Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
No. 216
Memorandum of Telephone
Conversation, Prepared in the White House1
3:52 p m, President called Secretary Dulles re his memo2 on Soviet Tankers en route to Communist China.
[Page 473]Dulles further explained: He’s rather disposed to let them go ahead on these boats. Our own hand won’t be shown. Don’t think it critical, one way or another.
As to our moral position, & whether we’re acting in good faith, he said it isn’t the kind of thing we would do openly. We’re not sending American boat or plane to round up & stop this traffic. We do encourage the Chinese Nationalists who are theoretically in state of civil war. They do it in exercise of their own belligerent rights, & prevent their enemy from getting necessary materials. They take off cargo & let ships go.
Told President, if he would like to take a little more time, didn’t have to settle it now.
We make the decision to extent of reconnaissance to enable them to pick these boats up. Our plane flies high, spots these boats, tells Chiang where they are, & he picks them up. He himself has insufficient reconnaissance, & can’t have effective blockade. Boats are picked up on the high seas. No different from international law. Mentioned that British exercised control of picking up ships on high seas. Of course, we are doing same thing today in relation to Guatemala; it’s a little illegal, but no one so far has picked it up. Got some stuff in Hamburg yesterday.
This is just a case of our giving them private help, & tipping off Chinese. We don’t automatically tell them. They treat our notification to them as being acquiescence, or invitation to action. I gather in the past we haven’t helped them, particularly in terms of Soviet flagships, although we have in case of Polish ships.
President said: I don’t know of any reason why they (the Chinese Nationals) should not be told. I don’t feel really in a position to make a decision that we should urge them to do it. They might get themselves in a fix, what the results would be I do not know. I am quite certain this would not be something for which the Soviets would try to declare war.3
Hardly a pretext for declaring war against us. Might possibly intensify their action. Might mean in future they would send armed convoy to protect their ships. They of course suspected that we were up to some devilry—wouldn’t have happened without our connivance.
There was earlier ship we spotted last October. We were about to give information on it to Chinese so they could pick it up. Later information indicated this might have been a decoy, so let it go on [Page 474] by. But if it looks like real stuff this time, perhaps they can catch it.
We would be in position to make a straightforward statement in event anything turns up, because it can be serious. Could say “we had no part of the action itself, which related to detention of these ships.” And “as a matter of habit, we gave this information to the Chinese.” Just because of our reconnaissance, can’t be considered as engaging in actual war. Our naval & air forces are under instructions to defend Formosa, & this is part of our whole scheme of affairs.
President gave permission to give them the information.
- Apparently prepared by Ann Whitman, although the source text does not so indicate. The memorandum is an attachment to a memorandum for the files of the same date, also by Whitman, not printed.↩
- Not found in Department of State files.↩
- On the source text, this paragraph appears at the conclusion of the paper with the heading “Insert,” and the word “Insert” appears in the margin between the immediately preceding and the following paragraphs.↩