CHAPTER SEVEN

Bricker, McCarthy, Bravo, Vietnam

January 1–May 7, 1954

AT THE BEGINNING of the new year, C. D. Jackson, who was about to leave the Administration to return to Time-Life (Emmet Hughes had already done so), wrote that he thought Eisenhower had grown immensely in the past year as a professional politician, but added that “he is still mystified in a sincere and uncomplicated way at the maneuvers of politicians.”1 The politicians who mystified Eisenhower most were those senators, a majority of the whole, who supported the Bricker Amendment. Through the winter of 1953–1954, the amendment dominated the political news. It went through a complex and incomprehensible series of changes, as various senators struggled to find a precise wording that would satisfy both the President and Bricker. But the substance remained. Bricker insisted that executive agreements, such as Yalta, would be regulated by Congress, and that treaties “shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of a treaty.” Eisenhower told the Republican leaders on January 11 that no one knew enough about what the amendment meant to talk about it with any authority, and “probably less than one percent are familiar with the basic issues involved.”²

Eisenhower’s position was clear; he opposed any amendment that would reduce the President’s power to conduct foreign policy. On January 14, Eisenhower told Hagerty he was going to start “calling names—say this was stupid, a blind violation of the Constitution by stupid, blind isolationists.”3 When Edgar Eisenhower wrote a letter strongly supporting the amendment, Eisenhower replied that he would not normally answer a letter so filled with “hackneyed criticisms and accusations palpably based on misinformation and deliberate distortion.” But he said he was replying to Edgar because he was so disturbed to find that Edgar believed “that I am a poor, helpless, ignorant, uninformed individual, thrust to dizzy heights of responsibility, who has been captured by a band of conniving ‘internationalists.’ ”⁴ Similar letters, although less strong and angry, went to his rich friends who supported Bricker.

At his meetings with Republican leaders, Eisenhower emphasized his “utter opposition” to the amendment. He also tried to educate the Republicans. The amendment, he declared, could never have stopped Yalta, because at Yalta the President had been acting as Commander in Chief during time of war. He said he wished FDR had not been so “indiscreet and crazy,”⁵ and claimed that he had told Roosevelt that he did not have the right to make decisions that properly belonged in the peace treaty, but still he insisted that the Bricker Amendment could not have stopped the process. Gene Millikin of Colorado said the amendment was a step in the right direction, nevertheless, and insisted that “no one ever got to heaven in one jump.” Eisenhower snapped back, “There’s a lot of stairs.” Nixon wanted to find a substitute amendment that would be acceptable to Eisenhower, and advised the President, “As in any battle, you need a second line of retreat.” Eisenhower replied, “No, Dick, you need two to go ahead, only one to retreat.”⁶

In February, there was a series of votes on various forms of the amendment. Eisenhower agonized through every one of them (one substitute motion came within a single vote of adoption by two-thirds of the Senate). Eisenhower used all his persuasive powers—in stag dinners, at meetings, in private, in correspondence, even on the golf course—to kill the amendment. He hated wasting his time on Bricker; early in February, he told Hagerty, “If it’s true that when you die the things that bothered you most are engraved on your skull, I am sure I’ll have there the mud and dirt of France during the invasion and the name of Senator Bricker.” He also complained, “If our Republican leaders had any guts this would all have been over.”⁷

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Simultaneously with the fight over Bricker, Eisenhower had to struggle with the Republican leaders over the tariff. In January, Eisenhower asked for a three-year extension of RTAA, based on a report from the Randall Commission on the necessity of promoting free trade around the world. Predictable complaints from high-tariff advocates, such as Edgar, brought from Eisenhower some straightforward presentations of fact. American capital and trade had to go into the underdeveloped world, Eisenhower said, because “only in this way can they absorb our industrial and agricultural surpluses; only in this way can we get the vital raw materials we must have.”8 Intermixed with RTAA were various Old Guard proposals to stop all trade with Communist states, to blockade China, and to prevent the NATO allies from trading with Russia. Eisenhower told the Republican leaders, “The unpleasant truth we have to face is that we’re going to have to fight Russia either in a trade war or in a hot war. We’ve got to win a lot of people to our side. Our allies say, ‘All right, you want to limit trade with us; you won’t let us trade with Russia; what do you want us to do—starve?’ ”

Dan Reed warned about the dangers of letting cheap Japanese goods into the United States. The congressman said he had a doll in his office, “all dressed up, hair, clothes, the works. It’s from Japan, and the price is three cents.” Eisenhower cut him off: “Never mind the dolls.” He urged Reed to think about real problems, such as nuclear testing and containment. Millikin interrupted to say it reminded him of a man who had been told of all the terrible things that were about to happen. The man said, “Well, I guess we might just as well paint our asses white and run with the antelopes.” Eisenhower strongly disapproved of such language in a formal meeting (he always apologized when a “damn” or a “hell” slipped out when he was talking). Turning red, the President said tartly, “That’s quite a story. Unless we act, we better start running now.” Later, Eisenhower said of Millikin, “He’s the most fearful man I ever met—he fears everything.” On this occasion, he told the Republicans, “We cannot live alone, and we’ve got to find some way for our allies to earn a living, because we do not want to carry them on our backs.”⁹

The Old Guard was not convinced. Eisenhower threatened, telling his Cabinet he would not support for re-election any Republican who would not support him on RTAA. “If the man changes,” Eisenhower added, “look upon him as a prodigal son and kill the fatted calf for him, but if not, I have need for my own beef.” And he told Hagerty that he was about to give up on working with Republicans. But in the end he compromised, accepting a one-year extension of RTAA, instead of the three he had demanded.¹⁰

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Eisenhower was not always at odds with the Republican leaders. Most of his domestic program was acceptable to the party, and even the Old Guard was enthusiastic about parts of it. In his State of the Union message of 1954, Eisenhower repeated his call for legislation on a number of issues that he had first proposed in 1953. One dealt with controlling the Communists. Some liberals, such as Hubert Humphrey, were trying to outlaw the Communist Party. Conservatives, such as J. Edgar Hoover, who had no need to establish their anti-Communist credentials, warned that outlawing the party would only make surveillance more difficult, while Eisenhower was worried about the constitutionality of a bill making membership in a political party a crime. Instead he asked for, and eventually got, the Communist Control Act of 1954, which stripped anyone who advocated the violent overthrow of the government of his or her citizenship. The bill also included “immunity-bath” legislation, which allowed the Attorney General to grant immunity from prosecution to witnesses testifying before a grand jury or a congressional committee.11

That bill pleased the Old Guard. So did Eisenhower’s decisive endorsement of private development of nuclear power. Democrats had wanted to retain a federal monopoly on nuclear power, through the AEC, while most Republicans wanted to encourage commercial production of electricity. Eisenhower asked for, and got, legislation that permitted the private manufacture, ownership, and operation of atomic reactors under licensing systems administered by the AEC, and that directed the AEC to provide private manufacturers, at cost, with materials and services. With such inducements, the utilities were quick to respond; on Labor Day 1954, at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, groundbreaking ceremonies marked the beginning of the first civilian atomic power plant in America.¹²

Health care was another area that pitted private against public development. Some Democrats, most notably Harry Truman, were advocating a form of national health insurance; Republicans, with the solid support of the AMA, denounced any such plan as socialism. Eisenhower asked for—but did not get—a program instituting a limited federal reinsurance program that would provide financial support for the private health-insurance industry. To the AMA and its friends in the Old Guard, Eisenhower’s proposal was no more than the entering wedge of socialized medicine.¹³ Eisenhower suffered other defeats; his call for Hawaiian statehood failed, in part because the southern Democrats were afraid of Hawaii’s mixed population. The Democrats wanted Alaska brought in simultaneously, but Eisenhower opposed statehood for Alaska on the grounds that the population was insufficient to provide a state government. He also failed on his proposal for the vote for eighteen-year-olds, and on his call for some minor revisions in Taft-Hartley.14

But Eisenhower won more than he lost. His Housing Act was one example. Democrats, responding to the nation’s urgent need for more housing, brought on by the postwar baby boom, proposed a major role for the government in building housing projects; Republicans wanted to leave the problem to the construction industry. Eisenhower came down in the middle, calling for the construction by the government of 140,000 homes over a four-year period (which was far below the figures the Democrats had in mind, and even Senator Taft had advocated a larger federal role). Eisenhower put a four-year limit on the program with the idea that after that time he could replace government-financed projects with a program to insure long-term loans to mortgage holders.¹⁵

Eisenhower’s most significant legislative victory was Social Security. He had tried to expand the system in 1953, failed to get action, and repeated his request in 1954. With an election coming in November, Republicans were more amenable to improving rather than destroying the system, and Eisenhower got a bill that increased benefits and put ten million people not previously covered into Social Security.¹⁶ He also got the funds for American participation in the St. Lawrence Seaway and put through a tax-revision bill that did not lower rates but did increase deductions, thereby providing a tax cut of $7.4 billion for 1954.¹⁷ Thanks to reductions in defense expenditures, he was bringing the budget into balance despite the tax cut.

