memorandum I wrote last July to express some thoughts of mine was probably lost, I am attaching hereto a copy.” He said he realized that Taylor was concerned with building his defensive line, but “this work should be well along by now,” so there should “certainly be available technical personnel whose enthusiastic cooperation can make every appropriated dollar do the work of ten.” Eisenhower offered to talk to Wilson “at any time about this problem.”11 Again, nothing happened. Wilson was not interested, Taylor was not interested, and Eisenhower—despite his splendid vision—was not interested enough to follow through. Korea was in the past.
• •
Back in January 1953, Eisenhower had received a three-page cable from the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. “Old Mossy,” as he was called by contemptuous Westerners, headed a government that had nationalized the oil fields and refineries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The British had responded by shutting down the world’s largest refinery, at Abadan, and by charging that any oil sold by Iran was in fact stolen goods. The British threatened to take any purchasers to court; the result was a de facto blockade on the sale of Iranian oil. In October 1952, Mossadegh broke diplomatic relations with the British. That act increased his popularity, but not his revenues—Iran was broke. In his cable to Eisenhower, Mossadegh set forth the Iranian position, summing up his theme in one sentence: “For almost two years the Iranian people have suffered acute distress and much misery merely because a company inspired by covetousness and a desire for profit supported by the British government had been endeavoring to prevent them from obtaining their natural and elementary rights.” In a hand-drafted reply, Eisenhower said that his own position was impartial, that he had no prejudices in the case, and that he hoped future relations between Iran and the United States would be good.12
Everything Eisenhower was hearing about Iran, however, was anti-Mossadegh. Because Mossadegh had accepted the support of the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, Americans leaped to the conclusion that he was himself a Communist. The American ambassador to Iran told Eisenhower that Mossadegh’s supporters in Teheran were “the street rabble, the extreme left . . . extreme Iranian nationalists, some, but not all, of the more fanatical religious leaders, intellectual leftists, including many who had been educated abroad and did not realize that Iran was not ready for democracy.”13 Eisenhower’s own friends in the oil business, including Sid Richardson, a Texas oil magnate, and Pete Jones of Cities Service (a charter member of Eisenhower’s gang), told the President that nationalization was “disruptive” and not in the best interests of Iran, Britain, or the United States. Dulles feared that the chaos in Iran, coupled with the Tudeh’s growing influence under Mossadegh, would give the Soviets an opportunity to take over the country.
In the spring of 1953, Foreign Secretary Eden had come to Washington for talks. There had been much to discuss—the war in Korea, British trade with China, Vietnam, NATO, ferment in Egypt, and of course Iran. In his meeting with Eisenhower, Eden noted later, the President “was extremely worried about the position in Iran.” By this time, Mossadegh was engaged in a test of will with the young Shah of Iran, who was pro-British and who opposed nationalization. Eden told Churchill that Eisenhower “seemed obsessed by the fear of a Communist Iran.” Eden was in a delicate position; he wanted Anglo-Persian’s monopoly restored, but he did not want it done by the Americans, because if they intervened successfully, their oil companies would demand a share in Iranian oil. “The difficulty of this situation,” Eden reported to Churchill, “remains that the Americans are perpetually eager to do something. The President repeated this several times.” Further, the Americans had “a desire to reach a quick solution at almost any cost,” coupled with “an apparent disinclination to take second place even in an area where primary responsibility was not theirs.”14
Unfortunately for the British, they did not have the resources to drive Mossadegh from power by themselves. Anglo-Persian and the British government had therefore called on the CIA for help. British Secret Service agents had talked to Kermit (“Kim”) Roosevelt, TR’s grandson and FDR’s cousin, a former OSS man now working for the CIA, about the possibilities of cooperative action toward a coup engineered by the CIA, supported by the British communications network in Cyprus. Roosevelt told the British that the chances of convincing the Eisenhower Administration to act were good.15
He thought so because of the emphasis the new President was putting on both the underdeveloped world and on the CIA. Eisenhower and Foster Dulles spent many a cocktail hour together, holding wide-ranging discussions. More often than not, their talk came around to the underdeveloped world and the need to keep the poorer nations from going Communist. With NATO in place, with EDC about to be ratified, with a firm defensive line established in Europe, with an armistice in Korea, the battleground for the Cold War had shifted to the so-called Third World. Latin America, India, Egypt, Iran, Vietnam—these were the places where the free world was being challenged, or so Eisenhower and Dulles believed.
In meeting the challenge, Eisenhower intended to use the CIA in a much more active role than Truman had given it. Under Truman, the Agency had concentrated on its first responsibility, gathering and evaluating intelligence from around the world. It had occasionally intervened in the affairs of other nations, but only by providing campaign funds for political parties favorable to the West, such as the Christian Democrats in Italy in the 1948 election. Eisenhower believed the Agency could be used more effectively, indeed could become one of America’s chief weapons in the Cold War. Partly this was based on his experiences in World War II; he had been impressed by and grateful for the contribution to victory made by the British Secret Service, the French Resistance, and the OSS. More important was Eisenhower’s fundamental belief that nuclear war was unimaginable, limited conventional war unwinnable, and stalemate unacceptable. That left the CIA’s covert action capability. Under Eisenhower’s leadership and Allen Dulles’ direction, the size and scope of the CIA’s activities increased dramatically during the 1950s. The beginning came in Iran in 1953.
