621. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Radford) and the Counselor of the Department of State (MacArthur), Washington, November 29, 19561
Admiral Radford called me this morning to say that he was much disturbed about the Egyptian situation. He said he had read Ambassador Hare’s recent messages of his talks with Nasser and the Egyptians, and he felt that Ambassador Hare was inclined to take the word of Nasser and his associates at face value. This was not realistic, since we had … information … which indicated that while Nasser talked one way to Hare, he was behaving in an entirely different way and was in general instructing his subordinates to do things which were very dangerous from our viewpoint.
Admiral Radford said he felt it was vital that arrangements be made for Ambassador Hare to see the same … reports which we received here… . he would be in a better position to evaluate what Nasser was really up to and would not be taken in by protestations of one kind when Nasser was acting in directly the opposite sense… .
I said I did not know what arrangements had been made for keeping Ambassador Hare up-to-date …, but I agreed it was important that he should know what we know. I said I would bring this to the attention of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Rountree. Admiral Radford said he was also disturbed because he did not think Ambassador Lodge had adequate knowledge … . At least this was the impression he had from some of the statements Ambassador Lodge had made.
Admiral Radford said he was desperately concerned about the situation in the Middle East and had called me because he wanted to [Page 1210] get this off his chest. He said he personally felt the situation was going to bog down and disintegrate and that if it did so, the military had to be in a position to act if hostilities spread. The Department of State had opposed certain moves which Admiral Radford had proposed to strengthen our military posture in the Middle East. He was unhappy about this. He reiterated that he felt there would be no solution at the UN and that the situation would end up with Nasser in control and that Nasser would then start to do all kinds of things after the British and French withdrawal when there were no longer any strings on him.
I replied that we felt we must pursue these matters in the UN and that we were hopeful with respect to the withdrawal of British and French troops that some announcement might shortly come from London which would enable us to take constructive steps to be of assistance. Admiral Radford said he hoped I was right, but he had great forebodings about being able to work out anything in the UN since he thought the UN Secretary General had also been taken in by the Egyptians and the end result was going to be very bad.
The Admiral concluded by reiterating that he was so disturbed that he had called to get this off his chest, and I replied that I would of course bring his views to the attention of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Rountree.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 774.00/11–2956. Top Secret; Limited Distribution. Drafted by MacArthur. Copies were sent to Hoover, Murphy, Rountree, and Armstrong.↩