<--PREV Doc #1593  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1595 Document #1594; July 27, 1960 To Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, Jr. Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XX - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part IX: Shattered Dreams; March 1960 to July 1960 Chapter 22: Disaster in Paris   In Security Council we will make an announcement that no mention of such possibilities--(canal thru Mexico) will be mentioned or hinted at.1 DE 1 The Eisenhower Administration had for several years been studying the possibility of a new sea-level, trans-isthmus canal at various sites in Columbia and Nicaragua, as well as Panama and Mexico (Memorandum of Conference with the President, Mar. 21, 1960, AWF/AWD; Cabinet meeting minutes, Apr. 29, and May 22, 1960, and related material, AWF/Cabinet; see also Cutler to Adams, Nov. 19, 1957, AWF/A: AEC). The project was to be part of Plowshare, a federal program established in 1957 for finding peaceful uses for nuclear explosives (Memorandum of Conference with the President, Mar. 22, 1960, AWF/AWD; for background see Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, pp. 528 - 29; Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. II, The President, pp. 565, 568, and 591). Secretary of State Herter had advised the President (Herter to Eisenhower, July 27, 1960, AWF/D-H) not to announce publicly a promise to dig a canal across Mexico pending negotiations; Eisenhower had said he would like to make such a statement during a speech to the United Nations planned for September (Memorandum of Conference with the President, July 7, 1960, AWF/AWD; Kistiakowski, Diary, pp. 6, 364 - 65, 375 - 76). Herter said his recommendation was based on both political and technical considerations: excavations using nuclear explosives had not yet proven successful in practice and the repercussions were unknown. The Mexicans were "notably skittish" about nuclear matters, and the project would involve the relocation of more than 100,000 people. He thought that premature public discussion could generate adverse reactions and jeopardize the test ban negotiations (Herter to Eisenhower, July 27, 1960, AWF/D-H; see also nos. 1445, 1454, 1493, and 1581). Herter pointed out that the impact on U.S. relations with Panama needed to be considered due to the current difficulties over control of the canal (see nos. 1355, esp. n. 1, and 1443). He recommended Panama, not Mexico, as the best site for a sea-level canal. Eisenhower wrote his note to Goodpaster by hand on Herter’s July 27 memo. At a National Security Council meeting on January 5, 1961, Eisenhower would decide that it might not then be politically possible to construct a canal across Mexico (NSC minutes, Jan. 5, 1961, AWF/AWD). No second canal would be built. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, Jr., 27 July 1960. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1594. 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/1594.cfm <--PREV Doc #1593  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1595

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