Eisenhower: Volume II by Stephen E. Ambrose

Author:Stephen E. Ambrose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The High Cost of Defense, Nuclear Testing, Civil Rights

January–July 1957

ON EVERY possible occasion, Eisenhower told the press, the politicians, and the public that the only way to reduce the budget, stop inflation, and cut taxes was through disarmament. So long as the arms race went on, the United States would be putting $40 billion or so, nearly 60 percent of the total budget, into what Humphrey had called the “dump heap.” Even at those levels, however, the JCS were unhappy and demanding more; indeed they had originally requested $50 billion for 1958. In December of 1956, while the budget was being written, Eisenhower told Dulles he was going to “crack down on defense people,” and complained that “I am getting desperate with the inability of the men there to understand what can be spent on military weapons and what must be spent to wage the peace.” 1

With no disarmament treaty in sight, Eisenhower concentrated on making savings where he could. Personnel was a major item; he ordered the armed forces, especially the Army, to make even further cuts in their manpower. Wilson and the JCS protested. Eisenhower told his Cabinet, “I think I know more about this subject than anyone else. What would we do with a large Army if we had it? Where would we put it?” 2 Eisenhower told Wilson to reduce, and where to do it. The President wanted to streamline the forces in Germany, saving thirty-five thousand men there; he ordered a reduction of forty thousand in Japan and another twenty-five thousand elsewhere. Wilson made the point that keeping these troops in place gave the United States bargaining chips in the disarmament talks. He therefore thought the forces ought to be kept at current strength in order to keep the pressure on the Russians to agree to make reductions in their forces in Eastern Europe. Eisenhower told Wilson to go ahead and make the cuts, just don’t advertise them. 3

Eisenhower was disturbed by the high cost of the CIA, and by the way in which the Agency was spending its money. At a January 17 Oval Office conference (the Dulles brothers, Radford, Wilson, Humphrey, Nixon, Goodpaster, and three deputies), Eisenhower conducted a review of the CIA, which was costing $1 billion per year. Eisenhower thought that “because of our having been caught by surprise in World War II, we are perhaps tending to go overboard in intelligence effort.” He also complained about the quality of the intelligence he was getting, and the way in which it was presented to him. Eisenhower did not say so, but everyone in the room knew that with regard to the covert-action side of the CIA, Hungary had shown its extreme limitations, indeed helplessness, in Eastern Europe, which was precisely the area in which the Republicans had hoped that the covert-activity capability of the CIA could be used most effectively. One billion dollars a year was a considerable sum, especially for poorly gathered and prepared intelligence and little effective action on the covert side.

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