In May of that year, Mossadegh again wrote Eisenhower, asking the President to remove the British obstacles to the sale of Iranian oil and to provide Iran with American economic assistance. Eisenhower refused. After waiting more than a month to reply, Eisenhower told Mossadegh, “I fully understand that the government of Iran must determine for itself which foreign and domestic policies are likely to be more advantageous to Iran . . . I am not trying to advise the Iranian government on its best interests. I am merely trying to explain why, in the circumstances, the government of the United States is not presently in a position to extend more aid to Iran or to purchase Iranian oil.”16
That cable was sent on June 30. By that time, a high-level meeting in the Secretary of State’s office had already produced the decision to mount a coup against Mossadegh, directed by Kim Roosevelt, with the aim of restoring the Shah to power. Beetle Smith, Robert Murphy, the Dulles brothers, and Charlie Wilson were there. The plot involved using CIA money—the total amount spent is in dispute, but some millions of dollars were involved—to bribe Iranian army officials and to hire a mob in Teheran in order to turn out Mossadegh and bring back the Shah. It was code named Ajax. Secretary of State Dulles was delighted by the plan. “So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh!” he exclaimed.17
Before going into operation, Ajax had to have the approval of the President. Eisenhower participated in none of the meetings that set up Ajax; he received only oral reports on the plan; and he did not discuss it with his Cabinet or the NSC. Establishing a pattern he would hold to throughout his Presidency, he kept his distance and left no documents behind that could implicate the President in any projected coup. But in the privacy of the Oval Office, over cocktails, he was kept informed by Foster Dulles, and he maintained a tight control over the activities of the CIA.18
In July, Mossadegh dissolved the parliament and began ruling by decree. He called for a plebiscite. Meanwhile, the Tudeh Party was staging riots in Teheran. Mossadegh, Eisenhower believed, “was moving closer and closer to the Communists.” In early August, the Shah fled his riot-torn capital. On August 5, Mossadegh won 99.4 percent of the vote in his plebiscite. And on August 8 the Soviet Union—which Eisenhower had been told had already provided Mossadegh with $20 million to keep his government afloat—announced that it had initiated negotiations with Iran for financial aid. Different observers drew contradictory conclusions from these events, but Eisenhower’s was clear. “Iran’s downhill course toward Communist-supported dictatorship was picking up momentum.” Eisenhower told Allen Dulles to tell Kim Roosevelt to put Ajax into operation.19
• •
Eisenhower wanted to wage the Cold War not only on the diplomatic and covert fronts, but also for world public opinion. Jackson was full of psychological-warfare ideas, many of which Eisenhower approved of and implemented. One such was to offer Communist pilots a $100,000 reward if they would deliver a MIG jet airplane to American authorities. The idea was not so much to study the MIG—enough had been shot down in Korea to do that—as to exploit the propaganda angle of a defection.
In September, a North Korean pilot did fly his MIG across the 38th parallel and land on an American airstrip. Although Eisenhower had approved the offer, he now found himself embarrassed by it. Even for the Americans, $100,000 was a fair sum of money, especially for a plane that, as Eisenhower said, “is no longer of any great interest to us.” Eisenhower felt that the CIA had a moral obligation to pay the money, but thereafter he wanted the offer withdrawn. He was also ready to tell the Communists that they could have the plane back. Allen Dulles objected to all of this, on the grounds that great propaganda victories were possible, and it might even be that hundreds of pilots would defect. Eisenhower told Dulles that if that happened, “I will eat crow.” He explained that Communist “methods of punishing people through torturing families are too well known and too effective to give rise to any great hope that we are going to wreck the Communist Air Force in this fashion.”20 Beetle Smith then worked out a compromise; the pilot “rejected” the bribe “on the basis that his action was because of his own convictions and not for money.” Instead, Smith arranged for the pilot to be taken over as a ward by the National Committee for Free Asia (which was funded by the CIA) and provided with a technical education and financial support equal to the reward. Smith concluded a memorandum to Eisenhower, “C. D. and I feel that there is real propaganda value in this.” Eisenhower scribbled at the bottom of the memo, “Now we’re clicking. D. E.”21
CIA control of funds that did not have to be accounted for gave Eisenhower flexibility in expenditures. The National Committee for a Free Europe, for example, an organization guided by C. D. Jackson that was dedicated to liberation and ran Radio Free Europe, received 90 percent of its operating budget from the CIA. Jackson was a bit embarrassed by this fact, while Eisenhower was anxious to save the government’s money. They agreed to hold a private dinner at the White House for “business and national organization big shots.” Jackson managed to raise $10 million from the dinner, so the government saved that amount, and Radio Free Europe became, according to Jackson, “credible.”22
• •
That dinner was not publicized, but on most occasions when Eisenhower hosted his stag dinners, Hagerty gave a notice and a guest list to the press, which had been clamoring for more information about the dinners. Publication excited widespread comment. Republicans were delighted that the President had sense enough to gather around him the biggest businessmen in America; Democrats were outraged that the President sat down only with millionaires. That was not exactly true—Eisenhower liked to mix his company, with private businessmen sitting beside high government officials. At a September 23 stag dinner, for example, C. D. Jackson sat next to Henry Ford II; Charlie Wilson sat next to the head of Goodyear; Beetle Smith sat beside Richard Mellon; Allen Dulles was across from John J. McCloy of the Chase National Bank; and as a special treat for Eisenhower, his son was there, home from Korea, sitting at the end of the table.23 The dinners had a set pattern; formal dress, cocktails, dinner, retirement to the Red Room, where they all sat in a circle and discussed philosophical points or current issues.