In the spring of 1954, the country went into a mild, post-Korea recession. Eisenhower was determined that the Republican Party shed the label of “party of depression,” and repeatedly warned his Cabinet and the Republican leaders that they could not afford to “get tagged like Mr. Hoover did, unjustly, of not doing anything to help in economic bad times.” Eisenhower spent an enormous amount of his time studying the state of the economy with his chief economics adviser, Dr. Arthur Burns, and with his associates. He was ready to move decisively in the event unemployment got much above 5 percent (it had been 2.9 percent in 1953, and peaked at 5.5 percent in 1954). As unemployment pushed toward 6 percent, Eisenhower warned the Cabinet, “Now is the time to liberalize everything we can, because the fear in America is not the fear of inflation; it is the fear of deflation, of going down, not up.”¹⁸ In a long memorandum to Burns of February 2, he pointed out that he was committed to “keeping in a high state of readiness all applicable plans for combating, or rather preventing, depression or serious deflation.” Specifically, he wanted the government ready to speed up spending in such areas as soil conservation, dam construction, roads, public buildings, defense procurement, and shipbuilding.19 In early May, he got from Congress a bill that authorized some $2 billion for road construction, the largest sum ever invested to date by the federal government in the nation’s highways. If necessary, he was prepared to do more. On April 2, he told the Cabinet to “be ready to act every day.” He wanted the departments, especially such big spenders as Defense and Agriculture, to hurry up with their purchases, and he made it clear that he wanted it done well before the fall elections. He added that if the economy continued to decline, he would not hesitate to cut taxes.²⁰

Fortunately for Eisenhower and the Republicans, the recession was short-lived. Whether the early recovery (by 1955, the GNP was up sharply, while unemployment was down to 4.4 percent) was due to the Administration’s policies, or to simple good luck based on the inherent strength of the economy, was unclear. In any event the Republicans had avoided a depression, and thereby laid to rest at least some of the fear, so widely held from 1929 onward, that a Republican Administration meant widespread unemployment and an uncaring government. In the economic field, Eisenhower was approaching or realizing his major goals—a balanced budget, no inflation, tax reduction, a growing GNP, and a low rate of unemployment.

He was not so fortunate in his farm policy. In this area, his major goal was to get the government out of agriculture, and his main agent was Ezra Taft Benson. Together, Eisenhower and Benson agreed that the Democratic policies of the past twenty years were a disaster. The Democrats had instituted a compulsory fixed price support of 90 percent of parity on basic crops. Nevertheless, commodity prices had fallen steadily in relation to the rest of the economy. Meanwhile, the government had, by 1954, enough wheat and cotton and other crops in storage bins to supply all the needs of the market for a full year. This immense surplus was a problem of immense proportions; it was expensive to keep the crops in storage; the surplus had a depressing effect on prices; storage capacity was about gone. The government had been selling off the surplus slowly and ineffectively; Eisenhower wanted to get rid of it by giving it away through such programs as a free school lunch, disaster relief, and emergency assistance to foreign countries. For the future, he wanted to reduce price supports immediately by instituting a flexible system that would range from 75 percent to 90 percent, with the aim of implementing a long-term solution to the problem of overproduction by allowing a free market in farm products. Thus his ultimate goal was to end both parity and the government controls that went with it.21

Farm policy was an area in which he had deep and unchangeable convictions. Nowhere did his turn-of-the-century upbringing in Abilene show more clearly. As he often told his Cabinet, farmers in central Kansas had done without federal programs, and indeed had rejected the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan in 1896 despite hard times and Bryan’s major plank of helping farmers through monetary relief (the free coinage of silver). Eisenhower himself, as a six-year-old, had carried a torch in a McKinley parade. (When Truman accused Eisenhower of “creeping McKinleyism,” it gave the President a good laugh.²²) But however strongly Eisenhower felt about the need to get the government off the farmers’ backs, he was never able to do so. Benson waged titanic struggles with the dairy producers, the corn growers, and other groups over flexible price supports, but he scored only minor victories. The basic structure remained in place.

Farm policy was the only area in which Eisenhower called for a repudiation of the basic New Deal economic structure. In most instances, such as TVA, he was willing to continue, although not expand, the New Deal reforms; in some cases, most notably Social Security, he was willing to both continue and expand. Overall, save for agriculture and the level of defense spending, he continued the policies of the Truman Administration. That gave him the support of many Democrats, enough to make up for the loss of some of the Old Guard on his proposals, and allowed him to boast that his Administration had gotten most of what it requested from Congress. True enough, his critics responded, but that was only because what he had requested was so bland.²³

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Whatever else Joe McCarthy was, he certainly was not bland. The President’s attempt to undercut McCarthy by ignoring him had failed, utterly. To Eisenhower’s dismay, McCarthy continued to dominate the headlines and the White House news conferences. Eisenhower was genuinely perplexed by this situation; insofar as he felt he could explain it, he laid the blame on the news media. He told Bill Robinson, “We have here a figure who owes his entire prominence and influence in today’s life to the publicity media of the nation,” and he complained that “now these same media are looking around for someone to knock off the creature of their own making.”24 In his diary, he wrote, “The members of this group [the press] are far from being as important as they themselves consider,” but immediately contradicted himself by noting that in Washington, every politician courted the press shamelessly. His real objection was that the reporters “have little sense of humor and, because of this, they deal in negative criticism rather than in any attempt toward constructive helpfulness.” In other words, he wanted the press to be a part of his team, working together for the good of the country, just as the press in North Africa and Europe had been on his side.²⁵

On a more realistic level, Eisenhower wanted the press to provide, at a minimum, accurate reporting. At the end of January, Ellis Slater came down to spend a weekend in the White House. On Sunday morning, the two men read the papers while eating breakfast. Slater recorded that Eisenhower “remarked that after twelve years in public life, during which he had been in a position to know the real stories back of the news, he had about come to believe it was virtually impossible for a news reporter to get any story exactly right.”²⁶

A prime example was Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens’ “surrender” to McCarthy. The incident had its origins in McCarthy’s various investigations of Communist infiltration into the Army, which had led him to discover that a dentist, Dr. Irving Peress, who had been drafted, was a “Fifth Amendment Communist.” But although Peress had refused to sign a loyalty oath, or to answer McCarthy’s questions in a hearing, he had been promoted (the promotion was required by the doctors’ draft law) and then given an honorable discharge. McCarthy, furious, called the Camp Kilmer commanding officer, General Ralph Zwicker, to testify. Through most of February, McCarthy’s sole question of Zwicker—“Who promoted Peress?”—dominated the national news. Zwicker said he knew nothing about it. McCarthy browbeat Zwicker in the most abusive fashion, telling the general that he did not have “the brains of a five-year-old child” and that he was “not fit to wear” his uniform. Stevens then ordered Zwicker not to testify further. McCarthy thereupon ordered Stevens himself to appear before his committee. On February 24, Stevens had lunch with McCarthy in Everett Dirksen’s Senate office. Karl Mundt was also there. They struck a deal—McCarthy promised to stop abusing his witnesses in return for Stevens’ promise to permit further testimony by Zwicker and to release “the names of everyone involved in the promotion and honorable discharge of Peress.”²⁷

The luncheon was supposed to be a secret (it was a mark of Stevens’ political innocence that he could believe a lunch with McCarthy and the members of his committee, in the Senate office building, with Nixon’s office across the hall, could be kept secret). When Stevens emerged, McCarthy beside him, the reporters and photographers were waiting. McCarthy announced that Stevens had capitulated. The Secretary and his subordinates would come back to the hearings. He neglected to add that he in turn had promised to act responsibly, and Stevens did not think to point this out to the press.

