Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  48. Leonard Hall, interview by Jean Edward Smith, Garden City, N.Y., April 4, 1971.

  49. Lucius D. Clay, interview, COHP.

  50. The New York Times, February 15, 1956. Also see Donovan, Eisenhower 402–3; Lasby, Eisenhower’s Heart Attack 188–89.

  51. Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay 626–27.

  52. Press Conference, February 29, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 263–73.

  53. Ibid. 266.

  54. Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises 160–61 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962). “I could not be certain whether the President really preferred me off the ticket,” Nixon wrote, “or sincerely believed a Cabinet post would better further my career. It probably was a little of both.”

  55. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President 402.

  56. Ann Whitman diary, March 13, 1956, EL.

  57. Quoted in Hughes, Ordeal of Power 173. (Eisenhower’s emphasis.)

  58. Press Conference, April 25, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 431–32.

  59. Nixon, RN 172.

  60. Ibid. 172–73.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SUEZ

  The epigraph is Eisenhower’s instruction to Dulles after learning that Israel had invaded Egypt in concert with Britain and France to capture the Suez Canal. David A. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis: Suez and the Brink of War 275 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).

  1. 279th Meeting of the NSC, March 8, 1956, EL.

  2. Eisenhower diary, March 8, 1956, 16 The Presidency 2053–55.

  3. Tripartite Declaration, May 25, 1950. United States Department of State, 5 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950: The Near East, South Asia, and Africa 167–68 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978).

  4. Kennett Love, Suez: The Twice-Fought War 84 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

  5. Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics, 1945–1958 265 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

  6. Love, Suez 88.

  7. Hoopes, Devil and John Foster Dulles 323–24; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 1956–1961: The White House Years 24 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965).

  8. Love, Suez 289.

  9. DDE, Waging Peace 25. The Soviets offered to provide weapons for Israel, which the Israelis declined.

  10. Eugene R. Black interview, Dulles Oral History Collection, Princeton University.

  11. Dulles-Macmillan conversation, November 9, 1955, United States Department of State, 14 Foreign Relations of the United States: 1955–1957: Middle East 720–23 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989). Cited subsequently as FRUS 1955–57.

  12. Telecom, DDE-JFD (John Foster Dulles), November 29, 1955, White House log, EL.

  13. 268th Meeting, NSC, December 1, 1955, EL.

  14. Eugene R. Black interview, Dulles Oral History, Princeton University.

  15. Adams, Firsthand Report 247–48.

  16. House majority leader John McCormack wanted to throw the fear of America into Nasser; Senator Estes Kefauver said the arms deal brought the Cold War into the Middle East; Hubert Humphrey assailed the administration for not providing arms to Israel to offset Nasser’s Soviet purchase. Ordinarily such Democrats would have lined up behind the administration. See The Washington Post, January 4, 5, 8, 1955.

  17. Hoopes, Devil and John Foster Dulles 337.

  18. Press Conference, May 23, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 522.

  19. Press Conference, June 6, 1956, ibid. 554–55.

  20. Ibid. 556–57.

  21. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 154.

  22. Lasby, Eisenhower’s Heart Attack 213.

  23. Nixon, Six Crises 168.

  24. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 160.

  25. Eugene Black, interview, Dulles Oral History, Princeton University.

  26. The New York Times, July 9, 1956.

  27. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 170.

  28. Conversation, DDE and JFD, July 19, 1956, 15 FRUS 1955–57 861–62.

  29. Conversation, JFD and Egyptian ambassador, July 19, 1956, ibid. 867–73.

  30. DDE, Waging Peace 34.

  31. Minutes, Cabinet Meeting, July 27, 1956, EL.

  32. Ann Whitman diary, July 28, 1956, EL.

  33. DDE to Anthony Eden, July 31, 1956, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 17, The Presidency 2222–25. Cited subsequently as 17 The Presidency. (Emphasis added.) “I realize that the message from both you and Harold [Macmillan] stressed that the decision [to intervene] was already approved by the government and was firm and irrevocable,” Eisenhower wrote. “I personally feel sure that the American reaction would be severe and that great areas of the world would share that reaction.”

