332. Memorandum of Conversation Between Eisenhower and Herter1
The President telephoned me this morning in connection with a letter he had just received from Prime Minister McMillan concerning the exchange of information on atomic weapons which has just been approved in committee on the Hill. He said that any agreement under the bill will have to be laid before Congress for 30 days this year and 60 days thereafter before it can become operative. In that case, we will have to do some fast work.
I said I had talked to Admiral Strauss and we think we can step up our time table very materially. We have a draft reply to McMillan which we will get to the President before he leaves at 12:15 stating, in effect, that we will be in a position to have preliminary discussions with Plowden when he arrives next Wednesday, and shortly thereafter will be in a position to communicate with him about a time for the team of experts to come over. The President said he thought that, instead of aiming at the 1st of July, we should get it done by the 15th of June or we may get in trouble. I told him the only thing we had to be careful of was not to let word get out that we had begun negotiations before Congress has completed action.
The draft reply to McMillan was telephoned to the White House and the President called back at 12:05 p.m. to say it was all right with the exception of the first sentence of the second paragraph, which he suggested be changed to read: “. . . the discussions by the experts can in fact progress quickly ….”
- Source: Reply to Macmillan letter on exchange of nuclear weapons information. Confidential. 1 p. NARA, RG 59, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199.↩