Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?

Abstract

The overwhelming consensus among analysts of United States foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration is that it was dominated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Regardless of their often differing assessments of the policies, these writers agree that Dulles' forceful personality, lengthy preparation, and keen intellect enabled him to control and even manipulate the congenial but bland and passive President Eisenhower. This conventional wisdom has been based on the public record, the period's journalistic accounts, and the appraisals of individuals who were largely outside the inner circles of both the White House and the State Department. Recently much primary source material has become available that calls into question this traditional interpretation of the Eisenhower-Dulles relationship. The Whitman File in the Eisenhower Library contains thousands of pages of transcripts of the president's daily phone conversations, minutes of formal and informal meetings, memoranda and other written communications, and Eisenhower's private diary. By using this new material in combination with the extant but often overlooked sources-Eisenhower's wartime papers, interviews with White House and State Department insiders available in both the Dulles Oral History Project and Columbia Oral History Collection, and studies of Eisenhower's pre-presidential career-the current scholar can determine that the standard view of Dwight Eisenhower on the leading strings of John Foster Dulles is highly problematic.