Office of the Historian

91. Memorandum From the Secretary of State’s Special Assistant (O’Connor) to the Secretary of State1

Washington,May 6, 1955.

RE

  • Alpha

Byroade is scheduled to make his approach to Nasser “this week or next”. Mr.Hoover just spoke to me and is quite concerned that once Byroade moves ahead, we may be caught up in a series of developments which will involve us in commitments which might run up to a total of $1,000,000,000 without any opportunity to say no.

Hoover knows that you have assured the President that the initial discussions will be only exploratory and that we will make no commitments without the President’s express approval. However,Hoover is afraid that once Byroade starts his conversations, we may as a practical matter be committed so deeply that the President’s approval becomes academic.Hoover, therefore, thought it would be wise if you took this matter up with the President today.2

R.O’C.
  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Meetings with the President.↩

  2. According to the Secretary’s memorandum of conversation with the President on May 6,Dulles said the following to Eisenhower regarding Alpha:

    “I discussed with the President the ‘Alpha’ project for the Near East. I recalled our previous talk and the fact that matters had progressed to a point where it was deemed useful to have Byroade talk to Nasser. I did not want to take this further step without clearing it with the President. I mentioned that I thought it would be indispensable within the next few months to come out with some project which would indicate reasonable conditions under which we might be prepared with the British to give a guarantee of Israel against her neighbors and vice versa. I mentioned that this project had rather heavy financial implications and might involve ‘jumping up’ our contribution to the area by another $500,000,000 or thereabouts over a five-year period, or a total for the five years of around $1,000,000,000. The President indicated he thought it was in order for Byroade to speak to Nasser on the assumption, of course, that he would skillfully avoid anything like a definitive commitment.” (Ibid.)

    Subsequent to this meeting,Dulles evidently made the following marginal inscription on the source text: “Pres. says go ahead. But no firm commitment”.

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