ON OCTOBER 8, Eisenhower opened a news conference with a prepared statement. The subject was the recent Soviet test of a hydrogen bomb. The President said the test had not come as a surprise, and added that the Soviets “now possess a stockpile of atomic weapons . . . and the capability of atomic attack on us, and such capability will increase with the passage of time.” Turning to the American situation, he said, “We do not intend to disclose the details of our strength in atomic weapons of any sort, but it is large and increasing steadily.” He assured the press that the armed forces had sufficient nuclear arsenals to carry out the specific tasks assigned to them. And he warned that “this titanic force must be reduced to the fruitful service of mankind.”1
Millions agreed with Eisenhower’s final sentence. More important, leading American scientists agreed, and indeed had already been calling for disarmament followed by research on peaceful uses of atomic power. Most important, the former scientific head of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, agreed. In July of 1953 Oppenheimer had published, in Foreign Affairs, an article titled “Atomic Weapons and American Policy.” In the article, Oppenheimer warned that an atomic arms race between the superpowers could only have disastrous results, and in any case it made no sense, because when America built its “twenty-thousandth bomb it . . . will not offset their two-thousandth.” In a vivid image, Oppenheimer compared the United States and the Soviet Union to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” He insisted that the American people had to be told the truth about the size and power of their atomic arsenal, and called for “candor on the part of the representatives of the people of their country.”2
Oppenheimer’s article sharpened, but did not begin, the debate in the Eisenhower Administration over atomic policy. As this was unquestionably the most momentous problem Eisenhower faced, he treated it with the utmost seriousness. He had made Oppenheimer the head of an advisory group to report to the President on what to do about the arms race; in addition, Oppenheimer had been chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the AEC. Eisenhower read and was impressed by Oppenheimer’s views; he agreed with the physicist that an atomic arms race was madness; he also believed that if the American people were told, in graphic detail, of the destructive power of the H-bomb that they would support him in any genuine disarmament proposal. The President therefore put C. D. Jackson to work on a speech designed to meet Oppenheimer’s call for candor. Jackson called the preparation of the speech “Operation Candor,” and worked on it through the spring and summer of 1953. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Oppenheimer’s basic idea.
Other top advisers were firmly opposed. Dulles had no faith whatsoever in any disarmament proposal. He believed in dealing with the Russians only from a position of overwhelming strength, and insisted that the various Soviet proposals so far received for disarmament were merely propaganda devices, designed to weaken NATO and to discourage the French from ratifying EDC. Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the AEC, agreed with Dulles.
Strauss was a self-made millionaire (on Wall Street) and had been James Forrestal’s assistant during the war (thus his rank of admiral). Truman had first put him on the AEC in 1946; three years later Strauss had engaged in a bitter dispute with the then AEC chairman, David Lilienthal, and with Oppenheimer, over the hydrogen bomb. They did not want to build one, while Strauss—and Truman—did. In July 1953, Eisenhower appointed Strauss the chairman of the AEC (although he hardly knew the man). After Strauss’s swearing-in ceremony, Eisenhower took him aside and told him, “My chief concern and your first assignment is to find some new approach to the disarming of atomic energy.” Strauss ignored the President’s directive. His concern was to stay well ahead of the Russians, and he had no interest in promoting disarmament, especially by so dangerous a method as Operation Candor. Strauss wrote in his memoirs that Candor “would not have advantaged the American public but certainly would have relieved the Soviets of trouble in their espionage activities.”3
Eisenhower was between Oppenheimer and Strauss in his thinking, “encouraging both without offending either.” The President said that Jackson’s various drafts (which insiders were calling the “Bang! Bang! papers”), with their descriptions of atomic horrors leaving “everybody dead on both sides with no hope anywhere,” were too frightening to serve any useful purpose. “We don’t want to scare the country to death,” Eisenhower told Jackson, because he was afraid it would set off a congressional demand for outlandish and largely ineffective defense spending. On the other hand, ever since he had read his first report on the initial H-bomb test, he had had an impulse to inform the public about the awesome destructive power thereby unleashed. But each time he read another of Jackson’s drafts, the fear of an overreaction by Congress to a “Bang! Bang!” presentation overcame his instinct to tell the truth, and he kept instructing Jackson to tone it down. “Can’t we find some hope?” he asked Jackson.4
Hope was difficult to locate. Not even the President could find much of it, and he was beginning to despair of ever delivering a Candor speech. He asked Strauss if he could possibly balance the “Bang! Bang!” aspect of the speech with “some kind of equally significant hopeful alternative.”5 Strauss thought not. In September, in Denver, Eisenhower talked to Dulles about it, complaining that “everything was still very vague.” Eisenhower wanted to “bring things to a head,” to make a “fair offer” to the Russians and then, if it was rejected, face the fact that “we had no alternative but to look upon the Soviet Union as a potential aggressor and make our own plans accordingly.”6
Later that month, back in Washington, Eisenhower conferred again with Jackson, telling him that any speech on atomic power had to “contain a tremendous lift for the world—for the hopes of men everywhere.” Having been rebuffed so many times in his attempts at candor, Jackson was enthusiastic about the prospect of turning from the negative to the positive. He told Eisenhower that the speech “can not only be the most important pronouncement ever made by any President of the United States, it could also save mankind.”
