<--PREV Doc #1383  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1385 Document #1384; December 1, 1959 To Arleigh Albert Burke Series: EM, AWF, Name Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XX - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part VIII: "Friends and Foes"; September 1959 to February 1960 Chapter 20: "No substitute for personal contact"   Dear Arleigh: There is nothing that I like more than a "writ of exception", especially when it provides a break in the disciplinary barriers normally confounding human instinct. I shall take plentiful, even self-indulgent, advantage of the dispensation, if for no other reason than because of reverential awe of the extraordinary power possessed by any one authorized, legally, to issue such a writ--and make it stick.1 My thanks for your welcome present, and even more for the escape you have provided from ordinary rules of naval behavior. Your thoughtfulness already has done much to lighten some of the forebodings that have clouded anticipations of my impending tour.2 With warm personal regard, Sincerely 1 Admiral Burke, in his third term as Chief of Naval Operations, had sent the President a gift of "liquid stimulant" in anticipation of Eisenhower’s visit aboard the U.S.S. Des Moines in the Mediterranean, during his twenty-day good will tour of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. (On the tour see nos. 1382 and 1395.) Since alcohol was prohibited on Navy vessels, Burke wrote that he had resorted to "legal subterfuge" in effecting a "writ of exception" that applied only to "Presidents, Royalty, and those excepted by their express invitation." Burke said that he hoped that Eisenhower’s "inner man" might benefit from "this extraordinary remedy at law" (Nov. 23, 1959, AWF/N). In February Eisenhower had congratulated Burke on the success of the Vanguard missile program and had sent along a bottle of Burke’s favorite scotch whiskey (see John S. D. Eisenhower, Strictly Personal, pp. 200 - 201; on the Vanguard program see no. 548). 2 Eisenhower would board the U.S.S. Des Moines on December 15 (New York Times, Nov. 8, Dec. 14, 16 - 19, 1959). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Arleigh Albert Burke, 1 December 1959. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1384. 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/second-term/documents/1384.cfm <--PREV Doc #1383  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1385

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