Strikes against IKE:

1/ He sanctioned the assassination of democratically elected foreign leaders because their policies went against the interests of multi-national corporations. These actions – akin to killing off any budding FDRs of African and Middle East nations, leaving them basket cases. RE: Iranian 1953 BP inspired coup, would come back to haunt Americans in 1979, with them wondering, “why us”.

2/ He did nothing to stop the huge build-up of the Military-Industrial-Political-Media nexus, except warn about it to the American people and leave it to his successors.

3/ He authorised he U2 flight at a time when he and Krushev had a rare opportunity to put the Cold War to rest and the huge expenditures it entailed.

4/ He proclaimed liberty and yet did nothing whatsoever on Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and economic mobility and opportunity.

5/ He tailored Richard Nixon as successor….

6/ Eisenhower also refused to speak out against Joe McCarthy, even adjusting his praise for General Marshall, until the were out of the Senator’s state. He preferred to try to sabotage the McCarthy’s crusade behind closed doors without taking a stand as President. It would on Ed Murrow to deal with it.

7/ “In 1950 Dwight D. Eisenhower had purchased a small farm for $24,000. According to Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson (The Case Against Congress), several oil millionaires, including W. Alton Jones, B. B. Byers and George E. Allen, began acquiring neighbouring land for Eisenhower. Jonathan Kwitny (Endless Enemies) has argued that over the next few years Eisenhower’s land became worth over $1 million: “Most of the difference represented the gifts of Texas oil executives connected to Rockefeller oil interests. The oilmen acquired surrounding land for Eisenhower under dummy names, filled it with livestock and big, modern barns, paid for extensive renovations to the Eisenhower house, and even wrote out checks to pay the hired help.”

……In 1961 Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson began reporting on Eisenhower taking money from the oil industry. Eisenhower did not take legal action against the journalists and the story did not receive very much publicity. In 1968 Pearson and Anderson returned to the topic in their book, The Case Against Congress (1968). “On January 19, 1961, one day before he left the White House, Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 percent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action. One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order happened to be Cities Service, which had had no residual quota till that time but which under Ike’s new order was allotted about 3,000 barrels a day. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the three faithful contributors to the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm.”

….The authors went on to claim that hree months later, W. Alton Jones was flying to Palm Springs to visit Eisenhower when his plane crashed: “Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash and travelers’ checks. No explanation was ever offered – in fact none was ever asked for by the complacent American press – as to why the head of one of the leading oil companies of America was flying to see the ex-President of the United States with $61,000 in his briefcase.”
” – Spartacus website.

8/ ” In 1956 there was an attempt to end all federal price control over natural gas. Sam Rayburn played an important role in getting it through the House of Representatives. This is not surprising as according to John Connally, he alone had been responsible for a million and a half dollars of lobbying.

Paul Douglas and William Langer led the fight against the bill. Their campaigned was helped by a speech by Francis Case of South Dakota. Up until this time Case had been a supporter of the bill. However, he announced that he had been offered a $25,000 bribe by the Superior Oil Company to guarantee his vote. As a man of principal, he thought he should announce this fact to the Senate.

Lyndon B. Johnson responded by claiming that Case had himself come under pressure to make this statement by people who wanted to retain federal price controls. Johnson argued: “In all my twenty-five years in Washington I have never seen a campaign of intimidation equal to the campaign put on by the opponents of this bill.” Johnson pushed on with the bill and it was eventually passed by 53 votes to 38. However, three days later, Dwight D. Eisenhower, vetoed the bill on grounds of immoral lobbying. Eisenhower confided in his diary that this had been “the most flagrant kind of lobbying that has been brought to my attention”. He added that there was a “great stench around the passing of this bill” and the people involved were “so arrogant and so much in defiance of acceptable standards of propriety as to risk creating doubt among the American people concerning the integrity of governmental processes”.

The decision by President Eisenhower to veto this bill angered the oil industry. Once again Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison began negotiations with Eisenhower. In June, 1957, Eisenhower agreed to appoint their man, Robert B. Anderson, as his Secretary of the Treasury. According to Robert Sherrill in his book, The Accidental President: “A few weeks later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to “study” the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day program which benefits the major oil companies, the international oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year.” ” – Spartacus

But darn it, that smile, those good natured eyes, that uncle baldness….I still like Ike!

Often away from the West Wing,
President Ike did like to swing.