Democratic fears that Eisenhower was allowing himself to be unduly influenced by his rich friends were misplaced. Although it was true that the President listened more than he talked, and although he occasionally did pick up an idea or two, his actual purpose was to impose his views and ideas on his guests. At a dinner in July, for example, the subject for discussion was a return to the gold standard. Eisenhower entered into it with preconceived notions; he had told George Whitney recently that as far as he could tell, the gold bugs “are merely another type of isolationist (I think some of them own some gold stocks.).”24 Still he listened patiently as the guests made their case for gold. He was not convinced. When he pressed them on their ideas, he discovered that “they had no clear idea as to the method by which this should be done; indeed, they had no real idea of what they were talking about.” Eisenhower concluded a diary entry on the dinner, “As usual, everybody went away carrying with him the opinion with which he came.”25
Eisenhower knew better. He did change many minds in the course of eight years of stag dinners. He used the occasions for a sales pitch for his favorite programs, most especially MSA and NATO. He always spoke last, summing up the evening’s conversation in a few sentences and then pronouncing his judgment and asking his guests to help him put over his program. Since the guests were among the most powerful and influential men in American life, the dinners gave Eisenhower an opportunity to exercise leadership the way he liked to do it, through reason and persuasion of other American leaders. He was so earnest about MSA, so convincing about NATO, and so open and honest in his appeals for help, that virtually every guest went away a missionary determined to “go out and help Ike on this one.” Eisenhower’s virtuosity, and his intelligence, impressed even such a high-powered intellectual as George Kennan. After attending one stag dinner, Kennan remarked, “In summarizing the group’s conclusions, President Eisenhower showed his intellectual ascendancy over every man in the room.”26
• •
On July 2, Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “Daily I am impressed by the shortsightedness bordering upon tragic stupidity of many who fancy themselves to be the greatest believers in and supporters of capitalism.”27 He had in mind such organizations as the American Medical Association, with its knee-jerk opposition to any role for the government in the nation’s health care, or the general clamor he heard from the heads of large corporations about the need to cut taxes. Lobbyists were a special bête noire; in the summer of 1953, the lobby that irritated him most was the one that spoke for the motion-picture industry. The movie people had persuaded Congress to eliminate the tax on admission tickets. Eisenhower was opposed to special favors for anyone, and he hated to lose revenue, so he was opposed to the movie-tax elimination on general principles. He also had specific objections.
The movie industry was in trouble, he said, not only because of the competition of television, but because “the cost of motion pictures has gone into extravagant and almost senseless competition” for “stars” whose only qualifications were good looks. Eisenhower felt he knew what he was talking about, because “I have personally met a number of these stars; those with whom it is a pleasure to talk informally constitute a very small portion of the whole. I think one out of ten would be an exaggeration.” Further, “the movies ran the old-fashioned vaudeville practically off the stage; they enjoyed for many years practically a monopoly in popular indoor entertainment.” With their monopoly, they “grew careless indeed in the kind of pictures that they produced.” Then came television, and now Hollywood was begging for tax relief. Eisenhower thought the movie people ought to pay for their own sins, and he vetoed the tax-relief bill.28
• •
Eisenhower’s tightfistedness about movie tickets and defense expenditures did not reach clear across the board. In some areas he was not only willing to continue, but actually wished to increase, public spending. Social Security was one. On August 1, he sent to Congress his program for expansion of the system. He called for extension of coverage to some 10.5 million people, plus increased benefits.29 At a Cabinet meeting in early July, when the discussion turned to the budget, Secretary Hobby said that HEW could make significant cuts. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about the prospect until he heard her say that federal grants for education was an area in which she expected to make savings. Eisenhower protested that he “hadn’t heard of this before. I am amazed at the thought of an education cut!!! This is the most important thing in our society.” He told Hobby that “every liberal—including me—will disapprove.” Hobby protested that the cuts were popular with Congress. “Then we can play some politics,” Eisenhower responded. “If Congress can increase its expense accounts, we shouldn’t cut vital education programs.”30
Eisenhower frequently characterized himself as “liberal on human issues, conservative on economic ones.” His liberalism, however, was usually closely connected with national security. He wanted better educational opportunities for Americans, for example, not so much for their own sake as for creating the scientists and technologists who could keep America ahead in the arms race. That was equally true of immigration legislation, where he took a “liberal” stance that had its real origins in the needs of the Cold War. In 1952 Congress had passed, over Truman’s veto, the McCarran-Walter immigration bill, a restrictive measure that tied quotas to national origins based on the U.S. population of 1924. The practical effect was to exclude hundreds of thousands of potential refugees from Eastern Europe, one of the major Cold War battlegrounds. Eisenhower wanted to let these people in, both to reap the propaganda advantage and to obtain the benefit of their skills and labor. He therefore proposed supplementary legislation to provide for the admission of about 250,000 escapees from Communism. Old Guard senators were firmly opposed to this “surplus-population bill” and turned Eisenhower’s Cold War motivation on its head by charging that such wholesale admissions would make it possible for Communist agents to infiltrate the country. Eisenhower met privately with McCarran, but as he told a Republican leaders’ meeting, “I made about as much impression on him as beating on a steel lid with a sponge.” Still, he insisted that this was “must” legislation and he forced the Republican leaders to support it. On August 7, he signed the bill into law.31
When there was no direct Cold War connection on a domestic issue, Eisenhower’s liberalism faded. TVA provided one example. Liberals wanted to extend the system itself, and expand the principle by building federal dams and generators on other rivers. Conservatives wanted to sell it. So did Eisenhower, but he realized it was politically impossible, so he concentrated on stopping any expansion of TVA while encouraging private power company growth. He explained to the Cabinet, “TVA taxes Massachusetts to provide cheap power in the TVA area to lure Massachusetts industry away.”32
In these areas and others, such as his effort to put the Post Office on a self-sustaining basis, Eisenhower sought the middle of the road. He explained to Swede Hazlett that he tried to prepare himself for every decision through intensive study, but because “of the infinite variety of problems presented, and the rapidity with which they are placed in front of me,” he often could not do the research he wanted to do. Further, the people who came into his office to discuss specific issues “always have an axe to grind,” so that the advice he received was “distorted and selfish.” His own solution was to “apply common sense—to reach for an average solution.”33
But when basic decisions affecting the economy were involved, his average solutions usually came down on the side of business. His stance on revision of Taft-Hartley was a prime example. During the campaign, he had promised to amend Taft-Hartley so that it could not be used for union busting. And he added that any changes he recommended would incorporate the views of organized labor. His appointment of Martin Durkin as Secretary of Labor flowed directly out of that pledge. Durkin set up a committee to study revision, with representatives from management, labor, and Weeks’s Department of Commerce. Durkin wanted to abolish the right-to-work provision of Taft-Hartley, to minimize the jurisdiction of state courts in labor disputes, and to permit secondary boycotts. Weeks opposed any basic changes. On June 18, while the group was meeting in Sherman Adams’ office, Eisenhower walked in. He said he was interested in the subject and wanted to listen to the discussion. But when Durkin stated his position on right-to-work, Eisenhower interrupted to say that it was imperative that the states retain their rights in that field. He told Durkin that the Secretary of Labor should be representing the government and not the AFL.34
With Durkin blocked by Weeks, two of Eisenhower’s aides, Bernard Shanley and Gerald Morgan (one of the principal drafters of Taft-Hartley), drew up a memorandum containing nineteen revisions to be recommended to Congress; among them was a repeal of right-to-work. They told Durkin that the President had agreed to send the message to Congress on July 31. But that day, Senator Taft died. Shanley and Morgan then told Durkin that amending Taft’s bill on the very day of his death would be tactless. They did promise that the message would go to Congress shortly. Someone then leaked the proposals to The Wall Street Journal, which published them on August 3 under a headline that charged Eisenhower with favoring the unions. That article brought forth a flood of outraged complaints from big business. Nixon told Eisenhower that repealing right-to-work would alienate both business and southern support. Eisenhower therefore held back the message on revisions.