At Eisenhower’s insistence, Jackson then began hosting a series of breakfast meetings (and in the process changed the code name from Candor to “Operation Wheaties”) with Strauss, Beetle Smith, Radford, and Dulles. Together, they came up with a “package.” They insisted that any proposal Eisenhower made—the nature was unspecified—must meet three requirements. First, it had to be “new and fresh, and acceptable to the Russians if they possess a shred of reasonableness or desire.” Second, it must not lessen the American defensive posture. Third, it must be of such a nature that if the Russians did reject it, or drag their feet, then it would be “clear to the people of the world that we must all prepare for the worst, and that the moral blame for the armaments race, and possibly war, is clearly on the Russians.”7
Eisenhower mulled it over. The advice he was getting was contradictory and not very helpful. He realized that he would have to come up with an idea of his own for a disarmament proposal, one that would not endanger security, that the Russians would not be likely to dismiss out of hand, and that would contain some genuine hope. Finally he hit on it. The United States and the Soviet Union could, he thought, make donations of isotopes from their nuclear stockpiles to a common fund for peaceful purposes, such as developing nuclear generators. In one stroke, the proposal would solve many problems. It would replace despair over atomic energy with hope; it did not require on-site inspection, always a stumbling block in any disarmament proposal; its propaganda advantages were obvious and overwhelming. Further, it would reassure the American people “that they had not poured their substance into this whole development with the sole purpose of its being used for destruction.” Best of all, as Eisenhower wrote in his diary, if the Russians cooperated, “The United States could unquestionably afford to reduce its atomic stockpile by two or three times the amounts that the Russians might contribute . . . and still improve our relative position in the cold war and even in the event of the outbreak of war.” Finally, “Underlying all of this, of course, is the clear conviction that as of now the world is racing toward catastrophe.”8
Eisenhower called in Bobby Cutler of the NSC to discuss the idea with him. After leaving the White House, Cutler wrote Strauss: “The President suggested that you might consider the following proposal which he did not think anyone had yet thought of. . . . Suppose the United States and the Soviets were to turn over to the United Nations for peaceful uses X kilograms of fissionable matter.” The Wheaties talks finally had something to plan. Through October and November, Strauss and Jackson worked on the details of the speech.9
• •
Wheaties had just about abandoned the original Candor motivation for the speech, especially any mention of the numbers of bombs in the American arsenal. That bothered Eisenhower, both in the general sense that he had a theoretical commitment to the principle of an informed public, and in the specific sense that he thought the public had to be made aware of the realities of the atomic age. At a stag dinner on November 6, Eisenhower began the after-dinner discussion by expressing “his worry over people’s seeming reluctance to recognize the threat of the hydrogen bomb.” Dr. Vannevar Bush, head of the wartime science program, “immediately took up the case for scaring the people into a big tax program to build bomb defenses.” That was exactly the reaction Eisenhower had feared, and the reason for his opposition to Candor. “Is this all we can do for our children?” he asked. Bill Robinson, who was present, recorded in his diary that “Ike became greatly spirited and said that our great advantage was spiritual strength—this was our greatest offensive and defensive weapon.”10
Spiritual strength presumably included truth telling, but Eisenhower had not needed to hear Bush’s reaction to realize the dangers in telling too much of the truth. That applied to the activities of the CIA as well as to the horrors of nuclear war. Senator Mike Mansfield had introduced a resolution for a Joint Congressional Oversight Committee for the American Clandestine Service. Eisenhower was unalterably opposed to any oversight committee for the CIA. Stuyvesant Wainwright II, a freshman congressman from Long Island, had supported Mansfield. That fall, Eisenhower had Wainwright come to the White House for breakfast. Wainwright recalled that “he told me that this kind of a bill would be passed over his dead body.” The President said he was appalled at the thought of letting out the secrets of the CIA. And he was shocked by Wainwright’s support for Mansfield, because Wainwright had been on his staff at SHAEF, had been in on the Ultra secret, and should have known better. It was Wainwright’s turn to be shocked; he was a very junior member of the SHAEF staff and could recall seeing Eisenhower only four or five times during the war. That Eisenhower remembered him was remarkable. “He had a politician’s kind of memory,” Wainwright later said.11 He also had a politician’s adroitness; through such private conversations with key congressmen, Eisenhower was able to stave off Mansfield’s bill and allow the CIA to continue to operate without interference or publicity.
• •
With regard to the struggle against the Communist enemy within, Eisenhower definitely did want publicity about his efforts. At Cabinet meetings in late September and early October, the President led a discussion about getting maximum value out of the results of his executive order changing the basis for employment by the government from loyalty to security. How many Communists had been found, he wanted to know, and how many dismissed? Nixon, Brownell, and Summerfield all wanted to make a public announcement that would demonstrate the progress made by the Republicans in finding and eliminating the undesirables. Eisenhower was for it, but he did not want any names released, only numbers, for fear of prejudicing the prospects of dismissed employees.