As the newspapers then broke the story, Eisenhower and his Administration had surrendered. The New York Times headlined its story, “Stevens Bows to McCarthy at Administration Behest. Will Yield Data on Peress.”28 Eisenhower, returning from a speaking trip to California, was “very mad and getting fed up.” Hagerty noted in his diary, “It’s his Army and he doesn’t like McCarthy’s tactics at all.” Eisenhower swore, “This guy McCarthy is going to get into trouble over this. I’m not going to take this one lying down . . . He’s ambitious. He wants to be President. He’s the last guy in the whole world who’ll ever get there, if I have anything to say.”²⁹

Over the telephone, that afternoon, Eisenhower told Lucius Clay that Stevens, a wealthy textile manufacturer from South Carolina, was so chagrined by his blunder that he had offered to resign. Eisenhower said Stevens was “in a state of shock and near hysteria.” Eisenhower refused to hear of a resignation, and he told Stevens to admit that the Army had made an administrative error, then talk about “loyalty, honesty, integrity.” Clay then warned Eisenhower that “I’m willing to bet he [McCarthy] has information on honorable discharges while you were Chief of Staff.” Eisenhower bristled: “Never in my life has any Communist been brought to my attention. He never could be able to prove there was anything where I authorized a man’s discharge.” Clay cursed Dirksen for double-crossing the Administration, but Eisenhower said Dirksen was “not so bad,” that he was “just frightened.” Ninety-five percent of McCarthyism, Eisenhower said, was “just fear.”³⁰

Behind the scenes, Eisenhower was meeting with Dirksen and Mundt, extracting from them promises to make Joe behave. But his more significant act was a telephone call he placed to Brownell. His subject was the power of a committee of Congress to subpoena. “I suppose the President can refuse to comply,” Eisenhower said, “but when it comes down to people down the line appointed to office, I don’t know what the answer is. I would like to have a brief memo on precedent, etc.—just what I can do in this regard.”³¹ Eisenhower thereupon prepared the foundation for what would be his sole significant action against McCarthy, denial of access to executive personnel and records.

On March 3, Eisenhower had a prepared statement for his news conference. He said that the Army had made “serious errors” in the Peress case, that it was correcting its procedures, and that he had complete confidence in Stevens. He then read some homilies about McCarthyism (“In opposing Communism, we are defeating ourselves if we use methods that do not conform to the American sense of justice”), about the Army (it was “completely loyal and dedicated”), and about Congress (which had a responsibility “to see to it that its procedures are proper and fair”). After asserting his own “vigilance against any kind of internal subversion,” Eisenhower ended curtly: “And that is my last word on any subject even closely related to that particular matter.”32

McCarthy answered within the hour. He declared defiantly that “if a stupid, arrogant, or witless man in a position of power appears before our committee and is found aiding the Communist Party, he will be exposed. The fact that he might be a general places him in no special class as far as I am concerned.” Then, in a classic McCarthyism, delivered by the master himself, McCarthy said, “Apparently the President and I now agree on the necessity of getting rid of Communists.” To make sure his followers got the point, he publicly deleted the “now” a half hour later.³³

Still Eisenhower held back from any direct attack against McCarthy. He continued to urge the Republican senatorial leaders, especially Knowland, Dirksen, and Mundt, to keep the Army-McCarthy hearings (which were about to begin) orderly and fair. He told his Cabinet, in a formal memorandum, that “each superior, including me, must remember the obligations he has to his own subordinates. These comprise . . . the protection of those subordinates, through all legal and proper means available, against attacks of a character under which they otherwise might be helpless.”³⁴ Beyond that, he would not go. His belief was that McCarthyism was based on fear, and that the fear would subside, and McCarthy would lose his power and influence as the nation concentrated its interest on matters of substance. In a series of letters and diary entries, many in response to strong letters from men he respected urging him to denounce the senator from Wisconsin, Eisenhower cursed the amount of time the nonissue took. “Doctrine, ideas, and ideals have a tough time competing for headlines with demagogues.” To Bill Robinson, he complained that “we have sideshows and freaks where we ought to be in the main tent with our attention on the chariot race.” He also bemoaned “the tremendous importance that America places on personalities, and particularly upon clashes between personalities.”35

Much of Eisenhower’s incoming mail was telling him that McCarthy “has it within his power to destroy our system of government.” He scoffed at the notion: “When the proposition is stated as baldly as this, then it becomes instantly ridiculous.” He also scoffed at Adlai Stevenson’s charge “that the Republican Party was one-half Eisenhower and one-half McCarthy.” When asked at a news conference to comment, Eisenhower replied, “At the risk of appearing egotistical, I say nonsense.”³⁶

Thus Eisenhower decided, again, that McCarthy was not so great a threat to the nation or to the party as so many feared. But the forces McCarthy represented, and the methods he used, were another matter. “There is a certain reactionary fringe of the Republican Party that hates and despises everything for which I stand,” he told Robinson. He thought that if the Republican leaders had done their job, McCarthy would have long since been relegated to his proper sphere. Knowland, especially, had let him down; Eisenhower wrote of the majority leader in the Senate, “It is a pity that his wisdom, his judgment, his tact, and his sense of humor lag so far behind his ambition.”³⁷ As to McCarthy’s methods, Eisenhower said, “I despise them.” Nevertheless, he thought that his many close friends who were urging him to publicly label McCarthy with derogatory titles were badly mistaken. It would make “the Presidency ridiculous and in the long run make the citizens of our country very unhappy indeed.” Instead of speaking out, he would stick to his lifelong principle, so often stated so vehemently: “To avoid public mention of any name unless it can be done with favorable intent and connotation; reserve all criticism for the private conference; speak only good in public.” Eisenhower insisted that such a stance “is not namby-pamby. It certainly is not Pollyanna-ish. It is just sheer common sense. A leader’s job is to get others to go along with him in the promotion of something. To do this he needs their good will.”³⁸

Sound principle, but there were other principles Eisenhower also held, one of which was loyalty. He was, after all, not only the Commander in Chief but also the former Chief of Staff of an Army that McCarthy was viciously attacking. He was also the Supreme Commander of 1944; under his orders, General Zwicker, a West Pointer, had gone ashore on D-Day as chief of staff for the 2d Division, been wounded, and won a decoration. Since the war, Zwicker had had a distinguished career. Now Eisenhower was standing aside while McCarthy told Zwicker that he was not fit to wear the uniform. One might have thought that such assaults on such targets would have brought Eisenhower charging into the action. He himself had said (of the Republican senatorial leaders), “They do not seem to realize when there arrives that moment at which soft speaking should be abandoned and a fight to the end undertaken. Any man who hopes to exercise leadership must be ready to meet this requirement face to face when it arises; unless he is ready to fight when necessary, people will finally begin to ignore him.”39 But despite McCarthy’s extreme provocations, Eisenhower was not ready to abandon soft speaking.

The next storm broke when McCarthy announced that he would hold his seat as a voting member of the committee, despite the fact that he was on trial as much as the Army was (the Army charged that Roy Cohn, counsel to McCarthy’s subcommittee, had used his position to exert pressure for special favors for G. David Schine, Cohn’s former associate, who had been drafted). At a news-conference briefing, Eisenhower’s aides were split on how to respond. Jerry Persons, always the most conservative of the advisers, wanted the President to say that McCarthy’s vote was a matter for the Senate to decide. Hagerty, Cutler, and others said that the President was the moral leader of the nation and that if he did not speak out he would “get murdered on this one.” Eisenhower stopped their arguing by announcing, “Look, I know exactly what I am going to say. I’m going to say he [McCarthy] can’t sit as a judge. I’ve made up my mind you can’t do business with Joe and to hell with any attempt to compromise.”⁴⁰

At his news conference, he was not quite so tough. “I am perfectly ready to put myself on record flatly,” he said, “that in America, if a man is a party to a dispute, directly or indirectly, he does not sit in judgment on his own case, and I don’t believe that any leadership can escape responsibility for carrying on that tradition.”⁴¹ No one could disagree with that statement, and so McCarthy was considered “spanked,” and he abandoned his demand to have a vote, although he did retain his right to cross-examine witnesses. And, of course, the right to subpoena.

