<--PREV Doc #162  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #164 Document #163; April 27, 1953 To Arthur Hays Sulzberger Series: EM, AWF, Name Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953 Chapter 2: "A number of misunderstandings": Party and International Struggles   Dear Arthur: Thank you very much for your letter. I suspect that you were trying to chase me to a legal dictionary to look up the exact meaning of your "plea." But I was ahead of you there, because I had the Attorney General in here a couple days ago using the same terminology. In any event, thanks for writing. I agree that there may have been some indiscretion--but no great damage has been done.1 I look forward to seeing you one of these days for a chat. Sincerely 1 New York Times publisher Sulzberger had written on April 24 (AWF/N) to plead "nolo contendere" to charges of irresponsible reporting by Times journalist Anthony Leviero. In an article appearing under Leviero's byline on April 9 the Times had reported that the Eisenhower Administration was "willing to accept a settlement in Korea based on a boundary at the narrow waist of the peninsula." The article further stated that the Administration was considering a U.N. trusteeship for Formosa as a means of creating an independent republic. The White House had immediately denied these possibilities in dispatches sent to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other papers in which the story had appeared (New York Times, Apr. 10, 11, 15, 1953). Government officials did not deny that consideration of partition of Korea at the "waist" and solutions to the foreign-policy dilemma regarding Formosa were ongoing subjects for discussion in National Security Council sessions (AWF/NSC, Mar. 18, 31, Apr. 16, 1953). They did, however, disavow the view that the press report of April 9 represented official Administration policy. Sulzberger wrote that although he was entering a plea of nolo contendere, it did not mean that he had no case. "It does mean," he said, "that we ourselves were at fault in some matters of which we should not have been guilty." He explained that Leviero had written his story from notes taken by fellow journalist Walter H. Waggoner, who had attended a dinner at which the reported discussions had taken place. "There were," he said, "undoubtedly nuances evident to those who were present which were not recaptured when a new man wrote from another's record." A second reason for his plea, Sulzberger said, was that he would consider it a "grave disservice to my associates in the newspaper profession and to the country if the frank interchange of views such as took place at the gathering in question should be in any way curtailed by reason of this particular episode." For background on the Sulzberger-Eisenhower friendship see Eisenhower Papers, vols. X-XIII. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 27 April 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 163. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/163.cfm <--PREV Doc #162  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #164

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