Office of the Historian

185. Memorandum From the Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of State1

Washington, March 12, 1956.

I met with the President for approximately half hour this morning and covered a number of current items with him. Colonel Goodpaster was present.

(1)
We reviewed briefly Mr. Anderson’s trip to Egypt and Israel. I told the President he would probably be in Washington sometime this afternoon and the President expressed a desire to see him. (The meeting was subsequently set up for 4:30 p.m., and Mr. Anderson and I discussed the Middle East problems with the President for almost two hours. This will be reported on separately.2)
(2)
I outlined our proposed plans for introducing a resolution in the Security Council3 and stated that although we were talking with the British and the French on a tripartite basis, we were, nevertheless, holding up final decision on the operation until Ambassador Lodge’s return to New York on March 13.
(3)
The President examined with some interest an intelligence summary which I had with me outlining the disposition of military forces in Israel and the surrounding Arab states.4 He commented that the Arabs had certainly laid themselves open to a quick thrust [Page 341] by the Israelis and that he did not have much confidence in their military planning.

[Here follows discussion of unrelated matters.]

H.
  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Meetings with the President. Top Secret; Personal and Private. The meeting described here took place at 10:30 a.m. The time of the meeting is from Goodpaster’s memorandum of conversation. (Ibid., Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries)↩
  2. Infra.↩
  3. See Document 206.↩
  4. Reference is to an intelligence estimate, March 8, entitled “The Arab-Israeli Situation”, prepared by the Intelligence Advisory Committee’s Ad Hoc Working Group on the Arab-Israeli Situation. (Department of State, NEA Files: Lot 59 D 518, Alpha—Memos, etc., Feb. 16 to March 31, 1956)↩