It was this last point that had Eisenhower worried. He did not want McCarthy running rampage, demanding that personnel from the Executive Branch appear before him, and that they produce records. McCarthyism was the result of fear, the President had insisted, but he was reluctant to admit that he was also afraid. He feared that McCarthy would get into the records or haul government officials before him. On March 29, he again asked Brownell to prepare a statement that he could use in the event that he had to order his subordinates to not appear before McCarthy.42

What Eisenhower feared specifically was the Oppenheimer case. Eisenhower’s withholding of Oppenheimer’s top-secret clearance, pending investigation, had been done secretly, but inevitably word was getting out. What bothered Eisenhower most was that McCarthy had just charged that the H-bomb development had been held up for eighteen months “because of Reds in the government.” Joe’s statement was getting uncomfortably close to Oppenheimer. “We have to move fast,” Hagerty noted, “before McCarthy breaks the Oppenheimer investigation and it then becomes our scandal.”⁴³ Hagerty worried about the public-relations aspects: “It’s just a question of time before someone cracks it wide open and everything hits the fan—if this breaks it will be the biggest news we’ve had down here yet—real hot.”⁴⁴ Eisenhower worried about something much bigger than public relations; his concern was the morale of the nation’s scientists and the state of the nation’s defenses.

The seriousness Eisenhower assigned to keeping McCarthy out of the Oppenheimer case was best illustrated by the fact that the President spent most of three full days, April 9 through 11, on the Oppenheimer matter. Strauss gave the President information that made it clear Oppenheimer had indeed tried to delay the H-bomb project. Eisenhower was not particularly concerned about the politics of Oppenheimer’s wife, or those of his brother and sister-in-law, or even about Oppenheimer’s having lied, under oath, about his associations. Eisenhower respected the man for his accomplishments, thought that such a unique genius should be given maximum leeway for idiosyncrasies, even in politics, and had been impressed by the moral arguments Oppenheimer had made against the H-bomb. What Eisenhower found inexcusable was that once Truman had made the decision to go ahead with the H-bomb, Oppenheimer did not get on the team. Worse, he tried to slow down the project. Eisenhower wanted him removed from all contact with the AEC, because he did not want to give Oppenheimer the opportunity to spread moral doubts in the minds of the scientists. Oppenheimer’s removal from the AEC had to be done carefully, however, because of his unique stature and prestige among his fellow scientists, men on whom the fate of the nuclear arms race rested. Eisenhower also did not want to let McCarthy give the country the impression that all scientists were disloyal. “We’ve got to handle this so that all our scientists are not made out to be Reds,” Eisenhower told Hagerty. “That goddamn McCarthy is just likely to try such a thing.”⁴⁵

Adding to the difficulties, as Hagerty noted, was that “McCarthy knows about case and it was Nixon who talked him out of using it earlier because of security reasons.” And Hagerty realized, as did Eisenhower, that McCarthy, “with back to wall, could easily try to get out from under by splashing Oppenheimer.”46

So Eisenhower decided to back off, or rather to stay backed off, from McCarthy. He would not push the senator, but allow events to run their course, including ignoring McCarthy’s gross insults to Zwicker, hoping that McCarthy would not get so far back against the wall that he opened an Oppenheimer investigation. When Eisenhower was asked at a news conference about McCarthy’s charge of an eighteen-month delay in the H-bomb, he denied any knowledge of it at all. “I never heard of any delay on my part, never heard of it.”⁴⁷ Even in his memoirs, written after the accusation had been made that Oppenheimer had been removed from the AEC because of his opposition to the H-bomb, Eisenhower said, “Certainly I . . . gave no weight to this fact.”⁴⁸ But in private, at the time, he told a different story. James Conant, from Bonn, wrote a strong defense of Oppenheimer. Conant said he knew all about the charges and they were false. Eisenhower replied that he was responding to the new charges, that is that Oppenheimer “attempted to induce personnel to abstain from working on the project and used such other influence as he thought would adversely affect the proposition.” On reflection, Eisenhower did not send the letter to Conant, but he did send a copy to Strauss.⁴⁹

In his memoirs, Eisenhower said his main concern about the Army-McCarthy hearings was that they be done “with minimum publicity and maximum dispatch.” He certainly failed in that goal. But his real aim was to keep McCarthy away from Oppenheimer, and to avoid a debate among scientists about the morality of working for the government on the H-bomb. In this goal he succeeded brilliantly.

The hearings began on April 22 and dragged on for two months. They were on national TV and attracted a huge and fascinated audience. McCarthy got maximum publicity with minimum dispatch—indeed too much publicity. The senator had put himself into an impossible position, because it had come down to the Army versus McCarthy, the Senate versus McCarthy, and, offstage, Eisenhower versus McCarthy. Despite his histrionics, McCarthy could not win against such odds. He could only expose himself before the biggest audience of his career. Eisenhower watched the spectacle on TV (although he denied it), as fascinated and appalled as everyone else. “The McCarthy-Army argument, and its reporting, are close to disgusting,” he told Hazlett. “It saddens me that I must feel ashamed for the United States Senate.”50 As the spring wore on, he was content to watch McCarthy hang himself, and quite pleased that the subject of the H-bomb never came up in the hearings.

•  •

The H-bomb was very much at the center of the President’s attention. On March 1, the AEC had detonated a multimegaton nuclear device on Bikini island. Code named Bravo, the blast was the first in a series called Castle. Eisenhower had given his approval to Castle after being told by Strauss that it was probable that the Russians were ahead of the Americans in H-bomb technology. The device the AEC had set off in November 1952 had not been small enough to carry in an airplane, while the Russians seemed to have accomplished that goal in their test. American scientists needed to increase their efforts, which was one reason Eisenhower was so concerned about the Oppenheimer case breaking just as the United States prepared to start Castle. Eisenhower wanted to keep the tests themselves secret too, but it proved impossible to hide them. Among other problems, a Japanese fishing boat had been showered with radiation, the crew fell ill, and the Japanese government and people raised a roar of protest. On March 24, at a news conference, Eisenhower decided he had to respond to persistent questions about radiation, even though he had promised Hagerty he would tell reporters to wait for Strauss’s return from the Pacific testing grounds. Eisenhower told the press, “It is quite clear that this time something must have happened that we have never experienced before, and must have surprised and astonished the scientists. Very properly, the United States has to take precautions that never occurred to them before.”⁵¹

The President’s admission allowed the reporters to speculate that the H-bomb testing had gotten out of hand, that the blast was uncontrollable. Then on March 30 the AEC, no longer attempting to hide the basic testing, announced that a second H-bomb had been tested that morning. That led to more concerned headlines. Meanwhile, Strauss had returned to Washington, and on March 31 Eisenhower took him to his news conference. Eisenhower had told Strauss to read a prepared statement “setting at ease fears that bombs had gotten out of control,” then answer questions about Bravo, and finally try to relieve people’s worries.

Strauss told the press that Bravo was never out of control, that the main problem had been a shift in wind that blew the radioactive material over the Japanese fishing boat, that there was no truth to stories about contaminated tuna fish or about radioactive currents moving on Japan, and that overall the fallout danger was being greatly exaggerated. The radioactivity would disappear quickly, but the military gains for the United States would be enduring. He said the nation should “rejoice” that the tests had been so successful and that “enormous potential has been added to our military posture by what we have learned.”

•  •

That piqued the reporters’ curiosity, and one of them asked how big an H-bomb might be made. Strauss replied, “It can be made to be as large as you wish, as large as the military requirement demands, that is to say, an H-bomb can be made as—large enough to take out a city.” Cries of “What?” went up around the room. “How big a city?” “Any city,” Strauss replied. “Any city, New York?” “The metropolitan area, yes.”52

On the way back to the Oval Office, Eisenhower told Strauss, “Lewis, I wouldn’t have answered that one that way.” Instead, the President said, Strauss should have told the reporters to “wait for the movie.” He was referring to a movie the AEC had made on Bravo. Eisenhower said he wanted the truth told—“Hell, I’d let everyone see the movie,” he told Hagerty. “That’s the purpose of it, to let everyone in.” But then he let Strauss change his mind and decided not to release the movie, for fear of frightening people even further.⁵³

On April 7, the AEC announced that the third shot in the Castle series had taken place. That same day, Merriman Smith asked Eisenhower at his news conference whether the United States was “going to continue to make bigger and bigger H-bombs.” Eisenhower was direct in his answer. “No,” he said, “we have no intention of going into a program of seeing how big these can be made. We know of no military requirement that could lead us into the production of a bigger bomb than has already been produced. I don’t know what bigger ones would do.”⁵⁴ And indeed, as Robert Divine points out, Bravo was “the biggest bomb the United States ever detonated.”⁵⁵ Further, despite the assurances of the AEC and other leading scientists, Eisenhower was worried about fallout, especially as reports from Japan on the condition of the fishing boat’s crew became more alarming (one man had died already). And he was quite honest in saying that he could see no point to making any bigger weapons, which led him to wonder why it was necessary to continue testing.

