Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Western European Security and Integration, Volume IV

194. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State (Hoover) to the Secretary of State¹

Washington, October 24, 1956.

SUBJECT

• Conversation with Admiral Strauss re EURATOM

Admiral Strauss called at my office this morning just prior to his departure for New York. He will be absent from Washington until the end of this week.

I read to Admiral Strauss the draft of your proposed letter to him stating the Department’s position on EURATOM,² advising at the same time that it was not being transmitted because it had been prepared prior to the recess of the EURATOM negotiators.

Admiral Strauss felt strongly that he should proceed immediately with the bilaterals with Italy and France, and that they should be concluded before the 1st of November. He gave me all of the reasons, with which you are familiar, particularly stressing the fact that EURATOM is now further away from consummation than ever before, and that the Administration would be under severe criticism if concrete progress toward applying atomic power in the foreign field were not made in the next few months.

I advised Admiral Strauss that it was your and the Department’s feeling that conclusion of a EURATOM agreement was by no means impossible, and that we were optimistic that real progress would be made within the next few months. We felt that the conclusion of the bilaterals would seriously, and perhaps decisively, prejudice the ultimate adoption of the EURATOM concept. Admiral Strauss appeared to doubt that EURATOM could be put through in any event.

After some discussion, Admiral Strauss stated that he felt he should bring this to the attention of the President and you in person, and suggested that he would like to make a presentation upon his return to Washington at the beginning of next week. I promised to convey this information to you.

It is my impression that Admiral Strauss might be willing to delay the negotiations on the bilaterals until some agreed-upon deadline, such as perhaps January 1, 1957, and that if at that time more progress had not been made, he would be free to proceed along the lines he has proposed. I did not have an opportunity to pursue this possibility with him further, as he had to leave to catch his plane.

H.H. Jr.
Herbert Hoover, Jr.

1. Source: Department of State, Atomic Energy Files: Lot 57 D 688, Atomic Energy—General. Confidential.
2. Reference is to an undated draft of a letter from Dulles to Strauss. (Ibid.)