164. Editorial Note
At 8:30 a.m. on July 20, President Eisenhower met with Prime Minister Eden for breakfast at the latter’s villa to review, with the assistance of Secretary of State Dulles, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Dillon Anderson, and Foreign Secretary Macmillan, a number of subjects, including the Middle East and arms for Egypt. According to Anderson’s memorandum of this conversation, the participants discussed the Egyptian arms request in the following terms: [Page 304]
Egyptian Armament
“Mr.Dulles mentioned that the Egyptians had recently offered to buy from the United States a substantial (for them) quantity of tanks, guns and ammunition; that they had hinted that they would buy from the Russians if we didn’t sell to them.Eden thought this latter would be bad, but doubted that the Russians would sell to the Egyptians.
“Mr.Dulles said he thought we would make the sale; that it couldn’t be aid because the Egyptians would not make the kind of agreement in connection with aid that our laws require.
“Eden said the British were furnishing some small amount of armaments to the Egyptians; that the French were too; that some of it was being resold through Libya to the Arabs and shot back at the French in Morocco and Algeria.” (Eisenhower Library, Project Clean Up)
For a summary of those sections of the conversation related to the Middle East and to the Alpha project, see Document 171.