He brought up the subject with Dulles even as Castle was going on. He told the Secretary of State (an enthusiastic supporter of testing) on April 19 that he wanted Castle completed “as rapidly as possible.” After that, he thought the United States “should advocate a moratorium.” He said he was “willing to have a moratorium on all further experimentation whether with H-bombs or A-bombs.”56 Dulles was opposed to a moratorium, citing the verification problem. Meanwhile Castle went on, reaching its end on May 5 with a blast of almost seven megatons and on May 14 of two megatons. Divine speculates that the purpose of the series was to test various explosive configurations for the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, which had gotten started in February on a crash basis in response to Eisenhower’s order.⁵⁷

•  •

The Oppenheimer case, meanwhile, became public knowledge when the committee Eisenhower had charged with investigating Oppenheimer reported, by two votes to one, that while Oppenheimer was not disloyal, he had “fundamental defects of character” and therefore recommended that his security clearance be taken away. (By a vote of 4 to 1, with Strauss leading the way, the AEC later upheld that decision.) The announcement of the committee recommendation met Hagerty’s objective of beating McCarthy to the headlines on Oppenheimer, but it also set off the split that Eisenhower had feared in the American scientific community. The ensuing uproar also met Eisenhower’s objective of keeping the development of the H-bomb out of the debate. The ugly charge of anti-Semitism was hurled about, and Oppenheimer’s supporters said that Eisenhower had done it only to appease McCarthy.⁵⁸ Eisenhower was careful to point out that he was not punishing Oppenheimer in any way, nor finding him guilty of anything, merely separating him from the AEC. He was not even adverse to having Oppenheimer work for the government, if the project was safe enough. “Why do we not get Dr. Oppenheimer interested in desalting sea water?” Eisenhower wrote to Strauss.⁵⁹ And in a press conference, he was ready to praise Oppenheimer, albeit in a rather muddled way: “I have known Dr. Oppenheimer and, like others, I have certainly admired and respected his very great professional and technical attainments; and this is something that is the kind of thing that must be gone through with what I believe is best not talked about too much until we know whatever answers there may be.”⁶⁰ And with that, and with the end of the Castle series, and with the Army-McCarthy hearings reaching their height, the public interest in Bravo and its implications faded.

Throughout the period of Castle and the announcement about lifting Oppenheimer’s security clearance, Eisenhower complained about the way in which the Army-McCarthy hearings were detracting public attention from the real issues. But he was the chief beneficiary. He wanted Bravo and Oppenheimer kept as quiet as possible, and McCarthy diverted enough attention so that few noticed, in the spring of 1954, that Eisenhower had launched the United States into an H-bomb race with the Soviets, including a race to build intercontinental missiles. Eisenhower had made momentous decisions about this most critical of issues, and had done so with a minimum of public debate. He had even managed to keep Oppenheimer’s dismissal from raising the question of the morality of building the H-bomb.

•  •

Eisenhower, depressed by the failure of the Russians to respond to Atoms for Peace, was fully committed to the H-bomb. It had become the centerpiece of his strategy, and of his defense policy. It had allowed him to cut spending while increasing America’s nuclear lead. It made possible the “New Look,” as Wilson’s Pentagon public-relations people called it—fewer conventional forces, more atomic firepower, less cost. In the privacy of his Cabinet meetings, Eisenhower liked to stress what was “new” in the New Look; at his news conferences, he stressed continuity rather than change. When Ed Folliard of the Washington Post asked him about the subject, he replied, “ ‘New Look.’ What do we mean? We mean this: We are not fighting with muzzle-loaders in any of the services.” The kind of force he took across the Channel in 1944, Eisenhower said, “cannot possibly have any usefulness today whatsoever,” because two small atomic bombs would have been enough to wipe out the beachhead. He said he had heard people calling for a bigger Army. “Now, our most valued, our most costly asset is our young men,” he asserted. “Let’s don’t use them any more than we have to.” He was maintaining a one-million-man Army, the largest peacetime Army in American history, and regarded calls for an even larger force as irresponsible. He thought the reasons for such demands were that “there is too much hysteria.” Americans were afraid of the “men in the Kremlin,” afraid of “unwise investigators,” afraid of subversion, afraid of depression, afraid of radiation. The New Look was designed to meet one of those fears, that of a sudden massive Pearl Harbor-type attack on the United States. “To call it revolutionary or to act like it is something that just suddenly dropped down on us like a cloud out of the heaven is just not true, just not true.”61

The basic structure of the New Look was an expanded strategic air force and a much-reduced conventional force on land and at sea. It depended upon a huge American lead in nuclear weapons. Critics, led by Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway, charged that it was unbalanced and thereby forced America into an “all or nothing” posture. Ridgway was right, of course, as Dulles made clear in a mid-January speech, when he announced that Eisenhower and the NSC had made a “basic decision” that in the future the United States would confront any possible aggression by “a great capacity to retaliate instantly by means and places of our own choosing.” Eisenhower, asked to comment, said that Dulles “was merely stating what, to my mind, is a fundamental truth and really doesn’t take much decision; it is just a fundamental truth.”62

But that only deepened and did not elucidate the mystery. If American policy was to retaliate instantly and massively against Soviet aggression, what happened to the congressional power to declare war? In March, Dulles explained: “If the Russians attacked one of America’s allies, there was no need for the President to go to Congress for a declaration of war.” Congress was unhappy with that response; so were the reporters. Through the spring, they pressed Eisenhower for clarification. He explained that “there is a difference between an act of war and declaring war.” If he was faced with a Soviet assault against the United States, “a gigantic Pearl Harbor,” he would act instantaneously, but he would also assemble Congress as fast as possible, because “after all, you can’t carry on a war without Congress.” As to the precise legal and constitutional question, Eisenhower admitted, “I could be mistaken, and I would not argue it.” In a sentence that said volumes about the Eisenhower-Dulles relationship, the President added, “I would like to discuss it with Foster Dulles, but having talked to him, I am sure that we are absolutely in agreement as to what we mean about it.”

The point was that the reporters wanted to know what he meant by “it.” Did it mean that if there was a war in Korea or the Americans decided to support the French in Vietnam, that nuclear weapons would be delivered against Moscow or Peiping? “No war ever shows the characteristics that were expected,” Eisenhower replied. “It is always different.” Avoiding the question of how massive retaliation could work in a small war far outside Russian or Chinese borders, Eisenhower returned to the Pearl Harbor theme, again warning that in the age of nuclear weapons a surprise attack could be horrendous. Under those circumstances, if the President did not act immediately, he “should be worse than impeached, he should be hanged.” The reporters persisted. Richard Wilson said that Dulles’ speeches had indicated that if the United States were to take part in a local conflict, it would be done “with a direct attack upon the major aggressor at some point most desirable for us.”

“Well, now,” Eisenhower replied, “I will tell you. Foster Dulles, by no stretch of the imagination, ever meant to be so specific and exact in stating what we would do under different circumstances. He was showing the value to America to have a capability of doing certain things, what he believed that would be in the way of deterring an aggressor and preventing this dread possibility of war occurring.”63

•  •

The war raging in Vietnam made the subject of massive retaliation more than academic. The French were holding their own, but barely. Paris was weary of war. The cost, in lives and money, had become unendurable. For the Americans, too, the situation was intolerable. A continued stalemate would drain French resources to such an extent that France would never be able to meet its NATO obligations, always a prime consideration with Eisenhower. Further, the French were demanding more American money, and even American planes and troops, and they were simultaneously using EDC, which Eisenhower very much wanted, to blackmail the United States. Without support in Indochina, the French were saying, they could not ratify EDC.