On August 19, Durkin had lunch with Eisenhower. According to Durkin, Eisenhower promised support for the nineteen amendments; according to Eisenhower, he urged Durkin to take a broader view of his responsibilities and stop being a special pleader for labor (the President, his critics were quick to note, never told Weeks to stop being a special pleader for business). On September 10, Eisenhower informed Durkin that he had withdrawn his support for the amendments. Durkin then resigned, charging that he had been double-crossed.35
Accusing Eisenhower of being a liar was guaranteed to set Eisenhower off into a furious rage. He had spent his life making his word his bond. Both his prestige and power flowed directly from his reputation, and he guarded it jealousy. In this case, he immediately sent a long memorandum to Shanley, asking Shanley if he could remember what had been said. Shanley assured him that he had made no promises to Durkin.36 At a news conference later that week, Eisenhower was asked for his version of the Durkin resignation. “To my knowledge,” Eisenhower replied, “I have never broken an agreement, it was something that I did not understand was made. Now, I have never broken one that I know of. And if there is anyone here who has contrary evidence, he can have the floor and make his speech.”37 Eisenhower, who could use his temper constructively, had adroitly shifted the issue over to his integrity—an area where he could not lose—and away from right-to-work. And with that news conference outburst, the Eisenhower commitment to revise Taft-Hartley faded away. James P. Mitchell, a vice-president of Bloomingdale’s in charge of labor relations for the department store, was Durkin’s successor. He made some feeble efforts to recommend amendments, but nothing was done, and the original Taft-Hartley, including right-to-work, stayed on the books.
• •
Taft’s death was a blow. The senator had surprised and pleased Eisenhower by his cooperative attitude. Despite Taft’s outburst when first informed of the Administration’s budget plans, he had persuaded many of the Old Guard congressmen to go along with Eisenhower’s proposals on such basic matters as taxes and expenditures. Responding to Eisenhower’s heartfelt pleas, he had managed to save much of the MSA appropriation. With Taft’s help, Eisenhower could deal with the Old Guard; without it, he anticipated great difficulties. Eisenhower released a statement saying that America had “lost a truly great citizen and I have lost a wise counsellor and a valued friend.”38 Along with Mamie, Eisenhower paid a call on Taft’s widow in Georgetown. Holding Martha Taft’s hand in both of his, Eisenhower said, “I don’t know what I’ll do without him; I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”39
Eisenhower meant what he said, if only because Taft’s successor as majority leader in the Senate was William Knowland. Eisenhower’s contempt for the California senator was complete. “In his case,” Eisenhower wrote of Knowland in his diary, “there seems to be no final answer to the question ‘How stupid can you get?’ ”40
• •
One of Knowland’s problems was his opposition to MSA funding. He wanted MSA done away with. Truman had called for $7.6 billion for 1954; Eisenhower reduced the figure to $6 billion and then, after Knowland and others complained, to $5.5 billion. He assured Congress that “by far the largest single element will be the direct provision of military end items” to NATO, but his concessions and explanations were not enough to satisfy the Old Guard.
Eisenhower waged an all-out struggle on behalf of MSA. It was a constant theme at his stag dinners; in addition, he had breakfasts, luncheons, and evening sessions with both Democrats and Republicans, appealing to their patriotism and sense of duty. He told congressional leaders that “the most expensive way to insure security is to pile up our money in a defense,” and that “we’re not doing this for altruism. We’re talking about the security of our country—nothing less.” He swore he would “plead, cajole, and push” until he got the funds. Knowland told him he was unhappy because there had been no basic change in foreign policy; he wondered what was the point of electing a Republican President if he continued Truman’s same old line. Eisenhower’s response was to complain that “people rant and rave that we haven’t revolutionized foreign policy. We can’t ever revolutionize. The facts of the world situation don’t change that much.” But despite his vow to “fight to the bitter end” on MSA, the Republicans cut his request by 22.3 percent, leaving him with only slightly more than half of what Truman had projected. Still, Eisenhower felt, it could have been worse, and certainly would have been save for his personal involvement.41
• •
One reason Eisenhower wanted more MSA funds was to get on with the rearming of Germany. He not only wanted Germany rearmed, but he wanted the country unified and brought into NATO and EDC as a full partner. Field Marshal Montgomery, commanding the NATO ground forces, warned him not to push his projects too fast, because he could not have everything he wanted. His program was unrealistic, Montgomery said, because neither the Russians nor the French would ever allow Germany to both unify and rearm. If Eisenhower continued to insist, Montgomery feared the result would be to heighten tensions in Europe, and possibly to kill EDC, and certainly to put back the cause of German unity.
