570. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the President and the Secretary of State, Secretary Dulles’ Room, Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, November 12, 1956, 11:30 a.m.1
ALSO PRESENT
- Mr. Macomber
The President began the conversation by saying that Senator Green had called on him this morning and had said “all the right things”. The Senator had indicated a strong desire to cooperate with the Administration and said further that he fully understood that it was the Executive Branch that had the responsibility for the conduct of our foreign relations. He had added that he not only understood this principle but heartily believed in it. The President had mentioned to Senator Green the Foreign Relations Committee hearings [Page 1113] this morning2 and had asked the Senator to do what he could to prevent it becoming an occasion for partisan purposes. Senator Green had said he would do what he could, but pointed out that neither he nor anyone else could always handle a Senator who was seeking publicity.
In this connection the President said that he was sorry that the State Department had agreed to the hearings this morning. The Secretary also thought this had been unwise. The President believed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee made too heavy demands on the time of the State Department. He suggested that in the future when requests came for State Department officials to appear before the Committees that the former should take a firm line, indicating that they would appear for an hour and a half or some other set time and that after that time had elapsed they would have to leave for other appointments.
[Here follows discussion of unrelated subjects.]
The Secretary asked the President where we stood on the Big Three Meeting. The President replied that the situation stood as before, that no definite date had been set and it had been made clear to both the British and the French that there would be no meeting until all their troops had been taken out of Egypt. The President appeared to be thinking in terms of December 1 as a date when these meetings could begin. He said that this would have the advantage of allowing the Secretary to have a vacation in Key West before the meetings commenced.
The President talked briefly about his original invitation to Eden and Mollet to visit Washington. He said that he had made it very clear to Eden that the fact that we were willing to have such a meeting did not mean we would endorse what we have stood against. He had warned Eden therefore that there might be no communiqué or a split communiqué. The President told the Secretary that he thought this had averted any problem of seeming to endorse the British and French actions. He added, however, that the State Department had misgivings on this score and he had, as the Secretary knew, therefore postponed the meeting.
[Here follows discussion of unrelated subjects.]
[Page 1114]Returning to the Suez crisis the President said he now believed that the British had not been in on the Israeli-French planning until the very last stages when they had no choice but to come into the operation. He had felt when the British originally denied collusion with the French and the Israelis that they were misleading us, but he had now come to the conclusion that they were telling the truth. One of the arguments the President cited to support this view was the long delay that took place between the time the British declared their intent to go into Egypt and the time they actually went in. He said that the British were meticulous military planners and he was sure that if they had been in on the scheme from the beginning that they would have seen to it that they were in a position to move into Egypt in a matter of hours after they declared their intention to do so.
The Secretary thought that the British having gone in should not have stopped until they had toppled Nasser. As it was they now had the worst of both possible worlds. They had received all the onus of making the move and at the same time had not accomplished their major purpose.
The President and the Secretary spoke again of the importance of getting UN police troops in Egypt as quickly as possible. The President said he did not see why they were assembling the troops at Naples. If he were running the operation he would move the troops in as they became available—in as small groups as fifty at a time if that were necessary. He felt the important thing was to get some UN troops moving in and some British and French troops started out.
The Secretary mentioned his wish to have the NATO meeting postponed until January. He felt that it would be very difficult to have a useful meeting in December, that it was necessary to let matters settle down before we could hope successfully to consider some of the problems currently confronting NATO. He said that it was going to be very difficult to make NATO an institution where all members increasingly took each other into their confidence so soon after the recent actions of the British and the French. The President agreed with the Secretary’s observations and specifically agreed with the desirability of having the meeting postponed.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Meetings with the President. Top Secret. Drafted by Macomber.↩
- On November 12, Hoover, Allen Dulles, and Flemming testified in executive session before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concerning U.S. policy, actions, and intelligence operations in regard to the Suez Canal crisis, the Arab-Israeli dispute, the European oil supply situation, and the Hungarian crisis. The transcript of their testimony is printed in Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), Vol. VIII, Eighty-Fourth Congress, Second Session 1956 (Washington, 1978), pp. 605–660.↩