184. Memorandum From the Counselor of the Department of State (MacArthur) to the Acting Secretary of State 1
SUBJECT
- Briefing of the President, 8:30 a.m., November 13, 1956
Colonel Goodpaster and I met with the President this morning pursuant to the new liaison arrangements. Following the intelligence briefing which Colonel Goodpaster gave, the President was briefed on pertinent items in the Top Secret summary.2 In the subsequent discussion, the following points were of interest:
[Here follows discussion of items 1–2.]
3. Several times during the conversation, the President expressed concern over reports which seem to indicate that many European people had the impression that the US had incited the Hungarians to rebellion. He said this concerned him and we should devote all our efforts to correcting this impression. He said it has never been our policy to incite captive peoples to insurrection, but we have always stood ready to assist in their peaceful liberation through giving strong moral support to the captive peoples. I told the President that we had this problem in mind and that I would of course let Mr. Hoover know of his concern that we find means of correcting the false impression speedily.
[Here follows discussion of items 4 and 5 on the Middle East; see volume XVI, page 1120.]
I assume that you will have S/S show appropriate paragraphs of this memorandum to appropriate Assistant Secretaries on a need-to-know basis.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 711.11–EI/11–1356. Secret; Limit Distribution. A marginal notation on the source text reads: “Secty saw 11/13/56 H.H.Jr.”. Aside from Hoover, copies were sent to Murphy and to William B. Macomber.↩
- The Department of State’s Top Secret Daily Summaries are ibid., Daily Summaries: Lot 60 D 530.↩