<--PREV Doc #73  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #75 Document #74; March 11, 1953 To William Lindsay White Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series, Roberts Corr. ; Category: Personal and confidential 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 Mr. White:1 Thank you for your letter of the tenth, which Mr. Cutler has delivered to me.2 I am grateful that you so promptly informed me of the change in your own thinking. As you say, we should suspend final judgment until all the facts are in hand. Sincerely 1 White (A.B. Harvard 1924), who was the son of the late Kansas newspaperman William Allen White, was himself a distinguished reporter and author. 2 White had written to place distance between himself and Republican National Committee Chairman C. Wesley Roberts, then the subject of a Kansas legislative investigation. Roberts, a Kansas publisher and Republican official (see Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 907), had been elected chairman in mid-January. Less than a month later Kansas newspaper reports revealed that in 1951 he had received eleven thousand dollars from an insurance firm after the company sold a hospital building to the state government. Roberts described the amount as a public relations fee and denied any wrongdoing. On February 13 Press Secretary Hagerty said that the White House was "satisfied" with Roberts's statement. But in Kansas rival state Republicans scored Roberts for conduct "unpleasantly reminiscent of the loose standards of public honesty and morality which the people voted to change in the last election" (New York Times, Jan. 17, 18, Feb. 13, 14, 16, Mar. 2, 1953). On March 2 White had sent Eisenhower a copy of an editorial he had written for the Emporia, Kansas, Gazette emphasizing that "in the Wesley Roberts case, nothing has yet been proved." Three days later Eisenhower had acknowledged receipt of the piece and added in a postscript that White's "attitude regarding the investigation" was "admirable." In his letter of March 10, White cautioned against deciding the issue before Roberts could testify under oath but wrote that "very frankly, the present outlook is a lot worse than I had believed it to be when I wrote you last week" (all correspondence in AWF/A, Roberts Corr.). For developments see nos. 105 and 116. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To William Lindsay White, 11 March 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 74. 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/74.cfm <--PREV Doc #73  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #75

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