Eisenhower Library, Hagerty papers
Excerpt From the Diary of James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary to the President
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4. Guatemala—Allen Dulles and the CIA yesterday had prepared a brief memorandum1 for the President which was sent first to the State Department and which I actually did not see. Their memorandum, however, had the President backing “their form of activity in Guatemala”. Dulles rejected this memorandum because he was afraid if the President supported the CIA, it would lead to charges that the President and this country were supporting revolutionary activities within Guatemala and would place the President in the dangerous position of appealing to citizens of a foreign country to revolt against their leaders. Instead the State Department recommended (which was later approved by the President) that the President merely say that the current crisis in Guatemala shows a “disturbing tenor to change its Communist-infiltrated government into an out and out Communist dictatorship. A few days ago the regime officially announced the suspension of constitutional liberties. This was immediately followed by a wave of arrests of anti-Communists. Others are fleeing the country. A strict censorship has been imposed. There have been a number of killings. All of this is part of a similar pattern of a typical Communist take-over and is not in response to any external threat.” The State Department also urged the President to emphasize that any attempt by internal Communism to penetrate into the western hemisphere was a serious matter and one which was being studied by the Foreign Ministers of the American states.2
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- See footnote 2, supra.↩
- On June 16, at 9:37 a.m., Secretary Dulles spoke with Hagerty concerning foreign policy issues in connection with the President’s press conference later that morning. With respect to Guatemala, the conversation was recorded as follows: “The Sec. did not see the final [press] statement, but what he saw was o.k. … It is all right to say we are having talks with Latin American countries.” (Eisenhower Library, Dulles papers, “White House Telephone Conversations”) The text of the President’s press conference is printed in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954, pp. 566–574.↩