  34. Conversation, DDE and JFD, August 14, 1956, United States Department of State, 15 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957: Arab-Israeli Dispute January 1–July 26, 1956 198–99 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989).

  35. White House Conference, July 31, 1956, EL.

  36. Charles A. Thomson, Alexander Holmes, and Frances M. Shattuck, The 1956 Presidential Campaign 81–87 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1960).

  37. Address Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention, August 23, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 702–16.

  38. DDE, interview with Kenneth Love, November 25, 1964, EL, quoted in Love, Suez 503. Also see Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 275.

  39. Conference with the President, 7:10 p.m., October 29, 1956, EL.

  40. Conference with the President, October 30, 1956, 16 FRUS 1955–1957 851–55.

  41. Conference with the President, October 31, 1956, ibid. 873–74.

  42. Eisenhower, Waging Peace 92n.

  43. Telephone conversation, DDE and JFD, October 30, 1956, EL.

  44. The New York Times, October 31, 1956.

  45. Radio and Television Report to the American People, October 31, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 1060–66.

  46. New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1956.

  47. Quoted in Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 297–98.

  48. The New York Times, November 1, 1956.

  49. Address in Convention Hall, Philadelphia, November 1, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 1066–74.

  50. Medical diary, November 1, 1956, Snyder Papers, EL.

  51. DDE to Alfred Gruenther, November 2, 1956, 16 The Presidency 2357–59.

  52. DDE to Hazlett, November 2, 1956, ibid. 2353–57.

  53. Quoted in Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East 404 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981).

  54. Eisenhower, Waging Peace 95.

  55. Press Conference, November 14, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 1100–1.

  56. DDE to Bulganin, November 4, 1956, 16 The Presidency 2361–62.

  57. DDE to Eden, November 5, 1956, ibid. 2363–64.

  58. Neff, Warriors at Suez 410. Also see Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

  59. Bulganin to Eden, November 5, 1956, EL.

  60. Bulganin to DDE, November 5, 1956, 16 FRUS 1955–1957 993–94.

  61. Hughes, Ordeal of Power 223. (Eisenhower’s emphasis.)

  62. Memorandum of Conversation, November 5, 1956, EL.

  63. Telephone conversation, DDE and Eden, November 6, 1956, EL.

  64. Eisenhower’s statement was repeated by Eden to Guy Mollet immediately afterward. Mollet relayed it to his foreign minister, Christian Pineau, who made it public. See The Eisenhower Legacy: Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Military and Political Crusades, Part 4: “Commander in Chief,” video interview, Starbright Media. Also see Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 355.

  65. Moses Rischin, Our Own Kind: Voting by Race, Creed, or National Origin 28–37 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1960).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: LITTLE ROCK

  The epigraph is from Robert Welch’s Politician, a book-length attack on Eisenhower as a knowing tool of the Communist conspiracy.
According to Welch, “He [Eisenhower] has been sympathetic to ultimate Communist aims, realistically and even mercilessly willing to help them achieve their goals, knowingly receiving and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all of his adult life.” The Politician 267, 278 (Belmont, Mass.: Belmont Publishing, 1964).

  1. Lodge to DDE, October 31, 1956, EL.

  2. DDE, Waging Peace 58.

  3. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

  4. Ibid., at 544.

  5. Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), ordering Gaines, an African American student, to be admitted to the University of Missouri Law School; Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631 (1948), requiring admission of a qualified black applicant to the state’s only law school; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), overturning a Texas ban on admission of black students to the University of Texas law school when the alternative black law school was manifestly inferior; and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950), overturning Oklahoma’s effort to segregate graduate students at the University of Oklahoma. All of these cases pertained to professional and graduate study only.

  6. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

  7. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803); McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819); Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824).

  8. Brownell, Advising Ike 193–94.

  9. State of the Union Address, February 2, 1953, Public Papers, 1953 30–31.

  10. Press Conference, March 19, 1953, ibid. 108.

  11. The New York Times, October 31, 1954.

  12. Anderson to General Wilton “Jerry” Persons, May 28, 1953, Maxwell D. Rabb Papers, EL.

  13. DDE to Powell, June 6, 1953, EL.

  14. Byrnes to DDE, August 27, 1953, EL.

  15. Morris J. MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 1939–1945 487 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).

