Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Soviet Union, Eastern Mediterranean, Volume XXIV

182. Memorandum of Conversations Between the British Ambassador (Makins) and Secretary of State Dulles, Dulles’ Residence, Washington, June 23 and 25, 1956¹

June 23, 1956.

The Ambassador called pursuant to my telephone call to him in order to pick up the message from the President to Sir Anthony Eden about Cyprus.²

I said to the Ambassador, in giving him the message, that I thought he should know that this was not a perfunctory message, but that the President had given considerable thought to the problem and that we had discussed it together over the telephone. I also said that while I had made a first draft of the message, the President himself had changed it around so that it would, he thought, accurately reflect his thinking in the way he would like to express himself.

The Ambassador spoke of the “leak” of our criticism of their proposed Cyprus statement on the ground of a “built-in veto”³ He said the Foreign Office was much upset by the fact that it had become known that they had consulted us on this and that we had been critical of it.

I expressed my surprise that there should have been any such “leak”, which the Ambassador said was in the London Times. I said I would look into the matter.

June 25, 1956.

Following the signature of the Agreements regarding St, Lucia and Ascension Islands, I told the Ambassador I had looked into the matter of the “leak” regarding the Cyprus situation. I said that what had happened was that a Reuter’s correspondent had come into the Department and seen a very junior officer, bringing with him a Drew Middleton dispatch about Cyprus. This Middleton dispatch itself disclosed a considerable amount about the British intentions. The correspondent then tried to draw out the Departmental official as to what the attitude of the United States would be. I was reliably informed that he had said he had no idea, but there then followed what the officer thought was a purely informal conversation about the Middleton dispatch, in the course of which this officer had expressed it as his personal view that such a plan as Middleton reported might be deemed objectionable because it gave the Turks a built-in veto against a change in the international status of Cyprus.

I said that while I greatly regretted what had happened, it was not a “leak” of anything that had taken place between the Ambassador and me, as to which the officer in question was totally ignorant.

1. Source: Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199. Secret. Drafted by Dulles.
2. Supra.
3. In telegram 5924, June 23, Aldrich reported that Lloyd had asked him to call regarding an article in the London Times, which indicated that the Department had been kept informed of British moves to break the Cyprus deadlock. Lloyd noted that reference to the idea of a “built-in veto” in the article, suggested that the writer must have had a direct conversation with someone in the Department. According to Aldrich, Lloyd was requesting Makins to express to the Department Britain’s grave concern on this matter. (Department of State, Central Files, 747C.00/6–2356)