Eisenhower disagreed. He told Montgomery that “a steady social, political, military, and economic advance in West Germany” would act like a magnet to the East Germans. “It might even become impossible for the Communists to hold the place by force.” He admitted that German unity within the NATO alliance might be “provocative of a general war,” but said that would happen only after Germany had united, rearmed, and joined EDC. Those developments would have “a sobering effect on any Russian plan for risking a global war.” Summing up, Eisenhower asserted that “I do not believe there is anything incompatible between German unification and German participation in the EDC.” Why? Because Eisenhower was convinced that EDC, “like NATO and the U.N., is a peaceful concept.”42
Convincing the Russians, not Montgomery, was the trick. Chancellor Adenauer, like almost everyone else, doubted that it could be done. Although Adenauer continued to give pro forma support to the idea of unification, he had reconciled himself to the fact that the division of Germany was one of the most basic and permanent results of the war. Not Eisenhower. He continued to dream about German unification and a major German contribution to EDC, and beyond that to the liberation of all the East European satellites. How to achieve such goals was a problem, but he was convinced that backing off on a peace treaty, all-German elections, and full German participation in NATO was not the way to begin.43
The creation of an all-European army through EDC, to be followed by the creation of a United States of Europe, had been one of Eisenhower’s major goals as SACEUR, and he continued to make it the centerpiece of his European policy as President. Through Dulles, and through his private correspondence with European leaders, he pushed the project. In September, he told French Premier Joseph Laniel that it was “urgent” that the French, in their relations with West Germany, “be guided by a new spirit of friendship and trust.” He said he was aware of the difficulties for the French involved in ratifying EDC, as “we are not blind to history.” But still he urged Laniel to “not miss this historic opportunity for a Franco-German rapprochement.”44
Eisenhower’s high hopes for EDC involved not only what he felt it could accomplish for Western Europe, but also the promise it held for the United States. A closely knit Western European community, held together by economic and military ties, protected through NATO by the American nuclear umbrella and through EDC by numerous all-European ground divisions, would not only be a source of security for the world but would end the need for MSA funds and allow Eisenhower to cut even further the American military budget. EDC, in short, would simultaneously provide greater security for the West, a smaller defense establishment for the United States, and lower taxes. Anticipating its ratification, Eisenhower told Wilson to have the newly appointed Chiefs of Staff, headed by Admiral Radford, undertake a basic study of America’s strategic concepts, the roles and missions of the services, the nuclear option, and MSA, all with a view to reducing conventional forces and military aid.45 The re-examination, and EDC ratification, received a new emphasis on August 12, when the Soviets successfully tested their own hydrogen bomb.
• •
In mid-July, just as Kim Roosevelt was implementing Operation Ajax in Iran, Senator McCarthy threatened to disrupt the CIA by launching a full-scale investigation of it. His immediate motive was Allen Dulles’ appointment of William Bundy to the post of liaison officer between the NSC, the AEC, and the CIA. McCarthy challenged Bundy’s fitness on the grounds that he was Dean Acheson’s son-in-law and had contributed $400 to the Alger Hiss defense fund. McCarthy issued a subpoena to Bundy to appear before his committee, but Allen Dulles flatly refused to allow any CIA employee to appear before any congressional committee. Unlike his brother, he would not be cowed by McCarthy. The senator then declared that the CIA was neither “sacrosanct” nor immune from investigation.46
Both Eisenhower and Allen Dulles asked Nixon for his help. Nixon went to McCarthy. “Joe,” Nixon explained to McCarthy, “you have to understand how those people up in Cambridge think. Bundy graduated from the Harvard Law School, and Hiss was one of its most famous graduates.” McCarthy, for one of the few times in his career, backed down. Eisenhower breathed a sigh of relief.47
McCarthy’s retreat on the CIA seemed to provide proof of the effectiveness of Eisenhower’s policy of ignoring the senator. Bill Robinson, for one, said so, and he told Eisenhower, “a gratuitous castigation of McCarthy by you would be inappropriate as well as unwise,” while Allen Dulles was “satisfied” with the result.48 Swede Hazlett was “delighted,” not only because the CIA was protected, but because the incident seemed to him to “indicate that at last you are ready to (rack down on McCarthy.”