Eisenhower had another worry. Publicizing numbers was risky. How many employees had been dismissed because of their politics? How many because they were simply excess? The Eisenhower Administration was cutting federal personnel across the board; thousands had been dismissed; surely not all of them were Communists. When Jackson told Eisenhower at an October 2 Cabinet meeting that some twenty-five hundred employees had been dismissed by Commerce alone, Eisenhower interrupted to say, “If we have twenty-five hundred security risks in one office, I’m going to quit!” Jackson then admitted that they were not “all” security risks.12 Eisenhower also worried about the problem of who was accusing whom within the bureaucracy. He told Brownell to take a long look at any accusation coming from an ex-Communist. The Communists, he explained, “are such liars and cheats that even when they apparently recant and later testify against someone else for his Communist convictions, my first reaction is to believe that the accused person must be a patriot or he wouldn’t have incurred the enmity of such people.” Eisenhower told Brownell to “search out some positive way to put ourselves on the side of individual right and liberty as well as on the side of fighting Communism to the death.”13
Brownell finally came up with a figure on the number of security risks fired by the Administration, and on October 23 Hagerty announced on behalf of the President that 1,456 persons had been driven from the federal payroll. A numbers game ensued. Were they all spies? reporters asked Hagerty. No, Hagerty replied, he had not said that. Were they all Communists? No, not exactly, but they were all security risks. At this point McCarthy jumped into the game; it all proved, he declared, that the Truman Administration had been “crawling with Communists.”14
Fear of McCarthy then prompted the President and the Attorney General to ignore the basic principles Eisenhower had set forth, such as ignoring accusations made by ex-Communists and giving every man a fair hearing. In an effort to prove that McCarthy and his friends could trust Eisenhower to carry out the hunt for Communists, Brownell decided—with Eisenhower’s approval—to go after Truman himself by reviving the case of Harry Dexter White. Back in 1946, ex-Communists Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley had accused White, an official in the Treasury Department, of being a Russian spy. White denied it and a federal grand jury refused to indict him. The FBI, however, had sent further evidence about White to Truman. Truman read the FBI report and decided it contained only the evidence offered by “a crook and a louse” (Chambers and Bentley). The only thing new was a charge that White had shown “friendliness to Russia” during the war. Truman dismissed the charges from his mind, and indeed promoted White (who died of a heart attack in 1948).15
Brownell looked through the record (evidently prodded by J. Edgar Hoover) and decided that Truman was wrong. Brownell felt that the record showed White to be clearly guilty, and he could not understand how Truman could have promoted the man after reading the record. Brownell met with Eisenhower. He told the President the case was too important to cover up, that he felt a personal obligation to make it public, and that “disclosure was justified political criticism and that it would take away some of the glamour of the McCarthy stage play.” Eisenhower told him to go ahead.16
On November 6, Brownell told the Executives Club in Chicago that on the eve of White’s promotion, the FBI had sent a report to the White House that proved White was a Soviet spy. He said that the White case was “illustrative of why the present Administration is faced with the problem of disloyalty in government,” and charged that it was “typical of the blindness which infected the former Administration on this matter.”17 Chairman Velde then served a subpoena on Truman, calling on him to appear before HUAC. Truman denied that he had ever seen a report on White and, citing the constitutional separation of powers, loftily refused to appear before HUAC.
Eisenhower strongly supported Truman on the matter of the subpoena. He called Brownell the next morning and told him he deplored what Velde was doing and wanted it stopped. He also told Brownell that Dulles had done some searching and could prove that Truman had indeed read the report; nevertheless he informed Brownell that he intended to emphasize that no one had said Truman had personally seen the file, only that it had been sent to the White House “for delivery to the President.” If Truman said he had not seen it, Eisenhower was not going to contradict him. He did tell Hagerty to correct Truman’s statement that “as soon as we found out White was disloyal we fired him.” Hagerty reminded the press that in fact Truman had promoted White after the FBI report was delivered to the White House.18
Then it was Eisenhower’s turn to face the press. The media was obsessed with the subject, because of its sensational nature. In effect, Eisenhower had accused Truman, through Brownell, of not only harboring but actually promoting a known Communist spy. The reporters put Eisenhower through one of the most difficult news conferences of his eight years in office. It lasted but nineteen minutes, and every question dealt with White. All were hostile. Later that day, Eisenhower told his Cabinet he was “amazed at the press unanimity in leaping to the defense of Truman and White. They were prosecutors, I was defendant.”19 He was asked if he thought Truman “knowingly appointed a Communist spy to high office.” “No, it is inconceivable,” Eisenhower replied. Well, then, Ray Brandt asked, “Do you think the Administration’s action in virtually putting a label of traitor on a former President is likely to damage our foreign relations?” “I reject the premise,” Eisenhower replied, “I would not answer such a question.” Anthony Leviero of The New York Times told the President, “I think this case is at best a pretty squalid one.” White had had his day in court and had been found innocent, Leviero said. Under those circumstances, “Is it proper for the Attorney General to characterize that accused man, who is now dead, as a spy and, in effect, accuse a former President of harboring that man?” Eisenhower said to put that question to Brownell. Leviero responded that Brownell refused to see the press. Other reporters wanted to know when the new evidence would be released, and what it consisted of. Eisenhower’s patience broke. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he broke in, “I am going to answer my last question right now on this subject. I told you exactly, Mr. Brownell came in and reported to me. He said the evidence was so clear that he considered it his duty to lay it out. ‘I am not going to be a party to concealing this’ is the way he explained it to me. I said, ‘You have to follow your own conscience as to your duty.’ Now that is exactly what I know about it.”20
That afternoon, in a Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower asked Brownell how convincing was the evidence in the report; the President added that what he had seen had not convinced him, and pointed out that “friendliness toward Russia” during and immediately after the war was hardly proof. Indeed, he himself had been friendly toward Russia at that time. Brownell said he had four sources, not just Chambers and Bentley, “and papers in White’s handwriting.” Brownell added, “We got much more against White than against Hiss.” Eisenhower reminded him that “they never proved more than perjury against Hiss.” Eisenhower then tried to reassure himself that the case was important enough to warrant all the attention; he said the fact that the Democrats were “scared” proved it.21
Then it was Truman’s turn to contradict himself and get caught in his own maze of half-truths and outright falsehoods. On national television, Truman said that the Eisenhower Administration had “fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism,” which he called “this evil at every level of our national life.” Turning to the White case, Truman now admitted that he had indeed read the report, but he did not say that he had decided to disregard it. Instead he claimed that he had entered into a plot with J. Edgar Hoover. They would keep White on the job because firing him would tip off others under surveillance who were a part of White’s spy team. (Hoover immediately denied such a deal ever existed.) Then Truman completely contradicted himself by arguing for White’s innocence, citing as proof the failure of the federal grand jury to indict White. In a diary entry, Truman left no doubt that he believed White to be innocent; in his scathing view, “convicting a dead man of treason on a communist F.B.I, report is in line with present administration policy.”22
• •
At the height of the furor, the Eisenhowers were able to escape Washington and spend Thanksgiving in Augusta. John, Barbara, and the grandchildren were there, along with Eisenhower’s gang. Mamie’s cottage was ready, it was delightful, and she loved it. Priscilla Slater wrote in her diary that Mamie “spends the mornings in bed but sees everyone passing through the open Venetian blinds. Sociable, gregarious and warmhearted, she seldom lets anyone pass without calling him in . . .” Eisenhower, meanwhile, was busy cooking breakfast for his grandchildren, or was otherwise “active every minute, trying to crowd in as many games of golf, hours of fishing, fun with the children, and bridge with his friends as he can . . .” Cliff Roberts complained that he was exhausted after eighteen holes of golf and wanted to stretch out to rest, when Moaney appeared to announce, “The Boss is ready to play bridge!”
