The Chairman

by Kai Bird

  All of this, of course, sounded quite bleak. McCloy, Nitze, and other civilian members of the Commission were coming to grips with the sobering realities of the intercontinental missile. To men who could remember the shock of Pearl Harbor, a mere sixteen years in the past, the idea that the Soviet Union would soon be able to wipe out whole American cities on thirty minutes’ notice was a nightmare. Three members of the group actually believed Washington should consider launching a preventive war, before the Soviets acquired a full-blown ICBM capability.75

  In his meeting with the Gaither advisory panel on November 4,1957, Eisenhower listened calmly while Gaither outlined the group’s draconian recommendations. By the time Gaither finished, it was clear that the president was unconvinced. Not only did he assume that the Strategic Air Command was a much more survivable force than the Gaither group believed, but he also said he was inclined to think that fallout shelters were “rather low in the list of priorities.” At this, McCloy interrupted to argue that the cost of such shelters would be only $100 per life saved. A few days later, he again tried to assure the president that the economy could support the proposed defense expenditures.

  Eisenhower was willing to acknowledge that down the road the country would probably have to make a greater investment in missile technology. But in his view, the missile program was progressing just about as fast as was necessary, and he made it clear that his administration was not going to adopt the fantastic spending increases endorsed by the panel. Having firmly sidestepped the Gaither panel’s recommendations, Eisenhower politely urged the group to keep themselves together and “review the matter every now and then.”76

  Despite this presidential dismissal, the Gaither panel did influence the administration on some defense policies. Eisenhower ordered SAC to have at least one-third of its strategic bomber fleet either in the air or on fifteen-minute alert at all times. The Polaris submarine-based missile program was accelerated. Only a few weeks later, the administration acted on one of the report’s recommendations by broaching the idea of stationing nuclear armed missiles in Germany with West Germany’s defense minister, Franz-Josef Strauss. And eventually some money was appropriated to educate the public about various civil-defense measures. Starting in the late 1950s, a whole generation of American schoolchildren periodically were asked to hide beneath their desks during practice atomic alerts.

  Ironically, all the bellicose rhetoric about demonstrating a “will to survive” and building hundreds of new missiles masked the panel’s most significant conclusion. Though McCloy and his colleagues had identified a window of vulnerability—which they believed would last from 1957 to 1961—they also said there would soon be a window of opportunity for serious arms-control negotiations. “This could be the best time to negotiate from strength,” wrote the authors, “since the U.S. military position vis-à-vis Russia might never be so strong again.”77 According to their timetable, this window of opportunity would probably occur sometime in the early 1960s. (In fact, the Soviets took much longer to develop their ICBM force.) The panel emphasized that, beyond the early 1960s, the Soviets and the United States could expect to achieve nuclear parity in both weapons and delivery systems. At this point, it would be much more difficult to stop the arms race. McCloy and several other members of the Gaither group, including Isidor Rabi, were particularly impressed by this argument. Rabi went so far as to argue that the impending Soviet ICBM threat was such that the United States should (a) build an emergency defensive-missile system, and (b) negotiate “immediately a world-wide moratorium on nuclear explosions.”78 A ban on nuclear testing would go far to slow the arms race and therefore prolong America’s overall military superiority to the Soviets. McCloy too became persuaded of the advantages to be gained from a ban on nuclear testing. Ironically, his strong interest in arms-control negotiations thus dated from his experiences with the Gaither Commission, a group soon to be associated in the public mind with those calling for major increases in the defense budget.

  Inevitably, someone leaked the Gaither Report to the ubiquitous Drew Pearson, and the ensuing controversy led to another round of speculation on John Foster Dulles’s continued tenure at the State Department. Those who had leaked the report knew very well that Dulles had scoffed at its alarmist conclusions. Simultaneously, Dulles was being criticized for his opposition to a U.S.-Soviet summit and for the refusal of the Eisenhower administration to halt atmospheric nuclear testing. In December 1957, the Soviets had proposed a two-or-three-year moratorium on nuclear testing, but Dulles had insisted that the United States could not agree to any moratorium without an outright ban on further production of nuclear weapons. This stance was not a serious negotiating position, since neither side could possibly verify that the other was not engaging in clandestine production. Verification of a test-ban treaty, however, was quite feasible. The scientists were already certain they could detect an atmospheric test.79