A French defeat in Vietnam would be worse than continued stalemate. There was first of all the global strategic balance to consider. As far back as December 1952, Dulles had told Eisenhower that “Korea is important, but the really important spot is Indochina, because we could lose Korea and probably insulate ourselves against the consequences of that loss; but if Indochina goes, and South Asia goes, it is extremely hard to insulate ourselves against the consequences of that.”⁶⁴ There was in addition the political position of the Republican Party to be considered. A major theme of Eisenhower’s campaign had been a rejection of containment and an adoption of a policy of liberation. Now the Republicans had been in power for more than a year. They had failed to liberate any Communist slave anywhere. Indeed in Korea they had accepted an armistice that left North Korea in Communist hands. Eisenhower was keenly aware that by far his most popular act had been to achieve peace in Korea, but he was just as aware that Republican orators had been demanding to know, ever since 1949, “Who lost China?” Could he afford to allow Democrats to ask, “Who lost Vietnam?” He told his Cabinet he could not.⁶⁵

The obvious way out of the quandary was a French victory, but the problem was how to achieve it without introducing American planes and troops. Under no circumstances was Eisenhower going to send American troops back onto the Asian mainland less than a year after signing an armistice in Korea. Even had he wanted to do that, the New Look precluded such an effort—the troops simply were not available.

The only hope was through a judicious use of American resources to support allied forces, and not only the French. Eisenhower put Beetle Smith at the head of a committee to advise him. Smith recommended using Nationalist Chinese troops, adding that he had made a similar recommendation to Acheson in 1950 with regard to Korea. Smith admitted to Eisenhower that he and Acheson “had some very sharp words about this but I think I was right.” Eisenhower thought he was wrong. Putting Chiang Kai-shek’s troops into Vietnam would be a sure way to bring on a massive Red Chinese intervention. Besides, he told Smith, “We do not have an overall plan which provides for alternate lines of action in the event things go bad in Indochina regardless of our assistance.”66

What Eisenhower had in mind was a joint British-U.S. intervention, not with troops but with air support and military hardware. That would be in accord with his basic principle of collective security, it would relieve the Americans of the charge of colonialism, and it would save the French position. Convincing himself, however, was much easier than convincing the British, who wanted no part of an involvement in another war in Asia. Eisenhower wrote directly to Churchill, appealing to his sense of history. Eisenhower said that “I’ve been thinking a bit of the future. I am sure that when history looks back upon us of today it will not long remember any one of this era who was merely a distinguished war leader whether on the battlefield or in the council chamber.” Rather, history would remember those who established ties among the free nations that would allow them to “throw back the Russian threat and allow civilization to continue its progress.” In conclusion, Eisenhower declared, “Destiny has given priceless opportunity to some of this epoch. You are one of them. Perhaps I am also one of the company on whom this great responsibility has fallen.”⁶⁷

Churchill was unimpressed by Eisenhower’s dramatic presentation. Shortly after receiving it, Churchill met with Dulles. The Secretary of State reported to Eisenhower, “The Prime Minister followed his usual line. He said that only the English-speaking peoples counted; that together they could rule the world.”⁶⁸ Eisenhower deplored such thinking as hopelessly out of date, but he continued to work on Churchill.

Meanwhile, Eisenhower increased direct American military assistance to the French. How much of the war the Americans were paying for at this time is impossible to say because the figures were hidden in so many different ways, but the general estimate is around 75 percent. The French wanted more; specifically and immediately they wanted some B-26 bombers and the technicians to go with them. Eisenhower was terribly exasperated by the French—he blamed their refusal to grant full and free independence to the nations of Indochina for the continuation of the war—but the latest reports he was getting were quite positive about French chances. Eisenhower had not wanted to put American money and prestige into a losing cause, but his special study mission to Indochina, headed by General John O’Daniel, had just reported to him that the Dien Bien Phu fortress could “withstand any kind of attack the Vietminh are capable of launching.”69 The French were on the offensive, or so they said, although Eisenhower found it difficult to see how putting their most famous units into a fortress that was surrounded by high ground that was held by the enemy constituted taking the offensive. But he needed the French vote for EDC; he wanted to keep the French fighting in Vietnam; he could not bear the thought of losing the place through neglect; perhaps this time, with the bombers, the French would stiffen their backs and really go after the enemy. Eisenhower decided to give them something less than half of what they asked for. The French had wanted twenty-five bombers and four hundred Air Force personnel to service them; Eisenhower gave them ten bombers and two hundred people.

On February 8, at a meeting of Republican leaders, Senator Leverett Saltonstall anxiously raised the question about American servicemen going to Indochina. Was yet another President, this one a Republican, going to take the country into yet another war by the back door? That was Saltonstall’s implied question, and Eisenhower took it seriously. He carefully explained his reason for giving U.S. Air Force weapons to the French to be used against the Vietminh, and assured Saltonstall that none of the personnel would be in a combat zone. Eisenhower admitted that he was “frightened about getting ground forces tied up in Indochina,” and promised that he would pull all two hundred men out of the area on June 15. “Don’t think I like to send them there,” he added, “but we can’t get anywhere in Asia by just sitting here in Washington and doing nothing—my God, we must not lose Asia—we’ve got to look the thing right in the face.” Then he allowed himself Beetle Smith’s little fantasy: “I’d like to see Chiang’s troops used in Indochina”—and immediately caught himself up—“but the political risk of Chinese Red moves would then be too great.”70

Still, for all Eisenhower’s emphasis on reduced numbers and a definite date for withdrawal, he had sent the first American military personnel to Vietnam. Of course, as Eisenhower insisted, it was hardly an irrevocable step. But still, it had been taken. He was worried about what it might lead to. Earlier, in January, he had told the NSC (in the words of the stenographer), “For himself, said the President with great force, he simply could not imagine the United States putting ground forces anywhere in Southeast Asia, except possibly in Malaya, which we have to defend as a bulwark to our offshore island chain. But to do this anywhere else, said the President with vehemence, how bitterly opposed I am to such a course of action. This war in Indochina would absorb our troops by divisions!”⁷¹

Long before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, Eisenhower was even more emphatic and prophetic about an American ground involvement in Vietnam. When writing his presidential memoirs, in 1963, he declared, “The jungles of Indochina . . . would have swallowed up division after division of United States troops, who, unaccustomed to this kind of warfare, would have sustained heavy casualties . . . Furthermore, the presence of ever more numbers of white men in uniform probably would have aggravated rather than assuaged Asiatic resentments.” (When he published the memoirs, nearly a year later, he deleted that passage, because by then the country was getting involved in Vietnam and he did not want to be critical of the President.⁷²) Nevertheless, throughout the long period in 1954 of the French agony at Dien Bien Phu a grim specter dominated his thinking.

In mid-March, the upbeat reports from Vietnam suddenly reversed. Allen Dulles said the French now felt they had only a 50–50 chance at Dien Bien Phu. Furthermore, French Premier René Pleven told ambassador to France Douglas Dillon that “there was no longer the prospect of a satisfactory military solution.” Eisenhower was distraught on learning of Pleven’s defeatist attitude. “Why don’t they withdraw request for military aid?” he wrote Smith. “Might be well to ask.”⁷³

Eisenhower soon had a chance to ask himself. On March 23 French Army Chief of Staff Paul Ely came to Washington to discuss increasing the flow of American material. Eisenhower and Dulles had a series of meetings with Ely. He wanted additional American aircraft, while Eisenhower pressed him on the status of granting independence. Finally, Eisenhower agreed to furnish the French with some C-119 Flying Boxcars that could drop napalm, “which would burn out a considerable area and help to reveal enemy artillery positions.” But Eisenhower would not commit the United States to any military policy of direct intervention until he “got a lot of answers” from Paris on outstanding issues, primarily EDC and Indochinese independence.

Then Eisenhower set about building the support he would need to withstand the strident demands for intervention that he knew would come when Dien Bien Phu fell. He did so by putting conditions on American involvement. They were deliberately created to be impossible of fulfillment, and there were a number of them. First, a full and clear grant of independence by the French. Second, British participation in any venture. Third, at least some of the nations of Southeast Asia had to be involved. Fourth, Congress had to give full and clear prior approval. Fifth, he would want the French to turn the war over to the Americans, but keep their troops in combat. Sixth, the French had to prove that they were not just asking the Americans to cover a fighting withdrawal.

