308. Record of Telephone Conversation Between Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles1
The Sec. said he was sending to the President a clean draft of a message to Khrushchev. The Sec. said that after he wrote the Pres. on Sat. we sent a draft to London. Macmillan looked it over and came back with some minor suggestions which are incorporated in the draft the Sec. was sending over. They discussed whether the Sec. would come to the WH this morning and Sec. said he could come over at 10 on his way to the Pentagon.
The Sec. mentioned Jim Hagerty’s idea about the possibility of a somewhat different approach to Khrushchev and try to put him behind the propaganda eight ball by saying he suddenly talks one-third of our initial proposal where he said both of us do this and it would be [Typeset Page 1317] inspected. Let us say we will go back to the initial program and have a meeting right now of the UK, USSR and us, and possibly France. The Sec. said perhaps we could “beef” it up a little. The Pres. said we could tell Khrushchev that we stand ready in the meantime if he is ready to go ahead on that particular thing. If he would agree to that meeting and that purpose in spite of our plans we would postpone our plans. Perhaps we couldn’t because they are all out in the Pacific. The Pres. said he thought that Hagerty might have something. He said that he and the Sec. were always talking about a new approach and this might be something that would make Khrushchev squirm.
- Source: Message to Khrushchev; cessation of testing. No classification marking. 1 p. Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations.↩