That evening the women played bolivia while the men played bridge. Mrs. Slater took some mental notes on Mamie, later recording them in her diary. Mamie, she wrote, “has great concentration powers, a good memory, and is sharp and alert. She is feminine, really luscious looking, dainty and loveable, appealing in an almost childlike way. [She is] a very efficient wife, mother and hostess, who has her fingers on every detail of her part of the tremendous role of being the First Lady. She is tactful, but no individual would impose upon her more than once. She has a forceful personality, but her warmth and affectionate regard for her friends more than makes up for her decisiveness.”
The following day, when Bill Robinson saw young David Eisenhower playing with his grandfather, he suggested that David looked like presidential timber. “Ike said feelingly, ‘Oh, no! Be kind to him.’ ”23
• •
When Eisenhower returned to Washington, he discovered that the price he and Brownell had to pay for digging up Harry Dexter White was going higher. Eisenhower had told the reporters that Brownell would supply evidence of White’s guilt, but Brownell objected to releasing FBI files, because he feared the consequences of setting such a precedent. Eisenhower told Brownell, over the telephone, to say, “We long ago decided that the records of the Departments would be opened up more widely to the public, and I used this case to illustrate the kind of laxity, of what appeared to us to be indefensible.”24
Fortunately for Brownell, interest in the White case disappeared, to be replaced at center stage by Joe McCarthy. The senator from Wisconsin demanded and got equal time from the national TV networks to reply to Truman’s presentation. McCarthy used some of his time to denounce Truman, but he also declared that “the raw, harsh, unpleasant fact is that Communism is an issue and will be an issue in 1954.” This directly contradicted Eisenhower, who had said in his news conference that “he hoped the Communist-in-government question would not be an issue in the 1954 congressional campaign.” Eisenhower’s aides thought McCarthy’s contradicting Eisenhower so directly was a part of a bid by McCarthy to take control of the Republican Party. Hagerty said McCarthy’s motive was to make himself the issue in 1954, and then the candidate in 1956. He called McCarthy’s speech “sheer fascism.” Jackson was furious. He told James Reston that McCarthy’s speech was “a declaration of war against the President.”25 But still the President refused to denounce McCarthy.
Jackson was almost distraught. “All the vague feelings of unhappiness I have had regarding ‘lack of leadership’ over the past many months, which I have always put down, really bounced up this week, and I am very frightened.” He warned the staff that “this Three Little Monkeys act was not working.” On December 1, at a press-conference briefing, Jackson wrote out a statement on McCarthy for the President to read to the reporters. Eisenhower read the draft, Jackson recorded in his diary, “with visible irritation, and made some mumbling comments.” Jack Martin, a former assistant to Taft who had recently joined the White House staff, “pitched in with great courage and said that a vacuum existed in this country, and it was a political vacuum, and unless the President filled it somebody else would fill it.” Jackson wrote that Eisenhower “twisted and squirmed.” Jackson told the President that “the people were waiting for a sign, and a simple sign—and now was the time.” Eisenhower read the text again, “slammed it back at me and said he would not refer to McCarthy personally—‘I will not get in the gutter with that guy.’ ”26
What Eisenhower was willing to do was read to the news conference a paragraph repeating that Communism in government would not be an issue in 1954. “Long before then,” Eisenhower said, “this Administration will have made such progress in rooting them out that this can no longer be considered a serious menace.” He then asserted that “about fifteen hundred persons who were security risks have already been removed.”27
• •
And with that, he hoped, he had put McCarthy behind him, at least for now. But as he often said, McCarthyism was around long before McCarthy, and he predicted that it would outlast the senator. At the height of the furor over McCarthy’s bid to define the issues of 1954, Eisenhower got a telephone call from Wilson, who said that he had yet another report. This one was on Oppenheimer. It consisted of a letter from William Borden, the former director of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, to the Secretary of Defense. Borden charged that it was “more likely than not that J. Robert Oppenheimer is a Communist spy.” Borden had no new evidence to substantiate this charge, which had been around a long time, had been investigated, was widely known, and was widely disbelieved. What disturbed Wilson—and Eisenhower—was not so much what Borden was saying, but that McCarthy had become aware of the charges. It was imperative that the Administration act before McCarthy made the Oppenheimer charges his case.
The following morning, December 3, Eisenhower convened Strauss, Brownell, Wilson, Cutler, and Allen Dulles in the Oval Office. Eisenhower demanded to know how on earth Strauss could have cleared Oppenheimer for the AEC back in 1947, and why there had been no investigation of him since the Republicans took office. Strauss muttered that they could not have built the atomic bomb without Oppenheimer. Eisenhower then said that while he “wished to make it plain that he was not in any way prejudging the matter,” he wanted a “blank wall” placed between Oppenheimer and any further access to top-secret information until such time as a hearing had been completed. He told Brownell to get the entire FBI file on Oppenheimer and study it. He said he had himself examined the Borden charges and thought they provided “no evidence that implies disloyalty on the part of Dr. Oppenheimer.” However, Eisenhower added, “this does not mean that he might not be a security risk.” Eisenhower said he realized that if Oppenheimer had been feeding information to the Soviets, then cutting him off at this point “would not be a case of merely locking the stable door after the horse is gone; it would be more like trying to find a door for a burned-down stable.”28 He appointed a three-man committee to investigate the charges; Oppenheimer meanwhile was put into a state of suspension; McCarthy was blocked from exploiting the case.
