EISENHOWER DWIGHT D Typed Letter Signed Ike to former Atomic

Sale 2413 - Lot 114

Price Realized: $ 2,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

CRITICIZING BAY OF PIGS INVASION EISENHOWER, DWIGHT D. Typed Letter Signed, "Ike," to former Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis L. Strauss, stating that the Supreme Court's decision on Dixon-Yates was a "blunder," criticizing the actions of President Kennedy's "[New] Frontiersmen" including the Bay of Pigs invasion, and revealing his struggles in maintaining a quiet post-Presidency life. 3 pages, 4to, rectos only, personal stationery; staple holes at upper left corners, horizontal folds. (TFC) Palm Desert, 16 February 1963

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". . . It would seem that the decision by Consolidated Edison to build a 1,000,000 kilowatt plant powered by atomic energy is evidence that the Company thinks well of the possibility of producing the power at lower cost. I have no doubt that some day the cost will be competitive with coal and water power.
"I think that the City of Memphis probably learned a good lesson from Dixon-Yates. . . . I have no doubt that . . . we acted wisely and in the best interests of the United States. Moreover, I always thought that the decision of the Court of Claims that the government should repay to Dixon-Yates its out of pocket costs . . . was correct and sound. I think the Supreme Court blundered in reversing that decision on the technicality that one man, for a period of some ten or eleven days, was simultaneously an advisor in the Bureau of the Budge and to the Bank that was arranging for the financing of the operation.
"Joe Dodge wrote me a letter to which was attached a copy of a letter he had sent to Lucius Clay about the latter's role in collecting the $2,900,000 in cash as part of the ransom for the survivors of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Joe was astonished that Clay would have gotten mixed up in such an affair. Actually, there is no explanation for the 'ransom' efforts of the Administration except the existence of a guilty conscience. While the Administration has tried to avoid any admission of a blunder in that unhappy incident, the fact that it has twice tried to arrange through allegedly private sources for the ransom of those who had to remain for months in Cuba prisons shows not only that it had a very definite responsibility in the matter but is trying to remove this very sensitive item from the memory of the public.
"The Frontiersmen not only operate roughly, they do so on the theory that the hand is quicker than the eye.
". . . Respecting the item about the Kennedy speech of 1959, I find many statements of his ranging from the late 1950's to the very present that are contradictory one with the other. Politics in the capital now seem to be best described as conniving. The statement he made about your 'negative and ever-suspicious spirit' is taken by you I am sure as a definite compliment. . . ."
Lucius D. Clay (1898-1978), a then-retired general and former military governor of occupied Germany, voluntarily headed an advisory board to provide aid for the families of hostages at the Bay of Pigs. He was eventually called upon by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to use his business connections to raise the additional $2.9 million that Fidel Castro demanded in order to release the hostages.