Eisenhower hastened to correct Swede’s misperception. “I disagree completely with the ‘crack down’ theory,” he wrote Swede. He would continue to fight McCarthy with “indirect methods,” which he felt would produce “results that may not be headlined, but they will be permanent . . . To give way in anger or irritation to an outburst intended to excoriate some individual could do far more to destroy the attacker than it would do to damage the attacked.” Linking McCarthy to Huey Long, Eisenhower said that “the average honorable individual cannot understand to what lengths certain politicians would go for publicity,” and he assured his friend that he had no intention of adding to McCarthy’s notoriety.49
That was Eisenhower’s position, and he stuck to it, despite pressure from his aides as well as his friends to speak out. Shanley noted sadly in his diary, “We have really abdicated to McCarthy which is the entire source of his strength.”50
By the end of the summer, Eisenhower badly needed a vacation. He had been stuck in Washington for nearly two straight months. He had been hoping to find a weekend place close to the capital, something more homey than Camp David, and in late July had almost bought a country place in Virginia. He intended to sell the Gettysburg farm to pay for it. Then he discovered that although Mamie too was impatient for the rebuilding at Gettysburg to take place, “her heart is really set on it. When I talked about getting rid of Gettysburg, she looked as if she were about to lose her last friend.” So he decided to do without a weekend home until the work at Gettysburg was finished.51
Instead of going to Virginia, Eisenhower and Mamie spent the last four weeks of summer in Denver. On the eve of going, Eisenhower told Sid Richardson that “I am going to forget all of this political yammering—I hope to go up in the hills, catch a fish and cook a pancake; and, when I get on the golf course, try to stay under 120.”52
But although he was able to play some golf, catch some trout, and otherwise enjoy the marvelous air, weather, and scenery of the Rockies in late summer, he found he could not escape the work or the pressure. The press was still with him, covering his every move, asking questions. Sherman Adams was there, with his reminders, memos, and queries. Hagerty was along, and so were most of the aides. After sending a three-page, single-spaced memo to Charlie Wilson about a new type of radar, Eisenhower wrote, “This is supposed to be a vacation—actually the problem presented in this letter is only a small item compared to the constant pounding I am getting from all sides.”53
Despite the irritating interruptions, and despite the temptations of the mountains, Eisenhower used his vacation to do some serious thinking about a fundamental problem. The problem was post-Korea foreign policy. Eisenhower’s way of working on it was to bring along to Denver a long memorandum from Dulles. He also had Dulles come to Denver for a day of talk. At the end of his vacation, Eisenhower sent a memorandum of his own to Dulles. He began by rejecting Dulles’ suggestions, which had been that the United States increase its nuclear-weapon production and withdraw its troops from Asia and Europe. Eisenhower then outlined what he thought the basic needs were in the post-Korea foreign policy. First, educate the people. Otherwise, “we will drift aimlessly, probably to our own eventual destruction.” The people had to be told the truth. As things stood, “The individual feels helpless to do anything about the foreign threat that hangs over his head and so he turns his attention to matters of immediate interest,” namely taxes.
Educate the people about what? “Among other things, we should describe the capabilities now and in the near future of the H-bomb, supplemented by the A-bomb.” That was an idea that had been running through Eisenhower’s head ever since he read the report on the effect of the first hydrogen device. He had frequently mused to his aides, “We’ve just got to let the American people know how terrible this thing is.”54 AEC and JCS objections had so far deflected his desire, but he resolved to put new effort into making the horrors of nuclear war the subject of a major speech in the fall.
After explaining, in some graphic detail, the results of a hydrogen explosion, Eisenhower said, “We should patiently point out that any group of people, such as the men in the Kremlin, who are aware of the great destructiveness of these weapons—and who still decline to make any honest effort toward international control by collective action—must be fairly assumed to be contemplating their aggressive use.” Then the citizen would realize that “we have to be constantly ready, on an instantaneous basis, to inflict greater loss upon the enemy than he could reasonably hope to inflict upon us.”
That was exactly Dulles’ point—he recommended a defense policy based on a massive overkill capacity. Eisenhower agreed that such a capacity “would be a deterrent,” but he warned that “if the contest to maintain this relative position should have to continue indefinitely, the cost would either drive us to war—or into some form of dictatorial government. In such circumstances, we would be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment that we could designate.” First strike, in other words. Preemptive war. Back in the late thirties, Eisenhower had wondered how long a democracy would be willing to pay the cost of maintaining its defensive strength before it lashed out at the source of the threat and removed it. Now he wondered the same thing about the Russian nuclear threat.
Eisenhower was not advocating a first strike. He was not the man to launch a second Pearl Harbor. But he believed that a prolonged nuclear arms race would bankrupt the world, then destroy it. Anything was better than that, he was telling Dulles. Therefore the tone of the new, post-Korea foreign policy was to be one of an all-out effort to find a way to disarmament. And he was convinced that the way to prepare the people for such a move was to inform them of the horrors of nuclear war. Eisenhower thought that “a carefully thought out program of speeches, national and international conferences, articles, and legislation, would be in order.”
