<--PREV Doc #1658  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1660 Document #1659; September 28, 1960 To Christian Archibald Herter Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series ; Category: Personal The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XXI - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part X: Ending an Era; August 1960 to January 1961 Chapter 23: "To keep the Free World free"   Memorandum for the Secretary of State: Quite occasionally there are brought to me reports, by visitors to foreign lands, to the effect that some of our Ambassadors are not performing up to the standard that we should expect. Sometimes a complaint alleges indifference, sometime arrogance, and other times a degree of ignorance.1 In any event, I should like to have you, once more, have studied the idea of developing a kind of an inspectional system that could keep you and me well informed of our diplomatic activities. Foster and I discussed a number of times having "Ambassadors at Large" but for one reason or another, the idea was always abandoned.2 I wonder whether we could not find it possible to require each of the men we appoint as regional Assistant Secretaries of State to make an annual pilgrimage so as to determine for himself, through direct observation and conversations with knowledgeable people in several capitals, just exactly how we are getting along. This is something I should like to talk to you about at your convenience.3 1 Eisenhower had received a memorandum on the preceding day from Clarence B. Randall, Chairman of the President’s Council on Foreign Economic Policy. Randall had recently returned from Europe where he had represented the United States at the opening of the tariff conferences in Geneva. He had also visited the American embassies in The Hague, Brussels, Paris, and London to discuss economic matters with the ambassadors and their economic staffs. Randall had warned Eisenhower of "a severe bias" by the British against Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon’s perceived favoritism toward France and the Common Market (see no. 1415). Randall had told his British colleagues that Dillon was an able, dedicated public servant and was not Anglophobic. Randall also noted that Ambassador W. Walton Butterworth, U.S. Representative to the Economic Community, the Coal and Steel Community, and to the European Atomic Agency (Euratom) was "universally regarded as hostile to Great Britain" and "a menace." Randall recommended replacing him with someone else. In addition Randall also reported that an administrative assistant to Secretary Dillon had been "indiscreet" in expressing his attitudes and had been "throwing his weight around a little too much" (Randall to Eisenhower, Sept. 27, 1960, AWF/I: D-H; see also Eisenhower to Herter, Sept. 30, 1960, ibid.). 2 For discussions between Eisenhower and former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles regarding the issue of ambassadors-at-large see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, nos. 376, 1183; see also no. 1516 in these volumes. 3 Eisenhower and Under Secretary Dillon would discuss the need for two ambassadors-at-large able to visit every embassy semi-annually. Eisenhower would tell Dillon that he thought that "the State Department had not kept up with the times and had preferred to remain as much as possible with the old systems." No one in authority, he said, had ever seen all of the ambassadors at work. The State Department had tentatively agreed to the establishment, in 1961, of a three-man panel of consultants, Dillon would reply (John S.D. Eisenhower, Memorandum of Conference, Oct. 5, 1960, AWF/D). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Christian Archibald Herter, 28 September 1960. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1659. 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/1659.cfm <--PREV Doc #1658  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1660

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