The One That Got Away

There was a case to be made against the Administration's Far Eastern policy, but its Republican critics failed woefully to make it. G.O.P. Senators on the committee were seriously divided among themselves on Far Eastern policy, and could not even be gotten together to plan a coordinated attack. The Republican policy committee hastily sent over two men to think up questions and feed them to Maine's Owen Brewster. They were not enough. The plain fact was that, after years of criticizing U.S. China policy, Republicans had apparently not bothered to prepare for their biggest day in court.

On many lines, Senators had a chance to ask some searching questions. Subjects that were not effectively pressed:

>Conceding that the bargain at Yalta was dictated by military considerations, the fact remained that the rights of an ally had been bargained away behind his back.

>Acheson's exclusion of Formosa and Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter in January 1950 had undoubtedly reassured the Communists in their planning.

>The U.S. had withdrawn its forces from South Korea despite the danger of North Korean attack, of which General Wedemeyer had warned in his long-suppressed report. The U.S. had left the South Koreans neither adequately trained nor armed to defend themselves.

>Despite the Administration's big round figures, there was evidence that military aid to China in 1945 and later was slow in arriving, that there were unconscionably long time lags between appropriations and deliveries, that the actual quantities and types of useful equipment delivered to the battlefield fell far short of the figures. The U.S. had refused to supply Chiang with military advisers down to combat level, although it was doing so in Greece.

>The Administration claimed that it was not trying to force a coalition on Chiang, but it laid a ten-month embargo on military shipments just when he was locked in critical battle with Mao's forces.

>Once Chiang had been driven from the mainland, State had despaired of saving the Nationalists, had placidly awaited the fall of Formosa (and Chiang). Chiang, they obviously felt, was not a man the U.S. should be seen with.

Charges & Reports. It was a case that needed detail to counter the Administration's detail, that needed documentation to make its charges stick. Far from producing such evidence, the Republicans were often reduced to questions prefaced by such phrases as "some have charged that--" or "there is a report that--." Many a Republican on the committee was frankly impressed by the Secretary's well-briefed grasp of facts, dates and documents. Wisconsin's waspish Alexander Wiley said to him: "You have had a long chore, sir, and have done a grand job for yourself, I would say, with that mind of yours. Keeping everything in it is a remarkable accomplishment." Some seemed bedazzled by the intricacy of his argument. Maine's Owen Brewster asked for a recess to give him more time to prepare, pleading: "I am somewhat overawed with the responsibility of even questioning the Secretary [with his] very great intelligence and competence in his field."

Tempers Kept & Unkept. But the dispassionate air of inquiry had vanished. Partisan wrangle broke out. Republicans made their questions short speeches. Democrats retorted by producing past documents to show that the Republicans had rarely lifted a voice to protest U.S. policy steps when they were taken, and Connecticut's Brien McMahon, politicking for all he was worth, and joined by Maverick Republican Wayne Morse, demanded an investigation of the "China lobby."* Acheson coolly resisted most Democratic attempts to get him to concur in attacks on MacArthur or the Republicans.

Acheson had been warned over & over by his advisers to keep his temper at all costs, and he kept it. Only once did he show a flash of personal emotion, when one Senator charged that U.S. authorities knew Japan was licked at Yalta and that the concessions to Russia were unnecessary. Said Acheson: "My own son was out there in the Navy at the time of Yalta, believing the [Japanese] could take an awful lot of chances . . ."

Tired and frustrated, Republicans quarreled among themselves. Observed New Hampshire's Charles Tobey: "There is an injunction in the Scriptures: 'Avoid vain repetition.' I wish you would all remember it." Snapped Wiley: "I suppose I should accept it graciously coming from my good friend Senator Tobey. But I think he should avoid assuming the right to lecture constantly us who have been here day in & day out."

"I Prayed Considerable." The most trenchant questioning came not from the disorganized Republicans but from two anti-Administration Democrats. Georgia's Walter George demanded why it was, when U.S. policy was not to allow Formosa to fall into hostile hands, that the U.S. "came very near doing it" when it voted for the U.N. cease-fire offer in January. That cease-fire offer proposed that the fate of Formosa be discussed by a body which would include four specified nations--Russia, Communist China, Britain and the U.S.--a peculiar foursome in which only the U.S. was at all willing to save Formosa from Mao. Acheson lamely explained: "It did not say there should be [only] four, and you could have 50 as long as the four were in the group." Said George: "Mr. Secretary, on that point, I thought we had very frankly made a mistake and prayed considerable during about three days that the Communists would reject it, and fortunately the Communists did . . . I think it is a fine illustration of the efficacy of prayer." Dean Acheson was admitting no mistakes.

Virginia's Harry Byrd drew an admission that U.S. authorities had long ago recognized the dangers of a North Korean invasion, but withdrew U.S. troops anyway. Acheson argued that all U.S. authorities, including the J.C.S. and MacArthur had approved the decision, and that it was taken because of a recommendation by the United Nations (which, he neglected to say, the U.S. initiated). Snapped Byrd: ". . . That doesn't make it an accurate or proper recommendation."

At week's end, after 40 hours of questioning (probably the longest grilling any congressional witness has ever had), Dean Acheson stepped down from the witness chair unruffled. Perhaps he had made no new friends, but he had impressed even his enemies. Republicans, who had thought he would be an easy mark, grudgingly conceded that he had escaped almost unscathed.

* Acheson was noncommittal, but Harry Truman eagerly seized the chance, told him to go back to the committee and tell them that Truman was directing all pertinent executive agencies to get together their material and "to cooperate to the fullest possible extent."

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