Leaks & Gossip

As soon as the newsmen were all gathered in his big oval office, Harry Truman cleared his throat and began reading a prepared statement. "The United States," he said, "has no desire to obtain special rights or privileges or to establish military bases on Formosa at this time* . . . [it] will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China [and] will not provide military aid or advice to Chinese forces on Formosa." But, concluded the President, the U.S. will "continue the present ECA program of economic assistance," of which $100 million is yet unspent.

When the President had finished, he said he would answer no questions about Formosa: reporters would have to get the answers from the Secretary of State. This hot potato Dean Acheson caught with obvious distaste, although it was he who had first put it in the fire. It was Acheson who persuaded Harry Truman to overrule the Joint Chiefs of Staff on their decision to send military advisers to Formosa (TIME, Jan. 9).

Counter-Leaks. The Secretary neglected his usual polite greeting when he faced the press, bluntly began: "I am having this conference . . . at the request and at the direction of the President." The precipitate performance on the Formosa question, as he explained it, had been necessary because "this subject has become one of the foremost subjects of discussion throughout the country . . . We have had leak and counter-leak, gossip and counter-gossip . . . and therefore it was the President's desire to clarify the situation."

Actually not leak and gossip, but the hard core of fact and opposition behind them had become intolerably embarrassing for the Administration. The facts: 1) the Joint Chiefs had decided, only to be reversed, that the U.S. should help deny Formosa to the Communists by methods successfully used in Greece; 2) Britain's decision to recognize the Chinese Communists (see INTERNATIONAL) appeared to have put the U.S.-British alignment askew; 3) a Tokyo dispatch reported that the State Department had blithely advised its staff by memo--on Dec. 23, before the President had made his own decision--to play down the strategic importance of Formosa and anticipate its fall.

Republican Barrage. The open opposition to the Administration's decision came largely from Republicans. Ex-President Herbert Hoover, who had presided over a stern nonrecognition doctrine when Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, declared that the U.S. should certainly support the Chinese Nationalists and, if necessary, provide naval protection for Formosa. He was seconded on naval support by Ohio's Senator Taft, who last September had voted against the blanket Military Assistance Program for Europe and parts of Asia.

In Congress old Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tried loyally to answer a five-hour Republican barrage, but in doing it, he was forced to double back on his own statement of seven days before that it would be "wise" to defend Formosa. Republican Floor Leader Kenneth Wherry, the party's on-tap isolationist spokesman, said that Britain's recognition of Red Peking afforded "even more compelling reasons for cutting this [ECA] spending to support British socialism."

California's Senator Bill Knowland, just back from a visit to China's retreating Nationalist armies, warned: "Munich certainly should have taught us that appeasement of aggression, then as now, is but surrender on the installment plan." To this ailing Arthur Vandenberg added a restrained, nonpartisan postscript. "The Formosan question is presently clarified," he said, "but it is not settled . . ."

*Later, when reporters got a look at the first mimeographed texts of the statement, they found no mention of the words "at this time." The President added them as an afterthought, the Secretary of State explained, to give the U.S. free rein to take bases where needed "in the unlikely and unhappy event" of war.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.