  From the point of view of many critics—such as Paul Nitze, the primary author of the Gaither Report—Dulles combined the worst of two positions: not only was he unwilling to support the increased defense expenditures recommended, but he seemed to have an inflexible approach to disarmament negotiations with the Soviets. By contrast, McCloy had signed on to the Gaither Report’s budgetary recommendations and yet was known to be a realistic advocate of arms control. Characteristically, he had maneuvered himself into a position that blended tough military preparedness with a willingness to negotiate. On January 6, 1958, the debate within the Eisenhower administration over how to respond to the Soviet proposal for a test moratorium came to a head in an acrimonious National Security Council meeting. Eisenhower’s disarmament adviser, Harold Stassen, presented the argument for accepting the Soviet proposal. Eisenhower rejected Stassen’s arguments, and within a month asked for his resignation.80

  In the meantime, a public campaign emerged in the press to have Dulles replaced by McCloy. On January 12, 1958, Philip Graham and his wife, Katharine, dined with Drew Pearson, and the publisher of the Washington Post confided that he was “working to get Jack McCloy in Dulles’s job. . . .” He told Pearson that Lucius Clay and Milton Eisenhower had lent their support. The New York Time’s Cy Sulzberger wrote that the secretary of state was a “tragic-comic figure.” Senator Jacob Javits told Undersecretary of State Christian Herter that he thought McCloy should be given some position in the administration, even if not in the Cabinet. About this time, Eisenhower himself complained of Dulles’s “practice of becoming a sort of international prosecuting attorney” in his dealings with the Soviets. But the president was still reluctant to move against his secretary of state.81

  But if Dulles was not to be removed, Eisenhower nevertheless had to contend with an increasingly vocal public campaign mounted in Congress and by private citizens’ groups like SANE to force the administration to negotiate a test-ban treaty. Harold Stassen’s dismissal as the president’s disarmament adviser only made things worse. So, two weeks after Stassen’s resignation, McCloy, Alfred M. Gruenther, Bedell Smith, and Robert Lovett were named to advise Dulles on disarmament policy. In Europe, the London Times reported that these appointments meant that “Washington’s disarmament policies will now flow directly from the State Department and that means from Mr. Dulles.” In Moscow, Izvestia, citing the fact that McCloy and Lovett had both signed their names to the Gaither Report, characterized the panel of disarmament advisers as “bulls let loose in a china shop.”82

  But McCloy and his three colleagues were actually rather inclined to push the process along. Twice in April 1958, McCloy and the other members of the disarmament panel met with Dulles to discuss whether the administration should support a test-ban treaty with the Soviets. McCloy strongly favored such a treaty and did not believe the U.S. nuclear deterrent could be harmed by a ban on atmospheric testing. In this he was vigorously opposed by AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss. Dulles and Eisenhower were beginning to waver. World public opinion was such that the administration was under heavy pressure to
demonstrate its willingness to negotiate with the Soviets. In March 1958, Khrushchev announced a unilateral halt to their own series of nuclear tests. Washington had to respond. So, at the end of April 1958, Eisenhower and Dulles finally agreed to drop their insistence that no progress could be made on a test-ban treaty without a simultaneous ban on production of nuclear weapons. In response to a letter from Eisenhower, Khrushchev agreed to send a delegation to Geneva, where preliminary talks on the technical aspects of a test-ban agreement commenced in July. McCloy and Eisenhower’s other disarmament advisers could claim at least part of the credit for this first concrete breakthrough in U.S.-Soviet arms-control negotiations.83