• •
Simultaneously with the White incident, McCarthy’s challenge, and the Oppenheimer case, Eisenhower had to deal with the segregation cases coming up before the Supreme Court. Unhappy with the idea of the Attorney General expressing his opinion on the unconstitutionality of segregation in the schools, Eisenhower nevertheless accepted Brownell’s advice that it had to be done. Indeed, he helped Brownell write his opinion. Still he worried. As always when he got back from Augusta, Eisenhower was full of sympathy for the white southerners’ point of view. He asked Brownell what would happen if the southern states abandoned public education, as Byrnes and others were threatening to do. Brownell said he would try to convince Byrnes that the Court would give the South “a period of years” to adjust, so “he wouldn’t have to declare war so to speak.” Eisenhower repeated his fear that the Court would make education a function of the federal government. Brownell assured him that the South “will work it out in ten to twelve years.”29
Byrnes came up to Washington for further talks with the President, who later, on December 1, wrote the South Carolina governor. Eisenhower said he recognized the “very serious problems” the South had to face. He warned Byrnes that the last-minute southern attempt to put some money into Negro schools, so that there could be some appearance of the “equal” to go with the “separate” in Plessy, was going to involve “extraordinary expenditures.” And he wondered just who would decide “when facilities were exactly equal.” Then, knowing full well that Brownell was that day expressing to the Court his opinion that segregation was unconstitutional, Eisenhower nevertheless told Byrnes that in rendering any opinion Brownell would be acting according to “his own conviction and understanding.” The President assured Byrnes that he himself was disassociated from the case.30
On December 2, Brownell told Eisenhower that Justice Warren “told me last night that my brief on the segregation cases was outstanding.”31 Eisenhower made it clear that he wanted no part for himself in the compliment. He had begun the process of refusing to associate himself and his prestige in any way with Brown v. Topeka.
• •
The level of post-Korea defense spending continued to be a problem. In October, to Eisenhower’s great irritation, Wilson leaked to the press the Administration’s plans to sharply reduce personnel. The Europeans, fearing reduction in American combat strength in NATO, immediately protested to Gruenther (who had risen to the position of SACEUR), who passed along their alarm to Eisenhower. In response, Eisenhower began by complaining about Wilson, saying that “some people have more trouble in controlling their tongues than they do their wives.” But he also told Gruenther to remind his European friends that the stationing of American troops in Europe was always intended to be on a “temporary or emergency” basis. When Eisenhower was SACEUR, he had frequently expressed the hope that American boys could go home in three or four years. Now he reminded Gruenther that the United States could neither build nor afford to maintain “a sort of Roman Wall to protect the world.” He also worried about the troops themselves; how long, he wondered, before European gratitude for their presence would turn to hostility toward foreign troops on their soil.32
When Gruenther passed along some more European criticism, Eisenhower began to lose his temper. “I get weary of the European habit of taking our money,” the President wrote, “resenting any slight hint as to what they should do, and then assuming, in addition, full right to criticize us as bitterly as they may desire. In fact, it sometimes appears that their indulgence in this kind of criticism varies in direct ratio to the amount of help we give them.” In fact, the whole thing made him mad as hell, and “makes me wonder whether the Europeans are as grown up and mature as they try to make it appear.”33
Eisenhower decided to go ahead with his cuts, despite the Europeans. At a November 11 meeting with Dulles, Humphrey, and Wilson, he agreed with Dulles’ recommendation that the United States should begin to withdraw ground troops from Korea. Such an act would both save money and “show confidence in our air and naval strength.” Further, Eisenhower ordered reductions in service and support units in Europe; he wanted them “skeletonized.” He also wanted manpower reductions in the Navy. To balance these cuts, he ordered a continuation of nuclear weapons’ production at the rate of one per day.34 He noted in his diary, “The dependence that we are placing on new weapons [will] justify completely some reduction in conventional forces.”35
The JCS was unhappy (even the Air Force was scheduled to take some cuts in personnel). Eisenhower, in a long memorandum to Budget Director Dodge, met their objections. “We are no longer fighting in Korea,” the President declared, “and the defense establishment should show its appreciation of this fact and help us achieve some substantial savings—and without wailing about the missions they have to accomplish.” As an old-timer at the Pentagon, the President said he was sure that “if they put their hearts into it, they can make substantial savings with little damage to the long-term efficiency of the establishment.” Then Eisenhower warned Dodge not to expect any dramatic changes for fiscal ’55 in procurement costs, which were pretty well fixed. That made personnel savings even more essential; Eisenhower said he was going to tell Wilson to “place everything except a few units on an austerity basis.”36
At a mid-December meeting with the Republican congressional leaders, Eisenhower explained his strategy. “The things we really need are the things that the other fellow looks at and respects,” he declared. The Russians did not respect the handful of American divisions in Europe, but they did respect the bomb. Eisenhower said the United States “must take risks in certain areas,” and “must make a long-term effort,” so that “we do not get to the point where we must attack or demobilize.” Asia-firsters among the Old Guard congressmen protested against the planned reductions in ground strength in Korea. Eisenhower told them that he did not believe “Korea will be stabilized greatly by the continued presence of ground troops. We must put more dependence on air.” He said that if the Communists broke the armistice, “we go all out” in nuclear retaliation.37 At the end of December, while Wilson was reducing the 3.5-million-man armed forces to under 3 million, Eisenhower announced the withdrawal of two American combat divisions from Korea.38 He was putting his own stamp on defense policy; that stamp was a stronger emphasis on nuclear retaliatory power.