  16. Adam Clayton Powell, speech, February 28, 1954, in The New York Times, March 1, 1954.

  17. Because the District of Columbia is a federal jurisdiction, not a state, the Supreme Court rendered a separate decision (Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 [1954]) pertaining to Washington’s schools based on the Fifth, not the Fourteenth, Amendment.

  18. Quoted in David A. Nichols, A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement 66 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).

  19. Brown v. Board of Education (II), 349 U.S. 294 (1955).

  20. For Harlan’s exceptional credentials, see Tinsley E. Yarbrough, John Marshall Harlan: Great Dissenter of the Warren Court 71–113 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  21. David Halberstam, Fifties 661.

  22. For the text of the “Southern Manifesto,” see The New York Times, March 11, 1956. Also see Brownell, Advising Ike, Appendix C 359–63.

  23. Press Conference, March 14, 1956, Public Papers, 1956 303–6.

  24. William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story 170–72 (New York: William Morrow, 1991).

  25. DDE to Graham, March 22, 1956, 16 The Presidency 2086–88.

  26. NAACP Annual Report, 1955 7–10 (New York: NAACP, 1955).

  27. Brownell, Advising Ike 205.

  28. Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Right Years, 1954–1965 100 (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).

  29. Kasey S. Pipes, Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality 217 (New York: World Ahead Media, 2007).

  30. Faubus to DDE, September 5, 1957; DDE to Faubus, September 5, 1957, EL. These letters are not reprinted in The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  31. Nichols, Matter of Justice 174.

  32. DDE, Waging Peace 165.

  33. Brownell, Advising Ike 208.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Telephone message, DDE to Brownell, September 11, 1957, quoted in Nichols, Matter of Justice 176–77. Brooks Hays was defeated for reelection in 1958 because of his role in attempting to work out a compromise.

  36. DDE, Waging Peace 166.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Brownell, Advising Ike 210.

  39. Ibid.

  40. DDE, Waging Peace 167.

  41. Public Papers, 1957 678–79.

  42. Woodrow Wilson Mann to DDE, September 23, 1957, EL.

  43. Brownell, Advising Ike 211.

  44. Public Papers, 1957 689.

  45. The New York Times, September 24, 1957.

  46. Section 334, Title 10, U.S. Code.

  47. DDE, Waging Peace 170.

  48. Woodrow Wilson Mann to DDE, September 24, 1957, EL.

  49. Halberstam, Fifties 687.

  50. Brownell, Advising Ike 211.

  51. Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock, September 24, 1957, Public Papers, 1957 689–94.

  52. Halberstam, Fifties 687–88.

  53. John L. Steele memorandum, September 25, 1957, EL.

  54. Gallup poll, October 4, 1957; Nichols, Matter of Justice 200.

  55. Ashmore to DDE, September 24, 1957, EL.

  56. Louis Armstrong to DDE, September 24, 1957, EL.

  57. Jackie Robinson to DDE, September 24, 1957, EL.

  58. Moncrief to DDE, September 25, 1957, EL.

  59. King to DDE, September 25, 1957, EL. Eisenhower replied to King on October 7. “I appreciated your thoughtful expression of the basic and compelling factors involved,” said the president. “I share your confidence that Americans everywhere remained devoted to our tradition of adherence to orderly processes of law.” The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, vol. 18, The Presidency 479. Cited subsequently as 18 The Presidency.

  60. DDE, Waging Peace 173. For DDE’s September 27 reply to Brown, see 18 The Presidency 465–66.

  61. DDE to William M. Sheppard, October 3, 1957, ibid. 476.

  62. Elliott to DDE, October 2, 1957, EL.

  63. Russell to DDE, September 27, 1957, EL.

  64. DDE to Russell, September 27, 1957, 18 The Presidency 462–64.

  65. Statement by the President Concerning the Removal of the Soldiers Stationed at Little Rock, May 8, 1958, Public Papers, 1958 387.

