The Hearings

The Hearings "Few, if any, of us doubt," said Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, explaining the Eisenhower Middle East resolution before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "that it would be a major disaster if that area were to fall into the grip of international Communism ... No single formula will solve all the problems of the Middle East. They will have to be attacked in a variety of ways . . . But the evolution of events now requires us to add this new element to reinforce our other actions in the area."

As soon as Dulles had finished his prepared statement, Illinois' Tom Gordon, the soft-spoken new committee chairman, moved in with the first question. Just what countries did the President want to help protect when he spoke of the Middle East? Replied Dulles: "There is always danger in drawing a line on the map . . . There is no part of the world, I think, where any of us would want to see, in effect, the Soviet Union told 'It is all right if you take over this country; we will not mind as long as you do not take over the other.' "

Declaration of Peace. Other questions and.other answers then came thick and fast. The gist:

Q. Would the Eisenhower resolution heighten the tensions with Russia?

A. Perhaps, but then so did the Marshall Plan, NATO and other proven ways of stopping Communist aggression.

Q. Would it increase tensions between the nations of the Middle East?

A. Not of itself, because the U.S.'s purpose is to keep out Soviet influence, which is the greatest fomenter of "turbulence and turmoil" among nations in the region.

Q. Isn't the U.S. now being just as aggressive toward the Middle East as the British and French were?

A. There is all the difference in the world between attacking a country and offering to help a country against attack. "We will only act in the area at the request of the countries concerned."

Q. But how does the U.S. plan to handle subversion, the key Red tactic?

A. In three ways: namely, by reducing the Middle Eastern nations' fear of overt attack, by helping their military planning, and by building up the stability of the region through effective economic aid. "If you put those three things together you get as complete a protection against internal subversion as is possible, unless you want to go around the world invading countries to throw out governments which you do not like."

Q. Since Congress has already voted foreign-aid funds for the Middle East, why does the President need authorization to use $400 million over the next two years without restraint?

A. The President should now have some flexibility, because like ammunition in war, foreign aid might have to be switched rapidly from one front to another.

Q. Wouldn't the resolution be a blank check for the Executive to declare war?

A. "I do not call this a declaration of war, either present, future, or deferred. I call this a declaration of peace because I do not believe that peace can be preserved unless we make it clear in advance that if aggressors attack the freedom of other countries . . . that we are going to do something about it, and something serious. If we do not make that clear in advance, then I think these attacks are much more apt to occur."

"Approach to the Brink." After appearing in open session, Dulles and Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted on going into executive session with the committee to discuss some of the secret specifics. A censored version of the testimony later was released. In it Dulles explained that the Middle East threat was real and dangerous, that the area might well be lost to Communism if the U.S. delayed in offering military protection and economic aid. "And if it is lost it will be the greatest victory that the Soviet Communists could ever have gained, because if they get this area they, in effect, will have gotten Western Europe without a war [by strangling its oil supply]." Dulles made it plain, as the President had made it plain to the Kremlin during the anxious first days of the crisis (TIME, Nov. .12 et seq.), that the U.S. would forcefully oppose any Middle East movement of Communist "volunteers."

Next day the Democratic attack on the Eisenhower resolution found its focus. Into the dimly lighted hearing room half an hour ahead of schedule strode the Democratic lead-off witness, Harry Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson, trim in a dark blue suit, white shirt and red-and-white striped tie. In a 35-minute statement, Acheson unburdened himself of half a dozen assorted points about Republican policies that had bothered him, ranging from "nuclear retaliation" to recent cuts in ground troops. As for the resolution before the House, Acheson thought that it was "perilously like another approach to the brink ... far too hazardous even to be hinted at." Acheson's own ideas on how to handle the crisis: 1) the U.S. should agree to supply Western Europe's oil and dollar needs and thus cut down Nasser's leverage and his incentive for keeping the canal blocked, and 2) the U.S. should fret less about an attack by the Soviet Union and start seeking and underwriting agreement on internal Middle East problems, e.g., Arabs v. Israel (objectives that the U.S. is working toward through the U.N.). Beyond that, Acheson urged Congress to pass only a simple declaration on the U.S. intent to defend the Middle East.

Ominous Talk. Then Acheson's onetime boss was heard from. "If I were now a member of the U.S. Senate," wrote Harry Truman in a syndicated newspaper column, "I would support the request of the President . . . The situation is too dangerous to delay." Truman roundly criticized what he called "vacillation, indecision and failure," and he urged that the U.S. should actually go farther than the Eisenhower resolution, i.e., proclaim, and if necessary enforce, an embargo on all Communist arms shipments to the Middle East.

Thus the debate roared into its second week, and rolled from the Foreign Affairs Committee to the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. In the Senate, a group of Democrats orbiting around Arkansas' Senator William Fulbright talked of throwing up new roadblocks. Like Acheson, they had in mind a substitute resolution minus any mention of Communism, minus stand-by authority to use troops, minus the requested flexibility on foreign aid. Oregon's Wayne Morse told a television audience that the U.S. should never "spill American blood for Arabian oil."

What such hand-wringers failed to realize was that, in any partisan effort to embarrass the Administration, they might make a record for the Democratic majority that Democrats, as well as Republicans and the whole U.S., would regret for years to come.

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