  Early 1958 was a low point for the Eisenhower presidency. Ike was recovering from his second heart attack, which some of his friends believed had been brought on by the wave of criticism he received in the wake of the Sputnik affair. Though he had made a remarkable recovery by January, for the rest of his life he had to struggle with a mild speech impediment in which he occasionally transposed the syllables of a long word.84 He was severely embarrassed by this affliction and even considered resigning the presidency. Aware of his friend’s self-consciousness on this score, McCloy made a point of praising Ike’s State of the Union speech in early January. He wrote him that his ninety-two-year-old mother, Anna, had watched the speech on television: “In order to give you some idea of the high regard in which she holds you, I would say she ranks you just a little above me. She was so relieved, not only by the content of your speech but also by the vigor and manner of your delivery of it, that she burst into tears just after it was over in pure thankfulness.” Ike was touched by this little gesture and responded with a note to Anna assuring her “that I value highly the opinion of the mother of my good friend.”85

  A few months later, Eisenhower invited his old friend to a White House dinner in honor of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. It was an intimate gathering, attended by Foster Dulles, Bedell Smith, Al Gruenther, Robert Lovett, C. D. Jackson, Lewis Strauss, and a couple of British officials and their wives. After cocktails were served, the men adjourned to a stag dinner and their wives ate in a separate room. Later, while the women watched a movie, the men sat around and had a serious discussion on the issues of atomic testing, disarmament, and whether to have a summit conference with Khrushchev. Dulles led the discussion by going around the room and calling on each individual to express his opinion. It became apparent to all that Dulles’s hard-line views were shared by very few, if any, other men in the room. He began by turning to the president’s committee of advisers on disarmament issues: McCloy, Smith, Gruenther, and Lovett. They made it clear that they thought a summit was inevitable, an opinion Dulles disputed. Dulles was still looking for any excuse to avoid a summit, which he felt could only result in a propaganda coup for the Soviets. McCloy, Macmillan, Smith, and others argued that, realistically speaking, there was no way the United States could avoid such high-profile negotiations. Macmillan put it rather bluntly by saying the British people were not panicking at the thought that eight or nine bombs could exterminate their society, but they “jolly well feel that it is only fair to have a go at a conversation on the subject” [of a test ban and disarmament].86

  McCloy tried to explain to Dulles that, though a summit was probably inevitable, one could take steps to ensure that it wasn’t confined simply to a discussion of the Soviet proposal for a unilateral ban on testing. The Americans could put forward proposals for mutual on-site inspections in order to verify such a test-ban treaty, and a discussion of outstanding European problems could be placed on the agenda. Jackson suggested the administration should try to steal the initiative from the Soviets by announcing not only a suspension of nuclear testing, but a suspension of the production of fissionable material, provided the Soviets did the same. Dulles again expressed his displeasure at such an idea.

  Throughout this little debate, Eisenhower sat “visibly puzzled.” As Jackson reported to his diary, “Several times he blurted the kind of interruption that clearly showed he just had not understood.” Altogether, it was a discouraging evening for men who were, after all, some of the president’s closest friends and advisers. McCloy, Jackson, and others came away feeling that, in the face of Khrushchev’s aggressive diplomacy on disarmament issues, Foster Dulles was hamstringing the administration’s ability to break out of a defensive mode.87

  McCloy and the other disarmament advisers, however, underestimated their influence over the administration. Dulles’s objections focused on a summit meeting, with all its attendant publicity, and not the idea of a test-ban treaty. To be sure, Strauss and other AEC officials continued to argue that a test ban, or even a suspension of testing, should not be declared unless the Soviets were prepared to pledge a halt to all nuclear-weapon production. But with the encouragement of McCloy, Bedell Smith, Lovett, and Gruenther, both Dulles and Eisenhower began drifting toward a decision to press ahead for full-fledged negotiations on a test ban. When the team of Soviet and American experts negotiating in Geneva determined in August that it was “technically feasible” to detect violations of a test-ban treaty, the president announced his willingness to suspend all nuclear tests for one year if the Soviets agreed to have formal negotiations begin on the treaty by the end of October. Khrushchev quickly agreed, but between August and October 31, when the suspension took effect, the two superpowers exploded another thirty-three nuclear weapons—drenching the globe in record-breaking levels of radioactivity.88