As a part of the preparation campaign, Eisenhower told Dulles to tone down a speech he was to make shortly before the U.N. Eisenhower was gentle with his Secretary. He said he had the “impression” that the speech “is intended as a new indictment of the Bolshevik Party . . . Now I have no quarrel with indicting and condemning them,” but he wanted Dulles to “be positive and clear, without giving the impression we are merely concerned with showing that we have been very nice people, while the others have been very wicked indeed.”55
Dulles replied, “I see on rereading that my language can be much improved and I shall do this along the lines of your suggestion, which certainly has validity.”56
• •
Another Cabinet visitor to Denver was the Attorney General. He was welcome. Eisenhower had developed an unbounded admiration for Brownell. Eisenhower thought Brownell was a man of consummate honesty, incapable of an unethical practice, a lawyer of the first rank, and an outstanding leader. After outlining these qualities of Brownell’s in his diary, Eisenhower summed up, “I am devoted to him and am perfectly confident that he would make an outstanding president of the United States.”57
Eisenhower was not so happy with Brownell’s mission in Denver as he was with the man himself. Brownell had come to discuss the school segregation cases that were coming up before the Supreme Court. He told Eisenhower that the Court had requested the Attorney General to file a brief and an opinion in the cases. Requests for such amicus curiae briefs from the Court, Brownell assured Eisenhower, were not unique, although by no means was it an established practice.58 Eisenhower was not bothered by the Court’s request for a statement of fact on the Fourteenth Amendment as it related to segregation in the schools, but he did object to the Court’s further request that the Justice Department also submit its opinion on the subject. This, to Eisenhower, represented an abdication of responsibility. One reason he felt that way was his attitude toward separation of powers. “As I understand it,” he told Brownell, “the courts were established by the Constitution to interpret the laws; the responsibility of the Executive Department is to execute them.” He suspected the Court was trying to duck out of or avoid the most controversial social problem in America, that “in this instance the Supreme Court has been guided by some motive that is not strictly functional.” After talking to Brownell, Eisenhower dictated to Ann Whitman a “memorandum for the record” on their conversation; in it he concluded, “The Court cannot possibly . . . delegate its responsibility and it would be futile for the Attorney General to attempt to sit as a court and reach a conclusion as to the true meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” He wanted Brownell to limit himself to a presentation of “fact and historical record,” and to avoid giving his own opinion.59
Brownell very much wanted to give his own opinion, which was that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional. There was the rub. Eisenhower did not necessarily disagree with Brownell—the President tried to remain neutral on the constitutionality of segregation—but Eisenhower was fearful of the effect of a ruling outlawing segregation. Partly this reflected his own background and attitudes. Eisenhower was six years old when Plessy v. Ferguson established the doctrine of “separate but equal”; he had lived all his life with it. There were no Negroes in his home town, none at West Point. Eisenhower had spent virtually all his prewar career at army posts in the South (or in the Canal Zone or the Philippines, where racism was, if possible, even more blatant). During the war, he had commanded a Jim Crow Army. In December 1944, he had responded to the manpower crisis by offering to integrate Negro port workers and truck drivers into white units, if the Negroes would volunteer for combat duty. Thousands did, and fought well, but when the crisis was over, Eisenhower quietly returned the volunteers to their all-Negro non-combat units. Eisenhower had left the Army before Truman, in 1948, ordered the armed forces desegregated. Eisenhower had many southern friends and he shared most of their prejudices against Negroes. When he went down to Augusta, he listened to the plantation owners tell their jokes about the “darkies”; when he returned to Washington, in the privacy of his family, he would repeat some of those jokes.60
During the campaign, Eisenhower had denied that race relations were an issue, a startling statement in view of the Democratic Party split in 1948 over the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Indeed, Eisenhower had bid for southern votes by his own refusal to endorse FEPC. But one of his core beliefs about the office he now held was that he was the President of all the people. That included Negro Americans. He had therefore announced, in his State of the Union message, that he would use his full authority to end segregation in the District of Columbia and in the armed forces.61 Two months later, when Alice Dunningham of the Associated Negro Press asked him about the apparent contradiction between his announced policy and the continued segregation of military posts in the South, Eisenhower replied, “I have said it again and again; wherever federal funds are expended for anything, I do not see how any American can justify—legally, or logically, or morally—a discrimination in the expenditure of those funds as among our citizens. If there is any benefit to be derived from them, I think it means all share, regardless of such inconsequential factors as race and religion.”62
Eisenhower did move vigorously to eliminate discrimination in those areas where his authority was clearly established. He assigned an aide, Max Rabb, to oversee the task. Rabb consulted with Secretary of the Navy Robert Anderson, a Texas oilman; with Rabb’s encouragement, Anderson desegregated the naval installations in Norfolk and Charleston. Anderson did it quietly, without fanfare, and effectively; he thereby earned Eisenhower’s “intense admiration” and undying gratitude.63 Rabb and Eisenhower also worked on the other services; by the end of 1953 Eisenhower could boast that segregation in the Navy and the Air Force “was a thing of the past,” and the Army was on the verge of eliminating its last all-Negro unit. Eisenhower also ordered all public facilities in Washington desegregated, while Brownell argued before the Supreme Court that discrimination by restaurant owners in the capital was unconstitutional (the Court, on June 8, agreed).
These were real accomplishments, but they had little or no effect on the great bulk of Negro Americans. Plessy remained the law of the land. In the South, in the border states, even in abolitionist Kansas, schools remained segregated. The NAACP had been working for years within the court system to break down Plessy; by 1953 it had won a number of significant victories in special cases (admission to law or medical schools) and had cases moving toward the Supreme Court that challenged the basic constitutionality of segregation in the public schools.
Southern politicians were alarmed. On July 20 South Carolina Governor Jimmy Byrnes, once Truman’s Secretary of State, came to the Oval Office to talk to the President. Byrnes said he was “very fearful” of the consequences of integration in the South. He mentioned the possibility of riots, and said in his opinion a number of southern states “would immediately cease support for public schools.” Byrnes assured Eisenhower that “the South no longer finds any great problem in dealing with adult Negroes,” but said we “are frightened at putting the children together . . .” He also warned Eisenhower that if the President supported a desegregation decision, “that would forever defeat any possibility of developing a real Republican Party in the South.”
Eisenhower assured Byrnes that he realized “that improvement in race relations is one of those things that will be healthy and sound only if it starts locally.” Prejudice would not “succumb to compulsion.” Any federal law that set up a conflict “of the police powers of the states and of the nation would set back the cause of progress in race relations for a long, long time.”64
While in Denver, Eisenhower wrote further to Byrnes on the subject, which he said “has scarcely been absent from my mind” since their talk. He thought it was up to leaders to lead. “We who hold office not only must discharge the duties placed upon us by the Constitution and by conscience,” he told Byrnes, “but also must, by constructive advances, prove to be mistaken those who insist that true reforms can come only through overriding federal law and federal police methods.” He appealed to Byrnes to use his influence, not only in South Carolina but among the other southern governors, to achieve some real progress in race relations. That seemed to Eisenhower to be the only alternative to a federally enforced end to segregation.65
Eisenhower sent a copy of his letter to Nixon, asking the Vice-President to make a public statement along the lines he had suggested to Byrnes. But Eisenhower also told Nixon that he remained opposed to FEPC, on the grounds that it would be ineffective, would create antagonisms, and would set back the cause of progress by many years. Returning to his theme of voluntary cooperation, he told Nixon that every elected official in the United States should “promote justice and equality through leadership and persuasion; no man is discharging his full duty if he does nothing in the presence of injustice.”66
Thus the sum total of Eisenhower’s program for the 16 million Negro Americans who were outside the federal establishment was to appeal to the southern governors for some sign of progress. Since every one of those governors had been elected by a virtually all-white electorate, and since every one of them was thoroughly committed to segregation as a way of life, as were the vast majority of their white constituents, the President could not have anticipated rapid or dramatic progress.