• •
But, as always, Eisenhower also expected help from his allies. By December, the time had come to meet with his two principal allies, Churchill and Premier Laniel of France. Indeed, Eisenhower had been scheduled to meet with them in June, but then Churchill became ill; by the time he had recovered, the French were in the midst of another change-of-government crisis, and the meeting had twice been postponed. The Russians had added to the pressure for consultation by calling for four-power talks at the Foreign Ministers’ level. The British and the French wanted to hold such a meeting. Dulles did not. On December 2, two days before the Western Allies met in Bermuda, Ann Whitman made notes on Dulles’ advice to the President on four-power talks. “He says the Russians are going to stress that you can never have peace until Red China is brought into the council of great nations; that they will attack the United States for having bases on other countries’ territory as being a war threat; will attack NATO as being warmongering.” Dulles doubted that “anything constructive” could come out of such a meeting; he thought the real question was “how do you get it over with with as little damage as possible.” Eisenhower disagreed. He was ready to try, if only “to convince public opinion of our good faith.”39
The following day, December 3, Eisenhower met with the NSC and obtained from it a statement of policy on the exchange of atomic information with allied countries. Eisenhower had long disapproved of the McMahon Act of 1946, which forbade the sharing of atomic information with foreign nations. Britain had played a major role in the Manhattan Project, had since the war developed its own atomic bomb, and remained America’s staunchest ally. The British could go much faster and farther with their atomic arsenal if the Americans would provide them with the results of their research. Eisenhower wanted to do it. He also wanted more Anglo-American sharing of atomic weapons, means of delivery, and strategy. The kind of mutual cooperation he had created at SHAEF was his goal. He therefore had the NSC agree that after appropriate revision of the McMahon Act, “the United States should increase its disclosure to selected allied governments of information in the atomic energy field.” The “objectives of greater disclosure” included point 2.b: “Inspire them to act with the United States in crises and thus give the United States greater freedom of action to use atomic weapons as required.” Other points were to gain access to uranium ore and to benefit from the results of British research.
This statement of policy, called NSC 151/1, then spelled out in some detail the extent of sharing Eisenhower was willing to do. He wanted to inform the NATO allies “of the existence of a family of weapons ranging from relatively small yields to the very large,” and to inform them in a general way about the total American nuclear force “available for tactical support of NATO forces in the event of war.” He wanted them informed about the targets. What he would not do was to give them information “concerning the manufacture and design of atomic weapons,” or any figures on the total U.S. arsenal, “existing or past.”40
With NSC 151/1 adopted, Eisenhower was ready for Bermuda. He wanted to talk to Churchill and Laniel about his Wheaties speech, scheduled for the U.N. General Assembly later that week, about atomic sharing, and about EDC. Churchill wanted to talk about British problems in Egypt and Jordan. Laniel wanted to talk about Vietnam. Eisenhower thought both European leaders were just hopeless on these colonial questions. In the President’s view, they were simply blind to the strength of nationalism as a force, and he feared that their refusal to meet demands for self-government would lead to the loss of the Third World to Communism. So he did not want to talk about colonial problems. He insisted, instead, that they go into the talks without an agenda, and that the talks be informal throughout.
Eisenhower did not look forward to a high-level meeting with Churchill. The Prime Minister was deaf, he could hardly keep awake in the afternoon, he refused to face reality, either about his age or about Britain’s position in the world. (“In many ways,” Eisenhower told his Cabinet, “he’s just a little Peter Pan.”41) Eden was growing old waiting for Churchill to face facts and retire, and he was beginning to show his irritation. But if Eisenhower could get Churchill’s prestige behind his idea for an international atomic energy pool, putting up with the old man for a few days would be worth it.
Churchill surprised Eisenhower. As the meeting was on British soil, he was the host, and a most gracious one—the British put on a grand show of pomp and pageantry. In the restricted sessions (heads of government and Foreign Ministers only), Churchill stayed alert, made his contribution, and gave his support. He listened carefully as Eisenhower explained his idea. Eisenhower wanted to bring the British in on it; he suggested that “we might put in a thousand kilos, the U.S.S.R. two hundred, and the U.K. forty.” The material could then be made available “to the scientists of the world to use for practical purposes.” Eisenhower fairly glowed as he explained his high hopes: “We know that atomic energy could be used to generate power, to run tractors—in fact, we have a ship ready to run—its engine was built. This was very expensive, but scientists might find a way to make it cheaper. It had great capabilities in the medical field, in the field of agriculture, and tremendous possibilities if used peacefully instead of for destruction.”
Eisenhower saw other advantages to his idea. It would “make other nations feel they had a stake in all this. Men needed power everywhere. If we could give hope, it would give these nations a stronger feeling of participation in the struggle of East and West, and such a feeling of participation would be on our side, and hope might be engendered from a fairly insignificant start.” Eisenhower then gave the latest draft of his Wheaties speech to Churchill and Laniel, asking them to consider it very secret, because “he had not yet even made a definite decision as to whether the talk would be given.” Churchill responded to the flattery. He read the draft, then said he found the whole concept to be splendid and pitched in enthusiastically. He made a number of editorial changes, and recommended deleting two passages that were unnecessarily provocative.42
Eisenhower, Dulles, and Jackson then got on the airplane for the flight to New York and the General Assembly appearance. Eisenhower incorporated Churchill’s suggestions; Ann Whitman frantically typed the last version; as the plane circled New York to give them enough time to finish the job, Dulles and Jackson ran the mimeograph machine to make advance copies for the press.
• •
At 2 P.M. on December 8, Eisenhower gave his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the General Assembly. After opening words of praise for the U.N., Eisenhower launched into the Candor part of his speech. It was much reduced from his original intention. He informed the world that the United States had conducted forty-two test explosions since 1945, that America’s atomic bombs were now twenty-five times more powerful than the original bombs used against Japan, “while hydrogen weapons are in the ranges of millions of tons of TNT equivalent.” Oppenheimer’s and Jackson’s thought that the President ought to reveal the size of the American arsenal gave way to this paragraph: “Today, the United States stockpile of atomic weapons, which, of course, increases daily, exceeds by many times the explosive equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war in all of the years of World War II.” Eisenhower gave one additional illustration: “A single air group can now deliver to any reachable target a destructive cargo exceeding in power all the bombs that fell on Britain in all of World War II.” Atomic weapons, he added, had now achieved “virtually conventional status within our armed services.”