  That autumn, McCloy finally accepted an invitation to attend one of the exclusive and highly confidential meetings of the Bilderberg Group. This organization had been founded in 1952–53 by Dr. Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the consort to Queen Juliana. Until then, Retinger, a former adviser to the Polish government-in-exile during the war, had served as the secretary general of the European Movement, a coalition of institutions dedicated to promoting European political and economic unity. Nearly half of the European Movement’s budget was provided by the CIA-funded American Committee for a United Europe.89 In 1952, Retinger, alarmed by the rise of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, persuaded Prince Bernhard to head a new organization designed to influence public opinion by bringing together leading American and European personalities once a year for a free-wheeling discussion of their differences. As Retinger later explained it to Prince Bernhard’s official biographer, the idea was “to get the leaders of opinion in the most important European countries to make an appraisal of where the Americans were wrong” and then “at a completely private meeting of top-level people from both continents . . . to present this frank critique to leaders of American opinion and give them an opportunity to answer the indictment.”90

  In late 1952, Retinger went to America to try the idea out on his American contacts. Among others, he saw such old friends as Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller, and Bedell Smith, then director of the CIA. After Retinger explained his proposal, Smith said, “Why the hell didn’t you come to me in the first place?” He quickly referred Retinger to C. D. Jackson, who was about to become Eisenhower’s special assistant for psychological warfare. It took a while for Jackson to organize the American wing of the group, but finally, in May 1954, the first conference was held in the Hotel de Bilderberg, a secluded hotel in Holland, near the German border. Prince Bernhard and Retinger drew up the list of invitees from the European countries, while Jackson controlled the American list. As Retinger later explained, invitations were “only sent to important and generally respected people who through their special knowledge or experience, their personal contacts and their influence in national and international circles can help to further the aims set by Bilderberg.”91

  Americans like David Rockefeller, Dean Rusk, and Joseph Johnson turned up in Bilderberg to meet with such influential Europeans as Denis Healey, Guy Mollet, and Alcide de Gasperi, the architect of postwar Italy. That first meeting was dominated by a fierce discussion of McCarthyism. Some of the Europeans suggested America “
was heading for a Fascist dictatorship,” a charge Jackson vigorously dismissed.92

  In subsequent years, the Bilderberg Group focused on negotiations with the Soviets in the wake of Stalin’s death, relations with the non-aligned nations, and the future of NATO. In 1957, the Bilderbergers “almost came to blows” discussing the Suez crisis of the previous year. Some of these discussions actually resulted in concrete steps. One regular Bilderberger, George McGhee, an oil-company executive and former assistant secretary of state, later said, “I believe you could say the [1957] Treaty of Rome which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at these meetings.”93

  But in general, the purpose of the Bilderberg meetings was less a matter of elite decision-making than yet another attempt to sketch the boundaries of an Atlantic consensus. In this respect, Prince Bernhard’s meetings were little more than an extension of the Council on Foreign Relations. Indeed, the steering committee of the American section of the Bilderberg Group consisted entirely of CFR members.94

  McCloy had been invited to the first meeting, in 1954, but could not come. And though he accepted an invitation to come to the 1957 session, at the last minute he had to cancel. He finally made it to the group’s meeting at an oceanside resort in Buxton, North Carolina, for three days in mid-September 1958. Seventy-five men attended this session with McCloy, including Hermann J. Abs, Dean Acheson, George Ball, David Rockefeller, Giovanni Agnelli, and Paul Nitze. Prince Bernhard presided, as usual, and the discussion ranged over such broad issues as NATO conventional-force strategy, European monetary policy, the character of foreign aid for the developing nations, and the possibility of benign evolution within the Soviet Union. The minutes of the meeting report that the Bilderbergers that year “sometimes felt that a general relaxation of tension in the world could help that trend of evolution which we hope for inside the Soviet Union.” And yet, as C. D. Jackson put it, “we used to have such a useful ally in the simple, byzantine brutality of Stalin. You knew where you were, and you also knew that if you bumbled your way into trouble, you would be rescued by Stalin. That is no longer true today with Mr. Khrushchev, who is an infinitely more subtle character.” Still, a consensus emerged that the “seeming Russian interest in preventing the spread of atomic weapons could lead them to conclude some limited agreements.”95