Description:

Eisenhower Dwight

Typed letter signed "D.E." as President, 1p, 7" x 10.5" on White House letterhead. Washington, June 9, 1960. Together with a typed letter (signed in type), 2p, 7" x 10.5", on White House letterhead. Washington, May 14, 1960. Both addressed to San Diego Union Tribune publisher James S. Copley. File and staple holes at top, else very fine condition.

Eisenhower appeals to his powerful allies at a Republican fundraiser to lobby Congress against proposed cuts in the "mutual security program". First introduced by Harry Truman in 1952, the program helped fund a wide variety of foreign aid projects, designed as a bulwark against communist expansion. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the downing of Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy plane over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, Eisenhower worries that cuts by Congress to the foreign aid program would render "irreparable damage to our country". Citing his presence at the Four Powers Summit with Nikita Khrushchev, Harold MacMillian and Charles de Gaulle, Eisenhower, feared that the cuts might come during his absence (Eisenhower would arrive in Paris on May 16th, but his refusal to apologize to Khrushchev for the U2 incident caused the talks to collapse).

In his initial letter, Eisenhower laments that he "cannot but trouble over this possibility as I deal with the great issues confronting the free world, indeed all humanity, in the Summit Conference in Paris. It is incomprehensible to me at that at this point in world affairs we should face the possibility of undermining, by our own hand, our buttressing of free nations and our partnerships in defense against communist imperialism. At stake here are NATO and SEATO alliance structures, and the defense postures of South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Pakistan. Also at stake are the strivings of hundreds of millions of people who look to us for cooperation in making it possible for them to grow in freedom rather than succumbing to an atheistic materialism bent upon domination of the world."

In his signed follow-up letter, he thanks Copley for his efforts "to avoid a crippling appropriations cut, the action of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the House Appropriations committee has been twice postponed. These events are perhaps not unrelated. Those opposed to this great program of course hope for a waning of public interest. This must not happen."

But it did happen. Ultimately Congress turned a deaf ear to Eisenhower's appeal. In June, the House Appropriations Committee recommended cutting $790,000,000 of the $4,175,000,000 budgeted for foreign aid. A Senate-House conference endorsed similar cuts later in the year. (New York Times, June 14, 1960, 1; Ibid., December 27, 1960).

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