But the Russians also had the bomb, and were building more. An atomic arms race was under way. To continue it, Eisenhower said, “would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.” Anything would be better. Eisenhower asserted that he was prepared to meet with the Soviets (and he announced that the four-power talks the Russians had requested would begin promptly) to discuss such problems as an Austrian treaty, Korea, and Germany, as well as disarmament.
In such talks, Eisenhower said, the United States “would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.” It was not enough “to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how . . . to adapt it to the arts of peace.” Then, “this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.”
Eisenhower thereupon made his specific proposal. The U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. should make joint contributions from their stockpiles of fissionable materials to an International Atomic Energy Agency. That agency would be set up under the aegis of the U.N. He recognized that initial contributions would be small, but “the proposal has the great virtue that it can be undertaken without the irritations and mutual suspicions incident to any attempt to set up a completely acceptable system of worldwide inspection and control.”
The proposed agency would draw on the talents of scientists from all over the world, who would study ways to use atomic energy for peaceful activities. “A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.” He outlined other advantages inherent in his proposal: a reduction in the world’s atomic stockpile dedicated to destruction; proof that the superpowers were “interested in human aspirations first”; and the opening of “a new channel of peaceful discussion.” He closed with a pledge: The United States was ready “to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”43
Eisenhower had not been interrupted once by applause, and when he finished there was dead silence. Then the thirty-five hundred delegates began to cheer—even the Russians joined in—in an outburst of enthusiasm unprecedented in U.N. history. Outside the Communist countries, world reaction was overwhelmingly positive and even extravagant. Eisenhower appeared to have cut the Gordian knot. He had replaced fear with hope.
But the Russians stalled. They gave no immediate response, nor did they respond during the next year, or the next. Not until 1957 was an International Atomic Energy Agency created. By that time, the arms race had moved on to new levels and such an agency was irrelevant to current problems.
A great opportunity had been lost. Eisenhower’s proposal of atoms for peace was the most generous and the most serious offer on controlling the arms race ever made by an American President. All previous offers, and all that followed, contained clauses about on-site inspection that the Americans knew in advance were unacceptable to the Russians. But it was the strength of Eisenhower’s proposal, the measure of his genius, and the proof of his readiness to try something new to get out of the arms race that atoms for peace seemed to have a real chance of acceptance. It was not loaded against the Russians. Eisenhower believed that, to the contrary, the proposal had to be tempting to them. He hoped they would accept it and he thought that they would.
They did not. The Communists allowed their suspicions to override their judgment. They felt, evidently, that a reduction of their stockpile of fissionable matter would only widen the American lead. They were right, of course, and indeed Eisenhower had made that point in his diary and in selling the idea to Churchill. But Eisenhower had proposed contributions at a level of five American units to one Russian, and that was only a starting figure, open to negotiation. Still the Russians were not interested. They let the numbers frighten them. The United States might get two or three thousand bombs ahead of them.
Thus did the logic of the nuclear arms race take over. It was a logic unique to itself, with no connection to experience or reality. Everyone agreed that the sole purpose of making atomic weapons was to deter the enemy from aggression. All agreed that to deter you need only be in a position to threaten to destroy one major city. (Eisenhower once told this author, “There is nothing in the world that the Communists want badly enough to risk losing the Kremlin.”) Why then build arsenals of thousands of bombs, when a few hundred would be more than enough to make the threat meaningful? At this point the numbers game took over. Strategists and leaders on both sides were terrified at the thought of the other side getting too far ahead. Eisenhower and the Americans wanted—demanded—a clear American superiority. How they would use that lead—except to insure deterrence, which could be assured with one hundred bombs anyway—they did not know. For their part, the Russians could not accept such a huge American advantage. They were determined to close the gap, if not catch up. Like the Americans, they did not know what they were going to do with all those bombs. They only knew they wanted them.
So they spurned Eisenhower’s proposed atoms-for-peace plan. It was a true tragedy. With only a bit of exaggeration, it can be said that Eisenhower’s proposal was the best chance mankind has had in the nuclear age to slow and redirect the arms race. Had the Russians put their own enthusiasm into it, it is possible to project an idyllic scenario: a generation of money, energy, and scientific skill going into peaceful uses for the atom, with both sides content to maintain but not add to their existing arsenals. To Eisenhower, the worst possible outcome, as he looked ahead in 1953, would have been a continuation of the numbers game, only by the 1980s at a level of tens of thousands of bombs, and with peaceful uses of atomic power generally unexploited, or—when in place—highly controversial and expensive. But that is exactly how it turned out.
Part of the blame is Eisenhower’s. He played the numbers game in nuclear weapons vigorously, although not so vigorously as all the JCS, nearly all Democrats, and most Republicans wanted him to. Atoms for peace was his one great bid to get out of what he knew was a losing game. He had pride of authorship in the original idea, which added to his depression when the Russians stalled on the proposal. He thought his idea was worth a try, and the lack of Russian response made him harden his attitude toward the Soviet Union. He had been rebuffed on the major goal of his Presidency. His attempt to explore a new approach to arms control was never even tried. That was the sad result of atoms for peace.
