Office of the Historian

265. Telegram From the Secretary of State to the Department of State1

London, July 29, 1957—9 p.m.

Dulte 1. Eyes Only Acting Secretary from Secretary. No further distribution. Your Top Secret memorandum of July 262 is still cryptic. When I last spoke to the President it was following the presentation by Lawrence and Teller and the President then seemed to question the wisdom of any suspension of testing.3 Does your July 26 memorandum indicate that we should consider accepting suspension of testing for longer than twelve months and also consider waiving the general “inseparability” concept and particularly the inseparability of testing suspension and “cut-off” of new fissionable material for weapons purposes. Or is it primarily his concern that the form of our presentation should appear to be more flexible without however such changes.

FYI. While I welcome some flexibility I would hesitate to change fundamentals unless the matter had been carefully reviewed with hearing to Strauss and Radford.

Dulles
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 330.13/7–2957. Top Secret; Eyes Only.↩
  2. Regarding this memorandum, see Document 263.↩
  3. See Document 248.↩