Eisenhower’s conditions, impossible as they were, seemed to him to be based on principles that could not be broken. As Dulles told Ely point-blank, the United States could “not afford to send its flag and its own military establishment and thus to engage the prestige of the United States,” unless it expected to win.74 Eisenhower expressed for himself another basic principle, when in an unpublished portion of his memoirs he wrote that “the strongest reason of all for the United States [to stay out] is the fact that among all the powerful nations of the world the United States is the only one with a tradition of anti-colonialism. . . . The standing of the United States as the most powerful of the anti-colonial powers is an asset of incalculable value to the Free World. . . . The moral position of the United States was more to be guarded than the Tonkin Delta, indeed than all of Indochina.”⁷⁵

So Eisenhower refused to go very far in meeting Ely’s demands. The French general went to Radford, who was much more forthcoming. Together they approved joint U.S.-French plans, made in Saigon, for Operation Vulture, an air strike against the Vietminh around Dien Bien Phu. Ely’s hope, and Radford’s, was that as the end drew near at Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower could not resist the pressure to intervene. Indeed, some of Eisenhower’s aides thought that the French were deliberately losing at Dien Bien Phu in order to force an American intervention.⁷⁶ Radford had reason to suppose the President might approve a strike too; just the day before he met with Ely, Eisenhower had told him that he would not “wholly exclude the possibility of a single strike, if it were almost certain this could prove decisive results.” But as always, Eisenhower had put on a condition that was impossible to fulfill.77

Eisenhower’s most impossible conditions were the ones that required allied participation and congressional support. On March 29, Dulles in a speech put forward an idea that he had been given by Eisenhower, that the United States take the lead in forming a “United Action” in Vietnam. Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, and the Associated States of Indochina would all intervene together. It was an absurd idea, except that it accomplished two objectives for Eisenhower—it allowed a national debate to take place on the wisdom of intervention (which debate, Eisenhower was sure, would convince most people that it was a mistake), and it began building the American fallback position. Eisenhower had reconciled himself to the loss of some of Vietnam, but not all, and certainly not all of Southeast Asia. Already he was committed, in other words, to a division of Vietnam, with the United States then coming in to support the non-Communist south. But he never said so in public, where he continued to insist that a negotiated settlement was out of the question. He still had some faint hopes that the French might pull themselves together, and that the British might at least put in a little material help.

For the record, and to protect himself against right-wing assaults, Eisenhower then tried to get both prior congressional approval and British participation. On April 2, with the situation at Dien Bien Phu growing worse every day, Eisenhower had Dulles and Radford meet with the leaders of both parties in Congress. Dulles said Eisenhower wanted a resolution from Congress that would give him the discretionary authority to use American air and sea power to prevent the “extension and expansion” of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. The authority would expire on June 30, 1955, and would in no way “derogate from the authority of Congress to declare war.”⁷⁸ The congressmen, as Eisenhower expected would be the case, were aghast. They cried out “No more Koreas.” The only way Eisenhower could get a resolution, they said (thus protecting themselves as carefully as Eisenhower was protecting himself), was if the British and other allies joined in, and if the French promised independence. Dulles decided not to submit the resolution to Congress.⁷⁹

On April 4, Eisenhower sent a telegram to Churchill. He expressed hope about Dien Bien Phu, but warned that “I fear that the French cannot alone see the thing through.” Worse, defeat would mean “that the future of France as a great power would be fatally affected.” He urged Churchill to join United Action, and between the lines implied to the Prime Minister that he had in mind putting the plan into effect after Vietnam was partitioned.

Then, Eisenhower drew the most telling historical parallel he could think of in appealing to Churchill: “We failed to halt Hirohito, Mussolini, and Hitler by not acting in unity and in time. That marked the beginning of many years of stark tragedy and desperate peril. May it not be that our nations have learned something from that lesson?”80 But for all the rhetoric, what Eisenhower was really doing was building a negotiating position for a conference in Geneva, scheduled for late April. The meeting had been called earlier to deal with Korea, but the Russians had insisted on putting Indochina on the agenda. Dulles was unhappy because he suspected, rightly, that the French wanted to use Geneva to negotiate themselves out of Vietnam. But he had failed to keep Indochina off the agenda, and partition was in the air, not least because of Dulles’ United Action proposal. The Americans knew they had to prepare for the probability of a French withdrawal.

On the morning of April 5, Dulles called Eisenhower to inform him that the French had told Ambassador Dillon that their impression was that Operation Vulture had been agreed to, and hinted that they expected two or three atomic bombs to be used against the Vietminh. Eisenhower told Dulles to tell the French, through Dillon, that they must have misunderstood Radford. Eisenhower said that “such a move is impossible,” that without congressional support an air strike would be “completely unconstitutional and indefensible.” He told Dulles to “take a look to see if anything else can be done,” then again warned, “We cannot engage in active war.”⁸¹

So Eisenhower had rejected intervention. But he had not decided to leave Southeast Asia to its own devices. He very definitely wanted to form a regional grouping for United Action that could draw a line and thus institute a policy of containment. As Truman had done in Europe in the late forties, Eisenhower would seal off the Communists in Southeast Asia. To achieve that goal, he first of all had to convince Congress, the American people, and the potential allies that Indochina was worth the effort. After all, if the Americans were not ready to fight beside the French, why should they, or anyone else, be prepared to fight for whatever was left of a non-Communist Indochina?

At his April 7 news conference, Eisenhower made his most important—and his most famous—declaration on Indochina. Robert Richards of Copley Press asked him to comment on the strategic importance of Indochina to the free world. Eisenhower replied that first of all, “You have the specific value of a locality in its production of materials that the world needs.” Second, “You have the possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.” Finally, “You have the broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” He thought that the “sequence of events,” if the United States abandoned Southeast Asia altogether, would be the loss of all of Indochina, then Burma, then Thailand, then Malaya, then Indonesia. “Now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions and millions of people.” Even worse, the loss of Southeast Asia would be followed by the probable loss of Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines, which would then threaten Australia and New Zealand.82

The President had painted a cataclysmic picture. If he was right about the probable consequences of the loss of Indochina, the need for United Action became clear and overwhelming. It was at this point, based on Eisenhower’s reasoning, that the United States made its commitment to Vietnam. Not to the whole of Vietnam, but to whatever was left of non-Communist Vietnam after the Geneva Conference finished partitioning the place. He was taking a halfway position, between those who were demanding an all-out effort to save the French at Dien Bien Phu and those who wanted America to get out and stay out of Southeast Asia.

As the situation at Dien Bien Phu deteriorated, demands for intervention from right-wing American politicians, military leaders, and from the French, increased. On April 16, the Vice-President spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Nixon was asked whether he thought the United States should send troops into Indochina if the French decided to withdraw. Nixon replied that if sending American boys was the only way to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia, “I believe that the Executive Branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.”⁸³ Since Nixon mentioned neither Congress nor allied participation, his statement seemed to represent a major shift in policy. Eisenhower was in Augusta for the weekend, so Hagerty had to face the reporters. He asked Nixon if there had indeed been a policy shift, but Nixon “played dumb” and said he was only answering hypothetical questions. Hagerty commented, “Think it was foolish for Dick to answer as he did but will make the best of it.”84

At a meeting of the Republican leaders the next week, Charlie Halleck told Nixon that his statement “had really hurt” and that he hoped there would be no more talk of that kind. Eisenhower defended Nixon, saying that it was a good thing to keep the Communists guessing about American intentions.⁸⁵

By April 23, the situation at Dien Bien Phu had become desperate. Dulles, who was in Europe trying to get United Action under way, sent a series of alarming cables to Eisenhower. “France is almost visibly collapsing under our eyes,” the Secretary declared. He deplored the worldwide publicity being given to Dien Bien Phu, because “it seems to me that Dien Bien Phu has become a symbol out of all proportion to its military importance.” Dulles insisted that there was “no military or logical reason why loss of Dien Bien Phu should lead to collapse of French will, in relation both to Indochina and EDC.”⁸⁶ In another cable, Dulles said the French insisted there were only two alternatives; Operation Vulture or a request for a cease-fire. (There was great confusion about Vulture; Radford, Ely, and Nixon all believed it involved three atomic bombs, while Dulles thought it would be a “massive B-29 bombing” by U.S. planes using conventional bombs.⁸⁷)