  66. DDE to Hazlett, July 22, 1957, 18 The Presidency 319–25.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

  The epigraph is from Eisenhower’s farewell address to the American people, January 17, 1961. Public Papers, 1960–61 1035–40.

  1. Press Conference, October 9, 1957, Public Papers, 1957 719–32.

  2. Halberstam, Fifties 617–18.

  3. DDE, Waging Peace 545.

  4. Quoted in Halberstam, Fifties 617–18.

  5. Perret, Eisenhower 580.

  6. Halberstam, Fifties 621.

  7. Richard Bissell interview, COHP.

  8. DDE, Waging Peace 227.

  9. Ibid. 228.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Ibid. 230.

  13. Ibid. 232.

  14. Ibid. 233.

  15. DDE to Nixon, February 5, 1958; Nixon to DDE, February 10, 1958. Ibid. 233–35.

  16. General Lucius D. Clay, interview by Jean Edward Smith, COHP.

  17. Press Conference, June 18, 1958, Public Papers, 1958 478–81.

  18. DDE, Waging Peace 315.

  19. Ann Whitman diary, September 16, 1958, EL.

  20. For Sherman Adams’s version of events, see Adams, Firsthand Report 435–51.

  21. Joint Resolution to Promote Peace and Stability in the Middle East, 85th Cong., 1st sess., H.J. Res. 117.

  22. DDE, Waging Peace 178.

  23. Lyon, Eisenhower 766.

  24. Telephone conversation, DDE and Macmillan, July 15, 1958, EL.

  25. DDE, Waging Peace 290.

  26. Memo of Conference, August 25, 1958, EL.

  27. Ibid., September 6, 1958.

  28. For the text, see DDE, Waging Peace 299–300.

  29. Public Papers, 1958 694–70.

  30. DDE, Waging Peace 304
.

  31. United Nations Statistical Office, Demographic Yearbook: 1960 146–47 (New York: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1960).

  32. The New York Times, October 30, 1958.

  33. For the text of the Soviet note, see Jean Edward Smith, The Defense of Berlin 166–78 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964).

  34. The New York Times, November 28, 1958.

  35. Ibid., December 4, 1958.

  36. United States Department of State, The Soviet Note on Berlin: An Analysis (Washington: Department of State, 1959).

  37. The Allied response, December 31, 1958, is in ibid. 32–36.

  38. Quoted in Jean Edward Smith, Defense of Berlin 199. A detailed chronology of the 1958–59 Berlin crisis is at pages 181–206.

  39. DDE to Macmillan, July 28, 1959, EL.

  40. DDE, Mandate for Change 424.

  41. Walters, Silent Missions 489.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid. 491.

  44. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament 372, Strobe Talbott, ed. and trans. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).

  45. Ibid. 380.

  46. Ibid. 412.

  47. United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960, vol. 10, Eastern Europe Region, Soviet Union, Cyprus, part 1, 462–67 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993). Cited subsequently as 10 FRUS, 1958–1960. The complete State Department record of Khrushchev’s trip is at pages 388–495.

  48. DDE, Waging Peace 448.

  49. Ambrose, Eisenhower 567.

  50. White House Memo for Record, February 8, 1960, EL.

  51. Goodpaster memo, April 25, 1960, EL.

  52. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament 447. Also see The New York Times, May 6, 1960; 10 FRUS, 1958–1960, part 1, 510–11.

  53. For the text of both the NASA and State Department statements of May 5, 1960, see Department of State Bulletin 817–18, May 23, 1960.

  54. Current Digest of the Soviet Press 3–7, June 8, 1960.

  55. Department of State Bulletin 818–19, May 23, 1960.

  56. Michael Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair 253 (New York: Harper and Row, 1986). Secretary Herter’s statement is on pages 257–58.

  57. Milton Eisenhower, interview, and John Eisenhower, interview, both in oral histories, EL. Also see Milton S. Eisenhower, President Is Calling 335.