Why Congress Is Suspicious
COFFIN, TRIS
Ike's Doctrine and the Mideast WHY CONGRESS IS SUSPICIOUS By Tris Coffin Washington A Congressman famous for his off-the-record comments was entertaining reporters just outside the House Foreign...
...cotton on the world market...
...Whether by accident or design, Red Army reinforcements began a massive attack on the Hungarian rebels the following day...
...There is much to support this...
...Nasser was crowing as if he had won a great military victory...
...It was a dread that a panicky Kremlin would start World War III...
...Egyptian cotton is breaking in on the South's world market...
...For example, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have for some time planned a small, mobile, highly skilled force which could be quickly transported to trouble-spots, like modern fire-fighters...
...This force would be armed with tactical atomic weapons...
...Information Sen ice office in Baghdad last year, and the present anti-Western ruler of Jordan owes his position, in part, to mobs...
...American foreign policy, meanwhile, was held at a standstill...
...Again, the Administration acted convulsively: The "Eisenhower Doctrine" was hastily thrown together...
...An awkward aggressive move by Russia, like "volunteers" in an Iranian civil war, could change Congress overnight...
...5. Many Republican strategists, who regard the military aspect of the "Eisenhower Doctrine" as politically explosive for 1958...
...Instead, the response has been alarm, cynicism, doubt and open hostility...
...The Congressman drawled: "It looks to me like the pilot damaged the plane and now wants us in on the crash landing...
...The Damascus and Cairo radios poured out a torrent of abuse at Iraq, a member of the Baghdad Pact, designed to set aflame the frightful mobs that sweep like holocausts through the Middle East...
...The "estimate" was, in a sense, captured by the Administration's political slogans...
...The fear came from three sources: the famous Bulganin hint that missiles might be used against England and France, a Moscow Radio boast that "volunteers'' for Egypt were being recruited in the USSR, and alarming reports from the Tito regime that outside "interference" in Hungary would bring an immediate Soviet offensive against Austria and Yugoslavia...
...The atmosphere in Washington in the fourth week of October was a euphoria of "peace and prosperity," with the expected re-election of the President...
...His senior, Theodore Green of Rhode Island, is 89 years old...
...Ike's Doctrine and the Mideast WHY CONGRESS IS SUSPICIOUS By Tris Coffin Washington A Congressman famous for his off-the-record comments was entertaining reporters just outside the House Foreign Affairs Committee chamber...
...It has been incorporated into the "Eisenhower Doctrine" as the peace-keeper in the Middle East...
...He hurried across the street separating his office from the White House and counseled: "Don't do anything you will regret later on...
...A Congressional figure consulted during this time said: "The boys in the White House and State Department were reading the press ticker, and trying to make judgments on a few lines put on the wire by a copy editor...
...Sixth Fleet to drag the invasion bodily out of the Middle East...
...That this was not done was largely due to the soothing influence of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey...
...When the thunder roared, the President and his advisers were stunned...
...At first, the Hungarian revolt was simply ignored...
...Within a few days, an almost frantic fear shuddered through the Administration...
...Leonard Hall, the GOP national chairman, had found that peace was the overriding issue...
...Hard intelligence on Hungary and the Middle East did funnel in...
...This is the earliest GOP Senate leader Knowland could promise Secretary Dulles in a private meeting last week...
...The Administration reacted convulsively...
...foreign policy in late October and November, which probably stemmed from panic, have crippled the free world...
...4. The perfectionists on foreign policy, like Senator William Ful-bright, who to all intents and purposes is the Democratic spokesman on the Foreign Relations Committee...
...The canvas mailbags dragged into Congressional offices every morning are full of letters from mothers who complain: "You promised to stop war, and now you're talking about sending my boy out to fight the Arabs...
...Keep calm and collected...
...The Southern cotton bloc is putting pressure on both the State and Agriculture Departments to dump surplus U.S...
...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a report by a meticulous and able scholar, Dr...
...The Pentagon interpreted the ominous quiet in U.S...
...Byrd and his followers are casting a very jaundiced eye on the whole foreign-aid program, and are in no mood to back vast Mideast spending...
...This was a reflection of the growing conviction on Capitol Hill that the convulsions of U.S...
...it was ignored...
...Sergius Yaeobsen, predicting the revolt in Hungary...
...Parts of plans rattling around the Pentagon and State Department were pulled out of drawers...
...2. The budget pruners, like powerful Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia...
...Congressional opposition comes from these groups: 1. Midwest isolationists, who realize that psychologically Cairo is a million miles from Terre Haute...
...Soviet Russia may yet save the President's plan, however...
...Russia has begun meddling again in northern Iran, apparently with the idea of starting a civil war...
...The Committee had broken up after hearing Secretary of State Dulles and Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify secretly on the Middle East...
...The framers of this Middle East plan honestly believed it would be welcomed throughout the United States and in London, Paris, Cairo and Tel Aviv...
...The President's initial reaction to the Suez invasion was anger...
...In the cold December and January mornings, the Administration began to awaken to the immense damage to NATO, the economy of Western Europe, and our own prestige...
...There was tough talk of using the U.S...
...did not look with favor on a hostile government on the Soviet border...
...This unsettled information was screened out by the "national intelligence estimate"—the top intelligence sieve, intended as a final guide for the President and National Seucrity Council...
...President Eisenhower called his old friend, Walter Bedell Smith, from his business office to the White House to interpret events...
...Both the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees are in open revolt, and a very patched and altered "Eisenhower Doctrine" will finally emerge some time in February...
...It was a tough ultimatum, not couched in the usual friendly phrases of U.S.-British relations...
...Britain and France were sternly warned that American economic and military aid would be withdrawn unless they pulled out of Suez without argument...
...One Congressman alone received 400 such letters within three days after the President delivered his message...
...Russia was assured (so the Washington Star reported on page 1) that the U.S...
...3. The traditionally internationallyminded South, now opposed to subsidizing competing cotton growers...
...The National Security Council had formally decided that full-scale revolution was impossible...
...Privately, he castigated Prime Minister Eden bitterly for "double-crossing" him...
...Such a mob destroyed the U.S...
...communications with Britain and France, the massing of arms and various statements in London and Paris as adding up to war...
...Orderly communications with the rest of the world and our own intelligence outposts broke down...
...And the climate of the Middle East has so changed since October 31 that Western oil supplies are in real peril...
...Russia was putting arms and jet planes into Syria in plain violation of the LTN resolution on the Middle East...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 4
