Eisenhower Library, Hagerty papers
Excerpt From the Diary of James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary to the President
Allen Dulles called me—and later Pete Carroll dropped in—to tell me that the situation in Guatemala as reported by the American press is greatly exaggerated. Press reports “bombing”. As Pete Carroll, said, “There are no such planes in that part of the world. There have been a few homemade bombs dropped by Piper Cubs but that is about all.” Expect that the Wire Services have very poor men in Guatemala and that they are overplaying the story. However, the State Department and Foreign Ministers of the other American countries are watching the situation very closely.
I think the State Department made a very bad mistake, particularly with the British, in attempting to search ships going to Guatemala. This was done obviously in an attempt to stop arms shipment to the country, but somebody in the State Department (maybe Dulles) forgot that the right of search of neutral vessels on the high seas is one which we ourselves oppose. As a matter of fact, we were at war with the [Page 1174] British in 1812 over the same principle. I don’t see how with our traditional opposition to such search and seizure we could possibly have proposed it, and I don’t blame the British for one minute for getting pretty rough in their answers. I don’t see why we did not ask the British and other nations to cooperate and to clear cargo lists in their own ports rather than to have them suffer the indignity of a search of their own ships by a foreign power.
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