• •
On the morning of September 8—Eisenhower was still in Denver—the President was informed that Chief Justice Fred Vinson had died of a heart attack. Eisenhower flew back to Washington for the funeral. He mourned the passing of his old bridge-playing friend, but inevitably his mind turned to the appointment of a successor. Eisenhower had already promised Earl Warren that he would have the first vacancy on the Court, but when Eisenhower made that promise he did not expect that the vacancy would be that of the Chief Justice himself. Eisenhower therefore felt free to canvass other possibilities, and did so—including considering John W. Davis of West Virginia, the 1924 Democratic nominee for the Presidency and a lawyer who was arguing the South’s side in the segregation cases. Eisenhower also thought of John Foster Dulles, and indeed asked Dulles if he would take the appointment. Dulles said no, he preferred to stay with the State Department.67
It was not that Eisenhower wanted to renege on Warren. Eisenhower had talked to Warren about his basic philosophy and was much impressed by the California governor. Brownell later recalled that Eisenhower “saw Warren as a big man; and his respect turned into a real crush.” To his brother Edgar, Eisenhower wrote that “from the very beginning of my acquaintanceship with Warren, I had him in mind for an appointment to the high court.”68
But Eisenhower wanted to think long and hard before making what probably would be the most important appointment of his Presidency. “I’m not going to make any mistakes in a hurry,” he told one consultant. To the dean of the Columbia Law School, who had suggested some names, Eisenhower explained his approach. “My principal concern is to do my part in helping restore the Court to the position of prestige that it used to hold, and which in my opinion was badly damaged during the New and Fair Deal days.” He said he was seeking “a man of broad experience, professional competence, and with an unimpeachable record and reputation for integrity.”69
Warren had all those qualifications, and others. Eisenhower could not be accused of paying off a political debt, because Warren had stayed in the race against him until the end at the convention. Warren was from the West Coast, but he was identified with Dewey and that wing of the Republican Party that Eisenhower wished to see prosper at the expense of the Old Guard. Warren was middle-of-the-road, so much so that Eisenhower’s reactionary brother Edgar denounced him as a left-winger, while Milton reported that he and his friends considered Warren to be dangerously to the right. Eisenhower responded to Milton: “Warren has been very definitely a liberal-conservative; he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court.”70
In late September, Eisenhower announced a recess appointment of Warren as Chief Justice (Congress was not in session). Eisenhower made the appointment for all the reasons cited above, but the one that stands out is simplicity itself. Eisenhower personally knew many great lawyers, great judges, great men. He was a shrewd judge of character and talent. He wanted this appointment to be his best. He was convinced that Warren was the best man in the country for the post of Chief Justice.
During his Presidency, Eisenhower never doubted that he had been right. When Congress gathered again in January 1954, Eisenhower sent Warren’s formal nomination to the Senate. There Senator Langer, helped by some Old Guard senators, held up confirmation. Eisenhower scribbled in his diary, “[If the] Republicans as a body should try to repudiate him [Warren], I shall leave the Republican Party and try to organize an intelligent group of independents, however small.”71 Despite his many difficulties with Warren over the next seven years, he remained convinced that he had made the right choice.
• •
While Eisenhower was in Denver, he also got the news of the CIA’s successful coup in Iran. On August 22, the Shah returned to his country; Mossadegh had been arrested by the Iranian Army, acting in concert with Kim Roosevelt. Eisenhower was careful not to meet publicly with Roosevelt when he returned to the States, or have any other connection with Operation Ajax, but he did read Roosevelt’s report while in Colorado. In his memoirs, Eisenhower quoted a bit of that report, but stated flatly that the report was prepared by “an American in Iran, unidentified to me.”72 On September 23, in fact, Eisenhower had personally awarded, in a closed-door ceremony, the National Security Medal to Roosevelt. And, in his diary, he wrote, “The things we did were ‘covert,’ ” and he admitted that the United States would have been embarrassed if the CIA’s role in the coup became known. Of Roosevelt himself, Eisenhower wrote that he “worked intelligently, courageously and tirelessly. I listened to his detailed report and it seemed more like a dime novel than an historical fact.”73
It was real enough. The Shah was back, and he entered into a new oil deal with the West. The British, despite their help on Ajax, lost their monopoly, retaining only 40 percent of Iran’s oil. The French got 6 percent, the Dutch got 14 percent, and the Americans (Gulf, Standard of New Jersey, Texaco, and Socony-Mobil) got 40 percent. Delighted with this outcome, Eisenhower in late September announced an immediate allocation of $45 million in emergency economic aid to Iran, with another $40 million to follow. On October 8, he wrote in his diary, “Now if the British will be conciliatory . . . if the Shah . . . will be only a little bit flexible, and the United States will stand by to help both financially and with wise counsel, we may really give a serious defeat to Russian intentions and plans in that area.”74
Eisenhower had ordered the Mossadegh government overthrown, and it had been done. It seemed to him that the results more than justified the methods. That was an additional side of the man who had insisted on making peace in Korea and trying new approaches to Russia on disarmament. Where he thought it prudent and possible, he was ready to fight the Communists with every weapon at his disposal—just as he had fought the Nazis. There was no squeamishness, no doubts. Do it, he told the CIA, and don’t bother me with any details.