FOREIGN RELATIONS: Middle East Debate (Contd.)

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FOREIGN RELATIONS

Middle East Debate (Contd.)

Pushing through the overflow crowd jammed into the Senate caucus room to hear him, the Secretary of State appeared fit and fresh in his pin-stripe grey suit and gay red necktie. Once more he was on hand to explain the President's request for authorization to 1) use U.S. forces, if requested, to defend any Middle Eastern nation against Communism, and 2) spend, without restriction, $200 million of already appropriated funds for Middle Eastern economic aid. Late the next afternoon, as he wearily pulled on his overcoat after questioning by the combined Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, John Foster Dulles was pale and drawn. He had met not only the care ful, concerned sort of questions that the Senate is duty-bound to ask. but also the hectoring and badgering of a small group of Democrats who launched what Vermont's mild-mannered Republican George Aiken called "a concerted effort to destroy you politically and personally."

Georgia's Richard Russell, wearing dark glasses against the glare of television lights, led off for the tough-but-responsible Democrats. He was, he drawled, a "little confused" about how the Administration planned to set up its program for economic aid to the Middle East. Dulles explained that as soon as the Eisenhower proposals are approved by Congress, a fact-finding commission, led by South Carolina's James Richards, former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, will depart for the area to draw up a bill of recommendations.

"Why didn't you send Richards out there as soon as he was employed, and get his program?" asked Russell sharply. "It seems to me he could have flown out there and gotten back by now and given Congress his recommendations. We are being asked to buy a pig in the poke." Dulles flushed. Pounding on the table with clenched fist, he snapped: "If Congress is not willing to trust the President to the extent he asks, we can't win this battle. If we have to pinpoint for every country, including the Communists, every step we are to take, this resolution will not serve its purpose. The emergency is great and the military situation is one of great danger."

"Calculated to Weaken." Arkansas' Democrat William Fulbright, onetime President of the University of Arkansas, who wears his Rhodes scholarship on his sleeve, waited patiently and purposefully for his turn with Dulles. When it came, he pushed his glasses down his nose and began to read a prepared statement. U.S. Middle Eastern policy under Dulles, he said, has "grievously wounded" Britain and France. Before Congress approves the Eisenhower resolutions, Fulbright continued, Dulles should be called upon to account for why these "responsible and friendly governments" had felt it necessary to conceal from the U.S. their plans for armed intervention in the Suez crisis.