• •
In December 1953, Eisenhower had little time to gauge reaction to his speech, because he had to descend from the rarefied atmosphere of a peace talk before the U.N. to the level of hard-core American domestic politics. Congress would soon be back in session; he needed to finish work on his first budget (fiscal 1955) and prepare his legislative program. In November, he had outlined a part of that program for Dodge, for Dodge’s use in making up the budget. Eisenhower said he wanted “to put ourselves clearly on record as being forward-looking and concerned with the welfare of all our people.” He said Dodge should budget for slum clearance and public housing, for dams on the western rivers, for the extension of Social Security, and for public housing. Eisenhower was even ready to accept “a few small public-works projects.”44
The Old Guard senators wanted none of this program, nor of Eisenhower’s request for MSA funds or other projects. They did want the Bricker Amendment. Beyond the Old Guard, Eisenhower was having trouble with Republicans generally, who were furious with Sherman Adams for not handing out enough jobs fast enough for their deserving constituents. Eisenhower could not get them interested in anything beyond Bricker and patronage, and certainly not in his middle-of-the-road program. The Republicans, Eisenhower complained to Emmet Hughes, “did not look upon the results of the election as the threshold of opportunity; rather it was the end of a long and searing drought, and they were at last reveling again in luxurious patronage.”45
Eisenhower professed to hate the very word “patronage,” but he was ready to use it to pursue greater goals. The difficulty was that the Democrats had managed to protect nearly everyone in government through Civil Service. At a mid-December Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower told Phil Young, a Columbia dean who had taken over as head of the Civil Service, that one way to get rid of a Democrat was to “transfer him around until he’s sick of it.” Eisenhower said that when he was Chief of Staff, “we had a general who didn’t want to retire. After we got through with him, he was ready!!!” He also told Young that it was “better to abolish a job than keep an opponent in it.”46
The next week, Eisenhower told the Cabinet that he was sick and tired of Republicans who opposed his programs coming to him to demand patronage. “From here on,” he declared, he was going to say to such men, “either you’re for the Administration program or not. If not, expect no more help from us, no patronage, no nothing.” The Cabinet applauded this tough stance. Eisenhower immediately retreated. “Now I don’t want to put it up as an ultimatum,” he said.47
The week before Christmas, Eisenhower held a three-day meeting with Republican congressional leaders. He wanted to talk about his program for the upcoming session; they wanted to talk about Bricker and patronage. Again and again the Republican leaders told Eisenhower that “if we could get the Bricker Amendment through quickly it would be the most helpful thing.” The President would mumble that he hoped they could get an agreed-upon (that is, meaningless) wording, so that he could support it. Congressman William Miller of New York then charged that the “Interior Department is still being sabotaged by rabid New Dealers.” He thought Eisenhower should “fire Phil Young.” Eisenhower snapped back, “I told you, Mr. Miller, I love to have your advice but when it comes to picking my assistants, I pick them.” Miller rejoined, “And I told you my advice was I would fire Young.”
After three days of such pounding, Eisenhower frankly confessed to the group, “My greatest troubles come up within the Republican Party.” He spit out the word “patronage.” He said, “I’ll be damned if I know how the Republicans ever held a party together all these years.” He said he “used to go on the theory that the Republicans had quite a bit of brains.” After the ordeal was over, he scribbled in his diary, “Impressions of three-day conference. Amount of caution, approaching fright, that seems to govern the actions of most politicians.”48
• •
It was a gloomy onset of winter for Eisenhower. He had had the distasteful business of Oppenheimer to deal with, and the challenge from McCarthy, and the misguided effort to revive the White case. The Russians were stalling on atoms for peace. And the Republicans were impossible. So impossible that he told Bill Robinson, as Robinson recorded it in his diary, “that if the die-hard Republicans fight his program too hard, he may have to organize a third party. Later he smiled ruefully, saying that could, of course, be an impractical alternative but he wasn’t ready to abandon the idea.”49
To Milton, Eisenhower expressed his personal feelings. Referring to the 1956 presidential election, he said “if ever for a second time I should show any signs of yielding to persuasion to run, please call in the psychiatrist—or even better the sheriff.”50 That was before the meeting with the Republican leaders; after it ended, Eisenhower told Swede Hazlett, “I shall never again be a candidate for anything. This determination is a fixed decision.” He told Swede his first choice for his successor was Milton, but he did not want to have any part in establishing a dynasty, and in any case Milton was not “physically strong enough to take the beating.” Eisenhower therefore was going to build up some of the younger men on his team. He said he could support Lodge, Nixon, Brownell, Stassen, or a number of others, and he wanted to put all of them in the spotlight so that the Republicans wolud have a well-trained, well-known candidate for 1956.51
• •
After Christmas at Augusta, Eisenhower returned to the White House, where on New Year’s Eve he replied to a suggestion from C. D. Jackson. Jackson had advised him to follow up on atoms for peace with proposals for complete atomic disarmament. That was far beyond anything Eisenhower was willing to do. He said that before making any such proposal, “I should like to discuss just what would be the effect on us and our position if atomic weapons could be wholly eliminated from the world’s armaments.” What, in other words, would then stop the Red Army from marching across the Elbe? Eisenhower also told Jackson, “The mere argument that because we are ahead of the Russians in atomic weapons that this one phase of our armament activity should be pushed to the limit, must be taken into account.”52
That was the dilemma that left Eisenhower alternately encouraged and discouraged that New Year’s Eve. He had brought about peace in Korea—but only through the implied threat to use atomic weapons. He anticipated major reductions in the defense budget—but only by putting increasing reliance on an ever-expanding nuclear arsenal. The prospective balanced budget would mean prosperity, stability, and lower taxes—at the cost of a nuclear arms race. There was the dilemma. A nuclear arms race was the cheapest way to counter the Russian military threat, but it was simultaneously the most dangerous. The arsenal could not be used, it could only grow and grow. With no response from the Russians on atoms for peace, and seeing no incentive for America in atomic disarmament, Eisenhower knew he was stuck. “Those horrible things,” as he called them, would dominate his Presidency. His attempt to persuade the Russians to turn the direction of atomic research and stockpiling from destructive to constructive purposes, so brilliantly and sincerely expressed in “Atoms for Peace,” had failed. It was most discouraging.