187. Memorandum of Conversation Between President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles0
ALSO PRESENT
- Allen W. Dulles
Mr. Allen Dulles reported on the information regarding the two presumed nuclear detonations that were indicated as having occurred in the Soviet Union on November 1 and November 3. I said that in view of this we contemplated instructing Wadsworth to talk to the head of the Soviet delegation in Geneva, indicating that we had these indications and asking whether the Soviet Union desired to comment on the matter. I said we did not plan to give any publicity to our information until after the Soviet Union had had a chance to respond and also I thought that in the meantime we should try to get agreement on what our own program should be, if it appeared that the Soviet Union was planning to carry on testing during the Geneva talks.
The President approved of this approach to the Soviet Union. He said that so far as we were concerned, he thought that we might in any event have a respite from testing. He said that Dr. Teller had been talking to him and had indicated that the urgent testing up to October 31 had been so intense that there had been more testing than thinking, and that some period for appraisal and new planning was, in Dr. Teller’s opinion, advisable.
I said that we would try to get agreement as between the Department of State, Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission [Page 677] as to what line we would take. I also mentioned that it would be important to coordinate with the British, who seemed to favor the continued suspension of testing by them and ourselves, presumably because they had no plans readied for further testing at this time.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Meetings with the President. Secret; Personal and Private. According to the President’s Daily Appointment Book, this meeting was held from 11:17 to 11:30 a.m. (ibid.)↩