No. 576
Editorial Note
Ambassador-designate Charles E. Bohlen, accompanied by Secretary Dulles, called on President Eisenhower on the afternoon of April 2. Secretary Dulles presumably came at his own request. According to the account in Bohlen, Witness to History, pages 335–336, Bohlen and the President had a general discussion of the Soviet Union, and Bohlen also took the opportunity to inform the President of the low morale in the Foreign Service and fear of investigations of subversion.
[Page 1140]In reply to a question at his regular press conference on April 2, President Eisenhower stressed that Bohlen’s call was in conformity with usual practice and would only mention that the topic of the conversation was the situation in the Soviet Union of the American Ambassador. (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953, page 159) No official record of the meeting has been found and there appears to have been no effort on this occasion, or any other, to provide Ambassador Bohlen with any formal instructions for his new post. In a conversation in November 1953, Bohlen allegedly told New York Times foreign correspondent Cyrus L. Sulzberger that the only instructions Bohlen had from President Eisenhower were: “Watch your stomach and don’t let them get you.” (Cyrus L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles: Memoirs and Diaries (1934–1954) (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1969), page 917)