Eisenhower phoned Beetle Smith. They agreed that there should be no intervention, no air strike, without allies. Eisenhower then cabled Dulles, saying that he could fully understand Dulles’ frustration, but urging the Secretary to keep trying.⁸⁸ Dulles replied that it was not at all certain in any case that an air strike would save Dien Bien Phu at this late date. “It is my opinion,” the Secretary continued, “that armed intervention by executive action is not warranted. The security of the United States is not directly threatened.”⁸⁹

On April 26, the opening day of the Geneva Conference, Eisenhower met with the Republican leaders. He told them that “the French are weary as hell,” that Dien Bien Phu would fall within the week, although “the French go up and down every day—they are very voluble. They think they are a great power one day and they feel sorry for themselves the next day.” When the congressmen asked the President why the British were so reluctant to get involved, he said that the Churchill government was “worried about Hong Kong and hope it will be left alone. They are fearful that if they move in Indochina the Chinese Reds will move against Hong Kong and could take it easily.” Eisenhower said he tried to convince the British that “if we all went in together into Indochina at the same time, that would be fine but if they don’t go in with us, they can’t expect us to help them defend Hong Kong. We must have collective security or we’ll fall.” He then assured the leaders that “I don’t see any reason for American ground troops to be committed in Indochina, don’t think we need it,” because “there are plenty of people in Asia, and we can train them to fight. It may be necessary for us eventually to use some of our planes or aircraft carriers off the coast and some of our fighting craft we have in that area for support.”

Milliken said that if the British and French “deserted, we would have to go back to fortress America.” Eisenhower turned on him angrily and ended the discussion by saying, “Listen, Gene, if we ever come back to fortress America, then the word ‘fortress’ would be entirely wrong in this day and age. Dien Bien Phu is a perfect example of a fortress. If we ever came back to the fortress idea for America, we would have one simple, dreadful alternative—we would have to explode an attack with everything we have. What a terrible decision that would be to make.”

After the meeting, Eisenhower walked to the Oval Office with Hagerty. The President told his press secretary to prime a reporter to ask him at the next news conference about the Geneva Conference. Eisenhower would then try to emphasize “that all is not lost if Dien Bien Phu falls, which probably it will within a week.”90

Eisenhower then wrote a long, thoughtful letter to Gruenther, whom he depended upon as his most reliable link to the French leadership. After repeating once again that unilateral American intervention was out of the question (“it would lay us open to the charge of imperialism and colonialism or—at the very least—of objectionable paternalism”), Eisenhower complained that “ever since 1945 France has been unable to decide whether she most fears Russia or Germany. As a consequence, her policies in Europe have been nothing but confusion; starts and stops; advances and retreats!” Eisenhower said of Dien Bien Phu, “This spectacle has been saddening indeed. It seems incredible that a nation which had only the help of a tiny British Army when it turned back the German flood in 1914 and withstood the gigantic 1916 attacks at Verdun could now be reduced to the point that she cannot produce a few hundred technicians to keep planes flying properly in Indochina.” Eisenhower thought the French problem was one of leadership and spirit. “The only hope is to produce a new and inspirational leader—and I do not mean one that is 6 feet 5 and who considers himself to be, by some miraculous biological and transmigrative process, the offspring of Clemenceau and Jeanne d’Arc.”

Then Eisenhower turned serious, ticking off points he wanted Gruenther to make to the French. The loss of Dien Bien Phu did not mean the loss of the war. The French should join United Action to stop “Communist advances in Southeast Asia”: not to hurl back, but to stop such expansion; i.e., after partition. Eisenhower wanted the French Army to remain in Vietnam and promised that “additional ground forces should come from Asiatic and European troops already in the region” (that is, there would be no American troops but America would pay the bills). The French should grant independence. The ultimate goal, Eisenhower told the SACEUR to pass on to the French, was to create a “concert of nations” in Southeast Asia on the NATO model.91

This was Eisenhower’s first direct mention of the idea of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and it was significant that he made it to the SACEUR. He thought first of NATO. His own vehement anti-Communism certainly played the major role in his Vietnam policy, tempered of course by his realism, but his anxieties about the French were also important considerations. He felt the French had to be dealt with like children, but he rejected the de Gaulle alternative. He had to support Pleven, now reportedly his only hope for getting EDC ratified by the French. And if EDC failed, German rearmament would be even more difficult to achieve. And without German rearmament, NATO would continue to be a hollow shell. In some part, then, SEATO came about because of the needs of NATO.

On the morning of April 29, at a news conference, Eisenhower referred obliquely to partition in response to a question from Joseph Harsch about Eisenhower’s recent use of the phrase “modus vivendi” in Indochina. Eisenhower said he was “steering a course between two extremes, one of which, I would say, would be unattainable, and the other unacceptable.” It would not be acceptable, he explained, “to see the whole anti-Communistic defense of that area crumble and disappear.” But because the Vietminh were winning, there could be no hope of getting a “satisfactory answer” from them. “The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.” Eisenhower then mentioned divided Germany and Berlin as an example of “getting along one with the other, no more. Now, I think that for the moment, if you could get that, that would be the most you could ask.”⁹²

Immediately after the news conference, Eisenhower went to a three-hour NSC meeting, most of it devoted to Vietnam. According to notes Nixon kept, “Stassen said that he thought that decision should be to send ground troops if necessary to save Indochina, and to do it on a unilateral basis if that was the only way it could be done. The President himself said that he could not visualize a ground troop operation in Indochina that would be supported by the people of the United States and which would not in the long run put our defense too far out of balance. He also raised the point that we simply could not go in unilaterally because that was in violation of our whole principle of collective defense against communism in all places in the world.”93

Eisenhower told Stassen that there would be the most serious repercussions among the NATO allies, especially Britain, if the United States went in on its own. He then turned the discussion to a post-partition “Pacific coalition.” Eisenhower said that future American efforts would be toward organizing a regional coalition, obtaining British support for it, and pressing France to grant independence. Eisenhower would not seek congressional approval for American participation in a collective intervention until a coalition could be put together.⁹⁴

The following morning, Bobby Cutler brought him a draft of an NSC paper that was exploring the possibilities of using atomic bombs in Vietnam. Eisenhower told Cutler, “I certainly do not think that the atom bomb can be used by the United States unilaterally.” Eisenhower turned on Cutler. “You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God.”⁹⁵

On May 7, Dien Bien Phu surrendered. Eisenhower tried to keep up the pretense that the French had lost only a battle, not the war. He told the NSC of his “firm belief that two, and only two, developments would really save the situation in French Indochina.” First, Paris had to grant independence; second, the French needed to appoint a better general to take charge of the campaign. The French could still win, but time was running out. Cutler then joined Nixon and Stassen in again urging a unilateral American intervention. Eisenhower ignored them.⁹⁶

So Eisenhower’s policy was set: to accept partition, although only after obstructing and delaying the process as long as possible, and then to create SEATO. He had managed to avoid involvement in the war, but he was determined to make as firm a commitment to the non-Communist remainder of Southeast Asia as America had made to the NATO countries.

Of all Eisenhower’s reasons for staying out of Vietnam, the one that meant most to him was the potential effect of intervention on the American people. The Korean War had been divisive enough; Eisenhower shuddered to think of the consequences of getting into a war to fight for a French colony less than a year after the armistice in Korea. That was the reason for his stress on prior congressional approval; if he could get it, he would be leading a united nation. But he doubted that he could get it, precisely because the nation was badly divided.

Eisenhower’s decision to stay out of Vietnam did not have the dramatic quality to it that his 1944 D-Day decision had, because it was made over a longer period of time. Nevertheless, it was as decisive, in its way, because in both cases what happened next depended solely upon his word. At any time in the last weeks of Dien Bien Phu he could have ordered an air strike, either atomic or conventional. Many of his senior advisers wanted him to do just that, including his chairman of the JCS, his Vice-President, his head of the NSC planning staff, his MSA adviser, and (sometimes) his Secretary of State. Eisenhower said no, decisively. He had looked at the military options, with his professional eye, and pronounced them unsatisfactory. On June 5, 1944, they had been satisfactory, and he said go; in April 1954, they were unsatisfactory, and he said don’t go.

From that moment on, Eisenhower supporters could claim, “He got us out of Korea and he kept us out of Vietnam.”