Office of the Historian

Eisenhower Library, Hagerty papers

No. 424
Extracts From the Diary of James C Hagerty, Press Secretary to the President

[Extract]

[Washington,] December 2, 1954.

Thursday, December 2, 1954

. . . . . . .

In my pre-conference talk with Dulles, we went over the following matters:

1.

The Statement which the President was going to make on the China Situation1 which was heartily approved by Dulles. He asked me to just stress one additional point to the President which was this: He said that at his press conference yesterday he had left open the possibility of a blockade so that it would allow the United States a bargaining lever with our Western allies.2 Leaving such a possibility open would allow the Secretary of State to go to our allies and say in effect: “Look, we want to do this by peaceful means and we need your support, but we want to warn you that if [Page 982] you do not support us, then we will be forced to go it alone and resort to a blockade or other acts. The choice is in your hands. Cooperate with us through peaceful means or force us to take actions which you will not like and which we will not like. But let me remind you we are dealing with the lives of American airmen captured in uniform during the Korean war and the United States is firm in its intention of getting those men back.”

. . . . . . .

3.
Formosa Mutual Defense Treaty—Dulles said that the President could announce that Dulles and the Foreign Minister of the Republic of China, George Yeh, would sign the Mutual Defense Treaty in the Secretary’s office at 4:00 p.m.3 As far as the offshore islands were concerned, Dulles said their position was the same as always. The Treaty actually applies only to Formosa and the Pescadores, both of which were detached from China by Japan in 1893 and belonged to Japan during World War II.

As far as the other offshore islands were concerned, the Secretary said that they were not expressly covered by the Treaty and recommended that the President merely say that their status was not changed and that if defense of those islands becomes involved in the defense of Formosa, we probably would help defend them. “Let’s keep the Reds guessing on them, however, and not make any clearcut statement about them.”

. . . . . . .

Allen Dulles called after the conference to find out what the President had said on the prisoners and when I told him, that the President had made a very great distinction between the 11 uniformed men and the two civilians,4 Dulles thought that was correct. Actually, if the United States is to make a strong case on this subject to the world, we have to divide the uniformed men from the two civilians, who were members of the CIA. Dulles has stopped the practice which existed prior to the time we came in of sending American CIA members on such missions and it cannot happen again, but nevertheless the Chinese have a case against those two. That is why the President deliberately separated the 11 airmen in his press conference.

  1. For text of the statement made by the President at his press conference that day, see Department of State Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1954, pp. 887–889.↩
  2. For text of statements concerning the possibility of a blockade, made by Dulles in response to questions at his Dec. 1 press conference, see ibid., p. 888.↩
  3. For text of statements made by Dulles and Yeh at the time of the signing of the treaty, see Department of State Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1954, p. 898. For the text of the treaty and the texts of the notes exchanged on December 10 by Secretary Dulles and Foreign Minister Yeh, see 6 UST 433; TIAS 3178.↩
  4. Telegram 319 to Taipei, Dec. 3, reported that, when asked about the status of the two civilians, the President had replied, “It is cloudy I think and I couldn’t discuss it in detail.” (611.95A241/12–354)↩